How to enable on-screen buttons if the physical ones no longer work. We assign alternative actions to the physical buttons of an Android smartphone: “Key remapping” and Button Mapper Controlling the home button on Android

Many people are familiar with the situation when you buy new smartphone, and the physical power button does not have a photography function, nor does it have a separate key for this, although the previous device had one and was a great help. At first glance, it’s a small thing, but your hands naturally reach for the mechanics, not the sensor, and at the most inopportune moment.

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First, let me introduce the test subjects. The first application is called: “Key Reassignment”, at least in Russian Google Play. It can work with both physical and touch controllers, but for some actions it requires root rights. The second participant will be Button Mapper, which can do the same thing, but does not require root rights at all, which is already interesting.

The test equipment used was:

• Tablet DEXP Ursus 8EV2 3G (Android 4.4.2, MT8382 processor, 4 x Cortex-A7 1.3 GHz, Mali-400 MP2 video core, 1 GB RAM, 4000 mAh battery, 3G module, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n );
• Smartphone Homtom HT3 Pro (Android 5.1 Lollipop, MT6735P processor, 4 x Cortex-A53 1.0 GHz, 64-bit, Mali-T720 video core, 2 GB RAM, 3,000 mAh battery, 4G module, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/ n).

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Overview of the Key Remapper app

The program has not been updated for a long time, but perhaps this is not necessary, since it can do everything that can be done with physical keys: assign any action, launch certain applications, disable buttons, and even prescribe combinations of presses to access special functions.

“Key remapping” only works with Android 4.3 or higher, is distributed free of charge and includes an interface translated into Russian. Thus, we obtain a kind of standard for such programs, which we will rely on in the future. Or maybe we won’t, because this is just a first impression.

Do not forget that the firmware of the device plays an important role, especially if it is modified, so there is no need to treat the program as a panacea.

If we talk about possible reasons why they stopped working touch buttons On an Android phone, it crashes more often on the physical side than the software side. If there are reasons from the first list, most likely you will have to take the device to a service center.

Physical reasons:

• A strong blow to a tablet or smartphone, a fall from a height.
• Prolonged exposure to moisture. Especially serious damage occur due to water getting into the area between the screen and the film or under the housing. Contacts are oxidized. After exposure to moisture, action must be taken immediately.
• Sudden temperature changes. Return the device to room temperature. Sensor performance may improve.

• Punching the screen. There are no scratches or cracks. The damage is noticeable when pressed - then glare is visible in the damaged parts of the sensor.
• Replacing the screen with an unsuitable model.
• Serious contamination. Wipe away dirt, dust, moisture, and fingerprints with special wet wipes from an electronics store or a microfiber cloth.
• Poorly applied film. In places where air accumulates under the film, parts of the screen will stop working. Remove the film and, if possible, replace it with a new one.

Software reasons:

1. The OS is overloaded with applications or some of them are not working correctly.
2. Changes device settings.
3. Touchscreen problems are possible if the screen does not recognize touch correctly or poorly. Screen calibration will help here (you can actually do it at home).
4. Inappropriate or unstable firmware version.

Why doesn't part of the sensor work on Android? Most likely, the contact has come loose or oxidized.

For a phone with a removable battery, remove the cover and remove the battery. Insert it back and turn on the device using the mechanical button.
If the sensor does not work partially, but not completely, and you can download the application, install Rebooter from Play Market. On Xiaomi, Meizu or Digma, after long pressing the on/off button (20 seconds or longer), the phone will reboot or turn off. For Samsung and Sony, press the Power/Lock, Volume Up, and Volume Down buttons simultaneously. Hold for 7-10 seconds. If that doesn't work, try again, but hold down these three keys longer. If your smartphone is from other manufacturers and has a built-in battery, perhaps the above methods will help. Otherwise, you will have to wait until the battery is completely discharged or take the device to a service center, where they will also sort out problems with the screen. It also happens that a reboot is needed just to get the display to respond again. What to do if the sensor on Android does not work after locking the screen?

Most often the problem is with the firmware version. To solve this, update the Android version and, if that doesn’t help, reset the settings. How to do this is in paragraphs 2 and 4 of the instructions in the next paragraph of the article. Why don't touch buttons work on an Android phone? Sometimes the problem is the film. If everything was fine before, try to remove it. Sometimes it's even new protective glass, which can also be disconnected independently. Users say that the bottom touch buttons stopped working after calibrating the screen (3rd step following instructions), became sensitive again.

Common repair options

These steps will help in many cases malfunction phone or tablet running Android OS due to software, so you can apply these tips when you doubt the system is working properly.

• Reboot your device. Perhaps it was under heavy software load or a minor error occurred. Maybe the application just froze, but the sensor is working?

