Several questions (app switcher, shortcuts, home, file manager)

[btcn]

Hello everyone,

Happy to join onyx boox owners family!

I have note air 2 for 3 weeks and i love it! Because i am new to android OS i have several set-up questions:

1, When i switch apps using external keyboard (alt+tab) switch choices shown until i hold the keys, if i release them before making selection (or tap does not register) i go back to original app, is there a way to customize this behavior?

1a, And is there a way to have short cut to switch to specific app bypassing selection all together?

2, Home gesture leads to Home, can i make it lead to apps?

3, File manager (storage) never shown in app switcher, is guess cause it's default app, what is good file manager you can recommend?

[Renate]

Yes, Alt-Tab is weird.
If you do:

C:\>adb shell input keyevent 187

You'll get the popup APP_SWITCH which stays until you select.
You could generate this by remapping a key in keylayout.

There are a few things (Contacts, Calculator, Call) that have their own keys. There is no general provision for FB, Twitter, Maps, whatever. You could do something with intents.

[btcn]

Originally Posted by Renate

You could generate this by remapping a key in keylayout.

Renate hi, thanks for reply, could you elaborate on this?

[Renate]

Unless you have a VID/PID tagged keylayout (like Vendor_0001_Product_0001.kl) the system will default to Generic.kl (previously qwerty.kl). This is all in /system/usr/keylayout.
You can change:

key 61    F3

To:

key 61    APP_SWITCH

That is, if you don't care for F3 (or whatever) and you'd rather have APP_SWITCH.

[llinfeng]

what is good file manager you can recommend?

For Android 11, all third party file-managers are performing poorly. Even for Boox's native Storage app, it will take some 3+ minutes to open a folder containing 2000+ files. (An excuse for this many files in one folder is that these are all linked to references I store in Zotero.)

I find "Files by Google" a good candidate. When a local file is updated, refreshing the file-list in the Files app takes less than 10 seconds to display the newly changed file.

Boox does have a plan to fix this performance issue, likely, in v 3.3 or so.

[Renate]

I use OpenIntents File Manager. Eh, it works well enough for me.

Sort of related: I've got my 16 key keypad on my steering wheel working mostly ok. You hit a button and it takes you directly to an app (not via app switcher or using Tasker).