FukeX Documentation

FukeX is a lightweight, easy-to-use Android media player written in Kotlin. It features a simple UI and was built specifically with screen readers in mind. We created FukeX because there were no good media players on the Android market that were both feature-rich and fully accessible. We are screen reader users ourselves, so we've kept accessibility front and center, ensuring every step is easily navigable with tools like TalkBack.

What is special about FukeX?

We offer many features that other media players lack. Some of our favorites include:

• Up to 25-dB volume boost amplifier: Though I personally recommend maxing it out at 20dB, because if you increase it to 25dB, the sound might crack on some devices.

• Crossfading and gapless playback: Have a party playlist and want that DJ feel? This feature is for you! You can even set a different fade time for each thing that can interrupt a song.

• In-app playlist locking: Use this feature to hide your playlist with a PIN, a password, or your fingerprint. Note that it only hides the playlist within the app, not on the system level.

• Multi-playlist support: Want to switch between multiple playlists? Yeah, you can do that too! Our tabbed interface allows you to switch between playlists effortlessly.

• SMB share: The killer feature! Can you imagine? You don't need to keep all your songs on your phone. Just connect to an SMB server (like Tailscale on your home server or PC), and you can play songs directly from your PC to your phone via the media player!

• Import and export playlists: Move a playlist to another phone, or keep a backup, using a small JSON file.

• Resume where you left off: FukeX remembers the track and the position you stopped at, for every playlist separately.

• Full media notification: Play, pause, previous and next from the notification shade and the lock screen, without opening the app.

What files can FukeX play?

FukeX plays these file types, both from your device and from an SMB share:

mp3, mp4, m4a, aac, flac, wav, ogg, opus, alac, mkv, and webm.

Video files are treated as audio only. If a file plays in FukeX but you selected it from a folder full of other stuff, don't worry, the file picker already hides everything that isn't playable.

You need Android 8.0 or newer to run FukeX.

How to get it?

You can download FukeX to your device from our website:

Click here to download FukeX

Installing the APK file

Once you obtain the APK file, here is how you install it:

1. Navigate to your file manager and choose the downloaded APK. Alternatively, if you are still on the Chrome page where you downloaded the APK, tap "Customize and control Google Chrome" (or "More options" if using another browser), then select "Downloads", and directly access the APK file.

2. Installing: When you tap the APK file, a system restriction screen for "Unknown apps" installation will pop up. Click the "Settings" button and toggle the switch that says "Allow this installation". If you can't find the page to allow unknown app installations, go to your phone settings and search for "Unknown apps" or similar. After that, choose the app you plan to install FukeX with, like a browser or file manager.

3. Confirm the installation: Once you're done with that hassle, tap "Install" to install the app. If you receive a Google Play scan warning, just let it do its job by tapping "Scan". If you wanna be quick, use the "Install without scanning" TalkBack global accessibility action.

Congrats! You've successfully installed FukeX.

Permissions FukeX asks for

The first time you open FukeX, it will ask for a few things. Here is what each one is for, so you're not left guessing:

• Notifications: So FukeX can show the playback notification with the play, pause, previous and next buttons. Say no and playback still works, you just lose those controls.

• All files access: FukeX uses its own file picker instead of the system one, because the system picker is painful with a screen reader. To browse your storage that way, Android needs this permission. FukeX explains this in a dialog first, and you can choose "Open settings" to grant it or "Not now" to skip. If you skip it, everything else still works and you can still play from an SMB share.

• Internet: Used only to reach your SMB server. FukeX does not phone home, and there are no ads or trackers.

Creating your first playlist

Wanna start listening to your favorite songs? Follow these steps:

1. Open the app, FukeX. Obviously, where else will you play the media, in the air?

2. You will see the following options:

• Settings: This is used to go to the settings page.

• Import playlist: Loads a playlist you previously exported.

• Default playlist tab, selected: This is a default playlist, which is currently empty. You can create a new playlist, or add media to play directly here.

• Seekbar / now playing indicator bars.

• Music controls: Like play/pause, previous, next, more options, and finally, the button which will be useful here, "Add media to playlist".

Right here, we'll be adding a folder or song to the default playlist. Start by selecting the "Add media to playlist" button. It will present you with a dialog titled "Add Media", asking "Where would you like to add media from?"

