I have started migrating to BiometricManager part of Android 29.
We have a requirement to display a different icon for face or Fingerprint depending upon device support. Even the following code returns true on Pixel 4 though Face recognition is available.
PackageManager pm = context.getPackageManager();
pm.hasSystemFeature(PackageManager.FEATURE_FINGERPRINT)
The following blog post walks you through implementing the Biometrics Library. If you follow the instructions, then your app should work with all form-factors without you having to do anything (whether fingerprint, face, iris, etc.).
Essentially, with the new library, UI is no longer the concern of developers. The library will detect whether a device uses face or fingerprint and will display the appropriate UI to the user.
You may also find this blog post useful.
Related
I am writing an application for previewing, capturing and snapshotting camera input. To this end I am using Media Foundation for the input. One of the requirements is that this works with a Black Magic Intensive Pro 4K capture card, which behaves similar to a normal camera.
Media Foundation is unfortunately unable to create an IMFMediaSource object from this device. Some research lead me to believe that I could implement my own MediaSource.
Then I started looking at samples, and tried to unravel the documentation.
At that point I encountered some questions:
Does anyone know if what I am trying to do is possible?
A Windows example shows a basic implementation of a source, but uses IMFSensorProfile. What is a Sensor Profile, and what should I use it for? There is almost no documentation about this.
Can somebody explain how implementing a custom media source works in terms of: what actually happens on the inside? Am I simply creating my own format, or does it allow me to pull my own frames from the camera and process them myself? I tried following the msdn guide, but no luck so far.
Specifics:
Using WPF with C# but I can write C++ and use it in C#.
Rendering to screen uses Direct3D9.
The capture card specs can be found on their site (BlackMagic Intensity Pro 4K).
The specific problem that occurs is that I can acquire the IMFActivator for the device, but I am not able to activate it. On activation, an MF_E_INVALIDMEDIATYPE error occurs.
The IMFActivator can tell me that the device should output a UYVY format.
My last resort is using the DeckLinkAPI, but since I am working with several different types of cameras, I do not want to be stuck with another dependency.
Any pointers or help would be appreciated. Let me know if anything is unclear or needs more detail.
I've got a big ask here, but I am hoping someone might be able to help me. If there's another site you think this should be posted on, please let me know.
I'm the developer of the free app Amphetamine for macOS and I'm hoping to add a new feature to the app - keeping a Mac awake while in closed-display (clamshell) mode while not having a keyboard/mouse/power adapter/display connected to the Mac. I get requests to add this feature on an almost daily basis.
I've been working on a solution (and it's mostly ready) which uses a non-App Store helper app that must be download and installed separately. I could still go with that solution, but I want to explore one more option before pushing the separate app solution out to the world.
An Amphetamine user tipped me off that another app, AntiSleep can keep a Mac awake while in closed-display mode, while not meeting Apple's requirements. I've tested this claim, and it's true. After doing a bit of digging into how AntiSleep might be accomplishing this, I've come up with 2 possible theories so far (though there may be more to it):
In addition to the standard power assertion types, it looks like AntiSleep is using (a) private framework(s) to apply non-standard power assertions. The following non-standard power assertion types are active when AntiSleep is keeping a Mac awake: DenySystemSleep, UserIsActive, RequiresDisplayAudio, & InternalPreventDisplaySleep. I haven't been able to find much information on these power assertion types beyond what appears in IOPMLibPrivate.h. I'm not familiar at all with using private frameworks, but I assume I could theoretically add the IOPMLibPrivate header file to a project and then create these power assertion types. I understand that would likely result in an App Store review rejection for Amphetamine, of course. What about non-App Store apps? Would Apple notarize an app using this? Beyond that, could someone help me confirm that the only way to apply these non-standard power assertions is to use a private framework?
I suspect that AntiSleep may also be creating a virtual keyboard and mouse. Certainly, the idea of creating a virtual keyboard and mouse to get around Apple's requirement of having a keyboard and mouse connected to the Mac when using closed-display mode is an intriguing idea. After doing some searching, I found foohid. However, I ran into all kinds of errors trying to add and use the foohid files in a test project. Would someone be willing to take a look at the foohid project and help me understand whether it is theoretically possible to include this functionality in an App Store compatible app? I'm not asking for code help with that (yet). I'd just like some help determining whether it might be possible to do.
Thank you in advance for taking a look.
Would Apple notarize an app using this?
I haven't seen any issues with notarising code that uses private APIs. Currently, Apple only seems to use notarisation for scanning for inclusion of known malware.
