Is it possible for Windows 10 to choose what apps should mute all other sounds when I am on a VOIP call?
I know that Windows does it for Skype and games, but I use mostly SIP protocol programs like Zoiper or Jitsy. When using these, and when I make / receive a call, other sounds are never muted. I am usually listening to music simultaneously from a browser, and its annoying to have to manually lower the volume everytime I have to VOIP. Its even harder because I have to switch virtual desktops also to do it, because I keep work v.desktop away from the rest.
I've searched all over the windows control panel, and also googled around but couldn't find any options for this. Any recommendations?
It is not possible. The app have to make some system call so the OS will recognize it as a VoIP app and reduce the volume for all other apps.
However I don't know on which API call this is relied on.
I hope that somebody will answer this.
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I am trying to connect to my iPhone and access services such as the battery level and ANCS from windows. I have tried out the Advertisement watcher and query but I feel as though they are really inconsistent. I am just using the code they provided in their updated documentation. I feel as though my results are extremely buggy. Devices show up multiple times and then become unreachable. It's almost as if past devices are never cleared from the cache (this may need to be something I do manually?) upon restarting my UWP in debug x86. I have briefly had success with the advertisement watcher and was even able to initiate pairing. Although when I read the battery level it was still not a number after using the data reader. I noticed that there were some service solicitation properties on the documentation but I could not figure out how to use them. Would these help and if so how could I use them? This might be useful when I try to connect to the ANCS of my iPhone.
Edit 1: After trying out the sample provided by Microsoft, I am still having a similar issue. I am able to see devices and even pair with them but when I click the connect button, it returns that there is a connection failure. In order to advertise to the BLE I am using the LightBlue app on my iPhone to advertise a virtual peripheral with the battery service added. My end goal is to connect to the iPhone directly and access some of its native BLE services and characteristics. I have heard that this can be done with something called service solicitation but have failed to successfully find any real examples of this being put into practice in a UWP (maybe it's not used anymore). I am still pretty new to BLE so I am trying to work out some of my fundamental misunderstandings of how it works so if there is something I am missing please let me know below!
BLE Failing to connect after pairing.
Edit 2: Ok after cleaning and re-building to fix some of my silly mistakes, I can now say that the example project is running as intended from what I can tell. The solution is actually pretty nice and I can see it is much more elegant than my implementation. However, I see that I am running into the same issue as before where the services of my virtual peripheral become undiscoverable after pairing and now result in a "Device Unreachable" exception in scenario 2. It seems as though Windows does not support "Resolvable Random Private Addresses." To elaborate, it does not provide my phone with an Identity Resolving Key (IRK) upon pairing with my iPhone 11 in order to keep track of its address. In order to access certain key characteristics, I need authorization.
Is there any way I can exchange an IRK upon pairing using the custom pairing capability or is there another method to provide authorization in order to access these characteristics on my iPhone? As it is, ANY and ALL GATT services present on the iPhone (virtual peripheral or native OS) become unreachable as soon as I successfully pair with the device. I am hoping it is possible to implement a solution in Windows as if not then communicating meaningful data between modern devices seems impossible with outdated privacy protocols.
I did a little bit of research and it is either the problem above or something to do with my Bluetooth device.
If I were to try to access characteristic without pairing
Edit 3: I have been able to get it to work briefly and it was wonderful. I used the system settings to pair and magically got the prompt on my phone to share notifications. From there, I had authorization/authentication and everything else I wanted to do was a breeze. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be reproducible as I have to randomly pair and unpair while starting and stopping the sample solution to get this prompt. I don't entirely remember what was happening when it popped up, but it does not seem easy to recreate. I thought that pairing would be my solution, but I am now stuck. When I pair with the device, I cannot access any services, but when I am unpaired, I can see all of the services and characteristics I need. However, when trying to subscribe to those characteristics I get "System.Exception: 'The attribute requires authentication before it can be read or written. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80650005)'." Is there any way for me to request access to the notifications on my iPhone using something in the documentation? I need a reproducible way to request system notification access on my iPhone.
In "old" times I created simple tool for Windows users, which tracks what they were doing in the front of computer (where simple activity monitor). I was using Win32 api and functions like GetForegroundWindow, GetWindowThreadProcessId, etc.
Yesterday I installed new Windows 8 and tired to run my program. I got 50% success: for "classic" desktop it works like always:).
For Metro UI I just got one application: WWAHost :( without any details.
So my question is: is there a any way for tracking active application in Metro UI?
Thanks for help
UPDATE:
I'm trying to access Metro UI app from Win32, I know that accessing Metro app from another Metro app is impossible
You see, in WinRT, your application is the top-most application. And when your app is not the top-most application then your threads are suspended and the kernel will not schedule any more operations for your app. End of story.
