SuperBoox

A Supernote-style Quick Access panel for ONYX BOOX e-ink tablets.

Swipe along the edge of the screen on any page, and a panel slides in. It holds:

• your pinned notes, books, folders and apps
• the last note and document you had open
• quick switches such as Wi‑Fi and Front Light
• a clipboard history that also keeps handwriting copied from BOOX Notes
• your apps

Tap a pinned note and it opens directly in BOOX Notes, even from inside another note.

No computer or adb needed. No internet permission.

New in 1.1.0

Coming from 1.0.0? Here is what changed:

• Swipes inside the panel. Swipe right on Quick Access for Recent Files and right again to come back. In the Clipboard, swipe left for older clips and right for newer.
• Front Light in one tap. The tile cycles Off, Soft, Bright and Custom; Custom opens its sliders.
• Apps at the bottom, rearranged. Rows fit your pinned apps automatically, Previous app always sits bottom-right, and icons can be black glyphs.
• Notes folders. Pin a folder from the Notes library and expand it in the panel. Last Opened Note shows its folder path with a list of the folder's notes.
• Clipboard names and Mark up. Name a handwriting clip, pin it as you save, search by name, and Mark up a picture in BOOX's editor (the result is a new clip). Share an image from any app to Add to Clipboard. Tap a clip to paste it; hold for its actions.
• Writing mode. A Quick Control, plus a "Writing in Notes?" card in BOOX Notes, that turns off Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth and the Front Light in one tap and puts back only what it switched.
• This app. A strip above the apps with Optimize and EinkWise for the app that's open (BOOX).
• Hold Last Opened to open the note's folder or the document's app. Replace app swaps an app in place.
• Clipboard settings ask for All files access in one place, and only offer "Every copy, as it happens" once Advanced access is connected.
• Clear the clipboard or Recent Files, or remove one row.
• Older BOOX models. Pinned notes open from anywhere on older firmware; Add works in the library and inside a note; Add on the Library tab pins books.
• Settings. Fewer pages and switches, sized for 7", 10.3" and 13.3" screens, and Troubleshooting shows your BOOX model and what is confirmed on it. Show tips again is under Help.

Getting started

1. Install. Install Obtainium on the BOOX. In Obtainium, tap Add App, paste https://github.com/rn-os/superboox, then tap Add and Install. Obtainium will let you know when there's a new build. You can also download the latest .apk from Releases and open it on the device.
2. Open SuperBoox. A short tour (11 steps, with Next, Previous and Skip) walks you through:
   • Getting BOOX ready. Allow notifications, the battery exemption and BOOX's "Run at startup" first; BOOX can keep the next switch greyed out without them.
   • Turning on the service. Android settings → Accessibility → SuperBoox Quick Access → On. This is the only required step. If the switch is greyed out, the tour shows how to allow restricted settings (app info → ⋮ → Allow restricted settings).
   • Picking your size. Small, Standard, Large or Extra large, shown live on the real panel and on Settings itself. One choice sizes both.
   • Keeping it running. On BOOX, the tour opens BOOX's Optimize panel for SuperBoox: tap Others and turn on Stay active in the background, or BOOX may stop SuperBoox in the background. It also asks Android to leave SuperBoox's battery use alone. And it has the switch that turns the edge strip back on after a restart (see below).
   • Trying it. Your swipe strip is drawn in black, so you can see where to swipe.
   • A guided look at the real panel and the clipboard.
   • Permissions, each with a button and a line about why. All are optional:
     • Modify system settings: for one-tap Auto-rotate
     • All files access: to show copied handwriting
3. Swipe up or down along the right edge of the screen.

You can replay the tour any time from Settings → Help → Show the tour again, and find the keep-running switches at the top of Settings → Help → Troubleshooting.

What's in the panel

From top to bottom:

What Add pins depends on where you are:

• inside a note: that note
• in NeoReader: the book that's open
• in the Notes library: opens a picker so you can tick several notes at once
• anywhere else: the current app

The panel is black on white with no animations, so it draws cleanly on e-ink. Its width, its size, the screen edge and the gesture can all be changed in Settings.

Clipboard

The clipboard is meant to be a hub for carrying things between apps.

