Let all apps read my external SD card I have an external SD card, and I want to keep it that way.
I have lots of files on it sorted how I prefer. But now all my apps that I've saved data from or use to open files can't access the external SD card.

I've gone to app permissions and made sure they have storage. I just want them to have full access to my SD card, because, well, it's my SD card.

TitaniumBackup won't backup to it's folder anymore, says no space even though there are gigs free. My camera app won't save to the external dir I've put my pictures in. My music app won't give me a list of the files in the directory where I've sorted my music. Is there any way to just force MM to just let those apps have full access to my SD card?
I can browse the SD card with ESExplorer.

Sometimes CyanogenMOD messes with the SD card paths after rooting. If that is the case, you will need to use a terminal emulator to correct the path to /sdcard/external_sd

Make the external_sd folder in your SD card first. Then through the emulator use the command

su

mount -o bind your_current_path_as_per_es_explorer /sdcard/external_sd


How to type a pipe "|" on an HTC EVO Android 2.2? I am using Connect Bot on my HTC EVO Android Version 2.2, and on the keyboard I do not see a "|".  How do I type a pipe, "|" character?  I am trying to run a ps -ef | grep XYZ command.

If you're using stock keyboard, then go to the symbols (?123, bottom left), then press Alt (ALT, vertically second from bottom left), the pipe character is third from top-left.

If on HTC IME, then go to symbols (12#, horizontally second from bottom right), go to the second page (1/2, horizontally second from bottom left), the pipe character is the fifth character in the third row, and the broken pipe character is the sixth character in the second row.


What is KingoRoot error code 0x15F6D5? I'm currently rooting a Samsung J1 Ace in Android 5.1.1 using KingoRoot in order to give Link2SD root access and move the apps, music, and other data files from its internal storage to a SD card. The internal hard drive has 8 GB and is almost full to the point where it can't update apps.

I've downloaded KingoRoot through the mobile browser as an APK file and enabled USB debugging. After a few minutes, it reports that the rooting process has failed and reports ERROR CODE: 0x15F6D5. I searched through forums and have found nothing on this error code.

What is it and how do I avoid it?

I don't think this phone model on this Android version can be rooted using any one-click method, especially those using  apps! Those apps/softwares seem to since from android 5 (Lollipop).

You can still try the desktop version which I doubt will succeed.

Only Chainfire's rooting method can work. Works on every Samsung devices I had to root. The method consists of flashing a modified recovery by entering the device in Download mode.

Also, I'll recommend you heading to XDA Developers  for extra details.

Follow the instructions form this site. Or this detailed rooting process from XDA Developers. Alternative solution from Tsar3000 site.

Find all rooting files for many Samsung devices from the developer's site.


syslog shows a bunch of FF messages When I run dmesg I see a bunch of these errors,
FF SUSPEND INT                  0 ?\x09
FF WAKEUP                       0 ?\x09
FF GAD SUS                      0 ?\x09

What do these mean? Is this normal?

The OnePlus 7 Pro port is named "guacamole". You can find the source code at LineageOS/android_device_oneplus_guacamole. You may want to search for the error here, but if you can't find it check inside the setup-makefile.sh, you'll find the line,
export DEVICE_COMMON=sm8150-common

That means the kernel's source code is located LineageOS/android_kernel_oneplus_sm8150. You can also find this link on the in the documentation page for the port under "kernel link".
If you do a search in the LineageOS/android_kernel_oneplus_sm8150 repository for "GAD SUS" in that repository you'll find the source of this error which is drivers/usb/dwc3/gadget.c:3654. So the problem is in USB Dual Role Device, which is an ASIC driver described as,

The Synopsys DesignWare® USB 3.0 Dual-Role Device (DRD) Controller is a set of synthesizable soft IP that ASIC/FPGA designers can use to implement a complete USB 3.0 DRD for 5 Gbps speeds. The USB 3.0 DRD Controller is compliant with the specifications for SuperSpeed, High-Speed, Full-Speed, and Low-Speed USB speeds. Optimizing development time and minimizing engineering risk, the DesignWare USB 3.0 DRD Controller helps designers bring their host and peripheral designs to market faster for wired and wireless applications such as smart phones, tablets, TVs, set-top boxes, cameras, modems, game consoles, PCs, and telecommunications equipment. In addition, the IP is silicon proven in design process nodes from 180-nm to 7-nm.


Galaxy S2, Hangouts app deletes incoming text messages Incoming SMS messages tend to get deleted immediately on my Galaxy S2. The original messages app does not cause any issues, but if I turn on hangouts it goes nits.

Edit: were talking about an unrooted galaxy s2 with the latest Samsung firmware. If I disable hangout sms feature everything is fine.  Funny thing there was a big period of time when hangouts worked flawlessly.  I guess the desire is to use hangouts for sms if possible.

There could possibly be a bug which is causing the app to Delete the latest incoming messages .

Un-install the application.
Power off and wait for 2-3mins
Switch ON the device and install the App from the Play store
Check for and install the latest updates for Hangouts from the play
store

Always keep your applications up to date in order to avoid some bugs like this in the future


What's the difference between the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active ST17i, the ST17i-BKW, ST17a, and the ST17a-BKO? I am interested in buying Sony Ericcson Xperia Active (unlocked) but there are several choices and I can't figure out which phone is which. Can someone explain to me the difference? Thanks!

AFAIK not much other than the frequency bands they operate on:

ST17i: (i = International version) Dual-band

UMTS HSPA 900 (Band VIII), 2100 (Band I)

GSM GPRS/EDGE 850, 900, 1800, 1900

ST17a: (a = American version) Tri-band

UMTS HSPA 800 (Band V), 1900 (Band II), 2100 (Band I)

GSM GPRS/EDGE 850, 900, 1800, 1900


Micromax Canvas A1 is unable to install apps from Google Play Store I have a Micromax Canvas A1 device. I can open Play Store and can search the apps. But, when I click Install, it just shows (endless) download animation and no actual downloading happens.

An example:

Process is stuck in installation phase and no further progress nor even any notification hapens.

I've tried so far:

Clearing Google Play Store data and cache.
Doing factory reset of the device.

Still nothing. Anything else, I can try?

Backup your phone. Do a hard data reset (note, that this is different from a factory reset):

Press Volume Up + Volume Down + Power Button all at once.
Press Volume Up.
Go to recovery and then select wipe data/factory reset.

If you are facing any troubles, then this link should be helpful for you.


What private data can apps access without any specified permissions? Let's say an app doesn't require any permissions at all. What could that app access that could be a potential privacy risk? Other app usage? List of installed apps? Check is my screen unlocked? Google Analytics?

Permissions change with practically with every Android version , so without specifying the Android version, it is difficult to answer. Notwithstanding that, for a primer on permissions and to see how how crazy, it actually is, see The Android authorization model: a perfidious construct

Sourced from Izzy's blog (thanks)

*Permissions do not define what all an app can access, which is covered in Irfan's answer. Also see Izzy's primer on permissions

App description of XPrivacy Lua, which is an Xposed module, to protect privacy. Information below can be accessed without permissions (readers are welcome to add)

  Use analytics (Fabric/Crashlytics, Facebook
  app events, Firebase Analytics, Google Analytic, Mixpanel, Segment)
  Usetracking ( user agent for WebView only, Build properties,
  network/SIM country/operator)


Sleeping Cat, Mint Room, and Giraffe. Anyone know what these files are? In trying to make room in storage on my LG phone, I ran across 3 "apps" or files that I have never downloaded nor heard of and I have no idea how to find out what they are. Sleeping Cat, Mint Room, and Giraffe are their names, my question is if anyone knows what they could be and if I can delete them safely.

I don't know the location of this files and also the filetype, but you can try to rename the files and reboot and see what happend, if you face any problems by using an app you can rename it to the original filename.


adb: Restoration of a backup on Acer Icionia 7 fails by error "archive is encrypted but no password given" Due to some problems with my Acer Iconia 7 tablet (with KitKat 4.4) I decided to perform factory reset. However, because I have there some data that I did not want to lose I created a backup in HoloBackup. The backup was created succesfully (it has around 1 GB), but when I try to restore it, the process fails by error adb: archive is encrypted but no password given.
Now, at this point, I do not understand, because in developer settings I set a password to protect the backup feature of the tablet. But the error message sounds like a password protection is actually required for the .ab file itself. But in the settings nor in HoloBackup, I cannot see any way how to do it.
Can you help me please. Thank you.

Thanks to alexcs I was able to get it working, so here are the steps to solve the issue:

You need to convert the .ab file to unencrypted .tar archive, first. To do that, follow next steps.
If you have not installed Java SE on your computer yet, download it and install.
Download android-backup-extractor from SourceForge and extract it.
Now open Windows Explorer and locate the folder, to which you unpacked that archive.
Navigate to ...\android-backup-tookit\android-backup-extractor\android-backup-extractor-20180521-bin
Open the folder, where is located your .ab backup, in a new window and copy the abe.jar executable from android-backup-extractor-20180521-bin folder and paste it here.
Now open command-line or Windows PowerShell and use the cd "path" command (for example cd "C:\omegavesko-HoloBackup-179d978\Backups" to change your parent directory to the folder, in which is stored your .ab file
Now convert the .ab file to unencrypted .tar archive by entering this command: java -jar abe.jar unpack [file name of the original .ab file] [file name of the output file],(for example java -jar abe.jar unpack backup_june_2020.ab output.tar).
Now unlock the .ab file by entering password, which should be the same as the password you are using to unlock the backup function of your device.
Wait, until the process is not finished (the size of the .tar file will stop grow) .
Now convert the .tar file to unencrypted .ab file, using command: java -jar abe.jar pack [file name of the converted backup file] [file name of the new .ab backup](for example: java -jar abe.jar pack output.tar backup_june_2020_fixed.ab)
Wait, until the process is not finished.
Now navigate to the directory, where is executable HoloBackup.exe (for example cd "C:\omegavesko-HoloBackup-179d978")
Now power on your android device, connect it via USB and eventually make other neccesary settings.
Restore the backup by using command .\adb restore "file path" (for example adb restore "C:\omegavesko-HoloBackup-179d978\backups\backup_june_2020_fixed.ab")
Enter the password on your device to unlock the backup function.
Wait until the process finishes.


