An Android app that automatically taps buttons you've approved, so you don't have to — using only the Android Accessibility APIs. Its flagship use is streaming: Skip Intro, Skip Recap, and Next Episode in Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Crunchyroll, HBO Max, Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock, and Apple TV. The same teach-and-approve mechanism works for other repetitive buttons in apps you explicitly add — and taught apps can be exported and shared as small JSON files.
It behaves exactly like a user reaching over and tapping the button the app already shows. It never looks at video, never captures the screen, and never touches DRM-protected content.
A streaming app exposes its on-screen controls — including the "Skip Intro" button —
as nodes in an accessibility tree, the same data a screen reader uses. SkipperKit
runs an AccessibilityService that:
- wakes only for the supported packages (scoped in the service config),
- searches the current window's node tree for a configured target,
- walks from the matched node up to the first clickable ancestor,
- performs
ACTION_CLICK(falling back to a synthesized tap gesture if no clickable ancestor exists), - debounces so a burst of UI updates produces at most one tap.
The buttons we care about are real, interactive UI controls. The OS already
publishes their text, content-description, view id, bounds, and clickability through
the accessibility tree, and lets an authorized service activate them with
ACTION_CLICK. That is everything needed to "press Skip Intro." No pixels required.
On real devices each app even exposes a stable identifier on the button:
| App | Toolkit | Skip-button identifier |
|---|---|---|
| Netflix | Jetpack Compose | skipCreditsButtonTestTag (testTag) |
| Prime Video | Compose | test_tag:…:contextualButton_skip_intro_Button |
| Disney+ | native views | com.disney.disneyplus:id/skipIntro |
These ids are locale-independent, so matching is robust across languages. Visible
text (e.g. SKIP INTRO) is kept only as a case-insensitive fallback.
- Unnecessary. The button is already a structured, clickable node. Reading pixels to find something the OS hands us as text would be strictly worse.
- Privacy-invasive.
MediaProjection/screenshots would expose the entire screen (including everything else on it) to the app. The accessibility tree exposes only UI semantics for the foregrounded supported app. - Blocked anyway. Streaming playback surfaces are DRM-protected; screen capture of them yields black frames. Any pixel-based approach would fail precisely where it'd be needed.
- Heavy and non-deterministic. OCR/ML inference on a hot callback path would drain battery and could mis-click. A string/id match is deterministic and cheap.
SkipperKit therefore uses no MediaProjection, no screenshots, no OCR, no image
recognition, no ML vision, no root, and no ADB automation.
No on-device LLM either — see docs/on-device-llm.md for why Gemma and similar models are the wrong fit for a background button-tapper.
Built-ins come in two tiers. Verified apps match on stable view-ids captured from a real device. Label-only apps match on visible button text — functional, but a redesign or a non-English locale can break them until someone captures their view-ids (contributions welcome, see CONTRIBUTING.md).
| Service | Package | Tier |
|---|---|---|
| Netflix | com.netflix.mediaclient |
✅ Verified |
| Prime Video | com.amazon.avod.thirdpartyclient |
✅ Verified |
| Disney+ | com.disney.disneyplus |
✅ Verified |
| Crunchyroll | com.crunchyroll.crunchyroid |
🏷️ Label-only |
| HBO Max | com.wbd.stream |
🏷️ Label-only |
| Hulu | com.hulu.plus |
🏷️ Label-only |
| Paramount+ | com.cbs.app |
🏷️ Label-only |
| Peacock | com.peacocktv.peacockandroid |
🏷️ Label-only |
| Apple TV | com.apple.atve.androidtv.appletv |
🏷️ Label-only |
You can also add other apps yourself (Settings → Add an app). The accessibility service only ever observes the built-ins above plus the apps you explicitly add — never anything else. Added apps are read the same way (accessibility text only, no capture), discovery proposes their skip buttons for you to approve, and you can remove any of them at any time.
TV applications generally expose little or no accessible node tree, making reliable accessibility automation impossible.
So the Fire TV / Android TV / com.netflix.ninja variants are out of scope by design.
SkipperKit targets phone/tablet builds only.
Download skipperkit-<version>.apk from the
Releases page (a .sha256
checksum is attached to each release) and sideload it:
adb install -r skipperkit-v0.1.0.apk
# or just open the APK on the phone and confirm the install promptWhy not the Play Store? Google Play restricts the AccessibilityService API to apps whose core purpose is assisting users with disabilities, so utilities like this one are distributed as direct APKs instead.
Requirements: Android Studio (Ladybug+) or a JDK 17–21 and the Android SDK (compileSdk 35). Kotlin 2.0, AGP 8.7, Gradle 8.14 (wrapper included).
