[How to do instruction] Set up Android browsers

[TheOldPresbyope]

Background

Often overlooked, the moOde setup.txt instructions begin with the note

NOTE: Use http://moode, moode.local or IP address, whichever works on your network. Typically Android OS will only work with IP address.

If you enter "moode.local" into the search bar of the Chrome browser on your Android device, instead of launching your moOde UI, Chrome will return a list of hits on various Internet websites. Firefox, on the other hand, just reports it can't find the server at "www.moode.local".

It turns out that mDNS, the technology which resolves the IP address of a hostname in the ".local" top-level domain, is implemented in Android OS but it is not exposed to Android web browsers. Here's how we can take advantage of other peoples' work to access it.

On your Android device

1. Go to the Google Play Store and from it install a suitable app for discovering mDNS services. There are many to choose from. Two which have been found to be useful for our purpose are
   • Zentri Discovery
     
   • Bonjour Search
     
2. Start your chosen app. Here, for example, is Zentri Discovery reporting on my LAN
   
   
   
   
   Note that Zentri Discovery reports all mDNS services it finds on the LAN and not just moOde players.
   
   
3. Click on the entry for your moOde player.
   
   
4. et voilà, your default web browser will open on the moOde UI.
   
   
5. With Chrome you can go a step further and create an Android Home Screen shortcut for your moOde UI. Click on the three-dot icon in the upper-right corner of the browser and select "Add to Home Screen". Now you can simply click on the custom icon on your Home Screen to open the moOde UI in full-screen mode. 
   
   Here, for example, is the Home Screen on my Nexus 6P phone with shortcuts for three different moOde players on my LAN.
   
   
   
   
   Note that the Android Opera and the Android Firefox browsers can also create a Home Screen shortcut, as can be seen above, but the shortcuts created will open the respective browser in normal mode, not full-screen mode. In Android Opera, the menu function is simply "Home Screen". In Android Firefox, it's "Page > Add Page Shortcut".
   

(Thanks and a tip of the hat to @deztiny who pointed out how to do this in Android Firefox)