How to prevent mouse from activating Android notifications

RetroArch Android devices
#1

I am using RetroArch on an android tablet for Amiga games primarily controlled with a mouse. Quite regularly the “real” system mouse pointer will migrate far enough to the top of the screen to activate the Android top notification area and then a click pulls me out of the game entirely.

Is there any way to prevent this?

#2

Does it help to enable “game focus mode”?

#3

How do you do that in Android? I don’t see the option available to attach to a retropad key.

#4

I tried attaching it to the middle mouse button. The mode either doesn’t work or isn’t getting toggled. When I press the middle mouse button, the emulator status bar shows it. Does that mean the middle button is being passed through to the emulator without toggling game focus mode?

#5

Not sure. I would suggest trying to map it to something other than a mouse button just for testing to verify how it works.

#6

Thanks. Unfortunately this tablet has nothing else to map it to. It has power and volume up/down. The map dialog doesn’t respond to any of them. The only physical buttons I have which it responds to are the mouse buttons. Neither game focus mode nor grab mouse are available settings to attach to retropad buttons.

#7

My bluetooth keyboard for this device came in. I was able to map Game Focus Mode. It will activate but will not grab the mouse. I mapped Grab Mouse and it doesn’t even appear to activate. There is support in Anbdroid 8+ for grabbing the mouse, but RetroArch for Android doesn’t appear to take advantage of it.

#8

Yea…I use an nvidia shield, and when connected to the atgames legends arcade, everything works great except the track ball…the track ball activates the android mouse pointer which can be annoying…I assume one would need root access to disable the mouse or remove it altogether temporarily

#9

No, root access is not required. Since Android 8 the mouse can be captured by an App. The system mouse pointer disappears and Android sends the app mouse movement data.

This feature is used to good effect by the open source Magic Dosbox emulator. I hope the devs here will “Use The Source™” and duplicate this behaviour to enable mouse capture.