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📑 Table of Contents

• 🌍 What is ALST?
• ✨ Key Features
• 📸 Screenshots & Visual Tour
• 🔬 How It Works (Architecture)
• 📊 Feature Comparison
• 🛠 Tech Stack & Dependencies
• 📂 Project Architecture
• 🔒 Privacy & Security
• 🚀 Quick Start & Installation
• 🗺 Roadmap
• 🤝 Contributing
• 📄 License
• 👤 Author

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🌍 What is ALST?

ALST (AI Live Screen Translation) is an open-source Android utility that eliminates language barriers across all applications on your phone. Operating seamlessly via a non-intrusive floating overlay, ALST captures your active screen using hardware-accelerated MediaProjection, processes text using Gemini 3.6 Flash's multimodal vision model, and dynamically renders accurate translations directly over the original text coordinates using Android's WindowManager.

Whether you are playing untranslated foreign mobile games, reading raw Webtoons/Manga, chatting on messaging apps, or browsing international news, ALST provides an instant, contextual, and immersive reading experience without switching apps or taking manual screenshots.

💡 Primary Use Cases:

• 🎮 Gaming: Play Japanese/Korean RPGs and mobile titles with live dialog and menu overlays.
• 📖 Comics & Manga: Read webtoons, manhwa, and manga without waiting for scanlation groups.
• 💬 Live Messaging: Chat across WhatsApp, Telegram, or WeChat with instant auto-translation.
• 📰 Global News & Research: Read international apps and documents with full RTL/LTR script rendering.

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✨ Key Features

⚡ Single-Pass Multimodal Translation (Gemini 3.6 Flash)

• Zero OCR Bottlenecks: Directly analyzes the raw screen frame buffer with Google's latest multimodal vision AI.
• Context-Aware Semantic Understanding: Understands idioms, slang, gaming terminology, and multi-line paragraph flows rather than translating words in isolation.
• Auto Source Language Detection: Simultaneously detects and translates mixed-language screens (e.g., Persian + English + Japanese) in a single API call.
• Pixel-Accurate Coordinate Mapping: Calculates normalized spatial bounding boxes to place translations exactly over the original text.

📴 Offline Resilience (Google ML Kit)

• Completely local, on-device OCR and neural translation for Latin-based languages when traveling or off-grid.
• Dynamic language model manager with live sync and download status.

🎯 Floating Action Button (FAB) & Instant Overlay

• Draggable Frosted Glass FAB: Move the trigger anywhere along your screen edges.
• Quick Dismissal: One-tap dismiss on any translation block, with auto-timeout safeguards (30s) to prevent screen obstruction.
• Subtle Close Controller: Long-press to reveal the dedicated mini close button to gracefully stop the background service.
• Quick Settings Tile: Start and stop the translation engine directly from Android's status bar / quick settings drop-down.

🔋 Battery & Memory Engineered

• Frame Throttling (300ms): Eliminates continuous GPU/CPU rendering cycles.
• Memory Recycling: Zero bitmap accumulation via reusable frame buffers and strict ImageReader lifecycle closures.
• Android 14 Ready: Fully compliant with FOREGROUND_SERVICE_MEDIA_PROJECTION requirements and graceful system UI disconnect callbacks.

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📸 Screenshots & Visual Tour

🎨 Cyber-Glassmorphic Dashboard

🌐 Real-Time In-Place Translation Showcase (4 Languages)

ALST translates raw screen text while preserving the layout, fonts, and spatial positioning:

⚡ Floating Controls & Quick Settings Integration

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🔬 How It Works (Architecture)

flowchart TD
    A[User Taps Floating FAB] -->|Trigger Signal| B[ScreenTranslatorService]
    B -->|Request Frame| C[ScreenCaptureManager]
    C -->|MediaProjection + VirtualDisplay| D[ImageReader Frame Buffer]
    D -->|Throttle: 300ms| E{Active Engine Type}
    
    %% Online Route
    E -->|Online Mode| F[Gemini 3.6 Flash API]
    F -->|Multimodal Vision Prompt| G[JSON Parser & Markdown Sanitizer]
    G -->|Extract Normalized Bounding Boxes + Text| H[OverlayManager]
    
    %% Offline Route
    E -->|Offline Mode| I[ML Kit TextRecognition]
    I -->|Bounding Rects| J[ML Kit On-Device Translate]
    J -->|Translated Blocks| H
    
    %% Render
    H -->|Calculate Screen Insets & Density| K[Jetpack Compose Overlay View]
    K -->|WindowManager.addView| L[Screen Translation Canvas Displayed]
    L -->|Tap Overlay / 30s Timeout| M[Clean Dismiss & Recycle Bitmaps]

