What is Reddit's opinion of Headset Droid?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

I use Headset Droid, it costs $2.99 but I found it more than worth it. I used it to control my tablet in my car using the steering wheel controls. It lets you customize what your bluetooth buttons would otherwise normally do, so for example you can remap the "Previous" button to perform a Tasker task. Best part is that you can specify double-press and triple-press, among other choices. This effectively gave me additional buttons, since my steering wheel is basically limited to Previous, Next, and volumes.
 
So if I press "Next Song" three times quickly, it would toggle my tablet screen on/off by running a Tasker task (helpful while driving), or if it was "Previous" three times quickly, then it would play/pause music.
 
I even set it up so that I could give myself extra button configurations depending on which order I pressed my buttons. An example might be if I pressed "Previous" 4x, then that changed a variable in Tasker that indicated I now want to switch between media players. So that now when I simply pressed "Next" or "Previous", I would be cycling between Spotify, or PowerAmp, or Google Play Music, etc. Pressing "Previous" 4x again would leave that mode and I could use my steering wheel controls normally again. It was a pretty nice setup.

FWIW I had this happen for the longest time after phone calls - after a MASSIVE amount of effort I tracked it to this app. Worth checking for any headset helpers etc.

Only with a lot of steps. These remotes are intended to trigger the camera shutter and connect as a bluetooth keyboard. Both Android and iOS camera apps "listen" to certain keys, "Volume down" triggers on Android, I forgot which key code is send on iOS. So unless a VR app is checking for these key presses, either nothing happens or the default function of the key like "Volume down" is evoked in the OS. AFAIK no VR apps support them directly.

On Android you can run a background app that catches the key press and translates it into a faked screen tap which works the same as pulling the magnet switch. But this a) only works if your phone is rooted, b) requires you to use something like Headset Droid to fetch the key or button and c) Tasker to virtually tap the screen. Not really worth the trouble, cheap bluetooth remotes that also work as gamepads and mice (allowing clicks for screen tapping) are a better alternative.

I use this https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tvk.headvol&hl=en

An app can react to pretty much everything the developer wants. The Cardboard SDK provides an onCardboardTrigger method that handles the magnet pull and accepts a screen tap as an alternative, that's why many apps support these two types of input.

If your question was whether a user can use a trigger that was not implemented by the developer: sort of.

• If the app accepts screen taps (via the Cardboard SDK or directly), you can fake a tap with a bluetooth mouse or a controller or anything that acts like it, as a mouse click is interpreted by Android as a tap.
• If you want to use anything else, your phone has to be rooted, you have to use something like Headset Droid to fetch the key/button/trigger and then Tasker to virtually tap the screen. This should work with other input types too, e.g. faking a D-Pad with a keyboard, but obviously this isn't trivial.

If the app doesn't support taps or anything that can be easily faked, you are out of luck, as without any major hacks you cannot reroute the magnetometer data to fake a pull.