Hide Alarm icon in the status bar I have at least one alarm set to go off daily so the "alarm clock" icon on my notification bar is really pointless.

Is there a way to make this icon hidden in Android Froyo or Android Gingerbread?

On Android Marshmallow, you can use the hidden System UI Tuner.

Open the quick-setting panel, then press and hold the Settings' cog wheel until it starts spinning. You then get an additional settings entry in System > System UI Tuner > Status bar, where you can hide the alarm.


How do you get Android OS bugs fixed? I recently got an HTC Shift from Sprint. Within days of getting it, I noticed very bad issues with the phone losing sync to 4g, 3g, and wifi; it would not reacquire data connections unless I manually turned 4g on and off. Their tech support people immediately reset the phone to defaults, blamed my problems on an app, and declared victory.

I don't call this a victory. They treated symptoms, but the real problem (assuming it was an application issue) is that the Android OS allowed an application to routinely get their networking stack in a foobar'd state.

Assuming I can reproduce this problem, what is the best way to resolve it?

I assume from your posting that resetting the phone fixed the problem (temporarily).

If you want the problem fixed for good, you can help by trying to narrow down the problem further. This will allow you to address the right people with a very specific request of what needs to be fixed. You should:

Try to reproduce the problem. Install the apps you previously had on your phone one by one until the problem re-occurs.
If you can't reproduce it, there is not much chance of getting this anywhere further. If you can reproduce it:
Try the offending application on a different type and brand of phone.
If the problem exists on all phones, contact the author of the application about the problem and consider raising an issue with Google on their Issue tracker.
Otherwise try the offending application on a different phone of the same model and brand. If the problem occurs there too, contact HTC telling them which application has that effect and on which phone is does have that effect. Also consider filing and issue with Google as above.
Otherwise, if only your phone is affected, it's probably save to assume it's a hardware defect with your phone. Return it for repairs.


Question about data storage after deletion of app I am using Android 6.0.1 though i'm not sure that would make a difference with my question. So my question is after an app has been uninstalled through Settings --> Apps and then clicking the "Uninstall" button after selecting the particular app is there, in general, any evidence left on the phone that the app was ever installed? Secondly, if so how can that evidence be removed? Sort of like how a browser has a "browser history" after you've visited sites is there anything analogous in a history or a cache of some sort that can be recovered to see that the app was once on the phone and OS (barring a sophisticated forensic analysis). If i were to hand the phone to someone who is tech savvy or knows their way around android would they be able to ascertain that the app was once there?

Basically yes, any kind of data erased from a memory can be recovered since the space is "marked" as empty so new datas can be overwritten over them.
Those datas can be easily recovered with software like Recuva or more advanced forensic tools. You need to overwrite them with a third-party software.

On Android this can be achieved with apps like Secure Eraser. (
This kind of applications can not guarantee 100% that the data have been permanently erased)

Also remember that a list of the applications downloaded from Google Play is available on GPlay app under the App > My Apps tab. You can also see them from a web browser on this page after logging-in to your Google Account.


Remove Play Store access without removing Play Services I have built AOSP for the kiddo's phone. My goal was to remove the Play Store so that he can't install games or other apps.

However, we use Google Fi for our phone service, which requires Google Play services to function. That alone isn't a big deal using Open Gapps. However, I would like to remove the Play Store, but keep Google play services so that the Fi app can be used.

From what I can tell, Play Store and Play Services seem to be married (i.e., removing Phonesky.apk with Titanium Backup removes both the Play Store and Play Services).

Is there any way that I can remove the Play Store, but keep access to Play Services so that the phone can still register through Google Fi?

Note: this is on a rooted Pixel 1. AOSP is not a strict requirement, just something I was trying to use to solve my problem. If it can be done on, i.e., the stock ROM that'd be great too.

Note 2: I realize the Play Store can be disabled in the apps settings, but this kid is smart enough to figure that one out. I also tried hiding it in Nova Launcher Prime, but it still shows up in search results within the launcher.

For my purpose, the following works in adb shell (as root):

pm disable com.android.vending

Of course, now I need to figure out a way to make this persist over a factory reset...


Is it possible to connect to chromecast through router while still using data network for internet? Here's the setup I am envisioning:

Chromecast and android phone both connected to a WiFi router/hotspot (has x amount of data usage). My phone however has unlimited data usage and I would like to pull external content (soundcloud/netflix/youtube/etc) from my phones data network while letting the Chromecast pull data using the hotspot network.

I would be mirroring my display to the Chromecast so the Chromecast should only have to get very minimal amounts of data.

Is this possible? How can I do it? I've tried even hooking both the Chromecast and the phone to an isolated wireless router (no internet) and unfortunately my phone does not fall back to using data.

I've been able to set up a hotspot on my phone and use a third android device to pair the chromecast to that hotspot. After that you can screen cast to the chromecast no problem. (ignore the wifi not on part - it will work anyways)

The third device won't be necessary after the initial setup process.


Multiple tethering icon stuck in Notification bar of CM12 (for OnePlus One) Device: OnePlus One
Android: CM12 (0YL).
Status: Rooted, Xposed Framework installed.

Whenever I activate both USB tethering and Wifi hotspot, the icon  appears in Notification bar to signify that multiple tethering connections are activated. The problem is whenever I disable wifi hotspot and USB tethering their corresponding icons disappear as usual but this icon  remains stuck in the bar. The icon disappears after reboot but that's not how I want to get rid of this icon.

I tried enabling (again) both USB tethering and wifi hotspot and disabling them altogether but the icon always persist.

What should I do to get rid of this icon other than to reboot?

Edit: What's the reason behind this issue?

I want to avoid Factory-reset or flashing the ROM.

I have my icons get stuck or not show up a lot on the notification bar. Most of the time when I reboot to recovery and wipe the system cache it fixes it. Try that.


No operating system/no anything! I have a Samsung Galaxy s3  SGH-I747, I had rooted the phone and had success and tried different ROM's before deciding one I wanted to go back with and stick with.  I had booted my phone into recovery however and left it laying out (ADHD sidetracked me) returned and discovered a friend had accidentally wiped everything- INCLUDING MY BACKUP-he thought I said the backup was on the external sd card, which he noticed wasn't in.  So I have no back-up, no operating system and no firmware because of something with Kies? (it says this on the phone screen???)  which has me completely baffled, because I rooted with Odin.  So, no os, no rom, nothing.........what do I do?

Copy a ROM from your PC to your phone. Flash the ROM in recovery. You may have to reinstall the Samsung drivers on your PC.

Don't worry about this. You still have recovery intact. Keep yourself a SD card with a ROM and GApps on it.

*Always Do a Backup*


How to upgrade to Android 2.3 from 2.2? Possible Duplicate:
  How do I update the OS in my device?

I own a Sidekick 4g currently running Android 2.2 (Froyo) and I want to upgrade to 2.3 (Gingerbread) to use my front camera on video chat with family on Skype. How do I upgrade my Sidekick?

If there is an official update to Android 2.3 (check the post on Gingerbread updates) then you'll get a notice on your phone (eventually). Just follow the instructions.

If there's not an official update and you don't want to wait for one, you'll need to root your phone and install a Custom ROM.


How can I disable auto-updating of Market apps? Is there any way that to turn off auto update of Android Market apps? My phone prompts me for available updates and it runs in the background, and I think it's sapping precious battery power.

Yes, change the notification settings in Market -> (Menu button/Action Bar Button depending on device) Settings.


I like the HTC interface additions to Android, but I have a non-HTC phone. Is there a way I can get them anyway? From the list of on-topic questions in this SE's definition phase

In order to do this, you would need a rooted phone, and flash a custom ROM with the HTC interface (called Sense) built in. Depending on your phone, it may or may not be there (more likely not).


Problem PC stopped seeing S4 My S4 has suddenly stopped to connect to any computer. I tried with 3 different cables and 2 PC's with win7. I can't see it as a hard-drive. I can't see it in the device manager either (should I)?
Any help would be welcome.
Many thanks!

Uninstall the drivers from Samsung and download and install then again on your PC this seems to be an driver problem. If this not resolve your problem come back and I can suggest other options.

Does your phone recharge when plugged in?

Any sound on your PC when you connect or any notification on your phone about being connected via USB?


Can I get rid of "Sound Search for Google Play"? An app called "Sound Search for Google Play" is apparently eating all of my battery. Can I get rid of it? I tried clicking it, disabling it and "uninstalling update", but it still seems to eat away at my battery. Right now it shows me a disabled "Force stop" button and an "Enable" button.

Screenshot (click image for larger variant)

This is on the latest version of Paranoid Android for Oppo Find 5.

Download wakelock detector from the google play store, try to reproduce it for a day, open wakelock detector and it will show you cpu and partial wakelocks (will only show partial wakelocks if you enable advanced mode), if the largest cpu wakelock is "PowerManagerServiceWakelock" this means the largest wakelock is the combination of all the items listed in partial wakelocks.

I would suggest (if it happens again) looking for anything over 7% and doing a web search for the wakelock name, and seeing what you can find.

If it doesn't happen again, problem solved.

This is probably not sound search for google plays fault, rather another app is calling it, or it is something different entirely.


How to select a Non OEM USB Type C charger or cable for my device? Internet is replete with reports of problems of Type C accessories. Also reported here, Can a faulty Micro-USB cable cause damage to your device?

How do I go about selecting right cable or charger , assuming I have a Pixel ?

Note: This is a self answered question drawing from the spadework in answering a different question and felt it may be useful to share, given Type C is gaining popularity.  Additional answers are of of course welcome ! Guidelines in answer are not restricted to Pixel .

USB C Chargers/ Cables are a minefield - In implementation

The standards (as they should) are said to clear and consistent but implementation has been shoddy causing multiple problems and even burnouts. One Plus pioneered Type C on Android (One Plus Two) and set a wrong precedent by saving few cents, maybe, with a non- standard resistor . They are not the only ones, Apple and Google too , to an extent ( not to forget laptops )
Coming to Google, sample this, quoted from reddit post Please ELI5:Chargers, charging cables, and safety for my Pixel
where Nathan K  , says :

On buying USB cables having USB_IF certification (USB C )

  USB-IF Certification testing costs money -- lots of money. $10,000 per product. So a lot of generic manufacturers simply do not do it. Instead, they make products by the seat-of-their-pants. Others, like Apple and Google say "Screw the USB-IF, we know better than them. We can self-certify." So products you buy in an Apple Store or from Google may not have a USB-IF logo, but are (mostly) good. (There are some exceptions I've discovered, noted in my list.)