You'll see the following options:

• Local device: Choose this option if the audio file you wanna play is in your device's storage. For now, we'll choose this option.

• SMB share: You can play songs from your home servers or your PC. Keep reading the documentation or jump to the heading if you wanna learn how to connect it.

Finally, when choosing "Local device", it will display a custom file picker where TalkBack accessibility gestures will work. Browse for the file you want to play, or if you want to select an entire folder, keep focus on the folder you want to add, and swipe with one finger to reveal the TalkBack action saying "Add entire folder". As soon as you choose this, your playlist will be saved in a JSON file just in case, and your data stays only on your device.

A couple of things worth knowing about the file picker:

• "Add entire folder" also grabs every subfolder inside it, so pointing it at your whole Music folder works fine.

• Big folders take a moment. You'll hear "Scanning folder for media files" while it works.

• The back gesture moves you up one folder. Press back at the top level and the picker closes.

• Media is always added to the playlist tab you currently have open, and it goes to the end of the list.

As soon as you add the folder, your first song in the folder will start playing. You can pause it by clicking the pause button. Sure, I don't hope you are that dumb, anyway, now let's explore the rest of the player.

Around the player screen

Once a playlist has media in it, the screen is split into two parts.

The top part is the track list. Every track is a row you can tap to play. The one currently playing is marked with a play icon and is spoken as "Playing".

The bottom part is the playback bar, and it holds:

• Now playing line: Tells you the playlist name, and which track number you are on out of how many.

• Seek slider: Drag it, or use the TalkBack up and down swipe, to move within the song. It reads out as "3:12 of 4:05".

• Previous and Next buttons: These are dimmed at the very start and the very end of a playlist, so you always know where you are.

• Play / Pause button.

• More options: Search, playlist info, amplifier toggle, playback effects, and the hide and remove actions for this playlist.

FukeX saves your position roughly every five seconds and again whenever you leave a playlist. Come back later and it picks up the same track, at the same second.

Reordering and removing tracks

Keep focus on any track in the list and swipe up or down with one finger to reveal its TalkBack actions:

• Move Up: Swaps the track with the one above it.

• Move Down: Swaps it with the one below.

• Remove: Takes the track out of the playlist. This never deletes the file from your storage, it only removes it from the list.

If you remove the track that is playing, FukeX simply moves on to the next one, or to the new last track if you removed the one at the bottom. Playback only stops if you removed the very last track the playlist had.

Searching through a playlist

Searching through a playlist is straightforward. Go to the playlist, and near the playback controls, you will see a 3-dots menu, or the "More options" button for TalkBack. You can either use the accessibility action or tap the button and select the "Search" option.

After that, a text box will open up. Type the name of the song, and the result will pop up right next to the text box. Tap any result and it starts playing straight away, and the search closes itself.

The search looks at track names and ignores capital letters, so typing "night" finds "Night Drive" just fine. Track names come from the file name with the extension trimmed off, which is why you see "Night Drive" rather than "Night Drive.mp3".

Playlist info

Also in the 3-dots menu is "Playlist info". It gives you a quick summary:

• Name of the playlist.

• Total tracks it contains.

• Total size on disk of all the tracks added together. Tracks that live on an SMB share are not measured, since that would mean asking the server about every single file. If any tracks were skipped, FukeX tells you how many.

• Whether the playlist is locked.

Handy when you want to know whether that podcast dump is eating your storage.

Creating a new playlist

Oh, so let's jump into creating your own playlists.

Keep your focus on the default playlist tab, and using the TalkBack action, find the "Create new playlist" button. As soon as you activate it, a text box will pop up, asking you for the name of the playlist. You can name it anything. After providing a name, just press "OK". When you're done with the creation of the playlist, make sure to add a media file! ROFL.

The new playlist becomes the selected tab right away, so the very next thing you add lands in it.

Managing your playlist tabs

Keep focus on a playlist tab and swipe up or down with one finger, or tap the 3-dots button sitting inside the tab, to get to these:

• Create new playlist: The same thing described above.

• Move Left and Move Right: Rearrange the order of your tabs. Put the playlist you use daily first, and stop swiping past four others every time.

• Hide: Locks the playlist behind a PIN or password. More on this below.

