nextcloud/talk-android

📱😀 Video & audio calls through Nextcloud on Android

Nextcloud Talk for Android 💬

Please note that Notifications won't work with the F-Droid version due to missing Google Play Services.

Video & audio calls through Nextcloud on Android

Nextcloud Talk is a fully on-premises audio/video and chat communication service. It features web and mobile apps and is designed to offer the highest degree of security while being easy to use.

Nextcloud Talk lowers the barrier for communication and lets your team connect any time, any where, on any device, with each other, customers or partners.

Why is this so awesome? ✨

Because it is self hosted!!! Audio/video calls and text chat typically require a central server. Some projects go commendably far in trying to ensure they can't see the data, so nobody, not government, advertising company or somebody who broke in the servers, can follow conversations. But the servers still have to mediate every call and text message, allowing them to map out who talks to who and at what time. This 'metadata' is as useful, if not more, to track people, than the full content, especially for mass surveillance purposes. Even if the data is not stored by the chat server, the hosting provider or a hacker could simply gather the data.

By hosting your own server, all meta data stays on your server and thus under your control!

If you have suggestions or problems, please open an issue or contribute directly :)

How to contribute 🚀

If you want to contribute to Nextcloud, you are very welcome:

• on our public Talk team conversation
• our forum at https://help.nextcloud.com
• for translations of the app on Transifex
• opening issues and PRs (including a corresponding issue)

Contribution Guidelines 📜

GPLv3. All contributions to this repository are considered to be licensed under the GNU GPLv3 or any later version.

Please read the Code of Conduct. This document offers some guidance to ensure Nextcloud participants can cooperate effectively in a positive and inspiring atmosphere, and to explain how together we can strengthen and support each other.

Please review the guidelines for contributing to this repository.

More information how to contribute: https://nextcloud.com/contribute/

Start contributing 🛠️

Make sure you read SETUP.md and CONTRIBUTING.md before you start working on this project. But basically: fork this repository and contribute back using pull requests to the master branch. Easy starting points are also reviewing pull requests and working on starter issues.

Testing 🧪

So you would like to contribute by testing? Awesome, we appreciate that very much.

To report a bug for the alpha or beta version, just create an issue on github like you would for the stable version and provide the version number. Please remember that Google Services are necessary to receive push notifications.

Beta versions (Release Candidates) 📦

via Google Play

Sign up at Google Play Beta channel to get Release Candidates via Google Play.

via github

You can also get the Release Candidates at github releases.

Alpha versions

via Google Play

To become an alpha tester you have to be signed up for the Google Play Beta channel and additionally you have to join the Alpha testing Google Group. After that you will receive the alpha versions via the Play Store (initially, this might take some minutes after signing up). However, in the Play Store the app will still be named "Nextcloud Talk (Beta)" even if you are an alpha tester, but you will receive the alpha versions. If a beta was released that is newer than the alpha version, you will get the beta in the alpha channel.

via Download page

In addition to google play, the alpha and beta apps can also be obtained from the Nextcloud Download page Please make sure to remember that these versions might contain bugs and you don't use them in production.

Support ⛑️

If you need assistance or want to ask a question about the Talk Android app, you are welcome to ask for community help in our forums. If you have found a bug, feel free to open a new issue on GitHub. Keep in mind, that this repository only manages the Nextcloud Talk for Android app. If you find bugs or have problems with the server/backend, you should ask the Nextcloud server team for help!

Notifications

If you have problems to receive talk notifications on your android phone, please have a look at this checklist.

Credits 📜

Ringtones 🔔

• Ringtones by Librem author: feandesign
• Telefon-Freiton in Deutschland nach DTAG 1 TR 110-1, Kap. 8.3 author: arvedkrynil

Remarks 📜

Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google Inc.

talk-android's Issues

Granting permissions

Instead of letting the user enable permissions on settings, it should directly ask for the permission, like on nextcloud app:

Code reference: https://github.com/nextcloud/android/blob/61cbe88bd056ec1ec2f3933a8175cdc6a4252c6c/src/main/java/com/owncloud/android/ui/fragment/contactsbackup/ContactsBackupFragment.java#L346-L376

server url should respect url format

When entering the url: cloud. the input apparenrly doesn't tell my keyboard it is an url. So the . after cloud also gets a space.

This works in the Nextcloud app.

Implement push actions

Starting a call: more feedback needed

I started a call on our company instance and also tried it with a local server.
As soon as I start a call I see myself (front camera), but do not see any recipient.
Trying to start a call on the web ui also did not succeed.

The question is now, what is happening. Is it really trying to connect? So any feedback is necessary.

(Edit: I used the self compiled version directly out of AndroidStudio on an Samsumng S5 Neo)

Logo in new icon is too small

The main round form in the logo is significantly smaller than in the previous Talk app.

I'm a bit confused why since in the source file I only modified the background size and opacity.

Nextcloud Talk for iOS

Well nextcloud talk be out on iOS devices?

Login/confirm button for submitted the URL

There should be a login/confirm button after entering the URL. Only making the submit action available via keyboard/done key works, but is not that user friendly IMHO

Implement in-call controls (audio, video, end call)

Take server address & credentials from main Nextcloud app

@nextcloud/android is it possible that we can transfer the server address & credentials over from the main Nextcloud app?

Ideal would be completely seamless log in, but it’s also ok if we just port the URL and the username like we do for DAVdroid.

