How can I launch an Android widget from within Termux?

[bitcoinmeetups]

How can I launch an Android widget from within Termux?

Let's say another Android app has a widget (e. g. Automate). How can I write a Termux script which launches that widget?

[AbdullahM0hamed]

Find out the activity that gets launched, and then use am start -n <package>/<activity>

[AbdullahM0hamed]

@SDRausty Not sure if the example you provided was a counter to what I said, so I'm just going to clarify that I meant something along the lines of

am start -n com.termux/com.termux.app.TermuxActivity

[AbdullahM0hamed]

I suspect that it calls the existing instance if it's already open, and a new instance if it isn't.

Below is a screenshot of me opening chrome (the first time chrome was already open, and the second time it was closed):

[bitcoinmeetups]

Hi. I think with Android "apps with shortcuts" does not mean what it would normally mean. Most apps have icons that you click on the homescreen to start them. But that's not what I'm looking for. Actually I should have said widgets. I got confused because the widgets are also sometimes referred to as shortcuts.

Anyway, I'm looking specifically for a way to launch a widget from Termux. I was not able to launch apps with the instructions above either. But anyway it's the launching of wiidgets that I'm after.

[ghost]

@bitcoinmeetups What you are looking for is the calling specific intents with specified arguments. You can't call widget directly but only what is behind it.

Example for launching Termux activity:

am start -n com.termux/.app.TermuxActivity

- note that Termux cannot have more than one activity launched at the time, existing one will be brought to the front due to configuration in AndroidManifest.xml (single task mode).

Widgets are not exception and their action can be called through argument too. But this is more complicated and there no universal way how to do that.

Example for calling scripts through Termux:Widget:

1. Obtain the token from shared preferences. Should be possible from Termux but since I use debug versions of applications I used ADB:

herolte:/ $ run-as com.termux.widget                                                                                                                                                                              
herolte:/data/data/com.termux.widget $ cat shared_prefs/token.xml                                                                                                                                                 
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8' standalone='yes' ?>
<map>
    <string name="token">c27d1264-b1d6-48d7-980f-58cbc3e964fe</string>
</map>

2. Get the necessary arguments for intent. In my case:

• Activity name: com.termux.widget/.TermuxLaunchShortcutActivity
• Script name: /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/login (yes, you can execute programs outside of shortcuts with Termux:Widget).
• Token string name: com.termux.shortcut.token
• Token string value: c27d1264-b1d6-48d7-980f-58cbc3e964fe

3. Execute intent with activity manager:

am start -n com.termux.widget/.TermuxLaunchShortcutActivity -d file://com.termux.widget/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/login --es com.termux.shortcut.token c27d1264-b1d6-48d7-980f-58cbc3e964fe

- launches a new login shell session due to called script login, but you can put anything other here.

[ghost]

does this imply Termux app should be rebuild?

No, single task mode is intentional.

There no reason for having multiple activities. You also won't be able to start activity anyway if it is already running at the front.

Instead of

Warning: Activity not started, intent has been delivered to currently running top-most instance.

you will just get

Warning: Activity not started, its current task has been brought to the front