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Webkey gives you the possibility to remotely control your devices without rooting them and without add-ons. How? Let’s have a look!

Remotely controlling your devices requires special permission and there are different technical limitations from the developers perspective There were three options to gain control with Webkey and we have now added a new one to allow you remotely control your devices.

You may gain access to remote control by the following steps: 

• If your phone is compatible with Samsung Knox
• If the manufacturer of your device has certified our app
• With rooted devices 

and with the new

• Accessibility service

The accessibility service can be set-up by you and it does not require add-ons or complex processes on your end. 

How to activate?

To activate this service, you need to follow these steps:

Note

Please note that this option has some limitations. For example it only works with Android O (26) and above. There may be device brand specific limitations which can cause the Accessibility permission to be deactivated. For example in some Samsung and Vivo devices this permission may be disabled after the screen is locked. For any brands with limitations we recommend rooting the device for using remote control.

As we continue to develop our app, there may be special cases where you encounter issues with the newer versions. One such issue can be with the screen stream. 

In such cases, we recommend that you switch back to the legacy screen stream mode – an earlier version that worked well for you.

To do this, you will need to go to your settings in your Webkey Android app (on the controlled device). 

After clicking this, you will find a check box, that lets you switch back to the legacy mode. Please note that by switching back to the legacy mode screen stream the quality may be effected. We only recommend doing this if the screen stream has stopped working with the app update.

Webkey is proud to announce a new partnership with Everengine. 

Everengine is a Budapest based digital creative agency that takes on complex marketing campaigns by creating graphics, videos, movies as well as print solutions, branding of events with an emphasis on digital solutions. 

Webkey is proud to have partnered with a forward thinking and solution oriented company like Everengine. We have already received great feedback and insight from working together on a specialized Kiosk mode for Everengine. We are sure that the future of digital marketing and remotely controlled devices will bring more and more success to our mutual clients. 

If you are interested in setting up a partnership with us, we have more than one option for this. 

• If you are an Android device manufacturer, we would be more than happy to have our APK certified with us. This is mutually beneficial as this will unlock more features of our app on your device for the end-users. It is free and a relatively easy process.  If you are interested, please do not hesitate to send us an email.
• If you are interested in setting up a partnership that includes referral codes or other sales incentives then please let us know and we will be happy to start a collaboration. We are open to any ideas that can be beneficial to our clients.

If you are a small business owner, we at Webkey understand your day to day challenges. Difficult decisions need to be made on a daily basis and you need to be able to trust your partners, collaborators and vendors. Unlike our large competitors, we are in a very similar situation ourselves and this makes us ready to offer you the service that truly helps your business grow. 

Across almost all industries, we have seen the rapid growth of Android and the need for remote control go hand-in-hand. The small business owners cannot afford to stay behind in this race: you may need to perform maintenance on the Android devices from a central location or gain insight from the movement of the devices in your fleet with our GPS tracking – The challenges are different, but Webkey has an offer for you. 

The Standard Edition of Webkey has many of these solutions ready for you. We encourage every small business to give it a try – it is free for one device and always will be. Just go to Google Playstore and download it. Easy! The Standard Edition of our app is available for more than one device in our stair-step pricing model both as part of our Home and our Professional Pricing plans.  

If you do not find what you are looking for in the Standard Edition, we are always ready to listen to you and work out a solution. The Business Edition of Webkey (offered as part of the Professional Plus pricing plan) has many tailormade solutions available. This edition of our app practically is an app that is created to your business needs. As such, we are always delighted to listen to you: even if there is no immediate solution, we believe that working together we can achieve more. Feel free to get in touch with us today, we would love to hear from your business! 

As some of you may have already seen, recently a new menu item has appeared in the Webkey app user interface. These are available to all Webkey users, independent of the pricing plan (free version included!)

By selecting the premium features menu option, you will have an instant access to

• Extend the device limit
• Activate your local network connection

Extending the Device Limit

Extending the device limit will allow you to control more devices from your Dashboard. Please find more information about this on our Pricing page.