Opening it. Tap Clipboard in the top bar. By default it takes over the whole panel. You can keep Quick Controls, Last Opened or the apps showing beside it.

What it keeps:

• text
• links
• images
• handwriting you lasso-copy in BOOX Notes, shown as a picture of what you wrote

Pinned clips stay on top. Search the history, or filter it with All · Text · Links · Images · Handwriting · Pinned.

Using a clip. Tap a clip to paste it into the app you're in. Tap ⧉ to copy it again. Hold the clip for more:

• Name, and Mark up (pictures)
• Copy
• Paste in app
• Open (links)
• Share…
• Pin
• Delete

Settings → Clipboard lets you choose:

• which kinds to keep (each with a short description; one-time codes are off by default)
• how many items to keep
• whether to keep images
• whether to keep the history after a restart
• apps to ignore
• how much of the panel it covers (with a live preview)

When copies are saved. By default, whatever is on the clipboard is saved each time you open the panel. That needs no setup. To catch every copy as it happens, turn on Advanced access.

Handwriting pictures need All files access, which lets SuperBoox read the copy that BOOX Notes leaves on the device. Without it, handwriting clips still copy and paste back into Notes; they just show a pen icon instead of the picture.

Front Light presets

Hold Front Light to get a small box in the panel. It opens on the page with the active preset.

• Page 1 has BOOX's own presets: Bright, Soft, Custom and Off. Hold Custom to set its brightness and warmth.
• The next pages hold your own named presets. Tap one to switch to it, hold it to adjust its levels or rename it, or tap + New to make one.

Your own presets need Advanced access, so that setting one doesn't overwrite BOOX's Custom.

Settings

Settings is grouped into three sections.

Opening the panel:

• Gesture. Which edge, swipe along or swipe in or double-tap, and the strip's size and position. While you change these, the real strip is drawn on the screen.
• Look & size. Size (the panel and Settings together), panel width, and whether it remembers the last page.

In the panel:

• Recent files
• Quick Controls
• Quick Access items
• Apps at the bottom. You can rename an app's label.
• Clipboard

Pages that change the panel can show the real panel beside them while you adjust them. This works in portrait and landscape. Show me buttons draw what an option does.

Help:

• Show the tour again
• Troubleshooting. The switches that keep SuperBoox running, a debug report, and what has been checked on your tablet.
• Advanced access
• Backup & restore. Saves every setting (pins, Quick Controls, Front Light presets, apps, clipboard choices, gesture and look) to one small file you keep wherever you like, and restores it later.
• Advanced

Other ways to open the panel

Advanced access (optional)

Everything above works without it.

Advanced access uses the free Shizuku app, which runs on-device ADB over wireless debugging. No computer is needed. Settings → Advanced access walks you through it.

It unlocks two things:

• your own Front Light presets that don't touch BOOX's Custom
• saving every copy to the clipboard history as it happens

After the tablet restarts, Shizuku has to be started again. SuperBoox tells you when that's the case.

How notes and books are opened

• Notes.
  • BOOX Notes shares a small database of note names and IDs with other apps. When you pin a note, SuperBoox saves its ID, so the pin keeps working after you rename the note.
  • Tapping a pin opens the note through BOOX's own "open note" screen. If another note is open, SuperBoox closes it first with Back, so BOOX saves it.
  • If a direct open ever fails, SuperBoox falls back to finding the note in the Notes library for you. While that runs, the screen holds still.
• Books. NeoReader shares its library the same way. When you pin a book, SuperBoox saves its file location and opens it in NeoReader directly. Other reading apps (KOReader, Kindle and so on) are brought back to the front.

Tested on a Note Air 6C (Android 16, firmware 4.3). Other BOOX models and firmware should work, but haven't been tested yet. Bug reports are welcome.

Privacy

• No internet permission. Nothing leaves the tablet unless you copy or share it yourself.
• Pins, recents, the clipboard history and the troubleshooting log are stored on the device only. Clear history and Clear log empty them.
• For notes and books, SuperBoox reads only names, IDs, file locations and when things were opened. It never reads what's inside them.
• Permissions:
  • Required: the accessibility service.
  • Optional:
    • Modify system settings (Auto-rotate)
    • Ignore battery optimization (keeps it running)
    • All files access (handwriting pictures). This is used only to read the copy BOOX Notes makes when you lasso-copy.
    • Shizuku (Advanced access)

If the panel stops opening

SuperBoox catches errors in Settings and the panel and recovers by itself, so changing settings shouldn't stop it. If it does stop, a card at the top of Settings says so (it shows nothing while SuperBoox is running).