• Update the firmware. To do this, go to the following items: “Settings” – “About device” – “System updates” – “Check now”. More often than not, the problem is solved.
• Reset settings to factory defaults. Save all important data to a memory card, computer or similar storage device. Click “Settings” – “Memory” – “Reset to factory settings” – “Reset settings” – “Erase everything”. If necessary, confirm your choice. Wait a few minutes and the reboot will happen automatically

• What to do if the screen is glitchy? If it works but is slow, just clean the phone as a whole. Remove extra files and applications and cache (“Settings” – “Applications” – any application from the list – “Clear cache”). For removing other debris and cleaning RAM use CCleaner, Cleaner Master or another application.

How to fix your device

It is unlikely that you can fix your phone yourself. You will succeed when the cause of the malfunction is software. In this case, read the methods below.

1. Calibrate your screen. Depending on the manufacturer, there may be a built-in utility for this, or you may have to download the application yourself. There are several ways. For HTC models: “Settings” – “Language and keyboard” – “HTC Sense Input”. On other smartphones: “Settings” – “Display” – “Display” – “Screen calibration”. If desired, you can calibrate the screen via engineering menu. It is used by developers to test and change system components. We do not recommend this method as it can cause problems and takes longer than other methods. Third party application to calibrate the screen from the Play Market can improve the display's response. For example, Touchscreen Calibration or SGS Touchscreen Booster (you can set parameters manually in it).
2. The bottom touch buttons on an Android phone do not work, what should I do? You can install an application to create soft keys with the same functions, but in a different location. We recommend Back Button - it does not require root rights.

Contact the service center. There they will more accurately determine the cause and repair the device.

When I once again got a smartphone with hard-wired navigation keys, with no way to customize them or activate Nexus-style on-screen keys, I decided that I had to do something about it. After rummaging through Android's internals for a couple of hours, I turned off the annoying backlight, swapped the Back and Review keys, then turned on the on-screen buttons and found peace.

Intro

Let me be clear: I'm a big fan of the idea of ​​on-screen navigation keys. All these houses, arrows and squares drawn right at the bottom of the screen. Yes, they take up some space (which, however, in most cases is not really needed), yes, perhaps they spoil appearance apps, but damn, they're dynamic.

On-screen navigation buttons rotate with the screen, disappear when not needed, change color, and integrate seamlessly into the home screen interface. If we discard the very idea of ​​the uselessness of the existence of three buttons at once (after all, Yabloko owners make do with one and do not feel disadvantaged) and quite convenient systems navigation like PIE or MIUI navigation bubble, then on-screen buttons are the best thing that has been invented so far.

So here it is. For some reason, my wonderful, wonderful idea that there is nothing better than on-screen buttons is not shared by very many smartphone manufacturers. And they don’t even just not separate, but they don’t separate in a completely monstrous way, forcing you to use a smartphone with touch buttons (AAA!), equipped with dynamic backlighting (AAA-2!) and a “Back” button on the right side of the screen (AAA-3: decisive blow ).

The situation is extremely unacceptable, and given that the kind firmware developer did not provide any settings for activating on-screen keys and settings for controlling touch buttons, I had to make do on my own. There were two options for further action:

• bring the touch buttons to the desired state, namely turn off the backlight and move the “Back” key to the left side (even if it looks like a “square”, it’s even more interesting);
• disable touch buttons completely and activate on-screen buttons.

I don’t like third-party tools, so the decision to do everything myself came naturally.

Method number one. Setting up touch buttons

First, let's try turning off the button backlighting. For this we need root, a terminal emulator and a directory /sys at the root of the file system. This is exactly the combination. We are dealing with the Linux kernel, and in systems based on it, everything important information about the hardware, as well as the “toggle switches” that control it, are usually located in the sysfs file system connected to the directory /sys.

Actually, sysfs is not even file system, more precisely, it is file-based, but operates with so-called synthetic files. But they are not stored on disk, it is a kind of interface for communicating with drivers: I read the file - received data about the hardware, wrote it down - changed some setting. And to record, you still need root rights.

So, we get root, launch the terminal emulator (or better yet). And we write the following:

# su # cd /sys

# find -name \*button\* ./leds/button-backlight

Bingo! This is a directory /sys/class/leds/button-backlight. Let's go into it and see what's inside:

# cd /sys/class/leds/button-backlight # ls brightness device max_brightness power subsystem trigger uevent

I bet my Nokia 3310 that the file brightness is the current brightness of the buttons, and max_brightness- maximum. Let's check our guess by writing the value 100 into the first file (well, like 100%, although what scale there is is unknown):

# echo 100 > brightness

Great, the buttons are lit and are not even going to go out.

Moment of truth - write the value 0 to the max_brightness file:

# echo 0 > max_brightness

The buttons went out, forever, like the light bulb in my entrance last night.

But just like a light bulb, they can come back on if you reboot. That is, the command is valid only in the current session. Fortunately, this is not a problem, we will put our command in a script on the memory card:

# mkdir /sdcard/boot # echo "echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/button-backlight/max_brightness" > /sdcard/boot

And we, in turn, will put it into startup using . We launch the application, select the first three checkboxes, using the Select folder option, select the boot directory on the memory card.