# from the project root
./gradlew assembleDebug # build the APK
./gradlew installDebug # build + install to a connected device
# APK path: app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apkOr open the folder in Android Studio and Run. (First sync generates the Gradle wrapper jar if it isn't present.)
To sideload an existing APK manually:
adb install -r app-debug.apkSee SECURITY.md for keystore setup and rotation instructions.
./gradlew assembleReleaseIf keystore.properties is absent, the release APK is built unsigned.
.github/workflows/ci.yml runs testDebugUnitTest, lintDebug, and assembleDebug
on every push to main and on pull requests. Pushing a v* tag runs
.github/workflows/release.yml, which builds a signed APK (keystore supplied via
repository secrets, never committed) and attaches it to a GitHub Release.
An accessibility service cannot be enabled programmatically — only the user can turn it on. In the app, tap Open Accessibility settings, then:
- Find SkipperKit Skip Assistant under Installed apps / Downloaded apps.
- Toggle it On and accept the permission dialog.
Sideloaded apps are blocked from accessibility until you unlock them:
- Settings → Apps → SkipperKit → ⋮ (top-right) → Allow restricted settings, confirm with your PIN/biometric.
- Return to Settings → Accessibility → SkipperKit Skip Assistant and the toggle will now work.
The in-app status card surfaces this: it shows SERVICE OFF with the explanation and the settings shortcut until the service is actually running.
Open SkipperKit and you get a Material 3 settings screen:
- Status card — service ON/OFF, plus a health line ("Last activity: 2 min ago", or a warning when no events have been seen recently).
- Enable SkipperKit — master switch gating every app.
- Per-app cards — each app has an Enable switch and Skip Intro / Skip Recap / Auto-play Next Episode toggles. Toggles grey out when the app (or master) is off.
Then just watch a supported app — when a skip button appears, SkipperKit taps it.
| App | Skip Intro / Recap | Auto-next |
|---|---|---|
| Netflix | ✅ | ✅ (end-of-episode card) |
| Disney+ | ✅ | ✅ (upNextLiteButton) |
| Prime Video | ✅ | ✅ ("Next up:" prefix match on the end card) |
| Label-only apps | ✅ (by text) | ❌ — needs a verified end-card id first |
Where auto-next is unsupported the toggle is shown disabled ("Not available in this app"): without a verified identifier there is no way to tell an end-of-episode card from an always-present control-bar button, and SkipperKit refuses to guess. Auto-next is off by default everywhere.
Every app you've added yourself has a Share action on its card (built-ins ship with everyone already): it exports the app's approved skip buttons as a small JSON snippet via the system share sheet. Another user pastes it under Add an app → Import shared and gets the same buttons — after their own explicit import, and only for the one package the file names. Shared files can only ever describe Skip Intro / Skip Recap buttons; auto-next can never arrive via import.
When SkipperKit discovers a working skip button that isn't in the shared config, you can send it upstream directly from the app — after approving a suggestion ("Send this to the project?"), via Contribute on the app's card, or via Contribute all next to the Apps header, which sends every app you've taught or approved buttons for in one go. Taught custom buttons are included alongside skip buttons. The first send shows you the exact JSON; after that it's one tap. Submissions become public pull requests on skipperkit-config that a maintainer reviews before they reach anyone's device — and contributed custom buttons additionally arrive disabled in the shared config until the maintainer deliberately enables them.
Skip buttons are the flagship, but SkipperKit can automate any repetitive, user-visible button — a recurring "rate this app" nag, a daily check-in confirmation, a "still watching?" prompt. On any app's card, tap Teach:
- SkipperKit starts collecting the buttons it can see in that app (and nothing else — collection is local, capped, and expires after 3 minutes).
- Open the app and reach the screen with your button, then come back.
- Pick the button from the list, give it a name, done. It now has its own toggle on the app's card, and exports/imports along with the app.
Taught buttons match exactly (stable view-id when available, exact text otherwise) and never prefix-match. If a chosen button's label looks like a payment or destructive action ("Buy", "Confirm", "Delete", …), SkipperKit warns you and requires an explicit acknowledgement before saving. The same constraints always hold: the app must be explicitly added, every button explicitly taught by you, and matching stays accessibility-tree-only. This also makes SkipperKit useful as an assistive tool for users for whom repeated precise taps are physically costly.
All labels and identifiers live in data, never in matching logic
(config/DefaultConfigs.kt). Matching only ever compares against configured values.