• Unlock: Only shows up on a playlist that is already locked.

• Export: Saves the playlist to a JSON file.

• Remove: Deletes the playlist itself. Again, your actual audio files are untouched.

One small rule to keep in mind: while you only have a single playlist, moving, hiding and removing are not offered. FukeX always keeps at least one playlist around, otherwise you would have nowhere to add media.

Importing and exporting playlists

An exported playlist is a tiny JSON file holding the playlist name and the location of every track. It does not contain the songs themselves, so it stays small, and it is easy to keep in your cloud storage as a backup.

To export: use the "Export" action on a playlist tab, or "Export Playlist" from the tab's 3-dots dialog. Android will ask you where to save it and suggest the playlist name as the file name.

To import: press the "Import Playlist" button in the top bar, and pick the JSON file. It always comes in as a brand new playlist, so importing twice gives you two copies rather than overwriting anything.

Two honest warnings.

Because the file stores locations and not the audio itself, an exported playlist only works on a phone that can reach those same locations. Moving a playlist of local files to a different phone will give you a list of tracks that refuse to play. Playlists made of SMB tracks travel much better, as long as the new phone can reach the same server.

Exported playlists never contain your SMB username or password. That's good for sharing, but it does mean that after importing an SMB playlist on a new phone, you need to connect to that server once through "Add media to playlist" so FukeX learns the login. After that the imported tracks play normally.

Locking a playlist

Got a playlist you'd rather other people didn't stumble across? Use "Hide".

1. Pick "Hide" from the tab's actions or from the 3-dots menu in the playback bar.

2. Choose the type. "PIN" gives you a number keypad, "Password" gives you the full keyboard. Both need at least 4 characters.

3. Type it in and press "Hide".

The playlist tab disappears from the row of tabs immediately, and a lock button appears in the top bar so you can get back to it. That lock button is only there while you actually have something locked.

Please read this bit twice: if you forget your PIN or password, FukeX cannot get the playlist back for you. There is no reset, no email, no recovery question.

Also worth saying plainly, since we'd rather be honest than sound impressive: this hides a playlist inside FukeX. It is not encryption. Your audio files stay exactly where they were on your storage, and any file manager can still see them. What FukeX does guarantee is that your PIN is never written down as you typed it, so someone reading FukeX's data files cannot simply read your PIN back out.

Getting back into a locked playlist

Press the lock button in the top bar. You'll get a list of every locked playlist. Choose one, and then either:

• Your fingerprint appears, if you turned on biometric unlock in settings. Your device PIN or pattern works here too, so a failed fingerprint isn't the end of the road, and if you dismiss it FukeX just falls back to asking for the playlist PIN.

• Or the PIN box appears, and you type what you set earlier.

Either way, the playlist comes back as a normal tab and you can play it as usual. This is a temporary visit, though. FukeX relocks it based on your lock timeout setting.

If you want the playlist to stop being locked altogether, use the "Unlock" action on its tab. It asks for the PIN or password one more time, and then the lock is removed for good.

Lock timeout

In settings, "Lock Timeout" decides how soon a temporarily unlocked playlist goes back into hiding. Your choices:

• Immediate: Relocks the moment you leave the app.

• 1 Minute, 2 Minutes or 5 Minutes: Relocks after that much time without you touching the playlist.

• When Screen Locks: Relocks when your screen turns off.

There's one deliberate exception. A playlist that is actively playing does not relock underneath you on a timer, because having the music cut out mid-song would be a rubbish way to protect anything.

Connecting to an SMB share

This is the feature we're proudest of. Your music can live on your PC, your NAS, or a home server, and FukeX streams it.

1. Press "Add media to playlist" and choose "SMB Share".

2. Fill in the connection screen:

• SMB URL: Something like smb://192.168.1.100/Music/. The smb:// part is already filled in for you.

• Username: Leave it empty for a guest or public share.

• Password: Same, leave it empty if the share doesn't need one.

3. Press "Connect".

From there it behaves exactly like the local file picker. Browse into folders by tapping them, go back up with the back gesture or the "Go up" button, tap a track to add it, or use the "Add entire folder" TalkBack action to pull in a whole folder including everything nested inside it.

Some practical notes:

• Over a home Wi-Fi network this is smooth. Over a slower link, give the first few seconds of a track time to buffer.

