Does rooting phone wipe your data if the bootloader is unlocked? A few months ago I reset my phone because it had began to break and get really laggy. I want to re-root it now, I was just wondering if it would reset my data if the bootloader is already unlocked?

I'm not familiar with the G2 specifically, but in general, no, rooting a device on its own should not wipe data. Rooting your phone is the process of getting the su binary installed and available to access root privileges. That said, @SarpSTA is right in stating that a factory reset shouldn't unroot your phone. The su binary is placed in the system partition, which is left intact on wipe. If a wipe touched /system, your phone would be bricked and unusable, requiring a low-level flash to recover. What you may be missing is an app, such as SuperSU, to control access to root.


Can Android 2.3.4 be rooted? I have a Samsung Mesmerize and I've recently upgraded to my carrier's official release of Android 2.3.4, but to my dismay SuperOneClick doesn't seem to be able to root the device, it's always worked with past versions.

Does Gingerbreak no longer work with 2.3.4? Is there any simple way to root 2.3.4 yet without reflashing and other device changes? I would like to avoid reflashing the device again or altering the device from stock significantly if at all possible.

The SuperOneClick dev's website http://shortfuse.org/ states on their August compatibility list:

  All 2.3.4 devices need a custom root method.

Looking around, there doesn't seem to be a universal one click root method for 2.3.4 yet, most of the root methods for the later Gingerbreads involve flashing custom firmware, etc which is more involved.


Is there any way to sync wifi between devices? Are there any apps or methods to sync saved wifi between Android devices? Basically it would remember the wifi name and password if you logged into it once from one device on all devices synced.

Wifi credentials are actually not stored very securely at all, (plain text!), but in a system folder, meaning that only a rooted app could access it. Google's backup is your best bet.

It's stored in the data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf file, for the record.

If your phone is rooted, there are apps like Wifi Key Recovery  and Wifi Password Recovery that can get you the keys, but I know of no apps that will automatically sync these as well.


Rooted Galaxy S6 Edge, can I update? I just rooted my Galaxy S6 Edge using the PingPong root I believe it is called. Just to make sure, it is the root where you take the APK and put it on your phone and click one button and it roots it.

But now I keep getting a popup saying that there is a software update for the phone. How do I update the phone now that it is rooted? If it is not possible, then I have to go without updates, so how do I get rid of the popup??

Thanks guys!!

root will not get you banned from the updates you can update your phone normally via kies on PC or on the phone it self if the update is supported to be flashed from the phone ,however I must add that you will probably lose the root access on your phone after the update


Manually set date & time to the future I'm trying to manually set date & time on my HTC/Galaxy Note 3 device. I am correctly able to set the date upto 30th July, but when I set date to 30th August 2016, the clock reverts back to current date & time.

Is there a maximum limit to set future date & time?

This is due to an issue in Google Play Services, and it doesn't seem like Google is interested in fixing this bug.
Star this bug and make your voice heard : https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=36650


How to remove/hide "Likee Videos" from imo main menu? As shown in the picture below, Likee Videos appears between stories and recent chats? How can we get rid of Likee videos, so that it doesn't not appear there?

Go to settings
Then you can see " Function"
Click it turn off likee vedio


Where to find description of all "/system/bin/service" calls? In one answer I was adviced to use service call phone 2 s16 "$number". It works, but in service list I see other useful things I don't know how to use and can't easily find the information on the Internet.

I don't see any introspection in service apart from service list to findout myself...

Where to find more complete description of "service" calls and their parameters?

The real problem with service call is that transaction codes are not only undocumented, but also not guaranteed to be stable — they can be silently changed between Android versions. Because of this, service call commands should never be used except for private debugging, when you know what Android version is used.

Example:

ITelephony transaction codes for Android 2.3
ITelephony transaction codes for Android 4.2.2

(Here FIRST_CALL_TRANSACTION = 1, so the actual transaction code which should be used in the service call phone command is the number seen in the source plus 1.)

Note that in the new version TRANSACTION_supplyPuk was inserted in the middle, and all following codes are now shifted by 1. Anything that used service call phone to perform those transaction will horribly break when used on Android 4.2.2 — the same codes will result in calling completely different methods, possibly with disastrous results.


Messeging or Hangouts - Open Directly to List of People When I get a notification that I've gotten a new text message, I open Messaging to look. However, it opens usually to the last person I was sending texts to, which isn't always the person that I now want to look at. I then have to go back to get to the list, and then click the new message to read it.

Is there a way to have the app open directly to the list of people, every time? Thanks!