(Emphasis supplied)

On Chargers

  ...Google sells people on buying a $35 USB-PD charger its own product doesn't even utilize. The only time it would be used is with expensive peripherals like charge-through hubs.

( I am not sure what exactly is not utilized, haven't researched further   )

So, whom to trust ?

Nathan K is an independent tester, not affiliated to anyone (Google Plus ). Benson Leung is a Google software engineer ( Google Plus ). Individually and collectively, they carry out tests of practically any USB Type C equipment , chargers and cables and publish them on Google Plus.

They are doing a yeoman service by advising users on choosing right USB Type C accessories and their testing has at times forced prominent brands to remove products from sale (Anker, for example, see their blogs for more examples

Browse their blogs for the right accessory for your device and you may reach out to them on reddit / Google Plus

For Pixel users

You have it on a platter ! Nathan and Benson together they have curated a list of accessories that are tested for your device (details here ). Consider buying charger and cable based on the recommendations linked above (make sure look at the column titled "IR Drop compensation" (should have that). That is a very important feature to correctly charge

You will notice that some negatively or low  rated accessories include OEMs like LG, google and Huawei !

Disclaimer: Haven't owned any device with Type C charging and nor I am affiliated anyway with Nathan or Benson

Additional Information

USB Type C over Power Delivery (PD) , is different from Qualcomm Quick Charging. Qualcomm's Quick Charge will not work on a Pixel. The charger will default to a spec-standard current and voltage
What are USB PD Power Rules?
Can Qualcomm QC and USB Type-C coexist on the same connector?- No. Type C specs forbid that (though you will find cables that claim to do this on market- avoid them like plague). For the same reason,  Nexus 6P and 5X do not support QC
USB-PD can only work with a C-C USB cables. A to C cables - (pic here ) cannot charge as per specs (max current possible is 1.5 A)


Why would an APK contain DLL files? I used Archive Manager on Linux Mint to open the APK of a game made with Unity. To my surprise, inside the archive, there is a folder under the path /assets/bin/Data/Managed/ that contains almost 10MB of DLL libraries.
The file command on Linux gives this output on the DLLs:
PE32 executable (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 Mono/.Net assembly, for MS Windows

As far as my understanding goes, those should only be useful on Windows running machines.
Why would anyone load 10MB of useless data in a 50MB APK? Am I missing something here and DLL libraries can in fact be used by Android?

Izzy's guess is correct. Unity is based on Microsoft's .NET programming environment. A Unity game is written in C# and compiled to DLL files (the portable executable format, which is abbreviated to PE32 in the output you included). Unity packages those files along with the game's assets (3D data, textures, videos, sounds, &c.) and the Mono runtime. Mono is an open-source runtime for software made in .NET: it loads the .NET DLL files and executes them.

DLL files can contain executable programs for Windows, or Windows icon files, or compiled .NET code (the .NET equivalent of Java .class files). In a Unity game, it's the last of these options.


Remove Snooze -button in Android Alarm-lock I always by accident hit the Snooze button instead of Alarm -and it is irritating, alarm starting afterwards again. Is there some better alarm -lock with better UI or how can I remove the alarm-lock "Snooze" that is totally useless?

Use Alarm Clock Xtreme. Its reliable & it has everything you want.


How do I remove applications that android automatically downloads, and stop it downloading apps that I don't want automatically? I have an android phone, and every now and again, when I connect to WiFi, I notice it starts automatically downloading updates.

However, it also seems to download/ update a number of default apps, which I never use.

I now find myself running out of space, and don't want to delete the apps I do use (banking, traveling, etc), and don't want to delete photos, videos etc, until I am able to back them up to my computer...

I have tried removing a number of these apps (Flipboard, Google Play Books,  Music, etc, Google +), but they all still seem to be there. When I uninstall them/ set back to factory, they just seem to automatically update again when I next connect to WiFi.

I don't anticipate ever having a need for these apps, so how can I permanently remove them, and remove them from the automatic updates, to free up space for messages, photos, etc?

In general, to prevent auto updates - - Disable auto updates. Google Play Store → Settings → General → Do not auto update
The apps you mentioned seem to be system apps, those that came with the device (not user installed). You can remove  those only if your device is rooted. But this is not going to help you save space as they occupy space on the /system partition, which is not available to you.
However, you can reclaim some space by removing the updates of these apps.  Thanks to Izzy, who pointed in comments (now deleted)

  If the apps are not to be used anyway, better approach is going to Settings › Apps and to disable them altogether – including force-stop and delete cache + data. That way: no more auto-updates for them, cleaner app-drawer, plus space saved (date + cache being removed). And don't forget that those updates indeed use up space outside /system (updates go to /data, regardless of system app or not)

If you need more space You haven't mentioned your device /Android version and whether it supports ext.SD card. If you are on Android version 6 and above you can convert your ext.SD to adoptable-storage or root your device and move apps to ext. SD. If these options are not possible, you are out of luck, barring using a cloud based service to back up


Ethernet and charge via USB type C I have an HTC 10 with the new USB Type C connector. As USB C is also the primary (or only) connector on some laptop style devices such as the Pixel C  and new MacBook, there are many Ethernet and USB hub device - some with some with power.

Will this allow me to have a wired network and charge?

This is essentially the function of the micro USB Ethernet adaptor for Chromecast

It depends completely on the model/brand of the mobile phone - more exactly which drivers for e.g. ethernet chips/adapters that is has integrated in its hardware (since such drivers are not installed in software on mobile phones like this, but they are rather included in the hardware from the start or not).

The following is for example a very common USB-to-ethernet adapter, working for quite many mobile phones (just use a USB-micro-B-to-USB-C wire adapter to be able to plug it into a USB-C mobile phone), but as you can see in the compatibility list a bit down on the page, it depends very much on models and brands of the phones if it will work or not for a specific mobile phone:

https://plugable.com/products/usb2-otge100/

(your specific mobile phone model is not currently in that list, but it lists HTC ONE M9 as working, while listing HTC Desire 612 as not working)

There are also USB 3-based Gigabit ethernet adapters out there (including from the brand in my link above), but beware that these work for a lot fewer mobile phone models, due to the much less widespread inclusion of their drivers in current mobile phone hardware.


Regular maintenance to keep the phone running quickly and smoothly I've noticed that over time my phone has slowed down and feels laggy and less responsive in general.

In the same way you'd get your car serviced every year, what can you run to keep your phone running nicely?

I've got One Click Lag Fix installed and to give an example, the messaging app seemed very slow to load so I deleted all the threads in there but it's still slow regardless.

Here is some performance tips:

Have plenty of extra space in the internal memory. The phone uses the internal memory to store apks and caches, if you have very little internal memory, it might make it difficult for the phone to find contiguous area large enough to store and load the cache. While flash-based storage are not as badly affected by fragmentation as disk-based storage, there will still be a major performance hit if the apks or cache file is fragmented into 1000 pieces.
You should not need to clear caches. The caches are needed for the best performance of the phone. If you clear caches, and you have performance improvement, that's just because you've made an extra space and that makes it easier for new programs to create and load their caches. While you might be happy with this, it is only a temporary fix until the program rebuilds the cache and it becomes sluggish again. Best way to resolve this situation is to keep an amount of empty space (about 10-30% of the internal memory, the optimal figure depends on the size of your internal memory), do not install too many programs and uninstall programs you do not use; this way you prevent program you do not use to build caches you do not use. Prefer small programs, which generally produces smaller caches.
Avoid App2SD for applications you frequently use, unless you have Class 6 or higher SD card. Put only big applications that you do not use frequently on SD card (e.g. games); homescreen, keyboard, and widgets should be in the internal memory for best performance (Android prevents you from installing them on SD card, but it is not impossible to force move them to SD).
Avoid program that have background services and avoid home screen widgets. While there are valid reasons for programs to spawn background service (e.g. Music Player, IM, etc) and while some home screen widgets are very useful; they can degrade performance if you have too many of them. Background service and Home screen widgets will eat up RAMs that the OS cannot reclaim as easily as sleeping applications. Android usually will reclaim memory from unused applications first, but only in very dire circumstances that it kills background services and home screen. This is not an outright ban on background services and home screen widgets; just to be a bit conservative in the use of widgets since no OS in the world can smoothly run more programs than it was designed to handle.


How to install Android on the Touch Pad How can I install Android on the TouchPad? Looking for the latest android mod that can run on the TouchPad and support sound.

Here is a detailed installation guide [XDA];
And an example android 4.1.2 rom(I haven't tried it).
You can find multiple threads for the same at the same subforum (can't post >2 links).


Which are android OS is for tablets and devices? I am interested to know that which are android OS is for tablets and devices among below listed.

Cupcake:

Android 1.5

Donut:

Android 1.6

Eclair:

Android 2.0, also 2.0.1
Android 2.1

Froyo: (short for "frozen yogurt")

Android 2.2, also 2.2.x updates

Gingerbread:

Android 2.3, also 2.3.x updates

Honeycomb:

Android 3.0, also 3.0.x updates
Android 3.1
Android 3.2

Future Versions:

Ice Cream Sandwich:

So far only Honeycomb is a tablet-only version. Other versions are used on phones, tablets and other devices (TVs, android-x86 etc.).


How can I determine the block size of the filesystem on my Android? I'm creating a bunch of flash cards for use with AnkiDroid and many of them contain images or sound files.

I would like to find a balance between image/audio file size, and clarity, without wasting a ton of space with files that exceed a block boundary by just a few bytes.

So I'd like to know how to determine the filesystem block size on any given android device. Is there an easy way to do this?

You can use tune2fs (shell command) for this. The target output entry is 'Block size'. The corresponding block device (mmcblk1p1) depends on your hardware and needs to be replaced respectively.

tune2fs -l /dev/block/mmcblk1p1


How to copy file from PC to android tablet? When I connect the android tablet to windows 7 I get 2 external devices, one of them (H) doesn't open.

