Acho1.1

Acho lets users reach the Acho social network and chat service from an Android device through a lightweight WebView client. The service is self-hosted, and the app retrieves its server address from a remote configuration database rather than fixing it in the app. That address refreshes automatically every five seconds when the configuration changes, so server changes can reach clients without an application update.

Full WebView history powers in-app back navigation, while fullscreen mode and hardware-accelerated rendering support the browsing experience. Its foreground MessageCheckService stays active after the app is closed, polling the server every 30 seconds with the session token to detect and notify users about new messages. On Android 13 and newer, Acho automatically prompts for the POST_NOTIFICATIONS permission.

A resizable home-screen widget can occupy anything from a compact tile to the space of a full application. It shows the latest community posts with author initials, message previews, timestamps, and a badge counting new posts, and tapping it opens Acho directly. The widget periodically contacts the server to remain current, creating recurring background network activity; on devices with ample battery capacity this has negligible impact, while the developer advises avoiding the widget on devices with limited battery capacity.

Acho accepts shared text, images, video, audio, and PDF files from other apps, forwarding them to the WebView through window.receiveSharedContent(text, uri) after the page loads. The WebView supports uploading images, videos, audio, and documents, while the server can invoke AchoApp.shareContent(text) or AchoApp.shareUrl(url, title) to open Android’s native share sheet through the injected AchoApp interface. Version 1.1 runs on Android 7.1 or later with Universal architecture and is released under an open-source license.