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📊 Feature Comparison

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🛠 Tech Stack & Dependencies

• Core & Architecture:
  • Language: Kotlin 2.0+
  • UI System: Jetpack Compose (Material 3)
  • Architecture: Clean MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) + Repository Pattern
  • Async / Reactive: Kotlin Coroutines & Reactive StateFlow / SharedFlow
  • Dependency Injection: Factory Pattern & Lifecycle-aware scopes
• Android APIs:
  • Screen Capture: Android MediaProjection, VirtualDisplay, ImageReader
  • System UI: WindowManager (TYPE_APPLICATION_OVERLAY), TileService
  • Storage: Jetpack DataStore (Preferences)
• AI & Machine Learning:
  • Cloud LLM: Google GenAI SDK (gemini-3.6-flash)
  • On-Device ML: Google ML Kit (text-recognition, translate, language-id)

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📂 Project Architecture

ALSTMobile/
├── app/
│   ├── src/main/
│   │   ├── java/com/alst/mobile/
│   │   │   ├── core/
│   │   │   │   ├── capture/           # MediaProjection & screen capture pipeline
│   │   │   │   ├── ocr/               # ML Kit local text detection
│   │   │   │   ├── overlay/           # WindowManager floating overlays & FAB
│   │   │   │   └── translator/        # Gemini 3.6 Flash & ML Kit engine abstraction
│   │   │   ├── data/
│   │   │   │   └── preferences/       # DataStore local settings repository
│   │   │   ├── domain/
│   │   │   │   └── model/             # TranslationBlock, EngineType, Language models
│   │   │   ├── service/               # Foreground translation & Quick Settings tile services
│   │   │   └── ui/
│   │   │       ├── dashboard/         # Compose Glassmorphic dashboard & sheets
│   │   │       └── theme/             # Cyber-dark theme, gradients, typography
│   │   ├── res/                       # Drawables, mipmaps, strings
│   │   └── AndroidManifest.xml        # Android 14 compliant permissions & services
│   └── build.gradle.kts
├── docs/                              # Screenshots, demo GIF, and media assets
├── gradle/
├── README.md
├── README-fa.md
└── LICENSE

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🔒 Privacy & Security

• Bring Your Own Key (BYOK): ALST connects directly from your device to Google AI Studio's API endpoint. There is no middleman, proxy server, or custom backend.
• Local Credential Storage: Your Gemini API Key is stored securely on your device's private sandboxed DataStore storage.
• No Analytics / Telemetry: No tracking SDKs (Firebase Analytics, Crashlytics, Mixpanel, etc.) are included in the build.
• Zero Retention: Screen buffers are processed strictly in RAM and discarded immediately after rendering.

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🚀 Quick Start & Installation

📲 Option 1: Install Pre-built APK (Recommended)

1. Download the latest release from Releases or click Direct APK Download (v1.0.0).
2. Install the .apk file on your Android device (ensure "Install from unknown sources" is allowed).

🛠 Option 2: Build from Source

Prerequisites

• Android Studio (Koala | Ladybug or newer recommended)
• JDK: Version 17
• Device / Emulator: Android 8.0 (API Level 26) up to Android 15 (API Level 35)

Build & Run

# 1. Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/navidseyedain/ALSTMobile.git

# 2. Navigate to project root
cd ALSTMobile

# 3. Build debug APK using the included Gradle wrapper
./gradlew assembleDebug

Setup Gemini API Key

1. Generate a free API key from Google AI Studio.
2. Launch the ALST app on your phone.
3. Paste the key in the Gemini API Key card and tap Save.
4. Grant Overlay Permission and tap the Master Power Switch to start translating!

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🗺 Roadmap

• Multimodal single-pass translation via Gemini 3.6 Flash
• Offline local translation fallback via Google ML Kit
• Floating draggable FAB with gesture support & instant dismiss
• Glassmorphic Material 3 Dashboard with ambient blur
• Android 14 MediaProjection foreground service compliance
• Quick Settings Tile integration
• Interactive Box Selection: Drag to translate a specific rectangular screen region
• Text-to-Speech (TTS): Listen to translated blocks aloud with native voices
• History & Export: Save translated snippets directly to markdown or clipboard

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions are what make the open-source community an incredible place to learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated!

1. Fork the Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'feat: Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

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📄 License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

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👤 Author

Navid Seyedain

• GitHub: @navidseyedain
• Projects: ALAD (AI Live Audio Dubbing) | ALST Mobile