HOWTO make a quickdial button

Hardware Librem 5
1

The L5 has no homescreen with widgets, and I needed a speeddial button to reach my wife, this is how I achieved it. First, place your contacts image (for the icon) somewhere (I did a 128x128 JPG):

   mkdir -p ~/.local/share/icons
   cp beautifulspouse.jpg  ~/local/share/icons

Next, create the quickdialbutton (use a text editor of your choice):

 nano ~/.local/share/applications/quickdial_spouse.desktop

and paste the content:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Spouse
Exec=gnome-calls --dial="+43123456789"
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Utilities;
Icon=/home/purism/.local/share/icons/beautifulspouse.jpg

Now, the quickdial button should pop up among your app list. Long-press it and ā€œadd to favoriteā€ (this makes it appear in the top lines of all apps).

Make sure the phonenumber format is exactly the same as stored in your contacts if you want to see the contactā€™s name in the call screen and the call history screen.

In any case, next time I go shopping and forgot what to buy, my spouse is a single button press away!

17 Likes
2

Might be worth trying with and without country code in the phone number, both on your Exec line there and in the contact.

3

These are kinds of how-toā€™s that make life easier, and everybody gets to make their phone more unique. Nice! :slight_smile:

That could be altered to become an ICE (In Case of Emergency) contact - also with a couple of lines added that try to also send a location via text (if wanted, if switches allow, and as location is made possible in the future).

2 Likes
4

This is awesome! It should be a standard function of the L5; maybe a ā€œshortcut creatorā€ could be integrated into the librem5-goodies package at some pointā€¦?

Edit: I mean ā€œshortcut creatorā€ for those functions that canā€™t be made with a web app or simply moved to the favorite apps section, of course. A good example: Shortcut to Trash.

5

This is a candidate for the community wiki.

2 Likes
6

If you are a beautiful spouse, use thathandsomeman.jpg instead. :slight_smile:

3 Likes
7

Indeed, after using the exact same number format as in the address book, it shows the contact name while calling and in the calls history.

4 Likes
8

Related to this, maybe:

9

I have noticed that, once added the quick-dial button, there is a Spouse process running, using about 30 Mb of RAM. I didnā€™t expect that.

3 Likes
10

Not the first time I heard this, people complaining that their spouse is annoying them, constantly nagging and consuming resources. You might find there is no easy fix for it. :slight_smile:

9 Likes
11

err, that one certainly does not come from a quick-dial button which is nothing but a .desktop file, that is a shortcut to launch an application. My spouse is also running, but never in my L5. :stuck_out_tongue:

6 Likes
12

It does actually, the ā€œUsageā€ app shows the name and icon of my quick-dial button. Cannot be anything else. I cannot even get rid of it (her?), If I kill the process it restart immediately.

13

Yeah, this is long known problem.

2 Likes
14

Thanks for the info. That is interesting, I wonder why I am not seeing anything similar.

1 Like
15

I wonder, too. Once the .desktop file is removed, the process is gone.

16

Are you running amber or byzantium? Just exploring possible differences hereā€¦

17

amber ā€¦ Iā€™m not brave enough

18

Hey, you own a L5, you are brave by definition! :wink: (You might call me reckless for running byzantium) Ok, there we have a potential difference, although I could not think of a reason for that to make a differenceā€¦

4 Likes
19

ā€˜recklessā€™ he says :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: ā€¦ and here you guys were talking about spouses a few screens above :joy: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

20

Somehow I canā€™t edit the first post anymore, by now you have to add the line

X-Purism-FormFactor=Workstation;Mobile;

to make it show up in phosh.

2 Likes