Local Network

The second premium feature allows you to use your local network connection (wifi) without internet to manage your devices in your plan.

To be able to use this feature, you must know the IP address of your device and you must be able to set up local users on your device. No internet connection is necessary, so this feature can be a really useful tool for controlling devices in a closed environment.

The purchase and the payment for this can be made in the app – one off payment, via Google PlayStore.

The Headless edition of Webkey allows the user interface to be hidden. This means that there is no way to make changes to the client app from the controlled device. In the below post we have summarized some of the main characteristics of this edition of our app.

It is important to note that the Headless edition of our app is a tailor-made application and therefore it is only released as part of our Professional Plus package. This means, that if you wish to use the Headless version, you will need to get in touch with us so that we can create the APK to match your needs.

Main characteristics:

• After the initial launch, the app will automatically register itself on the Webkey server, under the pre-set account.
• The permissions in the Android Webkey client applications signed with Android platform key are automatically accepted and set. (This means that there is no interaction needed from the user of the controlled device.) Screen stream, touch inject, file transfer and location tracking.
• Webkey Icon on the controlled device is hidden in ‘Android Launcher’. In the full list of installed applications, Webkey will be shown.
• Webkey Icon will also be shown in the notification bar. Without this, the devices may go to deep sleep mode and so inaccessible from the internet.

Headless version is recommended for organizations who distribute preinstalled devices and would later prefer to remotely control those with a limited user interaction.

If you have any questions to the above or if you would like to use the headless app, please get in touch with us via info@webkeyapp.com

If you need to control Android devices behind a firewall, the set-up can be a little tricky. The rules set for the firewall need to be updated to allow Webkey to function. This practically means that your Android devices should be directed to reach a server and a port directly. 

Webkey uses several server addresses, which we have listed below; these should allow you to set your firewall rules to allow for a fully functioning Webkey on your Android devices. 

Please note that the above listed addresses and ports may later change. We will do our best to keep this page up-to-date, however if yo have technical difficulties setting up your firewall rules for Webkey, please contact us at info@webkeyapp.com

Please also note, that to reach devices in deep sleep state, we use Google Firebase services. To make sure that all features and functions work properly, you may need to permit access to Firebase as well.

The Webkey Terminal feature enable real-time pseudo terminal access to your Android devices.  In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to install and run Debian Linux applications on your Android in chroot jail environment.

To make it work, you will need:

• A rooted Android device
• Debian Linux distribution on your PC
• Installed applications on your PC: chroot, qemu-user-static
• Webkey Client App (Free)

Prepare the chroot environment on the PC

1. On the PC, create a folder and generate a formatted, mountable image. 
2. Install a Debian Buster linux inside the chroot environment with the debootstrap command.
3. Upload this image (debian.img) to your web server to download it later

mkdir -p webkey/tutorial
cd webkey/tutorial
dd if=/dev/zero of=debian.img bs=1024 count=614400
sudo mkfs.ext2 -F debian.img
sudo tune2fs -c0 debian.img
mkdir debian
sudo mount -o loop debian.img debian/
sudo debootstrap --verbose --foreign --arch armel buster debian http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian
sudo chroot debian
export LC_ALL=C
debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage

On your Android device

1. Download the Webkey Client App to your device
2. Install and register an account

On your PC

1. Open https://webkey.cc/dashboard/ and sign in to your account
2. Select your device from the list and launch the terminal
3. Create a new folder and download the image file created earlier (debian.img)
   

   su
   cd /data/media/0
   mkdir debian
   curl -s -k https://webkey.cc/public/chroot/debian_arm.img > debian.img
   

4. Mount the image and use busybox to change chroot to this environment
   

   mount -t ext2 -o loop debian.img debian
   curl -s -k https://webkey.cc/public/chroot/busybox > busybox
   chmod 755 busybox
   ./busybox chroot debian /usr/bin/bash
   

5. Now you can act as a Debian distribution

Try running Midnight Commander as an example. How cool is that? 💪