When I open G:, I get this

If I want to copy an app (adobe reader) to the tablet, to which folder should I copy it?

This is the screen of the tablet:

Where should I access the folders and files from?

If you have the Android Development Kit (See Bottom) then there is a super easy way to install an application from a file. All you need to do is start up a Terminal and type:

adb install -r <your.apk>

the -r function will replace an existing application with the same name.

No fumbling around with SD cards and no searching your phone for transfered files. If you are an avid Android user then I recommend getting the ADK.

How to install just ADK Binaries


Any equivalent to CCleaner for Android? I found a few questions about freeing internal memory, but they're mainly about deleting apps, moving them to the SD card, or deleting the data/cache. I do that on regular basis so I am looking for something else.

Is there any kind of equivalent of CCleaner for Android? That would help me to find and delete files I can delete?

HTC Desire on CM 7.1

Yes.  SDMaid does an excellent job of finding files abandoned by the system such as interrupted Play APK downloads (cutely called the "basement corpse finder"), shrinking databases and emptying your caches.  It also lists files by size so you can find space hogs, etc.


In Android (Galaxy S), is there a way to automatically sync photos from camera to picasa? I want to have it so that when I take a picture it automatically syncs to a private folder in picasa, is there a native way to do this? or maybe a third party way?

I don't think you can sync automatically on the Galaxy S at present but I understand it is supported in Froyo which is apparently coming to the Galaxy S soon. In the meantime there is an app or two that does this.
PicPush has a free 30 day trial, then costs $4.99. QRCode for the Android Market below

(source: 350nice.com)
Docs Pics apparently does a load of things including syncing files to Picasa. It is free.

I've not used either app yet. I'll update if I get a chance to try them.


ERROR : Unknown error when installing the application "-24" Every time I try to download an app called icoron on my Galaxy note 3 an error message appears,
 Unknown error when installing the application "-24
Can anyone please help me?

Go to /data/data/
search for your app com.cfinc.iconkisekae
(If you wish to keep the information that it contains for the app, Recommend making a copy of it first.)
Delete it
Install the application again.

DONE!!!!

source


huawei p9 lite (emui 4.1.1, Android 6.0) default gallery app add I try to change the default gallery app on my p9 lite mobile. I found the Default app settings menu, where I can override the default settings. But my problem that I installed an app (total commander) and I want to use that app for gallery, but unfortunately that is not on the list.

How can I add an app for that list? Or how can I set installed Total commander for default gallery app?

Thanks for the answers in advance!

Total commander is not a gallery app! It's is a file explorer. How do you expect it to be listed as a gallery app.

You can use QuickPic as an alternative gallery app instead.


Boot loop data recovery Cyanogen mod 9, ClockworkMod Recovery 5.8.9.2

I recently plugged in my phone after the battery completely died over night and the phone is stuck in a bootloop. I left it trying to boot for 30 minutes and it's just stuck.

I've made a backup in clockworkMod recovery and am willing to flash the phone to a newer or the same version of cyanogen but I don't want to lose data.

Is there any way I can make sure my contacts and SMS messages are recovered?

I reinstalled android and lost all my data. Nothing else worked. :(


Inspect Android Browser elements like Desktop Chrome Inspector I'm a web developer (don't know any native Android Development) and would like to inspect any web page in Android's browser without using an emulator.   Is there something available like how you can plug an iPhone into a Mac and use Safari to inspect the page just as if it were a webpage being loaded in the desktop Safari browser?

If this is not available, what is the next best thing?

You can't do this with the old "Android browser", but you can in Chrome, which is downloadable from Google Play and comes installed on all recent Android devices. The feature you're looking for is called Chrome Remote Debugging, and it relies on having Chrome on your desktop and ADB enabled and connected.


How to fix a force close loop on Android with phone access? I have a problem with my Samsung Galaxy S2 (GT-I9100) running Android 2.3.5 stock version.

I'm normal user who used the phone for basic function like making phone calls and using the Google, Facebook apps with some installed apps from the play store.

Today, 2 hours ago logsprovider initiated out of nowhere an endless loop of "force close" alerts, between them most of the running apps were closed too (including some weird z7... app).

Because of the interval (about half a second) between alerts I can goto settings -> apps -> and "clear data" in the logsprovider config.

This stops the "force close" alerts loop until the next restart of the phone. in this state I basically don't have access to the phone features and all the home screens are empty, including the phone's apps menu.

I can run any app by adding it to the home screen and then executing it, if the app has system operation like the play store that require it to install something, the app will crash and no new programs will install.

I can also connect the phone to a computer and get access to all the files (I think it's just those on storage), I might try to get an apk of an antivirus there and try to install it - hope it doesn't crash

These are desperate times... thats why I'm contacting the experts:

Can I fix this, this might have been caused by an app, what to do?
If the only solution is factory reset how do I backup the data, apps, or contact lists?

Issue solved

Boot in recovery mode > Choose "Wipe cache partition" and reboot.

No need to Factory reset and lose all data.
Long description
I also suddenly had my Samsung Galaxy SII (SGS2 GT-i9100) running Android 2.3.4 with a rush of continuous force close pop up windows, a lot of apps that seemed to try to connect to internet would trigger a popup force close window, many apps crashed. I hardly managed to quickly close the popups and turn off the phone, removed the battery and turned it on again but the problem persisted and got worse so in the end I got this popup again and again:
"The application LogsProvider (process com.sec.android.provider.logsprovider) has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again. Force Close."
And really had to try hard to close all those popups quickly to switch off the phone.
I found the solution here
Which is:

Turn off the phone (hold the power button if the power-off menu won't appear).
Boot in recovery mode (holding volume up key + home key + power button at same time).
Choose the fourth option "wipe cache partition" (using the volume keys to select option and then Home button to excecute).
Allow to reboot normally and problem solved.


How do I mount an NFS share on an CM 12? I'd like to mount an NFS share on my Android cell phone, with perhaps a mount-unmount button on the home screen. Any ideas of how to accomplish this?

My /system/lib/modules is empty. It doesn't have nfs.ko.

There are many apps that can do this:

Mount Manager
CifsManager

And also this thread on XDA-Developers suggest using BusyBox (it's simpler to just open the thread on go trough the discussion than for me to copy that stuff here, you'd need context to understand)

Finally, this research was done by a simple Google search, you should do your research before posting.


Remember wifi password but never automatically connect I have both my wifi password and my friend's saved.  Since they live nearby sometimes it will automatically switch to theirs if the signal is stronger.  I don't ordinarily want to use their connection unless I'm over there or my internet is down.

Is here any way to make android only automatically connect to my wifi without forgetting the other's password? It is long and impossible to memorize so forgetting the network is a huge pain.

Running ICS, and have root if needed.

Not exactly what you may have intended, but still a possible solution: Using an app like

Wifi QR Code Generator
WiFi QR Share

you can generate a QR Code of your friend's Wifi connection, print it, laminate it (for protection), and put it into your wallet. Now, whenever you want to use that Wifi network, take out the QR-Code, scan it with Barcode Scanner -- and get connected. For a "log-out" simply disconnect, and remove the network from your list (to keep your device from autoconnecting).

Not quite elegant -- but it saves you from typing the long password everytime. Side-Effect: Print out the QR multiple times, and give it to your friend's for other guests. Do the same for your own Wifi. Now you never have to tell your passwords: To permit your guests to connect, somply show them the QR-Code to scan (and have them delete the network from their devices when they leave, as Android stores Wifi-passwords unencrypted).


setting mock location remotely for testing purpose I need to fake my GPS location on a real Android device.
Now I know about the possibility of Android Emulator and setting their GPS location via telnet.

I dont really have a clue how those GPS Faker Apps set the mock location of an Anodroid device and that isnt really the question, but I wondered if there is a way to set mock location of a REAL Android device other than using these apps.
And additionally I need to do this over an interface so I can do this from my computer.

Is it possible to set up an telnet server on the android device ?
Or maybe I should write an minimalistic app that I can run via adb.

And btw how do I know the GPS module of my device doesnt overwrite my set mock location?

I am thankful for any lead.

cheers

I have wrote an app for exactly this :). It listens on port 5554 and accepts "geo fix" and "geo nmea" commands - ie. compatible with the android emulator.

app store: MockGeoFix and source code

  And btw how do I know the GPS module of my device doesnt overwrite my set mock location?

You disable all other sources of geolocation except GPS and you mock the GPS.


kitkat 4.4.4 connecting usb devices to samsung tab e I need to connect a USB printer and a Vivitar camera to a Galaxy Tab e. I currently have a USB OTG cable, and a USB-A --> Mini-B cable

For the printer, you'll need a USB-A --> B cable, along with:
Print Hand, Printer Share, or a similar app from the Play Store.

Make sure your printer is compatible with the app you choose before dropping the $.


Google Play SERVICES now force closing? I have a Samsung Galaxy Pocket.
Google Play Services has always worked for years on my phone. But a few weeks ago l noticed my phone was 'force close vibrating' constantly!
After looking and watching my 'running services' l noticed Google play services kepted restarting straight after the force close vibration.
I uninstalled gps and it stopped. (but why was it doing it in the first place?)
I reset my phone to factory, installed my usual apps, and installed gps again. And straight away it did it again!
Is there a way to fix this? As l play a few games etc on my phone, some games it says it needs gps to run it.
Please help!

Have you tried to factory reset the phone? If not just try it. Because there are some apps which make the Google play services to force stop.

Even then if it will not be able to revive then report to Google


Does using various app stores in parallel cause any issues? I am using a Android phone with Lollipop and found that apps can be installed from various app stores like Google Play, Amazon App Store or F-Droid.
Are there any problems I can run into if apps are installed from different app stores?

Depends on the store you're using, and how safe it is. See e.g. our alternative-markets tag-wiki, questions using that tag, and especially How safe is it to use Aptoide?

