Re: FYI - Command Line Programs for the Blind

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So you don't want to be able to connect your phone to your computer and be able to manage texts, notifications, calls and what ever else from the computer then?


I can do that. There are fre and open source apps on F-Droid that do exactly this, that is if I wanted it, though really, I just don't see the need for it at this point. I can manage calls, texts and other notifications right from my phone easily enough, and I can even manage calendars and email among many other things quite successfully and easily from my phone. Why should I want to do most of this on the computer when I have the phone right next to me already? I don't even feel the need to connect a bluetooth keyboard these days, now that Talkback has a braille keyboard built right in now, as Google did split that off from GBoard and integrate it right into Talkback now, and WOW that thing is just lovely. Text messages that once took me 2 minutes to type out on that horrible on-screen keyboard now take as little as 20 seconds. The only thing better would be if they would bring back real buttons.

Course, that really only works for Android, but you don't have an iPhone, because you'd have to give Apple your existing email address and phone number.


You're right. I only have Android here, and as deGoogled as I can make it, meaning that I still have to have Talkback, and only their voices work before I unlock my screen, but I otherwise run Lineage for MicroG now, which doesn't even have a Google account setup. But there are many other benefits to Android devices, not the least of which is the fact that there are many more of them made by many more manufacturers, and even more devices are capable of running LineageOS, formerly Cyanogenmod, than are made by Apple alone. ANd it's not just the privacy thing either. Apple locks down their OS and their app store, and "jailbreaking" only allows me to use just another app store. On any other device on the market not made by Apple, I can easily get apps that are not in the app store just by either downloading them directly to the phone, or even to the computer and then installing them via adb to the phone if I like. The choice and the freedom are mine.


Also for the Android thing I think there actually a way to do that with Linux but it's not the your phone companion thing naturally.


No, it's not called Your Phone Companion, but it does exist, and there are actually several different options, both open and closed source should I decide I want such a tool. Eventually, NextCloud is supposed to sync text messages, and I already use my own personal NextCloud for contacts and calendars and such, so that may be the next logical step.


Hmm, not sure if it's possible to do much on Android without an account. At least if it's based on the Google software much at all it'll have the notification to complete setup if you skip setup.


Well first, as I mentioned in a previous answer, I have LineageOS 18.1 here, equivalent to Android 11, and I got the MicroG version that doesn't need gapps. I just added in Talkback and a version of GoogleTTS that I got from MindTheGapps so that I could have speech during setup and upon startup before I unlock the screen. Talkback is in F-Droid, but when I tried sideloading it before booting the phone into Lineage for MicroG for the first time, the F-Droid version didn't work, didn't even show up in the accessibility settings, so I used the MindTheGapps version, which does work. I normally use RHVoice, but it doesn't work during setup, and although Espeak works during setup, it doesn't work when I restart the phone until I unlock the screen, so I used the same MindTheGapps GoogleTTS just for that and once the screen is unlocked, RHVoice starts normally. I get lots of things from F-Droid, which does not require a Google account, and I even downloaded the Aurora Store from F-Droid, which gives me access to free apps that are in the Google Play Store anonymously without a Google account. I could just as easily go to apkmirror.com or apkpure.com to get apps that don't appear in F-Droid, but the Aurora Store keeps my Play Store apps updated a bit more easily.


To answer the initial point though, I can get much done with any vendor Android without a Google account as well. I don't even have to tell it I don't have access to the internet in order for a skip button to show up on the Google setup page. Yes, it will give me a stupid question after I tap the skip button, but it's done at that point, no need to keep going back to it or anything like that, and although there are checkboxes that I need to turn off, there aren't so many of them as I recentlyh saw on a Microsoft computer that wasn't even connected to the internet.


OK, so you do have a point that setup will keep notifying me that I should "finish setup," but back when I just set up a Google account and let it do what it was gonna do, it still notified me that I needed to finish setup, and I left nothing undone at that time, so it seems it just does this for a time for some reason. Usually after restarting the phone a few times, the notification does go away in all cases. I have now skipped the Google account setup on phones running everything from Android 6 all the way up to 10, and I get the same result every time. The Google account setup can be skipped, and I can still have the apps I need or want on the device, and even use the included calendar and contacts and all that stuff without signing into an account.

~Kyle

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