The subject is a native Android 10 (NOT Android Auto) car head unit, that is, it works exclusively in landscape mode.
For driving safety I want to write a launcher – similar to Windows Taskbar – where all recent apps and relevant apps' shortcuts stay persistently on a vertical “taskbar” on the left part of the screen (assuming that I'll lose a narrow vertical band from the usable area of the screen).
There are already similar launchers in the store, the most popular being Taskbar, but all have an unacceptable drawback. That is, the taskbar floats OVER the app (thus hides a part of it) instead forcing apps to fit a smaller area, exactly how MS Windows works: even maximized app won't slip under the locked taskbar.
As I can see there are 3 approaches worth to follow under Android:
- Use freeform windows and set the apps' sizes exactly to fit on full screen minus the band occupied by the taskbar. This also have a flaw as freeform windows always have a header which looks strange and takes valuable space from screen.
- Create a persistent(?) asymmetrical screen split where the launcher occupies the (much) smaller split on the left while apps are always shown in the right (big) split.
- “Lie” Android about the usable area of the screen when launching an app.
(1) has the major problem that not sure if there is a trick for launching app in freeform window without showing the header (obviously giving up the possibility to move the window manually, but fortunately we don't need that, moreover it's even prohibited!).
(2) might be the comfortable and preferable way but having even more problems to solve. We should lock the split and prevent any apps to show full screen, I'm not even sure that all Android implementations let customize programmatically the split ratio.
Unfortunately (3) sounds a bit nonsense even for my basic Android knowledges. But still worth to ask.
What's your thoughts, which one is the worth-to-follow way? As I hardly think I'll be able to avoid coding from scratch I posted the question here, rather on StackExchange, though still hope there will be an easier way to get what I need.
