On Android 14 and later a foreground service has to declare the microphone, and for video the camera, or the system silences them the moment the app leaves the foreground. The only service here declared remoteMessaging, for the poll loop. So a call whose phone locked, or whose person switched apps, went quiet at the far end while the screen on this one still said the call was up. The app targets 35 and runs on nothing older than 33, so every phone it ships to behaves this way. The service re-declares itself with the microphone type when call media starts, camera too for video, and back to the plain declaration when the call ends. It is done the moment the audio track exists rather than at connect, because the microphone is open from there. If the system refuses the extra types, the plain declaration keeps the poll loop alive rather than crashing the service mid-call. A source-reading test pins the manifest, the service and both call-side hooks. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Flamenet Messenger. Android
The Android app, and the two libraries under it. The product's site is at https://flamenetmessenger.com.
engine/ the protocol: X3DH, Double Ratchet, sealed sender, safety numbers,
key transparency. Plain Kotlin/JVM — no Android in it at all.
client/ the relay transport: HTTP, auth, the §8 routes.
app/ the Compose app.
interop/ the cross-engine driver; not shipped.
engine and client are deliberately plain JVM libraries. The protocol has
nothing to do with Android, and keeping it off the platform means their tests
run anywhere a JVM does, no SDK, no emulator, no device, which is also what
lets them gate in CI on Linux:
./gradlew :engine:test :client:test
The app's own unit tests need the Android SDK but still no emulator (Robolectric):
./gradlew :app:testDebugUnitTest
Where it stands
PARITY.md is the definition of done for this app, read that, not this. Every row there names the iOS file it came from so it can be re-checked rather than trusted. Headlines: messaging, groups, attachments, voice notes, stories, calls, sealed sender, key transparency and the encrypted vault are built and tested, and a cross-platform round trip against iOS is verified.
If a claim here ever disagrees with PARITY.md or with the tree, believe those, and fix this.
Why the engine came first, and is held to the vectors
An Android client needs the protocol implemented a third time, and the third
implementation is the one that finds the places where the specification says
less than the two existing engines quietly agreed on, but only if it is
written against the spec and the published vectors rather than against a
reading of our own Swift and JavaScript. So the engine is held to
test/vectors/protocol-v1.json in
flamenet-e2e, the same file the
other two engines are checked against, read from that repository rather than
copied here, because a copied vector file drifts and a drifting vector file
stops being a check. PublishedVectorsTest looks for it beside this checkout
and fails loudly if it cannot find it; FLAMENET_VECTORS overrides the search.
Two implementations that agree may both be wrong in the same way, especially when one was written while reading the other. The audit-path ordering in §19 is the worked example: a top-down reading of a bottom-up path produces the correct root for every left-spine index, so it passes any test that only checks index 0. The vector file pins a right-descending index for that reason, and the Kotlin tests assert both that the published path verifies and that the same path reversed does not.
If this engine ever disagrees with the file, the interesting question is which of the three is wrong, not this one by default.
Contributing and security
- CONTRIBUTING.md, building (JDK 21,
JAVA_HOMEis not optional on a Mac), the test gate, and the platform traps that cost an hour each. - PARITY.md, what iOS does, what this does, and what is left. It is the definition of done for this app.
- SECURITY.md, threat model and where to send a vulnerability report. Not an issue tracker matter: security@flamenetmessenger.com.