This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/xreal by /u/Prestigious-Bear-447 on 2023-08-30 04:53:45.
Hey guys!
I'm seeing a lot of talk about the current update on the Beam, I've spent a fair bit of time deep-diving into it and I figured It might be good to make a more constructive post. To start, I'm Mailbot on the Discord, I've been working with the people there to get the functionality back that we lost in the update - But as we dug into the update we've been getting a pretty solid picture of what the update "Means" and was this just a FU to all us side-loaders? No, probably not.It seems this update was a step towards getting their own app-store going. They've added a lot of dependencies and changes to what is required to run their EVA launcher - The biggest change / update is their half functional cursor which has been capturing all the d-pad's input. I'm about 95% sure this is a cursor, a little orange cursor circle appears when you attempt press the d-pad, you can get it selecting items if you play with the accessibility settings (And also you would need to enable accessibility settings to get a cursor function).
And on a surface level this does look like they're trying to break functionality to running external apps inside their launcher - And ultimately it's current implementation does just that. But we need to remember that they aren't supporting the sideload. They're going to push updates that work with their development process. Based on the degree of changes and the dependency to the "Accessibility" settings my best guess would be the cursor was a dependant system that couldn't easily be disabled. We can maybe fault them for committing broken code or not designing their code a little less tightly coupled but I don't see this as being a malice attack to the sideload community. Why did they even do it at all? I'd say anyone who's spent time in the side-load knows that you either need an external keyboard / mouse or you would need some kind of fake cursor. Its actually really exciting to me to see them working on it. It's almost impossible to navigate the full interface without it, not all apps support it - Shit, even the settings screen doesn't fully support dpad navigation.
Also, if we look at everything else that was added, they've actually added some really good functionality:
- You can actually scroll in the app view (This is also wrapped inside an accessibility settings)
- Apps now open in Landscape instead of being lock to portrait
- They've added external Bluetooth mouse support in apps - It seems that people can finally use apps like Parsec without jumping through hoops.
So, what do we know / how do we fix it? Through our digging we've found that the EvaLauncher is now enabling Accessibility settings for itself and disabling Accessibility for all other apps when you boot it. This setting is what it's using to "steal" the inputs from the DPAD. Through testing we've found that fixing this is as easy as disabling the setting while inside the app you want to use a dpad for - unfortunately we haven't found an easy way to do this without a Bluetooth mouse. cmak414 has done a write up on one method for enabling it using an app called TaskBar:
And I've found that you can also get it working using an app called tvQuickAction Pro seen here:
We will hopefully find a better option soon, but I think honestly we could possibly have ourselves a better sideload experience with these changes - Once we've ironed all the kinks out. Also, don't blame the dev's for building the app, ultimately it's on us to support the sideload project, not them. They may need to commit something that breaks stuff, we just need to be flexible.
And remember, if they really wanted to break the sideload, they'd just disable the app-view in the EvaLauncher until the store came out. I'm sure it would be super simple. So lets not piss them off too much.