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It’s wireless – because no-one wants to carry cables around with them on the off-chance that they might need to exchange data with another device at some point during the day.
It’s not dependent on other networks. You don’t have to hunt down an open Wi-Fi network every time you want to use Bluetooth.
Bluetooth doesn’t use your mobile network, so don’t worry about burning through your monthly data allowance.
In this article I’m going to show you how to give your Android apps the ability to discover and connect with other Bluetooth-enabled devices. What your app does once it makes this connection will vary from app-to-app, but I’ll also be outlining the steps you’ll typically take to send data from one device to another – you can then tweak this formula to suit what you specifically want to achieve with your app’s Bluetooth connection.
Note that this article uses Classic Bluetooth, which will be suitable for the majority of use cases. However, if you’re designing an application that targets devices with stricter power requirements, such as Google Beacons, heart rate monitors or fitness devices, then you may want to look into Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) instead.
Why should I care about Bluetooth? Bluetooth Permissions
Initiating device discovery. We’ll be looking at issuing discovery requests later in this article, but essentially this is where a device scans the local area for other Bluetooth-enabled devices to connect to.
Performing device pairing.
Changing the device’s Bluetooth settings.
You declare one, or both of these permissions by adding them to your app’s Manifest:
…
Code
BluetoothAdapter bluetoothAdapter = BluetoothAdapter.getDefaultAdapter(); if (bluetoothAdapter == null) { Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(),"This device doesn’t support Bluetooth",Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); } else { ... ...If Bluetooth isn’t available on the current device, then in the interests of providing a good user experience you should disable all of your app’s features that rely on Bluetooth. The last thing you want is the user trying to access these features, discover they’re not working and subsequently leave a negative review claiming that your application is broken.
Enabling Bluetooth
The request code you passed to startActivityForResult. This can be anything you want; in the following example I’m going to use ENABLE_BT_REQUEST_CODE.
The resultCode. If Bluetooth has been successfully enabled, then the resultCode will be RESULT_OK. If Bluetooth wasn’t enabled (either due to an error or because the user chose not to enable it) then the resultCode will be RESULT_CANCELED.
An Intent that carries the result data.
In the following code, we’re checking whether Bluetooth is enabled and then issuing a dialogue if it isn’t:
Code
if (!bluetoothAdapter.isEnabled()) { intent enableIntent = new Intent(BluetoothAdapter.ACTION_REQUEST_ENABLE); startActivityForResult(enableIntent, ENABLE_BT_REQUEST_CODE); Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "Enabling Bluetooth!", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); }Now let’s take a look at our onActivityResult() implementation:
Code
@Override public void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) { if (requestCode == ENABLE_BT_REQUEST_CODE) { if (resultCode == Activity.RESULT_OK) { chúng tôi display the following toast.// Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "Bluetooth has been enabled”, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); } if(resultCode == RESULT_CANCELED){ chúng tôi display this alternative toast.// Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "An error occurred while attempting to enable Bluetooth", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); } }If your app is going to exchange data over Bluetooth, then it needs to find remote devices to exchange data with. This means either:
Querying the list of paired devices. If the local device has a list of known devices, then your app can retrieve this information and display it to the user. The user can then decide which device (if any) they want to connect to.
Scanning the area for nearby Bluetooth-enabled devices, by initiating device discovery. If another device is in the local area and that device is currently in a discoverable state, then this device will respond to your discovery request.
Making the local device discoverable. When the local device is discoverable, any device that’s scanning the area will be able to “see” your device, and potentially connect to it.
In the following section, we’re going to look at how each of these methods works in more detail, and how you can implement them in your app.
Retrieving the list of paired devices chúng tôi loop through these devices// for (BluetoothDevice device : pairedDevices) { mArrayAdapter.add(device.getName() + "n" + device.getAddress()); } } Discovering new devicesIf you’ve queried the list of paired devices and either a) didn’t find any devices or b) the user chose not to connect to any of these known devices, then you’ll need to look for new devices to connect to.
