Command Line for Light Phone (CLLP)

An Android app for communicating between two devices via SMS when those devices both have an active SIM (including duplicate SIMs).

Command Line for Light Phone (CLLP) is a tool for Android users that use two active SIMs for their Light Phone 2 and other Android device – either using phone number sharing (when both devices can receive calls and texts for the same phone number via something like T-Mobile DIGITS or Verizon NumberShare) or where each device has its own separate phone number associated with it. CLLP leverages the fact that you can send text messages from one device to the other. When you go out with your Light Phone 2, the CLLP app runs on the Android device you leave behind and monitors incoming SMS messages to look for commands you send that instruct it to perform tasks and report the results back to your Light Phone 2.

Installing CLLP

Unfortunately CLLP is not available on Google Play due to their heavy-handed crackdown on apps that use SMS so it must be side-loaded on an Android device running Android Marshmallow or higher. You can download the latest apk to install it from the releases page. After initial install, the app will automatically notify you as new releases become available.

Note: I have noticed that my Light Phone will not receive responses if I have RCS enabled on my Android device. After disabling RCS (on the Pixel, you do this in the Messages app by turning off "Chat Features") it can take a few hours before messages start coming through.

Current features supported by CLLP

• Google Maps directions
  • Walking - [origin] walkto [destination]
  • Transit - [origin] transitto [destination]
  • Driving - [origin] driveto [destination]
  • Bicycling - [origin] biketo [destination]
• Google Calendar
  • Agenda for next 3 days - calagenda
  • Add event to calendar - addtocal [event title] on [date and time] at [location]
• Weather
  • Current conditions, summaries, and 3-day forecast - weather [city and state/country as needed]
• Yelp Business Search
  • Business Name - [current location] yelpme [name of business]
  • Type/Category of food (aka Chinese, Mexican, etc) - [current location] yelpme [type of food]
• Wikipedia
  • Get a snippet and similar article titles - wiki [search term]
• Calculator
  • Arithmetic, trig functions, ceil/floor - calc [expression] (powered by https://github.com/kieferlam/postfix#operators, check there for function details)
• List all available commands - helpme

Permissions and API Keys

The CLLP app tries to explain what permissions are needed for different things. For instance, it absolutely needs notification access (to catch incoming SMS commands) and SMS sending permission (to send back results). Currently you can optionally give calendar access permission for the agenda and event adding features, and a Google Maps API key you generate to get directions (this is because they changed the pricing model last year so it's prohibitively expensive for me to use my own API key for all users). The intention is to have all permissions be optional so you can only grant the ones you need for the features you want.

Support and contributing

If you like the app and want to support its ongoing development, you can buy me a beer which is much appreciated! 🍻Issues and PRs are also welcome, though I'll note that I intend to adhere strictly to the Light Phone ethos of only providing utility and reducing distractions.

Note: If you want to fork this repo, make sure to update the UpdateChecker which is hardcoded to look for releases from this repo, and provide your own (or disable) Firebase Analytics, which I'm relying on for crash reports since this app is not in the Play Store.

License

Copyright 2019 Niraj Sanghvi

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.