When you come out of the app pressing home button, it's state is stored. So no matter how many messages you get ,you still go the previous message you were looking at, if you press messaging app...  to prevent this, when you get a new message open notifications instead of messaging app.. This makes app refresh it's previous state to the current one..


What is this icon on the status bar that looks like a cracked egg? (see screenshot) I'm using Samsung Galaxy Note 5 on Android Marshmallow. I was just wondering what that oval-shaped symbol near the top center was.

According to a mod to remove the icon on XDA Forum, it's RCS Service.
According to GSM Association (GSMA), the one behind the development of RCS technology,

What is RCS?
Rich Communications Services (RCS) is the platform that enables delivery of communication experiences beyond voice and SMS. It provides consumers with instant messaging or chat, one to one or to groups, live video and file sharing across devices on any network.
RCS marks the transition of messaging and voice capabilities from Circuit Switched technology to an all-IP world. It shares the same IMS investment and leverages the same IMS capabilities as VoLTE and video calls over LTE.


Read logs from recovery I want to read logs of Android devices having stuck at the boot logo, but I don't have ADB access.
Is it possible to read logs displayed by logcat in recovery by mounting /system partition?

The files (if they are considered as such) to which logs are written by the device are not in /system but in /dev/log.

These "files" are reset at every boot, so unless the device you have has a boot-time script that automatically saves logs to a file in, say, /sdcard, there is sadly no way to retrieve the logs you want while in recovery.


WiFi Direct - only one device (Samsung phone) According to Wiki:

  Only one of the Wi-Fi devices needs to be compliant with Wi-Fi Direct to establish a peer-to-peer connection that transfers data directly between them with greatly reduced setup.

How to actually establish the Wifi Direct connection from one Samsung Android phone (with Wifi Direct enabled) with another Samsung Android phone (without Wifi Direct / with Wifi Direct disabled)?

(FYI, I could establish connection with Wifi Direct enabled on both phones. But theoretically only enabling one phone is enough.)

Try using the app SuperBeam to receive files on a device without wifi direct from one that does have it.


Where's the alarm widget on my new HTC One m8? I just "upgraded" to a HTC One M8 from a Galaxy S3 and I can't see how to add the alarm home-screen widget.

On the S3 there's the '2 x 1 Alarm' widget which is great. How do I add this to my M8 please?

Also, is the disappearance of this due to a newer version of Android or is this widget only available on Samsung phones?

As you've suggested, this is a Samsung-only widget. You can easily find equivalents on Google Play if you want one; perhaps you'll even find something you like better than your old Samsung widget.


Access to Android phone's SD card from PC, without USB This question is classical: how to access the phone's SD card from PC?
 Of course USB works very well, but I'm looking for a wireless solution.

I've already tried various apps and solutions, but very often, with these wireless solutions, I didn't have real full access to the SD card, like I would have for a USB flashdrive or a harddrive or a CD-ROM. (see image below)

Thus my question is : how to access the phone's SD card from PC, wirelessly, with full access to SD card from PC?  (I mean: having a drive letter F: and being able to run .bat batch files on this SD card from the PC; this works when connecting with USB cable)

Note: I've tried tools like installing "FTP server" on phone, connecting by wifi, and then using tools on PC that make FTP look like a removable disk. But this was very tricky, and at the end didn't work well. And above all it was not handy on every day use.

I personally use FTP to achieve this...

You can try it too. All you'll just need is an understanding of how ftp works which is very basic by the way.

Download any app that provides an ftp server on your android devices, they are always pretty easy to use. I currently use use ES File explorer's functionality to do this.

As shown here

Selecting Remote Manager is all you need.

After the ftp services has started on your android device and is on the same network as your computer, you should then spring up windows explorer [win-key + E] or even a web browser and enter ftp://phones_ip_address:ftp_listening_port into the address bar

Note: the column separating address and port.
Lemme know if you get this


Messaging keeps drafts after you have edited and used them Running a Galaxy Nexus on Jelly Bean 4.1.2. Stock, with stock messaging app.

I find that when I create a draft message because I've accidentally hit home instead of space, when reloading the messaging app, editing the draft and sending it, it keeps the original draft in the 'Type message' input box.

Why doesn't it get rid of it, when the draft has been used and is therefore no longer needed?

Is there a setting somewhere to control this? (I couldn't see one.)

I just figured out how to get rid of that. Tap on the message like you are going to add to the message. Click the Delete button. Then you should see text in the background that says "Enter Message." Click the back button on the phone. That should take care of it.


How to turn on Wi-Fi Calling in Google Pixel 1 (not XL)? As a preliminary question to Wi-Fi Calling feature on Pixel - How do I tell if it is using it?, how and where does one enable it in the first place?