SkipperKit can also pull an updated config over HTTPS, so identifiers can be fixed without an app release if a streaming app changes its UI:
- On startup it restores saved toggles, applies the cached config, then fetches a fresh one. Any failure falls back cached → bundled. The fetch is HTTPS-only, with 8 s timeouts and a 512 KB cap, and never blocks the UI.
- The default URL is this project's own
skipperkit-config repo (changes land
via reviewed PRs). Forks should point
SettingsStore.DEFAULT_REMOTE_CONFIG_URLat their own trusted host. The config can only change which nodes get tapped within the already-scoped apps; trust the host accordingly.
Config JSON schema:
{
"version": 1,
"apps": [
{
"packageName": "com.netflix.mediaclient",
"locale": "en",
"skipIntroViewIds": ["skipCreditsButtonTestTag"],
"skipIntroLabels": ["Skip Intro"],
"skipRecapViewIds": ["skipCreditsButtonTestTag"],
"skipRecapLabels": ["Skip Recap"],
"nextEpisodeViewIds": ["NextEpisodeButtonTestTag"],
"nextEpisodeLabels": ["Next Episode"],
"enabled": true,
"autoNextEnabled": false
}
]
}User toggles persist across restarts via Preferences DataStore.
The matching core is Android-free so it's unit-testable against fake trees:
matching/NodeView – minimal node interface (text, desc, viewId, clickable, parent, children, click, boundsCenter)
matching/NodeMatcher – view-id-first, case-insensitive text/desc fallback
matching/TreeSearch – DFS findFirst + walk-to-clickable-ancestor
matching/SkipEngine – orchestration + package-aware 1500 ms debounce (injected clock)
config/AppConfig – per-app data; ConfigRepository (bundled⊕remote); DefaultConfigs (verified)
settings/SettingsRepository – user toggles → configFor() applies them over the base config
service/AccessibilityNodeView – adapts a real AccessibilityNodeInfo to NodeView
service/SkipAccessibilityService – binds events → runs the engine on a worker thread
ui/settings/ – Material 3 Compose settings screen
onAccessibilityEvent does no tree work itself — it posts to a worker thread, so the
framework callback never blocks (no ANRs).
A debug-only build flag (BuildConfig.DEBUG_NODE_INSPECTOR) dumps the live
accessibility tree (text / desc / view-id / clickable / bounds) under Logcat tag
SkipperKitInspector. This is how each app's stable identifiers above were captured.
It is fully disabled in release builds.
./gradlew testDebugUnitTestUnit tests cover label/view-id matching, ancestor traversal, debounce (incl. per-package and gesture-handoff), config gating, settings overlay, and remote-config parsing — all against fake node trees, no device required.
- Mobile apps only. TV apps are unsupported (see above).
- Labels and ids vary by locale and app version. SkipperKit prefers stable ids and keeps text as a fallback, but a streaming-app redesign can still break matching until the (bundled or remote) config is updated.
- Label-only apps are English-only for now and more fragile than the verified tier — device-verified view-ids for them are a welcome contribution.
- It only acts on the foregrounded supported app, exactly like a user tap.
SkipperKit reads the accessibility node tree of the supported apps and clicks buttons. That's all. Specifically, it does not:
- capture or record the screen (no
MediaProjection, no screenshots), - run OCR or any image/ML recognition,
- analyze video frames or audio,
- intercept, decrypt, or access DRM-protected media,
- use root or ADB,
- send your viewing data anywhere. (Two network calls exist, both HTTPS: an outbound GET for the button-configuration file, and — only when you explicitly tap Send/Contribute/Contribute all — a POST per app containing button ids/labels, taught custom buttons' names and ids/labels, the streaming app's version, SkipperKit's version, and your language code. Never device identifiers, never anything about what you watch.)
It interacts solely with the accessibility tree and native UI controls — the same mechanism assistive technologies use every day.
Scope is user-controlled. The service is scoped (via packageNames) to the
built-in apps listed above plus any app you explicitly add in Settings — it cannot
observe apps you didn't add. Adding or removing an app widens or narrows that scope
immediately; removing an app also deletes everything SkipperKit learned about it.
SkipperKit only automates a tap on a button the streaming app already shows to the user — the same action you'd take yourself. It does not bypass ads, DRM, paywalls, or any access control. Use it in accordance with the terms of the apps you use it with.
SkipperKit is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Netflix, Amazon (Prime Video), The Walt Disney Company (Disney+), or any other streaming provider. All product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners and are used only to identify the apps SkipperKit interoperates with.
Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for how to build, test, and add support for new apps. Security reports: see SECURITY.md.
The one hard rule: accessibility-tree only — no screen capture, OCR, ML vision, root, or media analysis, ever.
Apache License 2.0 © The SkipperKit Authors. See NOTICE.