At this point you have two options: either make the local device discoverable and wait for an incoming discovery request, or take the initiative and issue a discovery request yourself.
Entering discoverable modeIf you want the local device to accept incoming connection requests, then you’ll need to issue a dialogue requesting that the user makes their device discoverable. You do this, by calling startActivityForResult(Intent, int) with the ACTION_REQUEST_DISCOVERABLE intent.
Once the user responds to this dialogue, the system will call the onActivityResult method and pass the requestCode and the resultCode. This resultCode will either be:
RESULT_OK. The device is now discoverable. This field also contains information about how long the device will be discoverable for.
RESULT_CANCELED. The user decided not to make their device discoverable, or an error occurred.
Let’s take a look at an example:
Code
public static final int REQUEST_DISCOVERABLE_CODE = 2; … … Intent discoveryIntent = new Intent(BluetoothAdapter.ACTION_REQUEST_DISCOVERABLE); discoveryIntent.putExtra(BluetoothAdapter.EXTRA_DISCOVERABLE_DURATION, 400); startActivity(discoveryIntent); }By default a device will remain discoverable for 120 seconds, but you can request a different duration using the EXTRA_DISCOVERABLE_DURATION field and an integer value, as I’ve done in the above code. If you do include the EXTRA_DISCOVERABLE_DURATION field, then the maximum value you can use is 3600 – try to use anything higher, and EXTRA_DISCOVERABLE_DURATION will default to 120.
You should also never set EXTRA_DISCOVERABLE_DURATION to 0 as this will make the device permanently discoverable, which is a great way of draining the user’s battery and potentially compromising their privacy to boot.
Issuing a discovery requestAlternatively, your app can tell the local device to go looking for new devices to connect to, by issuing a discovery request.
Your app can start the discovery process, by calling the startDiscovery method. Since the discovery process is asynchronous, it’ll immediately return a boolean value that you can use to inform the user whether discovery was started successfully.
Code
if (bluetoothAdapter.startDiscovery()) { Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "Discovering other bluetooth devices...", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); } else { Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "Something went wrong! Discovery has failed to start.", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); }To ensure your app gets notified whenever a new device is discovered, you’ll need to register a BroadcastReceiver for the ACTION_FOUND intent.
Code
IntentFilter filter = new IntentFilter(BluetoothDevice.ACTION_FOUND); registerReceiver(broadcastReceiver, filter); private final BroadcastReceiver broadcastReceiver = new BroadcastReceiver() { public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) { String action = intent.getAction(); if (BluetoothDevice.ACTION_FOUND.equals(action)) { BluetoothDevice device = intent.getParcelableExtra(BluetoothDevice.EXTRA_DEVICE); adapter.add(bluetoothDevice.getName() + "n" + bluetoothDevice.getAddress()); } } };The onDestroy looks like this:
Code
@Override protected void onDestroy() { super.onDestroy(); ... ... this.unregisterReceiver(broadcastReceiver); Making the connectionOnce the user has found the device they want to connect to, it’s finally time to create a Bluetooth connection.
Bluetooth follows the client-server model, where one device acts as the server and the other acts as the client. How your app connects to a remote device will vary depending on whether the local device is acting as the server or the client:
The server. The device uses a BluetoothServerSocket to open a listening server socket and wait for incoming connection requests. Once the server accepts a connection request, it’ll receive the client’s BluetoothSocket information.
The client. This device uses the BluetoothSocket to initiate an outgoing connection. Once the server accepts the client’s connection request, the client will provide the BluetoothSocket information.
Client ServerIn this scenario, both devices have a server socket open and are listening for incoming connections. Either device can initiate a connection, and the other device will automatically become the client.
To setup the local device as a server, your app needs to acquire a BluetoothServerSocket, by calling listenUsingRfcommWithServiceRecord. For example:
Again, RFCOMM will only allow one connected client per channel, so you should make sure you’re not unnecessarily hogging system resources by calling close() on the BluetoothServerSocket once you’ve acquired a BluetoothSocket.
