📱 Global Context Menu

A Flutter plugin that enables adding custom actions to Android's text selection toolbar using the ACTION_PROCESS_TEXT intent.

Pub License: MIT

✨ Features

  • 🔠 Add custom actions to Android's text selection toolbar
  • 📝 Process selected text from any app
  • 🔄 Return modified text to replace the selection
  • 🔒 Support for both read-only and editable text selections
With return action Read only
With return action Read only

📋 Requirements

  • 📱 Android 6.0 (API level 23) or higher
  • 💙 Flutter 2.5.0 or higher

📦 Installation

Add the plugin to your pubspec.yaml:

dependencies:
  global_context_menu: any

Run:

flutter pub get

🛠️ Setup

1️⃣ Create a Flutter Activity to handle the text processing

First, create a Flutter activity in your app that will be launched when the user selects your text processing action.

Example activity implementation in Kotlin:

package com.example.yourapp

import android.os.Bundle
import io.flutter.embedding.android.FlutterActivity

class YourProcessTextActivity : FlutterActivity() {
    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        // The GlobalContextMenu plugin handles the rest in your Flutter code
    }
}

2️⃣ Register the activity in your AndroidManifest.xml

Add the following to your app's android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml file inside the <application> tag:

<activity
    android:name=".YourProcessTextActivity"
    android:label="Your Action Name"> // Add your action name
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.PROCESS_TEXT" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
        <data android:mimeType="text/plain" />
    </intent-filter>
</activity>

⚠️ Important notes:

  • The android:label attribute will be shown as the action name in the text selection toolbar, so keep it short and descriptive.
  • You can add multiple activities with different labels for different text processing actions.
  • As of Android 6.0.1, avoid adding android:exported="false" as it can cause issues.

💻 Usage

Check if the device supports the feature

bool isSupported = await GlobalContextMenu.isSupported();
if (!isSupported) {
  // Show fallback UI or message
}

Get the selected text

try {
  final Map<String, dynamic> textData = await GlobalContextMenu.getProcessedText();
  final String selectedText = textData['text'] as String? ?? '';
  final bool isReadOnly = textData['isReadOnly'] as bool? ?? false;
  
  // Process the text as needed
  print('Selected text: $selectedText');
  print('Is read-only: $isReadOnly');
} catch (e) {
  print('Error getting text: $e');
}

Return modified text

// Only works if text is not read-only
try {
  String modifiedText = "Modified: $originalText";
  await GlobalContextMenu.setProcessedText(modifiedText);
  await GlobalContextMenu.finishActivity();
} catch (e) {
  print('Error setting text: $e');
}

Close the activity

// Close without modifying text
GlobalContextMenu.finishActivity();

📝 Complete Example

Here's a simple example of a text processor that converts selected text to uppercase:

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'package:global_context_menu/global_context_menu.dart';

void main() {
  runApp(MyApp());
}

class MyApp extends StatefulWidget {
  @override
  _MyAppState createState() => _MyAppState();
}

class _MyAppState extends State<MyApp> {
  String _selectedText = 'No text selected yet';
  bool _isReadOnly = false;
  bool _isSupported = false;

  @override
  void initState() {
    super.initState();
    checkSupport();
    getSelectedText();
  }
  
  Future<void> checkSupport() async {
    final isSupported = await GlobalContextMenu.isSupported();
    setState(() {
      _isSupported = isSupported;
    });
  }

  Future<void> getSelectedText() async {
    try {
      final textData = await GlobalContextMenu.getProcessedText();
      setState(() {
        _selectedText = textData['text'] as String? ?? 'No text selected';
        _isReadOnly = textData['isReadOnly'] as bool? ?? false;
      });
    } catch (e) {
      print('Error: $e');
    }
  }

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(
      home: Scaffold(
        appBar: AppBar(
          title: const Text('Text Processor'),
        ),
        body: Center(
          child: Column(
            mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
            children: <Widget>[
              if (!_isSupported)
                Padding(
                  padding: const EdgeInsets.all(16.0),
                  child: Container(
                    padding: EdgeInsets.all(8.0),
                    color: Colors.amber[100],
                    child: Text(
                      'This device does not support text processing. '
                      'Android 6.0+ required.',
                      style: TextStyle(color: Colors.red[900]),
                    ),
                  ),
                ),
              Padding(
                padding: const EdgeInsets.all(16.0),
                child: Text('Selected text: $_selectedText'),
              ),
              if (!_isReadOnly)
                ElevatedButton(
                  onPressed: () async {
                    final upperText = _selectedText.toUpperCase();
                    try {
                      await GlobalContextMenu.setProcessedText(upperText);
                      await GlobalContextMenu.finishActivity();
                    } catch (e) {
                      print("Error: $e");
                    }
                  },
                  child: Text('Convert to UPPERCASE'),
                ),
              ElevatedButton(
                onPressed: () {
                  GlobalContextMenu.finishActivity();
                },
                child: Text('Cancel'),
              ),
            ],
          ),
        ),
      ),
    );
  }
}

🔍 How It Works

  1. 📲 The plugin registers activities with the ACTION_PROCESS_TEXT intent filter in AndroidManifest.xml
  2. 👆 When a user selects text in any app and chooses your action, your activity is launched
  3. 📊 The plugin retrieves the selected text and provides it to your Flutter app
  4. 🔄 Your app processes the text and optionally returns modified text
  5. 🏁 The activity finishes and returns to the calling app

⚠️ Limitations

  • 📱 Only works on Android 6.0 (API level 23) or higher
  • 🌐 Your action will appear in every text selection context in all apps
  • 🔍 You cannot filter when your action appears based on text content
  • 🚫 Services cannot be directly triggered by ACTION_PROCESS_TEXT

🔮 Use Cases

  • 📚 Dictionary/definition lookup
  • 🌐 Translation services
  • 🔍 Search in your app
  • 📊 Analysis or statistics
  • 🔤 Text formatting/transformation

📱 Example Apps Using Similar Functionality

  • 📖 Wikipedia (Search Wikipedia)
  • 🌐 Google Translate (Translate)
  • 🔍 Google Search (Web Search)

🚀 Planned Features

The following features are planned for future releases:

  • 🎨 Rich Text Support - Handle formatted text (HTML, markdown) with styling preserved
  • 🔄 Batch Processing - Process multiple text selections at once
  • 🌐 Enhanced Translation - Built-in translation capabilities with multiple language support
  • 📊 Text Analytics - Word count, readability scores, and other text metrics
  • ⚙️ Advanced Configuration - More options to control when and how your action appears
  • 🔒 Enhanced Security - Additional security features for sensitive text processing
  • 📦 Pre-built Processors - Common text processors ready to use out of the box
  • 📄 Multi-platform Support - Exploring options for similar functionality on other platforms

🐛 Troubleshooting

Common Issues

  • Action doesn't appear: Make sure you're running Android 6.0+ and have correctly configured your AndroidManifest.xml
  • SecurityException: Avoid using android:exported="false" in your activity declaration
  • Activity not launching: Ensure your activity class name matches exactly what's in the manifest

👨‍💻 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

📧 Contact

If you have any questions or feedback, please open an issue on the GitHub repository.

Made with ❤️ by Lokesh Jangid

Libraries

global_context_menu