Comment by ulrikrasmussen
5 months ago
I had a phone where the top half of the touch screen broke, so I installed "quick cursor" to be able to access it. I still use it on my new phone since it enables me to control everything using only about 1/3 of the touch screen. This should really come built in to the OS, especially since the app requires some pretty aggressive permissions to work.
Hi, Quick Cursor dev here.
I completely agree with you, my app functionality should be built inside the OS because of better integration, privacy reasons, etc.
I just wanted to add that because of this permissions my app needs in order to work, I will never add the internet permission to Quick Cursor. I took this decission 5 years ago when I started the app because I understood the privacy risk, and my app will never have internet access permission.
In order for an app to have access to internet, it needs to have the android.permission.INTERNET added to its manifest, otherwise it won't work. This can be checked easily, there are some apps that shows you this info about your installed apps, or by manually looking at the AndroidManifest in the .APK of the app.
Thank you for making this!
I am using GrapheneOS, and I think this OS actually also allows you to explicitly toggle the Network permission off for apps that require it, but I did notice that it wasn't even present on the list to begin with :). I also like to disable Network for things like keyboard apps.
I'm glad you like it. That's an awesome feature that should be implemented into all Android devices.
I have to say reading the statement "requires some pretty aggressive permissions to work" sounds like there's a problem with Android permissions model. I mean, if the app needs permissions, one should normally assume it needs these permissions in order to, well, be permitted to do its work? In other words, a "good-natured" app should not need more permissions than it needs to work, and the last part is kind of a tautology. Either that, or Android has broken permissions model, which may apparently be too coarse -- as in you need "access to Internet" for auto-update to work, despite auto-update normally being done by Google (when a Google-forked Android) over a secure channel etc.
I agree about the principle of least privilege, but the problem is that almost any accessibility app must basically be able to simulate user input to function, i.e. for a cursor app to actually provide a cursor, it must have the permission to activate any UI element on the screen.
I trust Quick Cursor, but I shouldn't have to - since basically every smartphone now is too big to use with one hand without having to shuffle it around and risk dropping it, I think the cursor feature should be built into the OS.