Flambo

A calm yet expressive voice recorder for Android — record, transcribe, and keep everything on your device.

Features

• One-tap recording with an animated-shape record button, live waveform, and pause/resume on a continuous timeline
• Two sources — microphone, or system sound (music, videos, app audio) via AudioPlaybackCapture on Android 10+
• Live notification with running timer plus Pause/Resume and Save actions, so recording survives the screen turning off
• Offline transcription — Vosk turns saved recordings into text on-device; downloadable language models, copy/share/edit, transcripts are searchable
• Noise reduction — live AGC and noise suppression while recording (toggle in Settings)
• Clean audio — one-tap offline enhancement (hush + leveling) with Light/Balanced/Strong strength, keep or replace the original
• Playback with waveform scrubber, 0.5x–2x speed pills, 5 s / 10 s skips, and a floating mini-player
• Library — inline rename, tags, favorites, full-text search, soft delete with Undo, auto-purging Trash
• Onboarding tour on first launch, replayable anytime from Settings → About
• Shortcuts & automation — long-press the launcher icon for Start / Pause, or fire recording actions from Key Mapper, Tasker, and other automation apps entirely headlessly
• Self-updates — Settings checks the beta rolling preview (by build number) or stable releases (by version), downloads and installs in-app with auto-cleanup; optional launch-time check pings you once per version via notification + snackbar
• Material 3 Expressive throughout — dynamic Material You color, tonal surfaces instead of shadows, morphing shapes, bouncy spring motion, edge-to-edge layout

Screenshots

Home	Recording	Playback

Settings	About	Trash

Get the app

Grab the APK matching your device from the latest beta pre-release (rolling 1.7.3-dev(#N) build, old assets are pruned automatically) or a versioned entry on the releases page:

File suffix	Architecture	Most devices
*-universal.apk	All ABIs	Recommended — works on any Android device
*-arm64.apk	arm64-v8a	Most phones from ~2017 on
*-armv7.apk	armeabi-v7a	Older 32-bit devices

Note

Enable Install unknown apps for your browser when sideloading. Release builds are signed with the project keystore, so updates install cleanly over previous ones.

Build it yourself

git clone https://github.com/MoHamed-B-M/flambo.git
cd flambo
git checkout dev             # active development happens here
./gradlew :app:assembleRelease

Debug keystore fallback means assembleRelease works locally with no secrets configured. Per-ABI APKs land in app/build/outputs/apk/release/.

How releases work

build.yaml builds every push to dev and main:

• dev → signed dev build 1.7.3-dev(#N) (universal + arm64 + armv7) published to the rolling beta-latest pre-release. Previous assets are wiped first, so the page always holds exactly one build. Artifacts expire after 7 days.
• main → versioned stable release Flambo-x.y.z-{arm64,armv7}.apk with changelog, checksums, and full notes. Artifacts kept 30 days.

Pushes touching only README.md or screenshots/ skip CI entirely (no code changed, nothing to build).

Required secrets

Secret	Purpose
KEYSTORE_BASE64	Release keystore, base64-encoded
KEYSTORE_PASSWORD	Keystore password
KEY_ALIAS	Key alias
KEY_PASSWORD	Key password

Without them CI falls back to an ephemeral keystore (fine for previews, not for Play Store continuity).

Versioning

This app follows a modified Semantic Versioning: MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH+BUILD

Number	Meaning	When to increase
MAJOR	Big update	Breaking changes, redesigns, major architecture
MINOR	New feature	Adding features without breaking existing ones
PATCH	Fix / small update	Bug fixes, tweaks, performance improvements
BUILD	Build number	Every new build/compile (always increments)

Format examples:

• 1.0.0+1 → first stable release, first build
• 1.1.0+15 → added pause/resume recording (15th build overall)
• 1.1.1+16 → fixed timer showing wrong value
• 2.0.0+120 → complete UI redesign + new audio engine
• 2.0.1+121 → rebuilt with updated libraries

Beta builds follow the stable line with a dev tag: 1.7.3-dev(#N), where N is the CI run number (e.g. 1.7.3-dev(#42)). When stable moves to 1.7.4, beta becomes 1.7.4-dev(#N) automatically — only BASE_VERSION in the workflow changes.

Beta version codes sit 100000 above the run number, so installing a beta over a stable release always counts as an update for Android (which requires the code to increase).

Project structure

app/src/main/java/com/flambo/recorder/
├── ui/
│   ├── home/          # Library, search, recording panel, mini-player
│   ├── detail/        # Playback, waveform scrubber, transcribe sheet, transcript card
│   ├── settings/      # Segmented preference groups, Vosk model manager, updates, about
│   ├── onboarding/    # First-launch expressive pager tour
│   ├── components/    # Waveform, cards, segmented list, mini-player
│   └── theme/         # M3 Expressive color / type / shape / motion tokens
├── record/            # MediaRecorder + system-audio (AudioRecord) engines, foreground service
├── audio/             # Offline DSP enhancer (gate, normalize, WAV writer)
├── stt/               # Vosk offline transcription, model downloads, PCM decoding
├── playback/          # ExoPlayer controller with persistent mini-player state
├── update/            # Release checker, in-app APK installer, update notifier
└── data/              # Room database, repository, DataStore preferences

MVVM throughout: ViewModel + StateFlow UI state, repository pattern, thin platform wrappers.

Permissions

Permission	Why
RECORD_AUDIO	Microphone recording — also required by Android for system-sound capture (prompted at first launch and when needed)
System-capture consent	One-time system dialog for system-sound recording, like a screen recorder
FOREGROUND_SERVICE_*	Keeps recording alive with the screen off (mic / playback / projection types, narrowed per take)
POST_NOTIFICATIONS	Recording timer + update-ready notifications (Android 13+)
INTERNET	Only for Vosk model downloads and the update checker — audio never leaves the device

Important

When enabling system-sound capture, Android shows a screen-recording consent dialog. Flambo only captures audio — no pixels are ever read (the codebase contains no virtual display; the MediaProjection token feeds AudioPlaybackCaptureConfiguration exclusively).

Shortcuts & automation

Recording is reachable without opening the app:

• Launcher shortcuts — long-press the Flambo icon for Start recording and Pause / Resume.
• Key Mapper / Tasker — pick Flambo from an automation app's "launch app shortcut" list and choose one of five discrete actions: Record, Pause, Stop, Toggle record/pause, or Toggle record/stop. They run headlessly — no activity is foregrounded, even from the lock screen.
• Broadcasts — apps that send intents can target the exported RecordingReceiver with com.flambo.recorder.ACTION_START, com.flambo.recorder.ACTION_STOP, or com.flambo.recorder.ACTION_TOGGLE.

Tech stack

Kotlin 2.3.10 · Compose (BOM 2026.08) · Material3 1.5.0-alpha26 (Expressive) · Navigation Compose · Room 2.8.5 (KSP) · DataStore · Media3 ExoPlayer · Vosk 0.3.75 · AGP 9.3.2, JDK 21.

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