Active Edge Service

This is an open-source implementation of the Pixel Active Edge gesture, written from scratch for portability and customizability.

Active Edge, codename Elmyra, is a gesture powered by side grip sensors on the Pixel 2/XL, 3/XL, 3a/XL, and 4/XL that is used to activate the Google Assistant on stock. The gesture is handled by a proprietary nanoapp running under CHRE (ContextHub Runtime Environment) on the sensor DSP.

This app is a reverse-engineered Android client that runs as a standalone service and talks to the CHRE nanoapp for gesture functionality. No decompiled code has been used.

Features

• Seamless integration in Settings → System → Gestures → Active Edge with no extra changes
• Integration with Settings search
• Many actions to perform on gesture trigger
  • Take screenshot
  • Open assistant
  • Open camera
  • Toggle flashlight
  • Mute calls & notifications (replicates default power + volume-up "prevent ringing" gesture)
  • Toggle power menu
  • Toggle screen
• 10 sensitivity levels (more granular than stock)
• Setting to control whether gesture is enabled when the screen is off
• Contextually-appropriate haptic feedback with modern effects
  • Heavy click for squeeze
  • Click for release
  • Reject for unavailable action (e.g. if flashlight can't turn on because camera is in use)

Integration

Sync this repo to packages/apps/ElmyraService.

Add the following to your device tree only for devices with this feature:

# Active Edge
PRODUCT_PACKAGES += \
    ElmyraService

While this service is designed to be as portable and self-contained as possible, Android does not provide the necessary APIs to implement all gesture actions out-of-the-box. This means that some commits must be added to frameworks/base to expose the APIs for full functionality:

• For screenshot action: SystemUI: Allow privileged system apps to access screenshot service
• For assistant action: core: Expose method to start assistant through Binder

Default settings can be changed by overlaying res/values/config.xml.

License

All code in this repository is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.