assitive floating dot navigation

fair

Hello, I've been searching for without success for existing threads or work in this area, nor I feel like I want to start any development before I make sure this is an accepted effort.

I would really like to have a portable computer which acts as a phone and a computer when docked. I expect that in this path I'll have to port most of the utilities I'd like to have on my daily digital life. The Fairphone 4 seems like a good choice, I waited quite a long time to get all the basic features working, including 5G, but once it all got solved with ubuntu 24.x I'm at the first steps of adoption having issues with usability.

The touch gestures are very hard to use with one hand. Maybe there's something wrong with FP4 responsiveness, but anyway I can't use the phone with one hand like any other smart phone. Here comes the turning point, I'm also not content with iPhone without it's floating accessibility ball. The same (similar) ball I'm also using on Onyx boox devices. I'd like to see the navigation overhaul on ubuntu touch to provide normal one handed operation, but at a minimum I'd like to have the accessibility floating ball to assign to it any action or gesture I need to do by a simple tap.

I'd like to see a choice of 3/4 buttons navigation vs gestures navigation, also speaking about the gestures ubuntu lacks "back" guesture
I'd like to have the floating ball, where I could assign to it whatever functions I need: expand app menu drawer, minimize all, back button, show keyboard, task switch, favorite app 1,2,3... I guess some of these might not event be available in the UI mechanics, we will see, but in general it should support adding a simple tap action to whatever can be done in the UI by gesture or otherwise

I don't commit to any immediate development effort nor timelines, just seeking feedback if there's any prior work in progress and if any such effort makes sense to start spending time on

PS. I've even just bought FP5 for better external monitor resolution support, hopefully it'll also work better with the gestures (I have the feeling it's something wrong with the IPS screen responsiveness).

wally

@fair I know that, as per your other thread on this topic, you just don't like gestures. But if you don't manage to make buttons, or even just until you do, you could consider trying the UT Tweak Tool, and playing with the settings under Edge Sensitivity.
Changing the edge barrier width can make a big difference.

I wouldn't personally want these options, but perhaps others would, and will speak up here.
I suspect that if others wanted it too, if you got it all working, and if it were totally stable, it's possible it could be introduced as a system option down the road. But it wouldn't happen quickly.

As an example, I understand that the wonderful manual screen rotation tool from Ambot Installer / Lomiri Plus got introduced as part of the OS in 24.04.

kugiigi

@fair FP4 actually has the one of the most responsive edge gestures in my expert. FP5 on the other hand is less responsive because it seems like it has an accidental touch algorithm that rejects quick short swipe from the edges. While on FP4, your swipe reacts to your swipe almost instantaneously. I wonder why you have a hard time. Perhaps you use a case which might make ot harder to reach the very edge or maybe the phone is just to big for one hand use?

In any case, I think a floating button isn't a bad idea for an accessibility feature. However, there are things you listed that might not be possible or at least not easily. For example, showing the keyboard cannot be a toggle because the onscreen keyboard shows up based on context such as a texbox being in focus. I guess there might be a workaround like utilizing the logic for hiding the keyboard when there's a physical keyboard connected.

Another thing is that back action concept doesn't exists in UT or in Linux systems in general. So I doubt you can have something that would work for everything. Even Plasma Mobile which mimics Android's bottom navigation bar doesn't have a back button. This one might be the trickiest thing to solve.

So in summary, it's possible to do it for some functions like opening the app drawer or app spread/switcher but other things wouldn't be simple.

If you're interested, you can try some of my hacks that makes UT easier to use one hand. Ambot Installer is available on OpenStore and you can use it to install my hacks. It's already available on Noble however my biggest hack called Lomiri Plus isn't available yet, at least via Ambot.

The hacks I have are mostly gestures though so you might not like it too
For example, you swipe down on the edges to pull down the whole shell so you can reach UI elements at the top. You can also do horizontal swipes at the bottom edge in apps to trigger the back button or even any if the page header actions. I also have what I call Quick Actions which can triggered via a swipe from the bottom of the left or right edge. Here you can have actions similar to what you mentioned and you can also add apps there.