Transferring dataOnce the server device and client device each have a connected BluetoothSocket, your app is ready to start communicating with the remote device.
The specifics will vary depending on how you want your app to use its newly-forged Bluetooth connection, but as a rough guideline, you transfer data between two remote devices by completing the following steps:
Call getInputStream and getOutputStream on the BluetoothSocket.
Use the read() method to start listening for incoming data.
Send data to a remote device by calling the thread’s write() method and passing it the bytes you want to send.
Note that both the read() and write() methods are blocking calls, so you should always run them from a separate thread.
Wrapping UpYou're reading Enhancing Your Android App With Bluetooth Features
Concept: Enhancing Airtag With Family Sharing, Widgets, And An Apple Watch App
Now that we’ve all spent time with AirTag, it’s time to start thinking about ways to make the product even better. There are several obvious ways to do this that many have noted over the past couple of days. AirTag is an incredibly powerful tool for tracking items, but lots of us would like to allow our friends and family to track important items or ask for their help in finding lost ones. Family sharing is just the tip of the iceberg.
Family SharingFamily sharing is something that would instantly level up AirTag. It would be so useful to be able to share an AirTag’s location with someone else when an item is lost or if an item is important enough that multiple eyes should be kept on it.
In this first example, I imagined what it would look like to share a single AirTag kept in a briefcase with seven people. Aside from sharing items with your family, businesses could get a ton of use out of AirTag this way.
When an AirTag is shared with you, it can be done so temporarily or permanently, much in the same way you can share your iPhone’s location in Find My or Messages. Shared AirTags could show up right in your items list with a clear indicator that they’re either being shared with you or if you are sharing them with other people.
Sharing AirTag is really the biggest thing I’d like to see in the first update to AirTag. If family members can see each other’s devices, why can’t they also see each other’s AirTags? I’d imagine this is something Apple is working on.
Home Screen WidgetsA less important but still very useful request I have is for a Find My widget that lets me see my AirTags right from the Home Screen or today view. I can see a different widget for each size class, with the smallest one including additional utility that wouldn’t fit into the larger widgets.
You could use a small widget to see the status of a single item or use the medium-sized widget to see multiple items. Of course, you would be able to choose which four items were shown on the widget, and if you wanted to use multiple medium-sized widgets to show 12 on a single Home Screen, you could. The largest widget could expand on the medium one by adding a map that shows the actual locations of each of the selected items.
While widgets can’t really be interacted with on the Home Screen, they can include buttons that launch into specific parts of its corresponding app. The small widget that displays the status of a single item could have deep links that directly play a sound on the AirTag or start the precision finding process.
I’m absolutely positive there are people out there who will put AirTag on important items that they will always want to know the status of. Widgets are an obvious way to help those customers out.
Apple Watch AppOne thing that seems like an oversight is the lack of Apple Watch compatibility with AirTag. The Find My app on Apple Watch is exclusively for finding people who share their location with you. Instead of cluttering that app with items, they could add a secondary “Find Items” watch app.
You’d be able to do basic things like see an AirTag’s location on a map, play a sound or start the finding process. Precision finding should work on Apple Watch now that Series 6 includes a U1 chip, which is required for the new finding process. Like family sharing, this is something I imagine Apple is working on already. Precision finding with Apple Watch would be a killer feature. We’ve actually already seen designers mock up what it would look like on the watch.