• FukeX keeps a cache of recently streamed audio, up to 500 MB, so replaying something you just heard doesn't hit the network again. Clearing the app's cache in Android settings empties it.

• If the connection details are wrong you'll get a clear "Failed to access SMB" message rather than a silent empty folder. If the server simply isn't answering, FukeX gives up after a few seconds instead of hanging forever.

• Your username and password are saved separately from your playlists, once per server. They are never written into a playlist file, so exporting an SMB playlist does not hand your password to anyone you send it to.

Controlling playback outside the app

While something is playing, FukeX puts a notification in your shade with previous, play or pause, and next. It also appears on your lock screen, and the same controls work from your car, your smartwatch, and anywhere else Android surfaces media controls.

The play, pause and skip buttons on wired and Bluetooth headsets work too, including the double-press for next track that most earbuds use.

The notification sticks around while paused so you can start playing again, and clears itself when you close the playlist.

Tapping the notification body brings you straight back into FukeX.

Sharing the sound with other apps

FukeX plays nicely with whatever else is making noise on your phone:

• A phone call, or another media app taking over, pauses FukeX. When a call ends, FukeX picks up again on its own.

• Something short, like a navigation instruction or a TalkBack announcement over the media stream, quietly drops FukeX's volume for a moment instead of stopping it, then brings it back up.

• Unplugging your headphones pauses playback rather than blasting the song out of the phone speaker.

The volume amplifier

Some recordings are just quiet. The amplifier pushes them louder than Android normally allows.

Set the level in settings, from 0 up to 25 dB in 5 dB steps. Then switch it on or off whenever you like from the 3-dots menu in the playback bar, without going back to settings, since the menu item tells you the current level, for example "Enable Amplifier (Boost 10dB)".

Above 15 dB, FukeX shows a warning before applying it. That warning is not decoration. Pushing a small phone speaker that hard for a long time can genuinely damage it, and heavily boosted audio tends to distort. 20 dB is our sweet spot, 25 dB is there for the brave.

Playback effects: speed, pitch and bass boost

Sometimes you want a track a little faster, a lecture a little slower, or just more thump in your headphones. Open the 3-dots menu in the playback bar and choose "Playback Effects" for three sliders in one dialog:

• Playback Speed: From 0.5x up to 2x. Slow down a podcast to catch every word, or speed through an audiobook you've already heard a hundred times.

• Playback Pitch: Also 0.5x up to 2x, and it's independent of speed, so you can change one without dragging the other along with it.

• Bass Boost: Off by default, up to a level of 1000 in steps of 100. Turn it up when your headphones just aren't giving you the low end you want.

All three take effect immediately and are remembered the next time you open FukeX, so you only have to set them once.

Evening out the volume between tracks

Ever get blasted by one song right after a quiet one? That's what ReplayGain is for. Turn on "Enable ReplayGain" in settings, under Playback, and FukeX will read the volume tag that most music library tools already write into your files, then adjust each track to a consistent loudness on the fly.

It's off by default, since not every file has the tag, but if you've got a mixed playlist and keep reaching for the volume button, switch it on and forget about it. Tracks without the tag just play at their normal volume.

Fading and gapless playback

This is what gives FukeX that DJ feel. Rather than one blunt crossfade setting, you get to choose a fade time for each event separately.

In settings, under "Fading (Gapless Playback)", first pick the event:

• Seek: When you jump around inside a track with the slider.

• Pause/Play: When you press pause or play.

• Manual Track Change: When you press next or previous, or tap a track in the list.

• Automatic Track Change: When one track ends and the next begins on its own. This is the classic crossfade, and it's the one to set for a party playlist.

Then set two sliders for that event:

• Fade In: How long the incoming audio takes to reach full volume.

• Fade Out: How long the outgoing audio takes to go quiet.

Both go from 0 up to 10 seconds. Zero means disabled, so that event switches instantly with no fade at all. Everything starts at zero, so FukeX behaves like a plain player until you decide otherwise.

A good starting point: around 300 ms for Pause/Play and Seek, so it feels soft rather than jarring, and 3 to 5 seconds on Automatic Track Change for proper crossfading between songs.

Changing the event in the dropdown swaps the sliders to that event's own values, so each of the four keeps its own settings.

