Shortcut Menu lets the Android accessibility shortcut, such as holding both volume keys, turn your choice of screen reader or other accessibility service on or off. It works like the accessibility shortcut menu on iPhone:
- With no screen reader on, the menu speaks for itself. Drag your finger over the screen to hear each choice, such as “Backtalk, off”, and lift your finger to choose it. The choices fill the screen, with Close at the bottom, so there is always one under your finger.
- With a screen reader on, the menu is a list of buttons that your screen reader reads.
Turning a screen reader on turns any other screen reader off, so two never talk at once. Services with the same name, such as Google’s and Samsung’s TalkBack, are told apart by their maker, such as “TalkBack (Samsung)”. Pressing the shortcut again while the menu is open closes it.
Without Shortcut Menu, a shortcut with more than one feature on it asks which one to use, and that question is not spoken when no screen reader is on.
Set up
- Download shortcut-menu.apk from the latest release and install it. Android asks you to allow installing apps from your browser or file manager the first time.
- Grant it permission to turn accessibility services on and off. Android only allows this with a permission that you grant once, from a computer with adb:
adb shell pm grant io.github.aaron_gh.shortcutmenu android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS
With Shizuku, run the same command without adb shell.
- In Settings, Accessibility, open Shortcut Menu and turn on its shortcut, such as the volume keys. Make Shortcut Menu the only feature on that shortcut.
- Open the Shortcut Menu app and choose which services the menu offers. Until you choose, it offers your screen readers. The app also shows whether the permission is granted and what each shortcut is assigned to, and has a button to try the menu.
How it works
The shortcut turns Shortcut Menu’s accessibility service on, and the service opens the menu. When the menu closes, the service turns itself off, so the next press turns it on again. A press while the menu is open turns the service off, which closes the menu.
Choosing a service changes Android’s list of enabled accessibility services directly, so Android does not ask “Allow full control?” each time. The menu speaks with the phone’s text-to-speech engine, at the accessibility volume.
Limitations
- It needs Android 11 or later.
- Without the permission, the menu can only say that it needs it.
- The first time anyone uses the volume key shortcut, Android asks whether to use it. With the permission granted, Shortcut Menu marks that question as answered when you open its settings. Without it, Android speaks the question aloud.
- A quick tap with no screen reader on chooses whatever is under the finger, like on iPhone.
Free or paid:
- Free
Accessibility and User Comments:
Samsung UI is the only Android UI that offers 3 accessibility shortcuts: pressing and holding the volume keys, short pressing the power and volume up keys, and the accessibility onscreen button or gesture, based on the navigation mode being used. Other OEMs offer only the first and third shortcuts. Honor even excludes the accessibility button and gesture, leaving the user with only 1 shortcut, and that shortcut can only be assigned to 1 accessibility service. On UIs that allow more than 1 accessibility service to be assigned to the shortcut, Android asks the user to choose which one to activate every time the shortcut is used. However, this dialog is not accessible if no screen reader is running.
Shortcut Menu aims to address these shortcomings by allowing the user to choose the accessibility services they want to launch from the shortcut. The user can then launch any of the selected services in an accessible way. When no screen reader is active, the service speaks the items as the user moves their finger over them, and lifting the finger activates the selected service. If a screen reader is already active, the service makes sure to turn it off before launching another screen reader to avoid potential conflicts.
Setting up the app requires an ADB command, which can be run either using ADB on a computer or directly on the phone through an ADB app that uses wireless debugging. Working with ADB is not covered here, but I personally used the ADB AppControl mobile app to enter the command that grants the app the required permission.
The app's UI is straightforward. It shows whether the permission has been granted and which shortcut is assigned to the service. It also includes a menu where you can turn services on or off without using the shortcut. The user can select which services should be included, although screen readers are checked by default. For me, Jieshuo Main, Jieshuo Helper Service, TalkBack, and AI Subtitles were all included.
When using the shortcut, the app currently speaks through Google TTS. When a screen reader is active, it behaves like a regular screen that the screen reader can interact with.
For Samsung users who keep both Samsung TalkBack and Google's TalkBack on their devices and wish to switch between them, both can be added to the services list. I haven't tested this on a Samsung device to see if there are any issues. Anyway, starting with One UI 9, Samsung TalkBack is replaced with Google TalkBack, so there are no longer two TalkBack versions.
Last Tested App version and Android version:
App version: 0.2, Android 16
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