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Elevate Your App Campaign Game With Marketing Analytics
Mobile marketing goes hand in hand with data analysis. Contactless payments, virtual socializing, online learning, and e-commerce transactions are few among others, which have become a customer’s necessity to manage their daily routine. These mobile app services have received traction like never before, resulting in an enormous user base. Hence, there’s a need for reports to structure this data and draw meaningful insights for the app marketers. Marketing analytics reports prove to be essential as they help optimize app campaigns, making marketers understand which media channels can attract the highest form of revenue. Here are a few analytics reports that play a vital role in enhancing any app campaign. Let us understand its importance and application – An LTV report is beneficial in giving engagement boosting insights considering today’s freemium-dominated businesses. Let us look at an example to understand better – Consider the following two attributes: Media source A – which delivers a higher number of profits Media source B – which draws small yields, but the users are willing to spend more An LTV report will draw a study of users and their activities from the date of download. Here, Media source B will give marketers better revenue results if they outlay more money to it. It also helps recognize the audience’s geographies, what creative variations attract them, which media source is beneficial, and hence, where they should make more monetary investments. Post analyzing, one can draw a line between which users are revenue-generating. It makes the decision-making of the marketers easy. Activity report: What if one wants to look at a particular time frame and not always from the initial date of app download? The answer to this is an activity report. Marketers can fix a timeline from start to end and observe their audience’s activity accordingly. This analysis helps especially in event-specific campaigns. For example, Diwali and Christmas are peak transactional slots in India for the clothing and apparel industries. Hence, one can set a timeline during these festivals and observe consumer behavior. Marketers can compare the previous year’s data with this year to draw better insights and plan the next effective campaign. Retention Report: Ensuring customer retention on the app is the real game. To retain your audience, apps must engage customers through different events. Owing to the fierce competition for audience attention amongst marketers, it is evident for customers to keep high user-experience expectations. Hence, securing their loyalty is the next challenge. This report closely observes user activities and alerts marketers when their customers are about to drop off. The retention rate is calculated by dividing the number of active users on a specific day/ week since the install day/ week by the total number of users who launched the app for the first time during the selected date range. For example, segment-1 may have the maximum number of users, but segment-2 might have a higher number of users who engage and retain. Hence, this report will help marketers identify that segment-1 needs re-work and how the following steps need to be taken to gain participation and meet business objectives. Cohort Report: When a marketer receives audience data, it is unstructured. Users participate in different events, make several transactions, and belong to unique names, backgrounds, and geographies. What if this data could be broken down and grouped in terms of similar choices and interests? The cohort report helps in clustering data. It breaks down and highlights activities that users show in high value. For example, set-A shows high activity on the app on Monday, while set-B shows average engagement. Here, the marketer can make a note of what made set-A engage in high rates on Monday and track the details accordingly. Marketers can then plan a campaign for set-A specifically and ensure their participation for upcoming Mondays. Remarketing Report: Remarketing checks on various levels to ensure your user’s loyalty to the app. Most users download an app but are not active on it. For the same, Remarketing report gives timely alerts on which user group needs re-engagement campaigns. Hence, this helps marketers in taking timely actions and saves their users from dropping off.
Exploring the same data through different prismsRunning the same data through various reports gives vast yet granular level feedback to the marketers. It helps marketers observe the data through several prisms. It also provides clarity on the KPIs they should focus on. Hence, marketing analytics reports for app marketers are a must-have tool. They are robust to turn unstructured data into meaningful insights and ultimately give confidence in making the right number of investments and gaining expected goals.
How To Run Multiple Android Apps On Windows Pc With Phone Link App
Your Phone app, now called Phone Link app, is a product of the collaborative efforts of Samsung and Microsoft which offered users to operate Android apps via their Windows 11/10 computers.
While there were web platforms for apps that are of the most basic use to most people, Twitter, Instagram for instance, Your Phone meant putting the entire experience of operating your phone into your computer; using one centralized device. At the time, it seemed like the feature would be a Note 20 exclusive, but in November last year Microsoft came up with the Windows Insider Program, and members of that program were given access to the app.
In recent developments, Microsoft rolled out the Your Phone app to all Windows 11/10 users who use select Android devices. Through Your Phone, you get to explore every nook and cranny of your android device through your PC, be it making calls, sending messages, or even streaming videos. There are certain requirements concerning both your phone and your PC that you would have to comply with in order to use the Your Phone app.
