Last week I did some research on the menu bar of Ubuntu Touch. I tweaked a few qml system files to create a temporary solution for the notch and rounded corners of the Volla Phone. I have raised the menu bar height so that the bottom matches the camera notch. In addition, I increased the margins of the indicators and application title, so that no information disappears under the rounded corners.

You can find the tweaked qml files on my GitHub: https://github.com/SanderKlootwijk/vollanotchfix

Shell.qml goes into /usr/share/unity8/
Panel.qml and PanelMenu.qml go into /usr/share/unity8/Panel/

Once again, this is a workaround until a universal and better solution for phones with a notch comes along.

Thank you @moem for documenting this and @danfro for maintaining the Cinny app! I've found bridging to Matrix very useful for WhatsApp. Personally, I use Beeper as a homeserver for this. It's an iOS and Android app that lets you connect multiple chat services and protocols in one place. Beeper uses Matrix underneath, so you can also log in to Beeper with Cinny once your account is set up. Here's how I got it working:

• Create a Beeper account on iOS or Android. I set mine up using the app installed on WayDroid. If you see a popup with a recovery code during setup, be sure to save it for later.
• Link WhatsApp (or Signal, or any other supported chat service - I haven't tested them all) to Beeper through the Beeper app.
• Install Cinny on Ubuntu Touch and set the homeserver address to beeper.com.
• Get a password for Beeper:
  • This is necessary because Beeper's official app only uses email codes for login and doesn't require a password.
  • In Cinny, enter your Beeper username and click on Forget Password?.
  • Follow the instructions in the email to generate a password for your account.
• Verify Cinny as a Matrix client. A red shield will appear in the left sidebar. Click it, choose Verify Manually, and enter the recovery key you saved when setting up your Beeper account.
• That's it! Your bridged chat services should now appear in Cinny's sidebar.

I wanted to use my MacBook Air to develop Ubuntu Touch apps. After a lot of trial and error I've got clickable working. So here's is a guide on how to set up clickable for macOS.

Install Homebrew
First off, you'll need to install Homebrew with this command:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

Dependencies
After installing Homebrew you'll need to install pip3, adb and docker with the following commands (open the macOS terminal):

brew install python3

brew cask install android-platform-tools

brew cask install docker

After installing Docker, open the Docker application (via Launchpad or by pressing Command + Space and searching for it with spotlight). Click OK in the Docker needs privileged access dialog and enter your user password. A whale icon will appear in the status menu and the symbolic links for docker, docker-compose, docker-credential-osxkeychain and docker-machine are created in /usr/local/bin. Confirm that docker is running, by clicking the icon in the status menu. If it says Docker Desktop is running you're ready to test out clickable! :party_popper:

Run clickable
Open the macOS terminal app and cd into the directory you want to store and build your app. Run the command clickable init to create a new app project. cd into your app project folder. Run clickable to build your app and push it to your Ubuntu Touch device through adb!

Clickable desktop
clickable desktop is not working. I've installed XQuartz but I get the following error:

Successfully built package in './test.sanderklootwijk_1.0.0_all.click'.
non-network local connections being added to access control list
Mounting device home to /Users/sander/.clickable/home
docker: Error response from daemon: Mounts denied: 
The paths /dev/snd and /var/lib/dbus and /run/501/pulse and /home/sander/.pulse
are not shared from OS X and are not known to Docker.
You can configure shared paths from Docker -> Preferences... -> File Sharing.
See https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/osxfs/#namespaces for more info.
.
ERRO[0000] error waiting for container: context canceled 
Command exited with non-zero exit status 125, see above for details. This is most likely not a problem with Clickable.

Atom
Atom with the language-qml and atom-build-clickable packages, works great for developing Ubuntu Touch apps on macOS. Get the Atom text editor here and install language-qml and atom-build-clickable (Atom > preferences > install).

@gt After looking at the system files once again, I figured out how the menu bar is organized. The indicators request a preferred position in the bar. For the date and time this preferred position is 20 for example. The date and time appear on the far right of the bar. The message indicator has a preferred position of 100, so it appears on the left side of the bar.

In an ideal fix, this entire system would have to be rewritten, with some fixed indicators appearing to the right of the notch and the rest placed to the left. But now the bar is indeed dynamically laid out and updated from the right side of the screen, causing some indicators to disappear behind the notch.

It's possible to change the position of indicators. You could temporarily give the messages indicator a preferred position of 22. The envelope will then appear to the left of the date and time in the bar.

For this you need to edit the file "com.canonical.indicator.messages". This can be found in "/usr/share/unity/indicators/".

Note the selected line "Position = 22". Don't forget to restart Lomiri after the adjustment.

This also is a hacky solution, but hopefully it will solve temporary frustration, until the notch problem is properly and universally addressed.

@jojumaxx Hello! The file system is read-only by default. You should make it read-write before modifying system files.

But to save you the trouble, someone made a way better and user friendly approach of my fix.

You can find the fix over here on GitHub: https://github.com/JamiKettunen/unity8-notch-hax

Just follow te steps under Applying the patch in the terminal on your Volla.

I don't know if he's on the forums here, but thanks to Jami Kettunen for making this fix a lot easier to apply!

For some reason I can't update the post above. But before you're able to run clickable, you'll need to install it of course. I forgot this step in the guide :grinning_face_with_sweat:

Install clickable with the following command:

pip3 install git+https://gitlab.com/clickable/clickable.git

Now you'll be able to run clickable!

@domubpkm As @AppLee says, you'll need to replace the original system files with the ones from my GitHub page. After that, a reboot or restart of Lomiri is required. But I might create an install script, to make installation a bit easier.