I've made pretty good experiences with F-Droid, and also with Aptoide (sticking to their main repository named "Apps", which is curated manually and well maintained – see the link in previous paragraph). Close to no side-effects as far as I can tell. Only issue with F-Droid is a two-fold: they build the apps themselves from the sources, so they need to sign using their own keys; while that makes sure you really get what it says (the .apk is sure to match the sources you can investigate), you cannot "cross-update" apps from them with other app stores (e.g. install from F-Droid and then update from Google/Aptoide doesn't work due to signature mismatch).

I cannot speak for other markets, as I don't use them. One specific thing to consider are payed apps, for at least two reasons: 1) that most likely demands the market's app to be running on your device (for license verification) – and 2) if that market "shuts down", you will either have to buy the apps again from another place or no longer receive updates (which e.g. happened with AndroidPIT's app-center on 2014-12-31).


Home screen doesn't use the full screen width So as of a couple days ago, something is different about my home screen(s). Where once the icons were evenly spread, now they're crammed to the left, leaving a bar of empty space in the right that just shows my wallpaper.

I could deal with this, but I can no longer swipe left from the right edge of the screen to get to my other home screens - it only works if I start the gesture on the part that has icons. How do I get the full width back?

The only thing I can think of is clearing the cache and data for your android launcher. If you go to settings -> application manager and then to all apps, you should eventually find your launcher. I would recommend taking some screenshots of how your home screen is organised before doing this though; this will end up getting rid of your home screen layout.


How to update google apps in miui5 I have purchased a Redmi 1s mobile. It has miui v5. It seems that we can't update Google apps in miui.
So, how can we update Google apps in miui.
I've just seen that the updates are shown in apps like 9apps and mobogenie.
Is it safe to download the updates from these apps? Or
How can I make Google play to show these updates?

try with that

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2397942

it replaces your play store and google apps with the last official versions

you have to flash it from  Recovery


How to keep playing online videos when screen is locked? I want to listen to online videos with my mobile phone in my pocket, but there is always something to touch the screen and interrupt the stream.

The only solution I know is to download and save the broadcast or video on my phone before listening to it with a video player app which can be screen locked.

The issue is that I don't want to download any YouTube video before listening to it, so I'd like to find a way that can keep screen locked while playing a video.

You can try to use an alternative to the default YouTube app, a popular choice being NewPipe. Although I haven't tested this myself yet, one of the listed features is being able to play videos in the background - even just the sound, without having to waste battery by displaying something you dom't actually care about.


How to stop android device from corrupting pictures When I take pictures with my device (Techno Phantom N9 running Android 4.2) the thumbnails and the images get corrupt. Hence I cant even send it to anybody, but on my device I can see some of the pictures even if the thumnail does not show.

an image of what it looks like (click for larger variant)

I use the default camera app.

What could be the problem, and how could it be solved?

There could be multiple culprits – and depending on which it is in your case, the solution is different:

The camera app: Try different camera apps, there are plenty good choices to select from. There might be a bug in the camera app, corrupting the file on saving it.
Storage: Photos can be stored to internal or external SDCard. Your external card could have problems (corruption, incompatibilities – not all combinations of brands/sizes and Android device work together equally well). Removing the external SDCard should force the camera app to save its photos on the internal SDCard. Check if the problem still persists. If not, your card might either be corrupted, or not working optimally with your device. You can check it for corruptions (e.g. using a card reader attached to your PC), or try with a different brand (make sure to buy only class-6 and above: better performance, less battery consumption).


Apps uninstalling on battery death I have an HTC Incredible smartphone. Every time the battery dies during normal usage, my applications uninstall. Why does this happen, and how can I prevent it from happening in the future?

The battery backed memory that holds installed apps is clearing when the battery goes dead. Don't let the battery go totally dead like that. It kills off your battery life, unless you've already damaged it.


How can I find my MAC address? I'm using a Samsung Young Duos GT-S6102.  My phone that shows nothing in Settings → About Phone so my question is how to find my MAC address?

You can run ip address from a terminal or adb shell to get the MAC address.  Specifically, ip address show wlan0 will give you the MAC for the Wi-Fi chip on most devices.  The address is shown after link/ether on the second line:

22: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP qlen 1000
link/ether a0:b1:c2:d3:e4:f5 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.0.12/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global wlan0
inet6 ab01::c23d:45ef:ab67:89c0/64 scope link
   valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

Thanks to Firelord for this suggestion.

Another alternative:

If you have BusyBox installed, you can run busybox ifconfig.  That will give output similar to the following (note the HWaddr on the first line):

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr A0:B1:C2:D3:E4:F5
          inet addr:192.168.0.12  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: ab01::c23d:45ef:ab67:89c0/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:993 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:747 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:904409 (883.2 KiB)  TX bytes:125749 (122.8 KiB)

If you don't have busybox you could try running ifconfig alone, but the version on my device has no output (and ifconfig wlan0 just shows the IP address).


Changes the voice from woman to man in Google Translate In Google Translate, how do you change the English voice from female to male?

Go to Settings > Language & input > Text-to-speech output.
Hit the Settings icon next to "Google text-to-speech engine". Under installing voice data you can select if you want male or female.

Link to related answer


A pop-up was on my screen and said I had a virus! I was searching up fun computer games to play when a message came up saying I have a virus and I should download this weird app and give it a lot of my personal information including phone number and email.

I'm scared this is a scam. What do I do??

Congrats! You won 10 bottles of snake oil if you're lucky.

Honestly: this has two very clear indicators of being scam:

There are no viruses on Android. And even if there were, how should that website know?
Asking you to download an app via their specific link to fix {whatever}. If you do so, then you are in trouble.

Ignore that message (close the tab of your browser were it appeared), but remember that website – to never visit it again.


lock ES File Explorer or similar options I want to lock ES file explorer, so that it can be opened after I put a password or pattern lock.

Is it possible in ES file explorer?
Is there any other file explorer that provides similar functionality?

There are many apps on the market that allows you to password-/PIN-/pattern- protect other apps, see: https://market.android.com/search?q=app+lock


How do I migrate my SMS (text messages) from iPhone to Android? I want to export my SMS history from an iPhone and import them into a new Android phone, including timestamp, message direction (incoming|outgoing), and correspondent (sender or recipient).

My specific scenario is this, but perhaps a generic solution exists -
Source: iPhone 4 running iOS 5 (jailbroken, if it helps)
Target: LG Nexus 4

This old question seems relevant except that it's aimed at Samsung devices, and it's 1½ years old.
Also, there's this alarming comment:
The problem with faked.org/isms2droid is that it doesn't correctly extract the iMessages correctly. It gets the wrong timestamp, and leaves the address empty and the type (which represents sent or received) is always 1 (received).

I'm thinking that there could be newer solutions that are worth mentioning?

After some digging into google, I came across a software called Backuptrans. The features listed include Transfer SMS between Android and iPhone, Save SMS from Android/iPhone onto local database on computer, Restore SMS from local database to Android/iPhone and many more.

I do not have an iPhone to check this software. This seems pretty good. The work steps are as simple as importing from iPhone to the computer and exporting to the Android device. More details with screenshots can be found here

The only downer for this solution is that you have to pay some cash (a minimum of $29.95) to use it fully. Since you are not comfortable with iSMS2droid (iPhone SMS Import), this seems to be the best option available.

On an additional note, iSMS2droid is worth trying before you buy Backuptrans.


How can I control wi-fi data use? I'll be taking a vacation next summer, and on the cruise data use is sold per megabyte. If I JUST want to check e-mail on my android device, how the heck do I do that? How do I prevent all the other apps on my phone from accessing the wi-fi (cellular will be turned off, or I'll be using my wi-fi only tablet).

My objective is to limit network use to just the one or two apps that I really want to see results from. I can't seem to find anything in the settings that would allow me to do this.

Is there any way? I'm probably willing to root my tablet if necessary.

Devices available are the moment are a Droid 4 phone, and an Acer Iconia A200 tablet.

Go to settings, accounts and disable Sync. It will reduce your data consumption by a lot.

You still can check for emails manually though when sync is off. Remember this is the only way to get fresh mails then :)


What's causing my games to sometimes exit to the homescreen? I have a Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray.

When i first bought the phone, it came with a 4GB class 2 microSD without a brand name.
I could play games without problems and it was pretty stable.

Then I bought a cheap 32GB microSD without any class. I moved my files from the old card into a new one by copy-pasting them. When I play games (mostly big-sized games) the games will sometimes suddenly crash to homescreen without any "force close" option.

Then I thought it was maybe because of the cheap microSD so I bought a new Transcend  32 GB class 10 microSDHC.  It is fast enough for HD games, and I'm satisfied with it, but the same problem happens - games will sometimes crash to homescreen.

Is this because of my storage space? Maybe I installed too much stuff on it? I have 80 MB free space. Maybe this is the cause?

My phone condition:

Rooted
No other modifications applied.

If your foreground app is being closed without warning, the suspect is no other than Kernel. It generally happens when Kernel runs out of memory. In such case, Kernel reclaims memory by killing other apps, otherwise the device would be crashed. In such situation, Kernel doesn't respect multitasking (apps with background services, apps having icon in status bar etc) and in some cases, even foreground apps (when its very critical). When Kernel fails to do it due to CPU unavailability etc, the device really get crashed. This is how it works.

In your case, one or more reasons are responsible:

You've a load of lots of background running apps which draw lot of memory even during game play.
The game requires more resources than your device hardware provides. Its less likely because game runs most of times, but its possible that game does a lot of memory caching which outruns currently available memory.
There's memory leakage bug in atleast one of your installed apps.

When it comes to fully filled big storage, system requires somewhat more resources to locate a file in it, but it doesn't cause this type of problem. You can reduce memory card size or files in it to lower down performance impact, but its not recommended. Its better to hunt down and remove always-running apps which are not extremely useful. Even if its useful, you should find its alternative which doesn't always run in background.

In the last, you can always install CatLog to see what happened after game crash. If you find it as alien language, Google it or ask here.


is it possible to flash supersu on my phone with twrp without unlocking bootloader I was wondering if you could get supersu somehow on my device, also what is the difference between not flashing supersu and downloading it, becuase I think I saw a article about being able to flash supersu without unlocking the bootloader.

Also if you say just to unlock the bootloader and flash supersu, but I like my phone with everything and I don't want to wipe it.