It goes without saying that the app sports only Samsung devices and then too, not all of them were able to make the cut. The list of devices that support the Your Phone app includes Galaxy Fold, Galaxy S20, S20 Lite, Z Flip, among others. For the purposes of this article, I’ll be demonstrating the app using my Samsung Galaxy S9.
Run multiple Android apps on PC with Phone Link appThe first step, after having checked that your Samsung device is among the select few, is to open Your Phone on your PC and follow to steps below.
Open the Your Phone app on your PC and select the OS your mobile phone operates on.
After doing as said above, confirm that the installation has been completed and open the QR code, which will be generated shortly afterward.
Use your phone’s camera to scan the QR code displayed on the computer’s Your Phone page.
Doing so would then ask you to log in to your Microsoft account and wait for a confirmation of relevant permission to be granted before a connection is formed between your phone and your PC.
You can then navigate to the Apps section from the list of features (which are discussed below in detail) and operate several of them through your computer.
Features of Your Phone AppThe functionalities of your android phone have been broadly divided by the Your Phone app into 5 categories, namely Notifications, Messages, Apps, Calls, and Photos. I will be walking you through each one of them individually. The three dashes on the top-left toggle the Features tray, in case you want each section to expand to the entire screen.
NotificationsThis is the first setting you’ll find in the app. The app will seek access to your phone’s database, which you can grant via the notification that will be sent to it. After enabling permissions, the interface of your phone’s notifications will look something like this:
MessagesAfter notifications are your phone’s messages. You will find a list of the recent contacts with whom you have communicated over text messages. In case you feel like the app hasn’t kept up with your recent texts, you can refresh them. Next to it is an option for you to write a new message, which subsequently opens a screen next to the contacts list, where you can compose a message and send it to the desired contact.
PhotosNext up are the photos and one of the things about the Your Phone app bugged me concerns this section. Here, the app displays all the pictures in your phone’s gallery without an option for you to choose specific folders and locations to browse pictures. Here, in case you want to look for a particular picture you would have to browse through all the pictures stored on your phone.
Apps CallsFinally, is your calling interface. Upon linking your phone’s call logs you will find the recent contacts you’ve connected with over a call with a keypad interface next to it, which you can use to make calls via your PC.
All in all, I found this app to be very useful and satisfactory. It helps me cut down on time and friction between using my phone and computer. I hope people who are looking for similar solutions find this to be useful.
Related: Troubleshoot Your Phone app problems.
Linkedin Pages Updated With New Features
New LinkedIn Pages updates include:
Lead Gen Forms in Product Pages
Ways to share content among coworkers in the ‘My Community’ tab
Full details about each of these new updates can be found below.
Lead Gen Forms For LinkedIn Product PagesA LinkedIn Product Page is a tool introduced last year which is like a business page for a specific product.
If a business sells a popular product that customers discuss and ask questions about online, a LinkedIn Product Page is a place where they can go to do that.
Now Product Pages can be used to collect customer information through Lead Gen Forms.
After submitting a lead form, users will see a “thank you” page with a link to a destination of the business’s choice.
For example, these forms can be used to collect customer information in exchange for a coupon code, a free download, or something of similar value.
Product Pages have only been available to create on LinkedIn since December and many companies have yet to utilize them. There’s roughly 12,000 product pages currently published by 10,000 companies.
The ability to use lead gen forms for free may be the incentive businesses need to create pages for individual products, on top of having a page for their company.
Updates to “My Company” TabThe “My Company” tab within LinkedIn Pages is getting updated with a way for admins to keep employees engaged with content.
A new ‘Recommend’ tool allows Page admins to curate organic content and suggest trending articles, which employees can then reshape through a new ‘Content Suggestions’ tool.
