This week for SyncAssist has been all about mobile remote control! Based on our discussion with our liaison engineers on how mobile remote control should work, we’ve since worked on two main modes of control: gesture control, and keyboard control.

In order to be able to navigate a remote desktop using only touch gestures, we decided that we would at minimum need to simulate the Tab, Shift + Tab, and Enter key combinations so that the user could focus on elements and select them. Thus, we mapped these shortcuts to the ‘swipe right’, ‘swipe left’, and ‘tap’ gestures, respectively. We are in the process of to simulating additional shortcuts like Alt + Tab for switching applications by using more complex gestures such as a swipe up and hold, then swipe right and release, but we also recognize that there’s a fine line between an additional gesture being useful or being too complex to use.

On the keyboard side, we’ve been able to map all the keys from external keyboards to be properly handled by the controller and sent to the host! Unfortunately, we’ve encountered a similar issue as we have with desktop remote control — we’ll have to write native code to block any keyboard inputs received by the controller from being simulated because certain shortcuts — like Alt + Tab — are protected. And though this will be probably be pretty straightforward on Android, we’re doubtful that we’ll be able to block any system-level shortcuts on iOS in typical Apple fashion. If this really is the case, then we might only be able to allow full remote control on Android devices, and gesture-based control on iOS.

Regardless, we’ve made a ton of progress in the past few weeks and will be enjoying our well-deserved spring break! Until next time!