Also I am on marshmallow 6.0.1

There's no chance that you flash TWRP before you unlock your bootloader, not even SuperSU.

A recovery can only be flashed from an unlocked bootloader, or a rooted system. But as you have neither, you can't flash TWRP, which is required for flashing SuperSU.


How to add more options on setting? How can I add more features on Android's settings. I saw some difference on my CM ROM's settings , how does the developer add new features or option on setting? Is it related with framework?

I want to add Newton interface like this screen shot.

You can't add features and generally customize Settings. Some features are added by android rom (During upgrades, ...) and  Developer Options can be added using this trick:
goto: Settings -> About Phone -> Press Build Number multiple times.


Would I install android studio with 2 GB RAM Would I install Android Studio on my PC that have Window 7 and 2 GB RAM?


Lockscreen rolling notifications like iPhone I like everything about my new Samsung Note 3. It is a superior device in almost every respect to my previous phone the iPhone 5.

But, I have one issue that I have not yet resolved. I cannot get the level of detail notifications that are automatically shown in a rolling notification queue like the iPhone (see images below, iPhone on left, Android on right).

The notifications are shown in the queue in the order they are received regardless of source (sms, email, calendar notification, etc).  They are scrollable vertically, and a swipe takes you to that specific message, event, email, etc.

This is one area the iPhone did very well, and I relied on the timeliness and dependability of that feature.

I have downloaded several lockscreen and notifications apps, but none are close to what I described.

Any suggestion?

I really appreciate any insight.
Thanks

Ok.  I didn't get any specific responses/solutions (thanks for the comments I did get thought), but it did prompt me to dig deeper since no one had an answer.

I looked in the Google Play store and found several apps under "Lockscreen", "Notificaitons", or a combination of the two words.  I found several apps that had some good features, but none really came close to providing rich/detailed notifications.  Some apps that I installed and tested.

-NiLS Notificaitons

-WidgetLocker

-Lock Screen Notifications

-Espier Notifications-  this one was promising, but never worked quite right

In the end, I found one APP that doesnt show up with the keywords "Lockscreen" or "Notificaitons".
This APP required a lot of configuration, and you have to install some helper email apps.  But the final result is acceptable(image below).  It also has some nice features, like the ability to add widgets (in this case I added a weather widget).  I could never do that on iPhone, so it may be a good trade off.

Executive Assistant Paid Version
AND
Executive Assistant Free Version

I hope this helps anyone looking for rich "iPhone" like notifications.


Extraordinarily fast battery consumption I have been using Xiaomi Mi Max (4/128) (now running on MIUI 10.2.1.0) for over two and a half years and as the time passed, my battery started to die pretty quick - I used AccuBattery to check the battery's health and it was about 40% after 30 charging sessions. On average it could last about 3-4 hours on screen and about 12 hours standby.

My decision was to change the battery and I did it, but the phone still does not work for 8+ hours on screen (as it did before the battery started dying that quick). I took a look at the power usage graph and the thing that suprised me the most was the distribution of power. I know it should be rather exponential than linear, but it was different - first 30% (from 100 to ~70 percent) has been drained in less than an hour, next 45% was used linearly (approximately 10% per hour), and the rest lasted for 20 minutes, going rapidly down to 0%.

Up to now I deleted apps which I was not using, turned on the auto-brightness and the battery saver. I was thinking about doing a factory reset, but at the moment I am unable to save all my photos and data, so I would like to get any ideas what else could I do instead, in order to lenghten the time the battery can last.

Looks like a software issue for me. I had the same issue on my max 2. I flashed the firmware again using Mi flash tool and there's no battery drainage now.


How to manually update apps I have Android 4.0 and I'm trying to figure out how to manually update all of my apps when the update notification usually at the top of the screen is NOT there. Can someone help me out?

You can perform updates on installed APP's accessing the Play Store:

Find the Play Store icon on your home screen or in your app drawer and tap it to open it up.
Once the Play Store loads, tap the menu button on your device and choose the "My Apps" option.
Wait until the list gets filled. If there are available updates you'll see::

A text that says "Update" to the right of the app's name, you can long press it to update that APP;
Additionally, you can press "update" on the top of the list to update all APP's.

Usually a number is present to the right, that refers to the total number of updates available.


Meaning of "Connected, no internet" In Settings -> Wi-Fi, there's a connection listed that says "Connected, no internet".

What does it mean to be connected?  What does it mean for a device to be connected but without internet access?  I'm not trying to fix this state: my goal strictly is to find out more about it.

The status Connected, no Internet in Android's WiFi settings strictly means that:

You have a connection to the wireless access point and a valid IP configuration so connectivity to the local network is possible.
Your device has not (yet) established a connection to Google's connectivity check and thus determined that no internet connectivity available.

This does not mean that you don't have an internet connection, it just can't reach the Google servers (google.com/generate_204) to determine this.
This often appears shortly after connecting to a WiFi access point when the device is still checking the connectivity.
This can also appear if the network you are connected to is using a captive portal and you haven't authenticated with it, yet.
It is also possible that there isn't any internet connectivity on the WiFi AP, for instance when connecting to a drone or digital camera.


Completely disabling cellular data and limiting apps only to WiFi when available I've recently (2 months ago) purchased my first smartphone. I'm on a sort of prepaid contract (I pay what I use in terms of calls and SMS and it's automatically withdrawn from my bank account).

For years I have been paying like 6-7 EUR per month (at the most!). I don't like using phones in general and smartphone is a new thing for me but I bought it just for the cheap GPS and camera (not the mobile surfing). After the first month I got a surprising 30 EUR bill. Every once in a while I was getting notifications about new mail, or Skype messages etc. and I was wondering why this was happening (I know, I sound like a member of the Flintstone family) because I never enabled mobile data transfer. As it seems it is turned by default.

I went to my service provider and the guy deactivated the data connection. To my question "Can I just block any Internet activity through cellular connection for my number?" he told me that it's not possible (why he did not explain). Just to make sure things were all set I even put a data cap on cellular data at 10KB. In addition I have also limited updates of apps only to WiFi that is if I'm connected to a WiFi network only then apps should check for updates and download those.

I've just received my bill for last month (the second month of me using the smartphone). And this time it was just painful - 81 EUR. I checked my bill's details and I saw the following strange reoccurring Internet traffic:

Data usage
Date       Time     Service  Units Cost
25.04.2018 04:23:28 Internet 38:54 Min 2,9410
26.04.2018 14:35:54 Internet 38:54 Min 2,9410
27.04.2018 16:59:36 Internet 38:54 Min 2,9410
28.04.2018 04:53:32 Internet 38:54 Min 2,9410
29.04.2018 02:37:58 Internet 38:54 Min 2,9410
30.04.2018 11:23:06 Internet 38:54 Min 2,9410
03.05.2018 13:57:57 Internet 38:54 Min 2,9410
04.05.2018 12:43:26 Internet 38:54 Min 2,9410
08.05.2018 05:08:03 Internet 38:54 Min 2,9410
09.05.2018 15:13:30 Internet 39:34 Min 2,9410
13.05.2018 19:34:04 Internet 1 Min 0,0756
13.05.2018 23:22:19 Internet 37:58 Min 2,8654
14.05.2018 14:11:45 Internet 38:54 Min 2,9410
15.05.2018 10:21:09 Internet 38:54 Min 2,9410
16.05.2018 10:32:32 Internet 38:54 Min 2,9410
17.05.2018 10:23:51 Internet 39:23 Min 2,9410
18.05.2018 19:38:51 Internet 38:54 Min 2,9410
19.05.2018 09:48:12 Internet 38:54 Min 2,9410
20.05.2018 04:41:42 Internet 39:34 Min 2,9410
21.05.2018 06:16:51 Internet 39:34 Min 2,9410
22.05.2018 10:05:11 Internet 39 Min 2,9410

All in all 68 EUR without VAT, 81 EUR with it.

Needless to say I am far from happy.

I started digging and checked the data use for every single app. Almost all apps had the background data use (cellular connection) enabled by default. I wan't sure what the background data is so I read a little bit.  The descriptions is also useful namely: Enable usage of cellular data in the background.

I checked some of the apps (like YouTube) and I saw that while 80% or so of the traffic was foreground many times there were couple of hundreds of megabytes background data.

I disabled all background data use now for all apps but I wonder if that is not the case why I got that fat bill. If that's the case there are multiple things that bother me namely

why did the cellular data limit not kick in? In the stats for cellular data I still get literally no data being used
why even with data connection disabled cellular is used at all?
why am I not getting Skype, Hangouts etc. messages, new email notifications, Chrome shows I'm offline etc. if cellular  is indeed enabled?

Especially with Google Photos (I have syncing between my phone and the online service enabled) the situation is horrible - 466MB foreground, 2.08GB background between 10th of May and 7th of June.

What else am I missing? Clearly the guy at the shop didn't help and I'm very new to this smartphone thing. I simply want to use Internet (any sort of Internet connectivity) ONLY when I'm connected to a WiFi network (home, work).

First, "not possible" is a straight lie. The carrier is perfectly capable of turning that feature off and limit you to "calls and SMS only". They simply don't want to.

Second, you could try some Firewall app in whitelist mode (i.e. by default all apps are blacklisted). Take e.g. a look at NetGuard (I recommend taking it from F-Droid, though it's also available at Playstore). This firewall app doesn't require rooting your device, and you can set up mobile-data restrictions separate from WiFi:

NetGuard: List of apps, settings for a specific app, defaults (source: Google Play; click images for larger variants)

As the screenshots show, you can set the default to "block mobile by default", so you don't have to take care for new apps unless you want to allow them.

Third: I find it very strange that mobile data are summing up if you have disabled them, that shouldn't happen. But using a firewall app, you should at least be able to reduce that massively.


Factory reset on htc one mini 2 doesn't work I'm trying to do a factory reset on my HTC one mini 2 following the instructions on HTCs website here:
http://www.htc.com/uk/support/htc-one-mini-2/howto/511217.html

I can't access settings (it dumps me out to the home screen, hence the need for a reset), so I'm trying the hardware buttons method.

I hold volume-down, then hold the power button as per the instructions. After about 7 seconds, a black message box pops up saying "to restart your phone, press and hold the volume-up and power buttons".
If I keep holding volume-down and power the screen then goes dark. Nothing else happens.
If when the message appears I let go, the message disapears, and my phone just returns to the locked screen, I can unlock it as usual.

