[shawnz]

It seems totally reasonable to me that arbitrary apps can't insert sounds into my call audio, am I wrong here? And this app is most certainly an accessibility app so it makes sense that it would have to take advantage of the accessibility permissions to do this kind of thing

[jeroenhd]

I think isolating the call stream to authorised apps makes a lot of sense. Using a accessibility feature to make accessibility work seems like the right solution to this problem. The initial hack (just injecting tones into the system) sounds like a bad solution to be honest.

For other advanced stuff you have to be the default dialer app which also makes a lot of sense. If you're going to be an accessible dialer, you may as well actually communicate to the system that that is what you are. With plenty of open source dialer apps to borrow from, I don't expect the burden to even be that high.

Interestingly, the post writes that the app communicates with the phone over ADB. I wonder if you could just inject keypad button presses using adb, so the app doesn't need to even be an accessibility service to get the tones across? Although I guess that only works if the dialer is in the foreground.

[EDM115]

from my searches, sadly ADB doesn't allow for it :(

[SkyeCA]

> It seems totally reasonable to me that arbitrary apps can't insert sounds into my call audio, am I wrong here?

No, though I will say I'm upset with how protected calls have become on phones in recent years. I used to record every phone call with an app so I had a record of it, something which is completely legal to do where I live, but that really isn't possible anymore.

Now all my calls go through a VOIP provider and call recording is a feature they offer.

[genewitch]

I could never figure out how to get call recording to work on 3cx, after the end of android call recording.

So a trrs plug splitter I can record to a tascam. And use a fancy mic.

Still, nicer to press a big record button, by a lot.

[deepsun]

Well, unless it's the app that makes the call.

But AFAIK both Android and iOS disabled all call apps except for their own.

Previously they allowed as long as the keypad looked "distinctively different from the default call app", but turned that off some time ago. I can see the security reasoning, but still think there were ways to make it possible and secure.

A similar question, for example, is how to record a call, default or not. AFAIK there's no way.

[shawnz]

Android supports third party dialer apps and the article notes that this is one way you can overcome the problem (but they didn't want to take that route because entirely replacing the dialer is out of scope for their app)