Android Auto support

[ahmedre]

Let's consider adding support for Android Auto.

[MonikaJethani]

@ahmedre Can I work on this?

[ahmedre]

@MonikaJethani please feel free

[benomaire]

@MonikaJethani Any updates?

[farooqu]

I think it would be nice to consider the desired feature set for Android Auto since it obviously would not be the full app experience.

[jibraniqbal666]

I wanna work on this next when i will have some time. @ahmedre :)

• I am thinking of maybe adding ayah by ayah screen, which is recited by desired reciter.
• wanna do it in compose :).

[ahmedre]

sure - but before doing so, let's figure out what it will look like and what it will do just so we're aligned. btw, we are using compose, it's just all hidden in the closed source portion of the repo (the new page rendering is all done in compose today).

[jibraniqbal666]

yeah let's do that, how do we proceed for new feature, which needs design. what do you mean by closed source portion?

[ahmedre]

historically, people clone the repo, add some ads on top, and publish as is (keeping our servers, our email contact info, etc). as a result, we get a lot of complaints and so on. to make this a little more difficult, we've started keeping parts of the app in a closed source repo - the open source repo is still the base, but some code isn't there.

the intention longer term is to have a set of libraries that are open sourced that apps can build a Quran app on top of, instead of a full app like is the case today.

with respect to auto - I mean let's think about exactly what we want to do and support (feature wise even not code wise). I imagine something like this would be focused around the audio experience, but curious what you had in mind. I also would think there are probably higher priority issues than this if you're interested can point you to some of them.

[jibraniqbal666]

that's understandable. That's what i was thinking, but we can tackle the higher issues first, point me to it. :)

[dasyad00]

Hi, I'm also interested in helping out with this PR.

Is the vision mainly to have media controls? Do we want the user to only start the Quran playback from the phone or also the car infotainment? I feel the latter will require a lot of UI/UX considerations especially to reduce distractions for the driver.

[benomaire]

@jibraniqbal666 Showing text might be tricky, because it is something that changes frequently, and some ayat are long and might require scrolling text? The following quote is relevant:

Avoid displaying dynamic visual information unrelated to driving, such as videos and auto-scrolling text.

@dasyad00

Is the vision mainly to have media controls?

I think yes. Or at least, it could be a good start.

Do we want the user to only start the Quran playback from the phone or also the car infotainment?

also the car infotainment IMHO.

I would imagine buttons

• to quickly start audio playback from the last position,
• to start playback from a random Surah and Ayah

and also two lists for choosing the Surah and Ayah (similar to the following screenshot from quran.com)

[ahmedre]

in my head, an Android Auto experience will only be around audio, since the person driving should not be using the display while driving, and can't really read ayat on it easily - I wouldn't expect a reading experience on it?

[jibraniqbal666]

it's audio, we are just showing ayah as another visual, but i think driver might get distracted from it. then we could just see Spotify auto which might just have play pause skip and title of the surah. @ahmedre

[ahmedre]

would be good like you mentioned to see what other apps do on Android Auto to get some ideas

[jibraniqbal666]

[jibraniqbal666]

@ahmedre ⬆️

[nacer80]

السلام عليكم عليكم عليكم وبركاته I'm using Bluetooth option to listen to Quran while driving and it's very useful .

[ahmedre]

Sure something similar to what either you @jibraniqbal666 or @nacer80 shared works - we should have all this info in the notification object we use for playback

[nacer80]

@ahmedre the last screenshot was from my screen car connected with quran_android app by bluetooth. Amazing job, thanks to all contributers. -still if you add tashkeel to Surah "سورة" ..."سُورَةُ"

[jibraniqbal666]

let's prototype some ui in compose :) @ahmedre, if we don't have compose in public repo, should i add it? btw i am planning to add 2 screens

• List to select the Surah.
• Play the Surah.

[jibraniqbal666]

@ahmedre the last screenshot was from my screen car connected with quran_android app by bluetooth. Amazing job, thanks to all contributers. -still if you add tashkeel to Surah "سورة" ..."سُورَةُ"

you should create a separate issue for tashkeel as i won't be focusing on bluetooth one for now :).

[ahmedre]

yes please feel free - versions are there in build.gradle so let's use those since that's what the rest of the project is using -

    composeVersion = '1.1.0-rc01'
    composeCompilerVersion = '1.1.0-rc02'

[jibraniqbal666]

@ahmedre we need api 23 to support Android Auto :)

[ahmedre]

should be able to just enable auto features on 23+ without bumping minSdk

[jibraniqbal666]

@ahmedre unfortunately no auto emulator is working in M1 mac :(, i have to find another way.

[ahmedre]

There was something but the link is gone now 😔 https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/219764014

[jibraniqbal666]

@dasyad00 can you help us on atleast, just the structure. :), if you have intel mac?

[jibraniqbal666]

Unfortunately, there is no Android Auto emulator on M1 yet, hence i can't even run and see the app, i would leave this issue stale for now and focus on something else. @ahmedre

[YousufSohail]

@jibraniqbal666 @ahmedre I have intel mac. I can help. Could you please let me know in what branch we have work related to android auto which I can run on an emulator?

[jibraniqbal666]

@YousufSohail https://github.com/jibraniqbal666/quran_android/tree/feature/base-android-auto it's just base, you need to run it.

• we could do this task collaboratively, as i can build stuff, but can't test it.
• first we merge base with basic ui (you can add) as i can't test them.
• then i add feature on your base, which you can test. :)

[NadimMussaDaud]

Assalam aleikum, i would like to have some update about the implementation of this feature so that I can help. Djazakallah khair.

[FardinEajdani25]

Assalamu Alaykum. Can I work on this PR?

[ahmedre]

@jibraniqbal666's work in progress is in #2648. will let him reply to this issue if he needs help.