I'm completely flummoxed, any ideas what to do next?

Right, so I figured it out (much googling, some trial and error, more than a few swearwords).

The htc guide (and most others on the interwebs that have just copied and pasted HTC's instructions) neglect to tell you that the phone needs to be switched off.

So, factory reset instructions for htc one mini 2.

press and hold power button and chose "power off"
press and hold volume down and power button
hold those for quite a long time
You should then end up in the "three android symbols menu" Let go of all the buttons
Press volume down until "factory reset" is selected, tap the power button.
Cross your fingers.


How to do a factory reset on Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4? I decided to try encryption on my Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 wifi version just for fun. But during encryption process (somewhere at the end) it turned off the screen and hung.

Anyway my tablet was encrypted, but I wasn't asked for setting a password or encryption key. And it's appeared to be hard to do a factory reset on an encrypted device, since I have Cyanogenmod instead of stock ROM and TWRP instead of stock recovery. Any "official" way to hard reset the tablet was unsuccessful - for some of them I was asked for decryption (I don't have a password) and for the other TWRP recovery was unsuitable - it just led to an infinite boot loop.

So how can I do a factory reset?

So the only way I could resolve the issue and reset my tablet was to install CWM recovery (the last working link I found). I believe stock recovery would work as well, but I didn't have or find one.

The second step is to go the Settings → Backup & Reset → Factory data reset and clicking "Reset tablet". It will warn you about unavailability to backup or recover your data since device is encrypted and then will reboot device to recovery and provide factory reset.

Again, it would probably not be a problem if I'd have stock recovery. But in my case this was the only way to provide reset for my device and it took some time to find this out.

I also could try using restoring stock ROM with Kies or Odin, but I didn't have a working copy of Windows...

BTW here a few different ways you could try for other devices:

If you know your password or you have a stock recovery it should not be a problem at all - just use the default way to wipe your data (through recovery or android settings).
Use fastboot erase userdata (it didn't work for me, because Samsung has no fastboot mode, they have their "Download mode", which is a bit different)
Probably there is a way to reset/recover your device through some vendor provided tools (like Kies/Odin for Samsung devices).
You are so unlucky :(. Try to search about how to do factory reset for your particular device.


How to make a simple bookmark on HTC Wildfire S? I am in the browser on my HTC Wildfire S.

I want to make a bookmark of the current page and save it to my desktop (main screen).

I press and hold down the URL and it gives me the choices:

share page (twitter, facebook, etc.)
copy page url

I would also expect it to give me the option "save bookmark".

How can I make a bookmark of a web page?

To add the current page as a bookmark, in the browser:

Menu->Bookmarks->Add Bookmark

Then you can long click the bookmark and select 'Add Shortcut to Home' which will add an icon for the bookmark on the desktop. Alternatively, long click on the desktop, then select

Add Item->Shortcut->Bookmark


Case statements in termux I tried this and failed. Does case statements exist in termux?

#!/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/bash
case in "$1"
    start)
            echo 'var1'
            ;;
    stop)
            echo 'var2'
            ;;
esac

Termux does indeed support case, but your syntax is incorrect. This, instead, works.

case "$1" in
 start)
  echo 'var1'
  ;;

 stop)
  echo 'var2'
  ;;
esac

Adding a blank line between the start) and stop) blocks is just a stylistic choice.


How to visit the /data folder on my Android on my PC? For example

  /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases/contacts.db

I cannot see it both in Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.04.

You can't directly mount the internal storage.  You need to be rooted to view it on your phone, or you can use adb pull from the Android SDK Tools to copy it off the device.


Add multiple identical homescreen widgets On my old phone (android 8) I used home screen widgets to take notes on the screen, it’s very convenient. But on my new phone (Android 10, Realme 6 pro) I get the error message “widget added”. It is happens with any type of widgets. How can i fix this? It’s very annoying, Android is so smart, and I'm so stupid, I don’t know that the widget has already been added, bravo.
P.s. I'm python developer, but I used adb before for fun.

In Realme UI. you can only add one widget at a time. The user can't add same widgets multiple widgets.  However there is trick, use Launchers like nova etc. Where you can add multiple widgets.
:)


What's corrupting my ROM? I'll have my phone running perfectly fine; however, after I wipe cache and dalvik cache in ClockworkMod Recovery, my phone freaks out and stops working.  It'll either get stuck on the boot logo or get stuck on: "Android is updating: Starting applications".  In a past incident, the phone actually booted into the home screen, but my wallpaper changed to black and wouldn't let me change it.

I've checked in the /etc/init.d/ folder to see if there are any scripts wiping something, but the folder is empty.  It's like my phone's hardware or a script (unfound) corrupts the ROM.  Currently, I'm unable to get into my phone to grab a last_kmsg log to see if you guys can debug the problem.  When I leave my phone for awhile on the boot logo or attempting to boot into the home screen, the phone feels very hot and I end up turning it off after unsuccessful boots.

The procedure for flashing my phone is downloading the Nexus 4 factory image from Google's official repository and using fastboot to flash all the partitions: bootloader, boot, recovery, radio, system, and userdata.

The kernel can't be the cause since the problem occurs when I wipe cache and dalvik cache, plus franco.Kernel is the #1 kernel developer @xda and there would be multiple reports of people having the same issue.  I never used to have this problem up until about a few months ago and I've been running the same setup since I got the phone when it first came out.

Nexus 4: factory stock 4.2.2, rooted, ClockworkMod Recovery, and franco.Kernel r140

Strange issue, due the fact you have a custom kernel it might be a better plan (hope you don't have any important things on your phone) to completely wipe your phone and reset to stock. So from CWM just wipe system, (Dalvik) cache, install fresh .ZIP from the internal SD (suppose you can mount the USB in CWM) and (re)install a clean ROM, install GApps and modem [optional], fix permissions, boot phone, good to go. If you can't grab a proper logcat/last_kmsg it's difficult solving this issue to be honest. If it's solved just be sure to make a Nandroid backup and then flash a custom kernel, if something goes wrong you can just reset it back to the current (working) state.


How to revert back from Marshmallow 6 to Lollipop 5 in Samsung Note 4? My Samsung Note 4 is updated to 6, but I don't like it and I want to go back to Lollipop. Is it possible to do it easily?

I heard that there are many problems with 6.

Unfortunatelly the downgrade isn't so easy at all.

You have to download a proper official Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop system image from SamFirmware and install it from Odin (or Heimdall on OS X). You have to read about this process before you do anything (eg.: enable developer options, USB debugging, etc)

It will be a clean install so if you have any important app or app-data you should backup all of them (I prefer TitaniumBackup Pro, but you have to be rooted.) with Kies (if you aren't rooted).

If you stuck there is a guide for a Samsung Galaxy S6.


Installed app is deleted from Play Store. How to download it from my mobile to PC for backup? There is an app that I have on my phone that is VERY USEFUL to me. The problem is that soon I'll have to change phone or reset to Factory settings and this app is no longer available on Play Store for download after losing it.

Is there some way to download the program/app from within my phone and copy it for backup on my laptop? Then I'd like to put it back on my phone and be able to re-install it myself (ticking install from unknown sources I guess?) after the reset.

Can it be found on my phone and be saved?

Thanks :)

Our backup tag-wiki mentions what might help you: ADB backups. You can check with our adb tag-wiki to get an idea on it, learn more on ADB backups via these answered questions.

Then, once you've got ADB up and running, adb backup -f myapp.ap -apk com.my.app will backup the app including your data, so you can even transfer it to another device.

Not that some apps do "opt out" of this backup method. In that case, you'd lose your data, but could still extract the installation file e.g. using an APK extractor. Or if you'd not be afraid to root your device, you could use a full-fledged backup app like Titanium Backup – which not only would allow you to backup all your apps and their data, but also your settings, SMS and more.


How does degoogling affect battery? Google apps especially play services show on top in RAM consumption and always have few processes running. Also these apps are very bulky.

By degoogling I mean disabling GSF & Google play services. But is there some sort of push service-like stuff that can be done more efficiently with GSF? (Considering a person is very likely to use Whatsapp, telegram, Facebook, instagram, reddit etc.. even after disabling these google stuff). Do anyone have micro benchmarks on these?

You can run Google free device, however you really have to know what you are doing.
Removing Google apps and services from an existing device isn't a recommended way. You may run into serious problems. The common way to get a Google free device is installing a custom ROM without Google apps (for license reasons most custom ROMS don't include Google services/apps).

If you disable GSF apps will loose the push notification service (if they still run at all). For a large number of apps GSF is a requirement.

Some apps have an alternative custom push system implemented but now every app has to run it's own background service. For example signal has such a service but the authors warn that it causes "reduced reliability or performance" and as every app has to open an own connection to listen for messages the overall power consumption increases.


Odin not allowing firmware to be flashed I'm following the instructions here to try and upgrade the firmware to I9000XWJS8:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=846913

As soon as I hit start it does nothing, as you can see in the message window it says it's failed. It does this with JS8 or with the Gingerbread download, in Odin 1.7 and 1.3.

What's going wrong? Also, should the phone be in USB debugging mode or regular? I've tried both to no effect.

The phone should be in Download mode:

Take out the battery
Plug into USB (apparently skip this if you have an i9000 -- see comments)
While holding both volume buttons (Note, you may need to hold Home+VolDown instead)

Insert the battery
Click the power button

Phone should go into Download mode after a few seconds:

You may need to disconnect from and reconnect it to the computer after this for Odin to see it.


Browse or mount SD card over WiFi on Linux? Is there a way to browse the contents of my SD card from my Linux (Ubuntu 10.04) machine over WiFi?

I used to connect with a mini-usb cable, or send files through gmail. Surely there must be a way to access the files through wifi.

My main focus is ease-of-use, I don't particularly care about speed or security. Although I do prefer a non-cloud solution due to privacy concerns.

(I have not actively searched for a solution yet. I will do this now, so maybe I will answer my own question. Which, as I understood from Atwood, is proper use of a StackExchange site.)

