[AnhDuck]

Brings back Gboard's floating voice toolbar for Rambler dictation. While dictating, a new ⏬ button next to ✓ shrinks the keyboard into a small floating bar. Dictation keeps going, and ⌨ brings the full keyboard back.

Closes #98

What changed

• It's Google's own feature. Gboard already ships this toolbar for Rambler. PixelBoard forced a flag (enable_rambler_al_toolbar) on, which swaps in Google's newer Rambler bar, and that bar has no minimize button. PixelBoard now forces the flag off while Rambler is selected, which brings back the older bar and its floating toolbar.
• The custom part is where the minimize button sits. With the flag off, Google puts ⏬ where ✕ normally is, so you can't cancel. This PR keeps ✕ on the left and moves ⏬ next to ✓, the same spot as the Minimize button in regular voice typing.
• Screen reader labels. Google's code labels every button on this bar "Close Rambler", so TalkBack would read ✕, ⏬ and ⌨ the same way. ⏬ is now read as "Minimize keyboard" and ⌨ as "Back to keyboard", using Gboard's existing translated text.

  Rambler bar
- [✕]                    [✓]    PixelBoard today (no minimize)
- [⏬]                   [✓]    Google's older bar as shipped (no cancel)
+ [✕]               [⏬] [✓]    This PR

There's no new setting.

Before and after

Tablet (Xiaomi Pad 7). Tap an image to open it full size.

	Before	After
Rambler bar
Minimized	No minimize button
Docked at the bottom	No minimize button

Phone (Galaxy S24+, after):

Rambler bar	Minimized

Full-quality phone video (MP4)

Testing

• ./gradlew test passes (349 tests), including new tests for the flag, the minimize key bookkeeping and the patch wiring. I checked the patched code itself by building the APK and decoding it.
• I patched stock Gboard 18.5.3 and tested it on two devices:
  • Xiaomi Pad 7: ⏬ minimizes, ⌨ brings the keyboard back, ✕ cancels and ✓ finishes. Dictation keeps going through minimize and restore. The floating bar can be dragged and docks at the bottom. The normal keyboard and regular voice typing don't get an extra button. Battery (Battery drain: Rambler keeps GoogleAsrService bound after dictation (candidate fix tested) #3): after pressing Home while minimized, the mic turns off and Google's speech service isn't left running.
  • Samsung Galaxy S24+ (Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, Android 17): minimize, drag, dock, restore and finish while dictating, as shown in the video above. I also read the screen reader labels from Android's accessibility tree: "Close Rambler", "Minimize keyboard" and "Insert text" on the bar, and "Back to keyboard" and "Insert text" on the floating bar.

Not covered

• I only tested Gboard 18.5.3. On other versions the flag change still applies, but ⏬ stays in Google's spot in place of ✕.
• Regular voice typing's floating bar can also go vertical and snap to the left or right edge. The Rambler bar doesn't, and this PR doesn't add that.
• While the floating bar is animating to your voice, it can't be dragged until you pause. That's Gboard's own behavior.

Risk

Easy to undo: reverting this PR brings back today's Rambler bar. It only changes the Rambler bar while Rambler is the selected voice typing engine.

Technical details

• Flag. enable_rambler_al_toolbar (mra.n in 18.5.3) picks between Google's AL toolbar (flv: ✕ and ✓ only, not draggable) and the classic Rambler widget (flw: draggable, docks at the bottom). When it's false, fll hands the live Rambler session between the keyboard header and the widget, and the header's flz.D() returns the minimize key (avn(7) → msg.m(), enter the Rambler widget) instead of the close key. PixelBoard had the flag in AGENTIC_FEATURE_FLAGS, so it was forced on. GboardRambler1803StockPolicy now returns false for it while Rambler is selected and leaves it alone otherwise.
• GboardRamblerMinimizeKeyPatch (18.5.3 targets only; it does nothing if any target is missing):
  • flz.D(): add Gboard's minimize key to key_pos_header_end_extra_key (mub.a), the slot stock voice typing uses for Minimize, then return the stock close key (E(u())) for the close slot.
  • flb.I(...) (header teardown): remove the key from the end slot (mue.a).
  • flz.W(...): Rambler hides the other header slots, so show the end slot again afterwards.
  • flz.D() and flw.D() (the floating widget's ⌨ key): F(icon, action) is C(icon, action) + label "Close Rambler" (0x7f14004a) + a(). Both keys are now built with C() and labelled with mtm.h(): 0x7f14167c "Minimize keyboard" (stock voice typing's Minimize label) and 0x7f1401ab "Back to keyboard".
  • GboardRamblerMinimizeKeyRuntime looks up the slot id by name and remembers whether it placed the key, so teardown only removes what it added.
• Three new RuntimeCallId entries. No new settings, strings or resources; the labels are Gboard's own strings.

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Written with Claude Opus 5.5. Reviewed by GPT-6.1 Sol (high reasoning) over 2 rounds: round 1 found the screen reader labels, and round 2 found no issues. Tested on a Samsung Galaxy S24+ (Snapdragon 8 Gen 3) and a Xiaomi Pad 7.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[Akshayykadam]

Thanks a lot for the high-quality contribution, @AnhDuck! LGTM! Merging now.