Should it appear in the phone app's settings or in the general settings? Can you post a screenshot?

And does it only appear in either of them if the phone company supports it for this phone?

Yes the Mobile Network needs to support Wi-Fi calling.

From Settings -> Network & Internet -> Mobile Network -> [tap on]Advanced and scroll down a bit you should see something similar to the following which was taken on a Pixel 2 with Android 10.


easy (command line) way to transfer a folder of photos from Android phone to Linux Debian desktop I have a RedMi note 7 phone model M1901F7G, running Android 9PKQ1.180904.001; I don't want to root my new phone (it is a gift from my wife, and I don't want risking bricking it).
I am an expert Linux user (since 1993) and developer (e.g. of bismon), preferring command line things.
The album on the phone contains a captchas subdirectory.
The phone is USB plugged to my Debian/Sid AMD2970WX desktop (I have sudo access to it). Kernel 5.3. X399 chipset. MSI X399 GAMING PRO CARBON  motherboard.
What is the detailed and quickest procedure to transfer the more than hundred JPEG files from the captchas/ subdirectory on the phone to the $HOME/Pictures/ subdirectory on the Debian desktop? I will do that occasionally (once a week perhaps), from home, using USB3 cable. But I want to avoid 500 clicks on phone or desktop.
I am able to transfer each individual photos (in about 5 clicks). I want to transfer a hundred of them.
I don't exactly understand the "USB debug mode". Please name free (as in beer) Android applications related that, or finger actions to enable it. I believe it is in the settings menu.
Of course I do like starting gmtp on Debian. I don't want an alternative to MTP. I just need to learn how to use it (and likewise for adb).
Bear in mind that I am not familiar with Android in practice, and that my sight is not very good (since I am 60 years old - had cataract surgery), and that I am not a native English speaker. But Unix commands, I could teach them even with moderate fever (since my first Unix was SunOS3.2 on Sun3/160 workstation at work around 1987, and I was given root and physical access to it). First Linux was Slackware, 0.99.12 kernel, around 1993 (on dozens of floppy disks, i486 motherboard). Getting X11 running at that time required kernel recompilation for the graphics card.
Take into account that (perhaps by mistake) I configured my phone in French. I cannot identify an Settings -> USB debug or Settings -> Developper Debug thing. Maybe I should by some app, but which one?

To pull a folder from the sd card, you can use adb tools using following commands in terminal:

cd $HOME/Pictures/
adb pull /sdcard/captchas/

It will pull all the files from /sdcard/captchas/ to your Pictures directory.


Send fax directly to or from phone without going through a web-based service? Is there a way to send or receive faxes directly to/from the phone without routing through a web-based service?

There are times when I've needed to send or receive a document image without going through e-mail or a third-party service.  It may be a recipient without an e-mail option for a document I need to submit (e.g., a particular government agency) or it may contain sensitive information that I do not want going through other hands.  When I checked the app store, everything I found seemed to involve a web-based service (I could've missed one, though).

With a device that can take images and make phone calls, it seems like a natural extension of the capabilities to be able to communicate with a fax machine directly.

As others have noted, this is not any more secure than email.  But yes, it is possible.  (See http://navasgroup.com/attwireless/fax.htm for an ancient example).  Has anyone written an app to do this with an Android phone? That's incredibly unlikely.


HTTP servers with scripting support on Android I'm looking to host simple web apps on my smartphone in a group (like a LAN party, just not as hardcore).
Because of both lack of portability and lack of specific programming skills, I can't just develop a client app to play. Therefore, I need a server - preferably an HTTP one - which can serve dynamic content. I already found many servers to host static files, and I also found a few servers supporting PHP as a scripting language, but I couldn't find any app that did all these things at once:

Be a server, i.e. support connections from the local network;
Serve dynamic content, i.e. parse and execute scripts which I can edit;
Is free for personal use.

AndroPHP looks like it'll fill your needs quite nicely.

You can...

Deply dynamic PHP content
Serve pages over LAN
Use a MySQL Database

Heck, this'd be awesome for all sorts of events. Have people whip out their phones, navigate to your locally hosted signup form, etc, then export the mysql tables out later.


Why is the app name under /data/app different from that under /data/data? After I installed DiskInfo.apk through adb install DiskInfo.apk, under /data/app, there is an installed apk named:

me.kuder.diskinfo.pro-1.apk

However, under /data/data, there is a new directory named:

me.kuder.diskinfo.pro

Why is the apk name under /data/app appended with "-1"?

And why is the name under /data/app different from that under /data/data?

The .apk file can be named whatever you want. It doesn't have to be named even anything related to the application ID.