Would someone be willing to take a look at the foohid project and help me understand whether it is theoretically possible to include this functionality in an App Store compatible app?
Taking a quick glance at the code of that project, it's clear it implements a kernel extension (kext). Those are not allowed on the App Store.
However, since macOS 10.15 Catalina, there's a new way to write HID drivers, using DriverKit. The idea is that the APIs are very similar to the kernel APIs, although I suspect it'll be a rewrite of the kext as a DriverKit driver, rather than a simple port.
DriverKit drivers are permitted to be included in App Store apps.
I don't know if a DriverKit based HID driver will solve your specific power management issue.
If you go with a DriverKit solution, this will only work on 10.15+.
I suspect that AntiSleep may also be creating a virtual keyboard and mouse.
I haven't looked at AntiSleep, but I do know that in addition to writing an outright HID driver, it's possible to generate HID events using user space APIs such as IOHIDPostEvent(). I don't know if those are allowed on the App Store, but as far as I'm aware, IOKitLib is generally fine.
It's possible you might be able to implement your virtual input device using those.
Since one release binary will run on pc, xbox and phones, I need a way to fetch the device type on runtime.
It is doable by checking with the ApiInformation for present types, methods etc., but I believe there should be a more reliable way.
Currently (with the preview tools released 23-Mar-2015) there isn't an easy way to do this, other than (as you mention) using the ApiInformation methods to detect implementations of things that only exist on the specific platform you're after.
It would be nice if there were some helpers to do this and if none are in the final tooling I'm sure some will be created by helpful people in the community.
However, there is a really good reason not to have this in that it encourages broad assumptions about the device.
If it was possible to say "Am I running on a phone?" then if you got the response 'Yes' then it would be easy to make assumptions about what was possible with that device but not all phones have the same capabilities.
It looks like there will be a "mobile" version of Windows 10 for both phones and small tablets. If you were able to say "am I the 'mobile' version?" then again that wouldn't potentially answer all your questions and you'd have to still check individual API availabilities as the capabilities of a cheap tablet and a high end phone could be vastly different. (The inclusion of physical buttons on the device and the ability to make phone calls are two obvious examples.)
Extending this further there are plenty of scenarios where you'd treat different platforms the same as the functionality exists on all of them. In this scenario you're code would be better of saying "Is such and such API available?", rather than saying "Am I running on desktop, Xbox or SurfaceHub?".
The IOT platform will likely further complicate this due to the range of functionality and capabilities different IOT devices will have available.
There are very few scenarios where you want to know the platform you're running on and not whether a specific API is available. Hopefully, by only exposing API availability Microsoft are encouraging developers to think about checking for what they actually need, rather than relying on broad, potentially incomplete, classifications of devices.
Just as with web development where you don't know what platform or browser you are running on, you shouldn't detect the platform and make assumptions about what capabilities that device will therefore have, you should detect if the specific capability you require is supported/enabled on the device before using it or exposing associated UI in your app.
It seems there is a new API to detect Device Family:
Windows.System.Profile.AnalyticsInfo.VersionInfo.DeviceFamily
You can find more information here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/dn705767.aspx
Updated:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.system.profile.analyticsversioninfo.aspx
[Edit July 3 to replace //build-era information with current information]
Although you can try and infer the device you're on by using the ApiInformation APIs to detect APIs, this is a very bad solution since APIs can be added to devices over time. Please don't do that; your future self (or your replacement ;-) ) will thank you.
If you really do need to programmatically detect the device family that you're running on (and in most cases you don't) then you can use AnalyticsInfo.VersionInfo.DeviceFamliy. This returns a string for which there is no published standard set of values, because device families could be introduced or retired at any time.
If you want to provide different resources per device-family (strings, images, XAML files, HTML pages, etc.) then you don't need to detect the device-family in code; instead you can use an MRT qualifier DeviceFamily (such as Logo.DeviceFamily-Mobile.png). Just make sure you always have a fallback resource (image, string, etc) for use when the app is running on a device family you've never heard of before. And don't fall into the trap of assuming things like "Desktop requires higher-res assets than Mobile" because that is often not true.