The settings screen

In the settings screen, you'll see the following options, grouped under headings:

Security

• Biometric Unlock: This switch is used to toggle whether your locked playlists can be opened with your fingerprint or face instead of typing the PIN. Turning it on asks you to authenticate once, to prove it's really you. If your device has no biometrics set up, FukeX tells you so instead of silently doing nothing.

• Lock Timeout: Configures how long a temporarily unlocked playlist stays open. Options are Immediate, 1 Minute, 2 Minutes, 5 Minutes, and When Screen Locks.

• Exit Prompt: Asks you for confirmation before closing the app. Off by default. Handy if you keep hitting back one time too many.

Playback

• Background Playback: Enable this to keep the media playing when you minimize the app. This one is on by default, because a media player that stops when you check a message is not much of a media player.

• Skip Silence: Automatically speeds through quiet or silent parts in the audio. Brilliant for lectures and podcasts, not recommended for music, since it will chew through the quiet passages you actually wanted.

• Skip Unavailable Tracks: Automatically skips any media that fails to load or cannot be played, and shows a short "Skipping unavailable track" message. Useful for SMB playlists where the server might be asleep. With it off, FukeX stops and tells you exactly what went wrong instead, which is what you want when you're trying to work out why something won't play.

• Amplifier Boost: Adjust the volume boost from 0 up to 25 dB, though a warning pops up above 15 dB.

• Enable ReplayGain: Automatically levels out the volume between quiet and loud tracks, using the ReplayGain tag your files already carry if your music library tool wrote one. Off by default.

Fading (Gapless Playback)

• Event selector, plus the Fade In and Fade Out sliders described in the fading section above.

About

• About FukeX: Version number, copyright and license information.

Where your data is kept

Everything FukeX knows about you sits on your phone, in the app's own private storage:

• Your playlists, track order, and the position you stopped at, live in a file called playlists.json.

• Your playlist PINs live in that same file, but only as a scrambled fingerprint, never as the PIN you typed.

• Your SMB logins live in a separate private file of their own, one entry per server.

• Your settings live in FukeX's private preferences.

• Streamed SMB audio is cached in the app's cache folder, up to 500 MB. Local files are never cached, since they are already on your phone. Clearing the app's cache in Android settings empties it.

FukeX never sends any of this anywhere. Your playlists and your SMB logins are also kept out of Android's automatic cloud backup, so they don't quietly end up in your Google account. Uninstalling FukeX removes the lot. If you want a backup of your playlists, use the export feature.

Tips and troubleshooting

• A track won't play. Turn "Skip Unavailable Tracks" off for a moment and try again, so FukeX shows you the actual error instead of skipping past it. The usual culprits are a file that has been moved or deleted, or an SMB server that isn't reachable.

• The file picker shows nothing. FukeX likely doesn't have the all files access permission. Go to Android settings, find FukeX, and grant it.

• No playback notification. Notification permission was denied. Grant it in Android settings under FukeX, notifications.

• Playback stops when I leave the app. Check that "Background Playback" is on in settings.

• Music sounds choppy at high volume. Lower the amplifier. Anything past 20 dB distorts on a lot of phones.

• My locked playlist keeps hiding itself. That's the lock timeout doing its job. Set it to a longer value, or unlock the playlist permanently.

• Playback pauses on its own. Check whether something else grabbed the audio, like a call or another player. This is deliberate, and FukeX resumes by itself after a call.

• An imported SMB playlist won't play. Connect to that server once through "Add media to playlist", so FukeX learns the login for it.

Accessibility quick reference

Every action below is reachable by putting TalkBack focus on the item and swiping up or down with one finger.

On a playlist tab: Create new playlist, Move Left, Move Right, Hide or Unlock, Export, Remove.

On a track in the list: Move Up, Move Down, Remove.

On the More options button: Search within playlist, Playlist info, Enable or Disable Amplifier, Playback Effects, Hide or Unlock, Remove.

On a folder in the file picker or SMB picker: Add entire folder.

On the seek slider and every settings slider: swipe up and down to change the value. The slider reads out its current value as you go, in minutes and seconds for the seek bar, in decibels for the amplifier, in milliseconds for the fade settings, and as a multiplier or a plain level for the playback effects sliders.