LinkedIn notes how employees are more likely to engage with content and share it when it’s from their own company:
“Internal LinkedIn research shows that employees are 60% more likely to engage with posts from coworkers vs. non-coworkers, and 14x more likely to share their organization’s Page content vs. other brands’ content.”
LinkedIn is adding a new analytics section in the My Company tab to help businesses measure the impact this feature has on content engagement and reach.
LinkedIn Stories Update For PagesLinkedIn makes a point of noting in its blog post that all Pages can use the swipe-up feature in their stories.
The swipe-up feature is not available to all personal accounts, but it is available to all Pages.
That has been the case since LinkedIn added the swipe-up feature last month, so I’m not sure why it’s being mentioned again. Maybe not enough Pages are aware it exists. It could be an effective way to boost referral traffic.
Source: LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog
How To Personalize Your Iphone Home Screen With Custom App Icons
With the release of iOS 14, Apple gave its users more flexibility with their Home Screens. We’ve been telling you all about Home Screen widgets; how to find and add widgets, create custom widgets, and the best apps that offer widgets. So if you’ve gotten a taste of how wonderful Home Screen customization can be and want a bit more, you’ve got it!
Not a new option, but certainly one worth mentioning is creating custom app icons for your Home Screen. Maybe you’re not fond of the icons for specific apps or perhaps you simply want to use images of your own. With the Shortcuts app and the images you want to use, here’s how to personalize your iPhone Home Screen with custom app icons.
Featured Home Screens by @
Icon packs and custom widgetsFeatured Home Screens by @ rslashAC , @ Sarrafkoo , @ PrettySickly , and @ wholelottajenni
If you want to replicate something like the image above, you’ll probably want to download a nice icons pack. These have existed for years but they’re receiving renewed interest since the launch of iOS 14. Search for iOS icons packs on your favorite search engine or on Twitter, and chances are you’ll find something.
To get you started, here are a few places where you can find icon packs for your Home Screen.
For added pop on your Home Screen, you’ll also want to create custom Home Screen widgets as well.
Create custom app icons with ShortcutsTo add new icons to your Home Screen, you can simply change the icon for the app to one of the built-in Shortcuts options or pick your very own image. We’ll show you how to do both! Open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone and follow these steps.
1) Tap the My Shortcuts tab at the bottom and then the + sign at the top.
3) In the box that appears, tap Choose and then select the app you want or use the Search at the top to find it.
4) Tap the three dots on the top right.
5) Give your shortcut a name. You can have the name of the app icon different on your Home Screen using the steps below. This step simply names the shortcut in the Shortcuts app.
From this point, the steps can vary. This depends on whether you want to pick an icon or add your own image.
Pick an iconIf you want to select an icon from Shortcuts:
a) Tap the default icon.
b) Choose Glyph and make your pick. Optionally you can select a Color.
c) Tap Add to Home Screen.
Add your own imageIf you want to use your own image:
a) Go straight to Add to Home Screen.
b) Tap the icon below Home Screen Name and Icon.
c) Select Choose File, Choose Photo, or Take Photo and follow the prompts for the option you pick.
6) Give the shortcut for your Home Screen a name and tap Add.
7) Tap Done and then Done again.
With both of the sets of steps above for the type of app icon you want to use, there is a longer version of steps where you tap Next instead of the three dots to create the shortcut. Then from All Shortcuts, tap the three dots for the shortcut and follow the steps above to add it to the Home Screen. This is just another way to create the shortcut to open the app and a longer one at that.
Since using the Shortcuts app is basically a different way to open an app (but with a different icon), there are bound to be downsides.
Another downside is that you will not see any badge icons you’ve enabled for the app. The shortcut you create is only to open the app and does not include this type of feature.
Wrapping it upEven though it looks like a lot of work to create custom app icons, once you do it the first time, the process will seem simple. And it may just have you creating tons of app icons for your Home Screen!
Want more spacing on your Home Screen too? You can also use Shortcuts to create blank icons!
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