Herald for Android: your Hermes Agent bots on an Android phone

Requirements

Phone

An Android phone. “Hey Herald” needs Android 13 or later.

Hermes

Running on your computer or server, paired with npx herald-setup

Push notifications

The Google Play build, plus the hermes-bot-push plugin on your computer

Purchase

Google Play, separate from the App Store purchase

Android and iPhone side by side

The ongoing Hermes Pet notification

Android gets its own version of the iPhone Live Activity. While a bot works on a long task, Herald posts one ongoing notification: the bot’s name as the title, a status line at the detail level you chose, the pet’s current pose as the icon and a timer counting from when the task started. It stays put while the task runs, and the finished state lingers for two minutes. “Hermes needs you” goes on a higher-importance channel so it can peek over what you are doing. On Android 16, the system may lift it into a chip in the status bar.

Settings › General › Hermes Pet › Lock Screen notification controls it. Herald needs notification permission and posts nothing until you grant it; switching the setting on asks for it. Like the iPhone card, it updates only while Herald is running; once Android suspends the app it stops changing until you come back.

Hands-free voice on Android

The wake word uses Android’s on-device speech recognizer, never a server, so it needs Android 13 or later and the offline English speech model. If Settings › General › Voice says the model is missing, install it from your phone’s speech settings.

With Listen with the screen off switched on, Herald keeps listening for “Hey Herald” through a foreground service and shows a “Herald is listening” notification with a Stop button the whole time. If notifications are off for Herald, that notice is hidden but Herald still appears under active apps in Quick Settings. If Android refuses the service, Herald listens only while it is open and Settings explains why.

Set up Herald on Android

1. Install Herald from Google Play

   It is a one-time purchase with no account to create.

2. Run the helper on your computer

   On the computer that runs Hermes, run npx herald-setup. It secures the dashboard, starts hermes serve and prints a QR code.

3. Scan the QR code

   Tap Scan the QR code in Herald and allow the camera. Your bots appear as chats.

4. Turn on push

   Install the hermes-bot-push plugin on the computer, then tap Register under Settings › General › Push notifications. See push notifications.

5. Pick your extras

   In Settings › General, check Lock Screen notification under Hermes Pet and switch on Hands-free under Voice.

Not on Android

• Siri, Control Center and the Action Button. Start voice from a chat’s menu with Talk hands-free, or say “Hey Herald”.
• Live Activities, the Dynamic Island and the StandBy widget. The ongoing notification replaces them.
• Apple Watch and CarPlay. There is no Wear OS or Android Auto app.
• The pet image on notification banners, which only iPhone banners carry.

Privacy on Android

Passwords and tokens are kept in Keystore-backed encrypted storage. Herald has no analytics, ads or crash reporters. Your phone talks straight to your Hermes, and plain HTTP is only allowed to local and tailnet addresses. Push is opt-in: after you tap Register, your Hermes stores this phone’s push token and the plugin sends short banners through Expo and Firebase. The privacy policy lists exactly what goes where.