Additionally to support the scenario Alan describes in his comment you can check for a Contract rather than a specific type as this indicates a block of related functionality. There is one such contract for the Windows Phone specific APIs - I described in here http://inthehand.com/2015/03/26/determine-if-running-on-windows-phone-from-a-uap-application/
Since this contract provides compatibility APIs for current Windows Phone apps we can assume at this point that it won't be implemented in small tablets as they won't have this. Obviously since the OS or APIs are not final this is not set in stone yet. This is a useful thing to know for Windows Phone especially if during the transition you want to cross promote legacy WP apps only on WP devices. For custom IoT devices I would check availability at the API level.
You can specify device family exclusive resources and views using specially named folders: (http://www.sharpgis.net/post/2015/04/01/Creating-DeviceFamily-specific-layouts-in-a-Universal-App).
You could, for the "advertising only same family apps" scenario described above, place a JSON or XML file in that device family's folder and fetch it at runtime using the storage API's.
I use this for phone (mobile):
if (Windows.System.Profile.AnalyticsInfo.VersionInfo.DeviceFamily == "Windows.Mobile")
{
// code for phone
}
else
{
// other code
}
extample is here
This is just repeating one of the previous answers which suggests using Windows.System.Profile.AnalyticsInfo.VersionInfo.DeviceFamily but I thought I'd include the complete code for a check:
// ----------------------------------------------------------------------
// IsRunningOnXbox
// Determines whether or not the game is running on an xbox console
bool IsRunningOnXbox()
{
// Skip if already checked
static bool bChecked = false;
static bool bRunningOnXbox = false;
if (bChecked)
return bRunningOnXbox;
// Retrieve the platform device family
Platform::String^ strVersionInfoDeviceFamily = Windows::System::Profile::AnalyticsInfo::VersionInfo->DeviceFamily;
if (strVersionInfoDeviceFamily != nullptr)
{
// Check to see if the device belongs to the xbox family
std::wstring strDeviceFamily = strVersionInfoDeviceFamily->Data();
std::transform(strDeviceFamily.begin(), strDeviceFamily.end(), strDeviceFamily.begin(), ::tolower);
if (strDeviceFamily.find(L"xbox") != std::wstring::npos)
bRunningOnXbox = true;
}
// Check complete
bChecked = true;
// Return whether or not the host platform is xbox
return bRunningOnXbox;
}
I do agree with Chuck's comment that this is probably not what AnalyticsInfo is intended for... but at the same time, we're talking about the xbox - a device with a single manufacturer who is also responsible for the OS. So in my mind at least, this seems pretty safe. Plus, if you wrap it like this, it's incredibly easy to swap in a different check should something better come along.
My C# app uses a C++ WinRT component I've written to get a list of system fonts using Direct X.
This is based on this example:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd756582(v=VS.85).aspx
My app is published in the store, but my latest update failed to pass the store review process on point 3.10 complaining about my use of Direct 3D and how this might not run on ARM tablets. As far as I know I'm not using Direct 3D and the only Direct X feature I'm using is GetSystemFontCollection.
How can I make sure I don't fail this requirement and do I need to remove some rogue reference in my component to Direct3D?
Also, why am I failing this now, when it passed before?
Did you target all three platforms or choose any cpu in your release?
Does this page help:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/windows/apps/hh994923.aspx
It looks like you may have inadvertently requested a higher level.
I submitted again and included a note to the tester explaining that my app didn't use any Direct 3D features, and I told them the exact DirectX function I did use.
I still failed, but the Direct3D reason was no longer one of the reasons.
Apparently my app is crashing, which was another failure reason the first time round, but I thought this must be related to the Direct3D problem. I can't reproduce the crash, but at least I now know that I can stop looking at my use of DirectX. This was a red herring.
We're in process of developing a desktop application which needs to record user's screen once he clicks a button. I read a tutorial about Adobe AIR, which says it is easy to do with AIR: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/articles/air_screenrecording.html
But our preference is Titanium as we've explored it a little bit. So I want to know is that even possible? If yes, how can we get started with?
There's also an interesting solution which uses Java applet for recording, as demonstrated here: http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/create?step=info&sid=default&itype=choose
But again, we're not sure about JAVA and would like to know how can it be done? or if its even possible to run a JAVA applet in Titanium?
When you say "record screen", I'm assuming you mean video. Correct?
The only way to do this in Titanium Desktop right now is to take a bunch of screenshots and string them together (encoding would probably need to be done server-side).
Depending on how long your videos need to be, this probably won't work for you. I'm also not confident in how quickly you could capture screenshots, and if it would have a high enough frame rate to be usable.
Past that, a module could be developed for Desktop to support some native APIs to record video. That's not something I see on the horizon, though.
I hope this helps, albiet a rather dismal answer. -Dawson