Migrate push keys to the database

The icon looks VERY bad

Using S7, which is a relatively recent phone:

• forced round icon looks awful since it's surrounded by a semi-rounded square (due to the way Samsung shows icons), so I vote for going back to squared icon in most cases (e.g. letting the phone/OS/manufacturer decide what's best)
• the dots on the background are completely INVISIBLE, so I vote for removing them completely

cc @AndyScherzinger

cc @jancborchardt @tobiasKaminsky - I know of your opinion and how "dull"/"boring" simple background is, but simplicity always wins, both on mobile and the desktop. Also, I am a mobile developer and I've done this more than once - I want the best experience, and the current state of icons that we ship is such that it's really really bad.

Login screen

The input field is a little darker, which in my opinion, does not look very good.
In general it looks very empty, maybe add also some infos, like on nc app?
Maybe also remove "talk" in "nextcloud talk server" as it can lead to the impression that there is a special talk server instead of the regular nextcloud server (of course with talk app enabled)
@jancborchardt

Video controls layout

Currently the video controls (hang up, video, mute, switch camera) are in that order, very small, on the top of the view. They stay for a long 10 seconds, no matter if something was touched, and then fade out slowly.

Instead of that:

• they should be on the bottom
• have more padding for better tappability (I guess the icon size itself is standard? Maybe a bit small)
• they should be sorted: Hang up, mute, video, camera switch (so video and camera switch is next to each other)
• mute and video should be at .7 opacity when muted / video off for better feedback
• hang up should have slightly more whitespace to the others so accidental tapping is minimized
• fade out should be quicker with 5 seconds, and the fadeout animation should also be quicker, e.g. 300ms. But whenever you touch the display, the timer should reset

If server has no Talk app installed, message should be more dominant and clear

When the Nextcloud server has no Talk app installed, the user gets redirected back to the screen with the URL input field without a permanent message there.

The message "Nextcloud talk app not installed, aborting" only appears for a few seconds and does not remain on-screen. Also, the wording is ambiguous. I would phrase it: "Nextcloud talk app not installed on the server, aborting"

Assume https

We build secure software. We should assume that any url entered in the main screen if there is no protocol provided we first try https.

If https fails. Show a big warning and offer to fall back to http

Change readme in coherence with ios app

A bit more "Brand" identity with talk-ios could be good.

A really simple proposal for the first part of the readme

---

Nextcloud Talk Android app

This is the Android app for the Nextcloud Talk app.

Prerequisites

• Nexcloud instance with Nextcloud Talk app installed (Latest master)
• .....

---

In addition it could be useful that each of the two apps cites the other.
Something like: "We are working also on the ios version of this app!"

"app not found" with http instead of https

I accidentally typed in http://cloud.nc.c instead of https://... and login worked without a problem, but then it was shown app not found and then I was logged out.

Create graphics

https://material.io/guidelines/style/icons.html#icons-product-icons

Relevant files are in:
mipmap-*
ic_launcher_background.xml in drawable directory

I also need an svg that will be used on the logo screen.

Implement room actions

Manual 1-on-1 calls

Handle web login load failure

Problem with connexion

Handle SSL issues / certificate acceptance

Loading & Error screens

Change & improve call UI/UX

Implement Contacts view

Avoid SSL certificate check if possible

Not sure if it's possible on Android
https://gist.github.com/aembleton/889392
but if, the SSL cert check should be avoided. It's technical and cryptic for non-technical end-users. They wouldn't even know what exactly they should check and how.

Double "Server selection" controller on "Add new account"

"Your SSL setup prevented us from connecting" message not making sense

The "Your SSL setup prevented us from connecting" message I get is confusing, it doesn't make much sense. It happened when on the NC i tried to connect, there was still NC12 without the Talk app (server-side) running.

So, of course the talk app wouldn't work without a server-side Talk app installed.

But SSL is fine, and should not be related, therefore the message does not make much sense here.

Implement Rooms view

Handle permission acceptance/decline better

Implement proxy setup in the onboarding phase

Integrate Merlin

https://github.com/novoda/merlin

Via Dagger module.

Add drone / lint

To have some QA/CI drone and lint should be added.
I can add integrate both of them.

Check & fix signaling with multiple users

Use account from Nextcloud app

To have a great UX it would be nice to have the accounts of NC app automatically shown on startup if available:

• use current state and fetch all accounts by name. Drawback: password needs to be entered again
• use nextcloud/Android-SingleSignOn#3 so it can work directly

(not now, but maybe for version 1?)

Implement settings screen

UI layout overlap with list items across tabs

I have entered a call/room and returned back to the calls list (and the problem only seems to happen then). When switching tabs, the list rendering is a bit weird, text is overlapping:

Prepare underlaying infrastructure

Make camera access optional

It shouldn't be mandatory to enable the camera to use the app.

Implement login mechanism

Handle network changes / reconnect

Cannot login with app token

Tested on our cloud.
Got message that app was not installed on the server
Had to start from scratch, the app did not remember my token.

Site not recognised as Nextcloud

The android app doesn't recognise my server as a valid Nextcloud site. It accepts my certificate and then it gets stuck.

Switch to simpler bottom navigation view

Support local instances

Add support for Xiaomi to Effortless permissions

Refactor search functionality into SearchController

Create new controller out of Base Controller that would implement search functionality currently implemented in both CallsListController and ContactsController.

External Contacts

Hello I think there should be a feature that shows external contacts for example I have a server that's shared via Federation and and if I click under contacts via web it shows all the contacts on the other server that's being shared is there a way to make this app able to see external contacts from other servers

Publish to F-droid

Hello,

thank all of you for such a nice app. Would it be possible to publish talk also to the f-droid repository like other nextcloud apps for android?

Thanks in advance!