WiFi File Explorer allows browsing of the SD card through a web based interface. Quite nice, but perhaps difficult to copy a large number of files.

http://lifehacker.com/5626268/wifi-file-explorer-manages-your-android-sd-card-from-a-web-browser

On Air (Wifi Disk) 'allows you to easily transfer files over your Wi-Fi connection by accessing it as if it were a drive', but only for Mac I suppose.

SwiFTP is an FTP server, which does what it says.


Tablet PC with IMEI invalidity issue I recently bought a tablet PC, from a Chinese manufacturer.

Its IMEI is 315589840117903. It's showing invalid in India. Please check with this link:

IMEI Validation Check

How I can solve this problem? I am unable to connect to internet and unable to make any calls.

The check digit of the IMEI is invalid, and usually the IMEI cannot be changed, or in come countries it can even be illegal.

For more information, see how the IMEI is formed and the check digit is calculated here, or see a related question here.

There are ways to recover an IMEI on Android devices, but for this you'd need a backup of some files from when the IMEI wasn't invalid.


PIN enforcement with MDM solution I have a technical question to the android os. A phone doesn't have to have some PIN or other unlocking options but what exactly happens when you take this phone into a MDM solution such as MobileIron? It gives you some policies and somehow you are forced to take a PIN. Is this because of the policy or because of the android OS which says: "oh you want to use certificates, well I do not allow you to use them without a PIN". the phone uses wpa2-enterprise

The MDM solution can require that you set a PIN.

The Google Apps Device Policy app, for example, can require you to set a PIN. This is described in the Google Device Policy for Android if you want more details.


How can I encode an MP3 file in Android using LAME? Can anyone tell me how to encode a MP3 file in Android (as you would by using lame.dll in Windows or lame.so in Linux)?

You can't use the Linux or Windows versions of LAME in Android, just like you can't run the PC versions of MS Word or OpenOffice in Android.  Applications are written for particular OSes and architectures, or for cross-platform frameworks like Java.  (Android doesn't have a true full JVM, though.)

A quick search returned Lame4Android, an Android app you can use to encode WAVE files as MP3.  It doesn't look like it can do anything else; if you need more functionality then you probably need to find or make a native port of LAME or another encoder.


Testing Websites on Phone I was wondering is there any way to test websites on my phone? I am a Web Programmer, and I usually code designs which are responsive. So I want to check if the design is compatible on mobile phone. I use XAMPP on my Windows 7 Laptop for Apache services. Is there anything like Hamachi I could use to see my http://localhost via my Phone?

Take a look: Chrome DevTools for Mobile: Emulate and Screencast


Edit hosts file on android studio messed up my emulator I had to edit my emulator' hosts file in order to connect to a local development environment. I have followed this steps:

Run the emulator:

~/Library/Android/sdk/tools/emulator -writable-system -avd Nexus_5_API_19

In another terminal/cmd prompt:

adb reboot

adb root

adb -s emulator-5554 remount

adb -s emulator-5554 pull /system/etc/hosts hosts

add the IP to host file

adb -s emulator-5554 push hosts /system/etc/hosts

adb reboot

Now whenever I try to start my emulator from AVD Manager it is not responding. I always have to start it with:

 ~/Library/Android/sdk/tools/emulator -writable-system -avd Nexus_5_API_19

I mention that I work from High Sierra.

Mention: I have tried with adb to make my emulator rw but it did not allow me to push my hosts file.

There is an other way to manipulate the /etc/hosts  (You need a Linux machine )

Use the system.img which come from Google

go to your Android SDK home

cd $ANDROID_HOME

find the right system.img for your emulator

sudo mount -w system-images/android-25/google_apis/x86_64/system.img

edit the /etc/hosts

sudo vi /mnt/etc/hosts
sudo umount /mnt

Create an emulator (from Android Studio)

ASD Manager
→ "Create Virtual Device"
→ Nexus 5X
→ Next
→ Tab x86 Images
→ Nougart - 25 - x86_64
→ Next
→ "AVD Name" : "Nexus 5X API 25 with WLAN hosts"
→ Finish

I have gone this way because emulator -writable-system -avd xx didn't work in my environment. Also mounting the system.img in my ~/.android/avd/xxxx directory didn't work anymore.


Should I use the Android Q Beta? The Android Q Beta has some great features and fixes the bad gesture navigation from before. I would really like to try it. From what I was able to gather, it's mostly fine, but I wasn't able to find a lot of resources detailing the downsides.

What I'm mostly concerned with is errors during the upgrading process, data loss and the running of the four most important apps for me:

WhatsApp
YouTube (music)
Firefox

I have already searched for issues, but wanted to make sure before I do something that could potentially create a huge hassle for me. I'm really thankful for any advice in advance!

In general productive usage of beta versions provided by Google is not recommended.

Google provides beta versions of upcoming Android versions for developers. Using the beta versions they are able to check if their apps will be compatible with the upcoming Android versions. Also developers can use those images to make some first test with upcoming new features.

Therefore I would strongly suggest to wait for the official release, especially if the apps that are important to you don't explicitly state that they are Android Q compatible.


Updated Samsung galaxy A5 to Marshmallow but look and feel remains that of Lollipop I have a Samsung galaxy A5 (SM-A500H) I didn't get a notification for an update from settings so I grabbed android 6.0.1 from Sammobile, I downloaded the South African version since there's no version for my country.

Everything is working and if I go to settings about phone, I see it's 6.0.1 and if I tap I get the marshmallow logo and the game that looks like flappy bird. And everything is working.

But it still feels like Lollipop. The color is still blue rather than black, the marshmallow themes and wallpapers are missing. When the phone boots I don't see the marshmallow animation, the scrolling in the app drawer is horizontal not vertical etc.

Is there a way to verify that what I'm using is really marshmallow? Could it be a knockoff?

Lower-end phones usually won't get the new manufacturer skin (that's on the new flagship phone) with a new Android version.

As for the launcher, bootanimation and stuff, it's how Samsung chose to make it in their TouchWiz skin - they don't necessarily follow how Google do it on Nexus.

Try installing Google Now Launcher if you want the vertical scrolling experience. Not looking as harmonious on top of all the TouchWiz icons but better than nothing.


When i flash a new custom rom, does it get rid of other things that i've flashed before? I have a rooted Moto G 2014 and im thinking of flashing a new custom rom on it. It is currently running PacMan Rom and i have Xposed and Google Apps(gapps) flashed right now. I know that flashing a new rom will get rid of all my data, but will i lose gapps and xposed too? Also, does anyone know any good roms?
Thanks

As of Lollipop all custom ROMs have transitioned to the new system.new.dat + system.transfer.list format, so the /system partition will be fully overwritten, which means bye bye GAPPS and Xposed. If you migrate to a different ROM, you'll also need to wipe /data (not including /data/media which is your internal storage).

Then again, flashing GAPPS/Xposed again isn't that hard, is it?

As for ROM recommendation, I think it's against SE's rule to do that here (XDA wouldn't allow that either), so better go try everything yourself. I myself am a die-hard CM fan.


Android studio not detecting devices I am currently using windows 10 enterprise and my android studio does not detect devices despite me installing drive pack 17 and also adb fastboot drivers all phones are detected by the machine but android studio does not detect the phone.

Enable USB debugging while you have plugged the phone in on android studio. Then a pop-up should appear, allow permission for your pc to do usb debugging. This might be the case since the phone is being detected by the device, usb debugging is found in Settings > Developer tools


Stop application after set time - sleep timer Is there a way to automatically stop playing music/stop other app after a set period of time. For instance while listening to music at night.

Have you looked at Music Off, I'm Sleeping! - seems to do what you're looking for.


Unable to sign into my Samsung Galaxy Tab A I forgot my password and have tried to log back in I never saw anything to reset my password and now every time I try to sign in it states try in 60 minutes. I tried holding down the power and the volume button and I do not see anything to bypass the lock. How can I get back into my Samsung Galaxy Tab A

If you have Android Device Manager installed or Logged in to Samsung account these links may help you Android device manager and try resetting the password or
Samsung find my mobile do this both from any other device.


Filtering notifications Is it possible to filter the notification that my Android device shows to me? For example I'd like to filter out the notifications about apps getting updated.

(I use CyanogenMod 9 if that matters.)

Most apps should give you control of their own notifications via their internal settings.  For your specific example, app update notifications are coming from the Play Store app, and can be toggled on or off from within the app itself via menu -> Settings -> Notifications.  Other built-in apps like Gmail or Talk, or 3rd-party apps like Yahoo! Mail or Facebook for example, have similar controls that allow you to adjust notifications with varying degree of control (e.g. frequency, etc.)

In Android 4.1 and above, Google introduced a way to completely disable notifications for certain apps that either don't have such settings at all, or don't offer enough control for your liking (or include aggressive advertisements via push-notifications like AirPush).  Long-pressing a notification and tapping the new App Info option will bring up properties of the app that spawned it, and from there you can completely turn them off.  This feature appears in most custom ROMs as well that are based on the Jelly Bean (Android OS version 4.1.x/4.2.x) code base (CyanogenMod 10 in your case.)


Recover data from Moto X with broken display I have a Moto X (Lollipop 5.1) whose display is broken. I have some files and photos in it which are very important. Unfortunately, I didn't use Dropbox or Google Drive to backup my content. I tried the following ways to recover the data but with no help:

Control a device with a broken screen but unfortunately USB debugging is not enabled. Also, the pc doesn't recoganize the device (I figured that out with lsusb on my linux).
The phone doesn't have any apps like AirDroid installed to allow it to be accessed remotely on a PC.

The phone works and I was able to locate and ring it via Android Device Manager. Is there a way to get access to the phone's data in my current situation?

Most if not all Android phones will connect via USB cable to a computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux) as a mass storage device or media device; either should let you use your computer's file manager to copy the files from the device to the computer's storage.

The device needs to be powered up to do this, but you don't (in my experience) need to make any settings changes in the device, so it shouldn't matter that the display is destroyed -- that is, if it works well enough to ring, you should be able to access and copy your files.

If the device won't mount as mass storage or media on a USB cable, you may still be able to recover files if they're stored on an SD card -- you'll just need to power down the phone and pull the SD card, then insert it in a compatible reader connected to your computer.