mc-webui/android

Android companion app — source

The app users install is a thin WebView wrapper around their own mc-webui instance: one screen for the server address, one full-screen WebView for the interface itself. It contains no mesh logic and talks to nothing except the server the user typed in.

The sources are here so that anyone installing the .apk can see what they are installing, and build it themselves if they prefer. For install instructions, see Android App.

Published build	mc-webui-wrapper.apk
Package	it.wojtaszek.mc.wrapper
Min / target SDK	21 (Android 5.0) / 36 (Android 16)
Permissions	INTERNET; CAMERA for QR scanning; POST_NOTIFICATIONS for new-message alerts; WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE (Android 9 and older) for saving downloads

Layout

src/
├── settings.gradle.kts, build.gradle.kts, gradle.properties
├── gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties
└── app/
    ├── build.gradle.kts
    └── src/main/
        ├── AndroidManifest.xml
        ├── assets/notification_shim.js                    ← window.Notification
        ├── java/it/wojtaszek/mc/wrapper/
        │   ├── MainActivity.kt                            ← the whole app
        │   └── MeshWatchService.kt                        ← background delivery
        └── res/                                            layout, strings, icons

MainActivity.kt is the entire application. Worth knowing about it:

• The server address is stored in SharedPreferences and only ever replaced by the user. A failed connection or a Back press shows the address form pre-filled — it never wipes what was saved
• Back on the first mc-webui page asks: exit, change server, or cancel
• Links to other hosts (URLs in messages, the packet analyzer) and non-http schemes are handed to the system, so the app stays on the user's instance
• The page's camera request (QR scanning) is mirrored to an Android permission request; downloads go to the phone's Downloads folder via DownloadManager

Notifications

Android's WebView ships no Web Notifications API at all — window.Notification is simply undefined, so mc-webui detects that and greys its notification toggle out as "Unavailable". Native code has to supply the missing piece:

• assets/notification_shim.js defines a stand-in window.Notification and forwards every call to a @JavascriptInterface bridge in MainActivity.kt, which posts through Android's own NotificationManager. mc-webui itself needs no changes — the page uses the standard API and never knows
• The shim is injected from onPageStarted, which runs as the document begins loading. That is comfortably ahead of DOMContentLoaded, where mc-webui reads the permission and decides whether to enable the toggle
• The web permission states map onto Android's: below Android 13 posting needs no permission so it is granted outright; after a refusal, shouldShowRequestPermissionRationale is what separates "ask again" (default) from "blocked for good" (denied)
• The notification channel is created at startup, which is also what puts the app in Android's notification settings list at all
• Background delivery (from versionCode 6) is MeshWatchService, a foreground service of type remoteMessaging. It does no work: it exists so Android leaves the process out of the cached-process freezer, which is what used to silence alerts minutes after backgrounding. The page keeps producing every notification, so mutes, blocked senders, channel names, translations and deep links stay in one place
• The service follows mc-webui's own notification toggle. The shim reads mc_notifications_enabled from localStorage and reports it over the bridge — read rather than asked of the page, because the wrapper connects to whichever server its user typed in, very often an older mc-webui. It also wraps Storage.prototype.setItem, since localStorage fires no event in the document that wrote it
• setRendererPriorityPolicy(RENDERER_PRIORITY_IMPORTANT, false) goes with it. The page renders in a process of its own, and WebView waives that process's priority once the view stops being visible — a service that saves only the host process would still lose the renderer under memory pressure
• Android 12 forbids starting a foreground service from the background, so the service is only ever started while the activity is on screen: from the shim's report and again from onResume

Building

Open src/ in Android Studio (the Gradle wrapper JAR is not checked in — Android Studio supplies it) and let it sync. Then:

• Debug build: Build → Build Bundle(s) / APK(s) → Build APK(s) → app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk. Fine for trying things out on your own phone, not for publishing — it is signed with the throwaway debug key and is marked debuggable
• Release build: Build → Generate Signed App Bundle or APK → APK, pick the project keystore, choose the release variant, and let it build. The result is what ships

Signing

Android identifies an app by its package name and its signing key. An update only installs over an existing app when both match, so a release signed with a different key forces every user to uninstall first — losing their saved server address. In practice this means:

• Use the same keystore for every release, from the first published one
• Back it up (and its passwords) somewhere that survives a reinstalled laptop. There is no way to recover or reissue it
• Never commit the keystore or its passwords to this repository

Publishing a new build

The app goes out through two channels, from one build of one commit. Do them in the same sitting, or the .apk here and the Store drift apart.

Both channels, first:

1. Bump versionCode — Play rejects an upload that reuses one — and usually versionName, in src/app/build.gradle.kts
2. Mention the change in docs/whatsnew.md
3. Check whether the change touches anything docs/privacy-policy.html claims: it lists every permission and everything stored on the phone, in both languages, and Play reviews it

The .apk in this repository:

4. Build the signed release APK
5. Copy it here as mc-webui-wrapper.apk
6. Update the version, size and SHA-256 in docs/android-app.md — sha256sum on Linux, Get-FileHash in PowerShell

Google Play (it.wojtaszek.mc.wrapper):

7. Build a signed App Bundle (.aab) — Play does not take an APK
8. Play Console → Production → Create new release → upload the .aab
9. Answer whatever new declarations the build triggers. A new permission usually asks for one; a foreground service always does, and its declaration wants a link to a video showing the feature in use
10. Write the release notes in every language the listing has (en-US and pl-PL), 500 characters each
11. Send for review. A production review is normally hours to a couple of days

Where a change has already been tested by the closed track, promote that exact build from Releases overview → Add from library instead of building again. Play has already reviewed the artifact, which is what made the first production review take hours rather than days.