Siesta input agent (IME and accessibility)

Siesta is a small Android app that Lusiesta Studio installs on the phones in your farm. It works in two roles at once: as an input keyboard and as an accessibility service. Without it part of the automation becomes unreliable, and warmup and publishing tasks will not start at all. Below is what it is, how to install the agent and how to make sure it really turned on.

What the Siesta agent is

The agent is a separate APK with the package id com.siesta.fastinput. It has two parts inside:

• Input keyboard (IME) - the system input method the app uses to type text into fields on the phone.
• Accessibility service - through it the agent reads the tree of on-screen elements, so scenarios find buttons instead of tapping blindly at coordinates.

The agent never needs root anywhere. The APK is not bundled with the Lusiesta Studio installer: it is downloaded from the server on demand, verified by a cryptographic signature before installation and stored on the computer in encrypted form. You cannot slip your own file in instead - an APK without a valid signature will not be installed.

Why you need it

• Reliable text input. System keyboards differ on every phone: layouts, autocorrect, suggestions, their own popup panels. The agent gives you predictable input of descriptions, tags and comments.
• Screen reading. Scenarios rely on the interface tree, so they work across different firmwares and on app clones where element identifiers change.
• A second preview engine. Besides H.264 streaming, the app can show the screen through capture performed by the agent itself (frames are assembled on the phone and delivered as JPEG). This mode saves the day on phones where hardware video encoding fails. In the settings it is labelled "APK": "Settings", the "Interface" tab, the "Grid" section, the "Streaming mode" option with the values "Auto", "APK" and "H.264".

Before warmup and publishing tasks the app checks the agent in advance, so it does not run a scenario for nothing. If the agent is missing, the task fails right away: "The agent is not installed on the device. Open the main menu and click 'Initialize agent', then start the task again."

How to install the agent

1. Connect the phone over USB and wait until it appears in the grid on the "Home" page. If the device is not visible, sort out the connection first: Connecting a phone over ADB.
2. Select the devices you need by clicking their cards. If exactly one phone is connected, there is nothing to select - the app will pick it up itself. If there are several phones and nothing is selected, you will see the hint "Select a device (click a card) - several are connected."
3. In the "Quick actions" panel on the right, click "Initialize agent" (the caption underneath reads "Prepare the helper").
4. Wait for the green status line in the device log - something like "agent installed v6, accessibility enabled, keyboard active". A red line ("agent NOT installed", "accessibility DISABLED") means the setup did not go through, and the reason is printed right next to it. Initialization runs in parallel on all selected phones.

What happens under the hood: the app clears its local cache and pulls a fresh APK from the server, installs it over the old one, and if the old version blocks the update, removes it and installs from scratch. The agent is then granted the system permission to change protected settings, after which it enables its own accessibility service and keyboard. On top of that, the client switches on the Siesta keyboard and adds the agent service to the enabled list without wiping other services that are already enabled.

Initialization requires a connection to the server and an active account login: the APK is physically not inside the installer. Without internet you will get "Could not fetch the agent from the server - an online login is required." That is why it is convenient to roll the agent out to the whole farm at once while you are connected.

What the phone may ask for

On most firmwares you do not have to touch the phone at all, the agent enables itself. Possible exceptions:

• Strict firmwares (OPPO, Vivo, Xiaomi, for example) often forbid enabling accessibility programmatically. In that case access has to be confirmed by hand on the phone screen - once.
• Keyboard switch. Siesta becomes the active input method. For a farm phone that is perfectly fine: it is driven by automation, not by a person.
• Screen recording prompt. If the preview runs in capture mode, a system dialog appears at start with a "Start", "Start now" or "Allow" button. The app looks for that button in the interface tree and taps it itself, but the dialog looks different across Android versions, so sometimes it is easier to confirm consent manually. If there is no picture at all, see No device previews.

How to tell that the agent is working

1. Select the device and click "Open agent" in "Quick actions" - the Siesta app screen opens on the phone.
2. There are two indicators on that screen: "Accessibility" and "Input keyboard". Both must be green, and the status at the top must read "Connected · everything works".
3. The "Connecting automatically…" status means permission has been granted and the agent is enabling itself. Wait a couple of seconds and look again.
4. The "Needs to be enabled" status means the automatic path did not go through: tap "Enable manually" on the phone, find Siesta in the system list that opens and confirm access.

The second way to check is the practical one: start a short task (a few minutes of warmup, for example) and open the "Logs" page. If the agent is missing or has not been granted access, the task will not start, and the result will tell you exactly what to do.

If the agent will not install or will not turn on

• "Could not fetch the agent from the server" - check your internet connection and account login, then run initialization again.
• Installation breaks off, the phone drops out mid-process - this is almost always power or the cable, not the agent. Details in USB cables: why you should not cut corners.
• The agent is installed but the indicators are off - open Siesta on the phone and tap "Enable manually". The same screen has an "App settings" button, a convenient way to lift firmware restrictions.
• The service turns itself off after a while - that is battery saving at work. Add Siesta to the autostart and battery optimization exceptions, then run initialization again.
• A task reports that the agent has no accessibility access - the fix is the same: open Siesta on the phone, tap "Enable manually", confirm access and start the task again.

If nothing helps, capture an error report straight from the task: the bundle includes a screenshot and the interface tree at the moment of the failure, and they show exactly which step everything stalled on.

When to reinstall the agent

The "Initialize agent" button always pulls the latest version from the server, so it is worth pressing: after a client update, after a factory reset of the phone, after swapping a device, and simply whenever text input or previews behave strangely. There is no need to remove the old version separately - an incompatible one is replaced automatically. The operation is idempotent: you can press the button as many times as you like, it will not do anything extra.