Half the task is completed, all that remains is to swap the positions of the “Back” and “Browse” buttons. To do this, you need to change the button layout. In Android it is located in several directory files /system/usr/keylayout/. There are quite a lot of them, but if you discard files like Vendor_2378_Product_100a.kl And qwerty.kl(they store layouts of full-fledged Qwerty keyboards, which Android supports out of the box), then there will be at most five left.

One of them is exactly what we need. Smartphones often use the file ft5x06_ts.kl, specific to the FT5x06 touchscreen controller (the buttons are touch sensitive, right?), but in my case it turned out to be the file Vendor_2378_Product_100a.kl.

If you open this file, you can see the three lines you are looking for:

Key 158 BACK VIRTUAL key 139 MENU VIRTUAL key 102 HOME VIRTUAL

All that remains is to swap the numbers 158 and 139 (any file manager with support for root rights). After the reboot, the new layout will take effect.

Method number two. On-screen keys

Everything is even simpler here. Android has a special debug variable qemu.hw.mainkeys, which allows you to control the visibility of on-screen navigation keys. If it has a value of 0, the keys will be shown on the screen, 1 - the opposite effect.

We write a variable with the desired value to a file /system/build.prop, and that's all:

# su # mount -o remount,rw /system # cp /system/build.prop /system/build.prop.bak # echo qemu.hw.mainkeys=0 > /system/build.prop

Conclusions

These are the kind of criminal steps you sometimes have to take to make your smartphone a little more convenient. As for me, I settled on the third option: “turned off” the buttons plus installed LMT Launcher. It seems to me that this is the most convenient way management.

Everything always breaks unexpectedly. Dropping a phone on a tiled floor is an unfortunate accident; drowning it in a bathtub is a banality that occurs more often than it seems at first. Statistics of requests to service centers contains many complaints about accidents from the “it fell and broke” series, even more often than drownings. At the same time, you should not expect that the first fall will take away the touch substrate or even the screen itself - in most cases, the consequences of unfortunate accidents do not look so destructive. Among other things, this is the sudden inability of the physical back, home and menu buttons. If this problem happened to your phone, but you still don’t have money for repairs, don’t worry. There is a relatively simple solution to this common problem. Now we will teach you how to enable on-screen buttons on your smartphone if the physical ones no longer work.

For everything to work out, you need to get Root rights. Administrator access to the depths of system files is sometimes difficult to obtain. But with the advent of apps that get the necessary access for you, you no longer need to read multi-page instructions. Just install the Kingo Root program on your computer and connect your phone. The only thing you need to do while the program is being installed is to enable “USB Debugging” in the phone settings, “Security” section. That's it. By clicking the big Root button in the interface Kingo Root, activate administrator rights.

Step two looks a little more difficult. You will need to download the program from Google Play (or a few... alternative sources) Root Explorer. Install it on your smartphone. Run this application, find the System directory, and in it - build.prop. If such a file is not visible in the system directory, it doesn’t matter. IN top corner programs have an ellipsis - tap on it to open a submenu. In the program settings, check the “Show hidden files" The loss will be discovered immediately.

In the left corner Root Explorer There is one more item we need - r/w. Tap it once and confirm your choice. This action will enable the ability to edit system files. Now touch build.prop and keep your finger on it. Top menu will change and from the drop-down list (in the same ellipsis) you will find the sub-item “open in a text editor”.

Scroll open file to the very bottom - all these long lists of settings are not needed yet. At the very bottom, add the line qemu.hw.mainkeys=0. Save the file and restart your phone.

Done, three on-screen buttons have appeared at the very bottom of the screen - similar topics, which you can see on the screen of any tablet. And after repairing the physical buttons, it will be possible to hide the virtual ones back by replacing the line qemu.hw.mainkeys=0 with qemu.hw.mainkeys=1 and rebooting the device again.

Problems with hardware often turn out to be much more complex and expensive than problems with software. It’s very disappointing if the screen falls off, but, as a rule, I can easily replace it. But the buttons can be a lot more fiddly. If you find yourself in a similar situation (click on Home, Back or Menu does not lead to any consequences), then the application will come to the rescue. After installing it, you will receive a panel consisting of 4 buttons: Home, Back, Menu And Resize. Make a note of what you need root access on the device.

After installing the application and launching it for the first time, you will receive a panel with buttons that will be located in the center of the screen. Its location can be changed; you can also adjust the size of the buttons, the distance between them and the transparency of the panel itself.

For button Home you can customize its behavior when pressed for a long time: either it will launch Google Now , or work as a button Power. Besides this Floating Soft Keys allows you to change button icons. If you want to choose a vertical panel layout, then to do this you just need to uncheck the box next to the horizontal layout option in the menu. There you can also enable the application to turn on when loading.

He behaves very smartly. If the panel overlaps any buttons or options running application, then it automatically changes its location on the screen, but there is one drawback. After the application that caused the panel to change its position is closed, the panel itself will not be able to return to its old location. This will have to be done manually.

It would be nice if the developers upgraded the existing buttons a large number functions and added volume control to them. But for now these are just dreams. If you are interested in such a practical thing as, and are already planning to download the application, then you