This means what you are wanting to accomplish cannot be done in WinRT. You are thinking more like a resident app or a service with access to the desktop. Those apps have two advantages. 1) they are always running. And, 2) they have the API to do what you are wanting.
WinRT intentionally puts apps in a sandbox so that the user's experience, performance and battery life are protected. Your scenario and scores more like yours underscore the continuing need for desktop apps. (as long as there is a continuing need for those types of apps ;)).
Sorry, if this is bad news.
As for enumerating other apps. This is also not possible. You cannot know if another app is installed or if it is running. You can call out to another app through protocol activation or file activation or (in a sense) through the share contract. But you are unaware if they get the message and if the user has it installed in the first place. And this is by design.
It is worth mentioning that you can pinvoke to Win32 APIs in your WinRT application. It causes lots of problems and can create a headache to get certified into the store. But even then, not all APIs are open to you. And you will find this particular use case is a non-starter.
I am sure this will not be possible. With Windows 8 'Metro' only a single application is active. All other applications will be in a suspended state whilst the topmost application is running. This makes it impossible to write an application that monitors other applications which are currently executing.
See the numerous articles on the Windows 8 app lifecycle.
I would like to be able to show whats happening on my phone, on a computer screen or projector.
This seems like it must be possible since Microsoft does it in all of their demos, but I can't seem to figure out how.
For example, I've build an app, and I want to demo it to a room of prospective clients. I can't really use the emulator very well during a presentation. I'd like the room to be able to see what I'm doing on a big screen instead of all huddling around my phone.
I've asked various people at Microsoft about this and, unfortunately, the response I always get is that Microsoft is not able to load to load the necessary "VGA Patch" externally.
Unless you can do your demo in the emulator, cameras are the only way to go at this point.
What you've seen was done with internal hardware. Perhaps you could approach Microsoft to see if they are willing to assist in any way.
I have an application for Windows Phone 7 that I need to bundle up and send to several doctors for a content review. Ideas on how this might be done? I can't expect the docs to install the full SDK, but if I could bundle the emulator with it that might work, or if there's an easy way to convert the app to a Windows EXE that would as well. All suggestions welcomed!
While the theory is that since it's SIlverlight it should just run on the desktop. Years of Compact Framework development have taught me that this theory is almost never correct and getting it to work is often a real chore.
Microsoft has not yet delivered a stand-along WinPhone emulator (no idea if they will, but they did for WinMo) so for now that option is off the table. Getting your end user to install the stand-alone emulator is a fair bit of work anyway.
To be honest, my experience has been that just doing a Camtasia capture of the developer screen while you step through the app is one of the easiest ways to get ideas across to these types of groups. No, the end result isn't interactive, so they can't clock on buttons themselves, but if you walk through the feature they want to see, you can usually answer 95% of the questions this way.
When you need to address that other 5%, my experience has been that it's easiest to just send them a physical device with the app installed.
If they are (or have ready access to someone who is) fairly tech-savvy, shipping a Virtual PC image of a PC with the emulator installed and the app installed on it sometimes works.
Dot NET code using MS libraries is partially upwards compatible and most runtime classes present on a mobile device are also available on desktop Windows (see MSDN docs for details). So create a copy of your source code, ask visual studio to create a desktop .exe from it, it'll tell you it can't for several reasons, and you will need to recode some sections of it, resize the frame window etc. to make it work.
If one is careful about what methods one uses, I have managed to actually use the exact same .EXE file on the desktop without problems!
You simply cannot present the application without the SDK, since Windows Phone 7 applications rely on a completely different subset of .NET Framework and require an emulator to run XAP packages. Although you might say that it's the same Silverlight, don't forget about Microsoft.Phone and derivatives - you need the SDK in order for those libraries to be properly handled.
Also, you cannot convert a WP7 application to a Windows executable due to difference in platform architectures.
What you could do is simply allow the doctors to test your application through TeamViewer or similar products.
i think a "killer app" for winphone7+silverlight would be a desktop browser based emulator. want to try the app? just have the store run the emulator in the browser. (yeah, lots of technical hurdles, limited multitouch etc, but it would be pretty slick!)
Obviously it's early days, I do not know whether this is information that is in the public domain or not yet, but...
I have trawled through some of this site - http://www.windowsphone7series.com/ but I can't seem to find the answer.
Specifically will I be able to write an app on the phone that updates the cloud with the phones current GPS position in the background even when other apps are running in the foreground.
According to ZDNet's post yesterday, Windows Mobile 7 will support multitasking for things like having music playing while using an application, but as far as 3rd party it will most likely not be supported. Things like notifications however will be there, as to help with multitasking.
I hate to relieve myself on your bonfire Christopher but might I suggest that a background GPS process, might not be a good idea. You'd really run down the users battery performance, perhaps if you shared a little more about your idea we could suggest an alternative architecture that didn't require a constant gps post.