• Running but misbehaving: tap Restart service in Settings → Troubleshooting.
• Turned on, but stopped: Android keeps an accessibility service stopped after an error until it's switched off and on again. Restart service does that for you with Advanced access. Without it, Restart service opens SuperBoox's switch so you can turn it off and on.
• After a restart: Right after the tablet starts, BOOX stops SuperBoox (and other apps), and Android then leaves its switch on but doesn't start it again. With Turn the edge strip back on after a restart (Settings → Troubleshooting, on by default), SuperBoox checks once the tablet has started. If the strip isn't back, it switches the service off and on by itself when allowed, or shows a notification you can tap. To let it do this by itself, tap Allow there while Advanced access is connected (needed only once; it keeps working after restarts without Shizuku), or run adb shell pm grant com.superboox.quickaccess android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS from a computer.

Reporting bugs

Open SuperBoox → Troubleshooting → Copy debug report (or Share…) and paste it into a GitHub issue.

The report includes:

• your device and firmware
• your SuperBoox settings and pinned items, including their names
• clipboard counts only (never what you copied)
• a log of what SuperBoox did: gestures, the app in front, launches, and each step of opening a note

Look it over before you post it.

How it works

QuickAccessService (AccessibilityService)
 ├─ EdgeHandleView      thin overlay strip on the screen edge, detects the gesture
 ├─ QuickAccessPanel    the panel: top bar, Quick Controls, Front Light presets, last opened,
 │                      Quick Access, Recent, clipboard, apps; also the live preview in Settings
 ├─ NoteOpener          opens a note by ID; opens BOOX's create-note screen (hold New Note)
 ├─ OpeningCover        holds the current screen while a note opens
 └─ tracks the app in front (for Add and the recents) and checks the clipboard
ClipHistory             clipboard history, kept on the device; reads handwriting copies
BooxShapes              draws BOOX Notes' copied handwriting (shape.pb) as a picture
QuickControls           the switches and Front Light presets
AdvancedAccess          optional Shizuku connection (presets, background clipboard)
NotesDb / NoteIds       BOOX Notes database: note names and IDs
NotesScreen             recognises BOOX Notes screens (open note, create-note screen)
ReaderLibrary           NeoReader library: book titles and file locations
Recents                 recently opened notes and documents
SettingsActivity        tour, settings pages, live preview, troubleshooting
Backup                  saves and restores settings to a file
OpenPanelActivity       opens the panel from the app icon or a BOOX gesture
PanelTileService        Quick Settings tile

An accessibility overlay draws above everything, including the BOOX launcher. BOOX leaves accessibility services running, and the service can read which note or book is on screen, which Add needs.

The UI is built in code (Ui.kt). The only libraries are Shizuku's API (used only if you turn on Advanced access) and HiddenApiBypass.

Building

./gradlew assembleDebug needs JDK 17 and the Android SDK. Every push builds an APK and publishes it as a GitHub release.

The images in docs/launch/ are drawn mockups of the 1.1.0 panel (not device screenshots), rendered from docs/launch/launch.html with made-up names and a public-domain book.

SuperBoox 1.1.1: help for the greyed-out "SuperBoox Quick Access" switch.

On some BOOX tablets (seen on the Note Air 4, firmware 4.2) Android keeps the accessibility switch greyed out for apps installed outside the Play Store, so SuperBoox couldn't be turned on.

• New tour step, "Get BOOX ready": allow notifications, Android's battery exemption and BOOX's Run at startup before turning the service on. Each row has a button; Next is never blocked.
• "Switch greyed out?" help on the "Turn SuperBoox on" step (Android 13+): Open app info → ⋮ → Allow restricted settings, then turn the switch on. No developer mode needed.
• The tour is now 11 steps. If you're already set up nothing changes; Settings → Help → Show the tour again has it.

Not yet checked on a tablet: the new tour step and the help card were checked in code and built by CI only.