In this case, what happened is that, when the file was downloaded, there was probably already a me.kuder.diskinfo.pro.apk in the download directory (or perhaps a temp directory), so the OS added "-1" to the filename. The contents, however, weren't changed, so the app still registers itself without the "-1".


Tasker if-else-if hierarchy and default setting, like Locale I use a Google Talk status plugin (written for Locale) with Tasker, and the one thing I miss from Locale is the priority order of situations. That is, if I'm driving, then set status "Driving", else if I'm at work, "At work", else if [...] else "Available". (Locale does allow multiple situations to be active, but each type of action (e.g. Google Talk) will only get run once.)

I'm struggling to replicate this in Tasker. The priority setting on a task seems only to affect the order in which multiple tasks are run, whereas I'd like this particular plugin to be run once per situation-change, with only one status (the one with highest priority) even if two situations are active. I also lack a place to put the default "Available" setting (exit tasks aren't really suitable).

Example: I start driving to work. Status "Driving". I get near the office. Status should still be "Driving" (highest priority). I arrive and disconnect from the car. Status should now be "At work".

...whereas if I naively put the plugin in each situation and set exit tasks of "Available", I will instead get "At work" when I get near the office, and "Available" when I get out of the car (from the exit task of the Driving situation).

I'm reluctant to go back to Locale because Tasker is more flexible for the other conditions and settings I'm using, and because it has more built-in conditions (e.g. power source mains/USB), meaning fewer Locale condition plugins need to be kept running in memory.

That's something not easy to be simulated by Tasker, but should be possible. The most likely trick is working with variables -- an approach you find described at Google Groups: How To Default Profile? (check the post by Nikita Popov).

That example just defines a single default profile to fall back on if no other profile is active. A more complex example would properly make use of variables like %PACTIVE (currently active profile), in the way that a "lower-priority" profile would contain the condition that the higher is not contained in %PACTIVE (so it only becomes the active profile if no "higher-priority" profile is currently running).


Can I set an alternative time source? If I set the time manually on my Desire (rooted, CM7) it appears to lose up to a couple of minutes every day.

Unfortunately, since the latter part of last year (possibly since the change to UK daylight savings time) T-mobile UK seem to be running around four minutes behind the rest of the UK. At least it's consistent, so my best option at present, but I have still missed a couple of trains as a result :(

Is there a way to configure a different time source so it can sync to something on the net? Or do you have any other ideas?

Indeed. Since you're rooted, I suggest you use the freeware Sytrant. It also allows you to choose which time server you wish to sync from as well as allowing a user to specify a daily interval at which the time can be updated automatically.


Certificate expiry upcoming Today my phone tells me that its certificate will expire in February 2018

What will happen to my phone when this date occurs?

Do I need (a) to worry (b) to take pre-emptive action? ...

Certificates sign apps as they are submitted to the Play Store, and are controlled by the app developer. If you are getting a warning, it should be specific to the app it reports against. Contact the app developer to seek a rebuilt app with an updated certificate.
The following is from Google's development documentation, and is for the app developer (who should also be aware of the expiration):

Expiry of the debug certificate

The self-signed certificate used to sign your APK for debugging has an expiration date of 365 days from its creation date. When the certificate expires, you will get a build error.

To fix this problem, simply delete the debug.keystore file. The file is stored in the following locations:

~/.android/ on OS X and Linux
C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\.android\ on Windows XP
C:\Users\<user>\.android\ on Windows Vista and Windows 7, 8, and 10

The next time you build and run the debug build type, the build tools will regenerate a new keystore and debug key. Note that you must run your app, building alone does not regenerate the keystore and debug key.

Manage your key

Because your app signing key is used to verify your identity as a developer and to ensure seamless and secure updates for your users, managing your key and keeping it secure are very important, both for you and for your users. You can choose either to opt in to use Google Play App Signing to securely manage and store your app signing key using Google's infrastructure or to manage and secure your own keystore and app signing key.

So, simple answer to:

a) Worry? - Maybe (from further down the documentation page "When your key's validity period expires, users will no longer be able to seamlessly upgrade to new versions of your app.")

b) Action? - note the app and the contact information of its developer, seek replacement app.


Application folder naming convention I was just wondering why the naming of some folders on android is such:

com.dropbox.android
com.android.browser

Further to answer from @PratapPatil who has given the Android details.
This is a convention in programming, specifically here Java.
The Java Tutorials package details give details and examples.
With programmers worldwide writing classes and interfaces using the Java programming language, it is likely that many programmers will use the same name for different types. In fact, the previous example does just that: It defines a Rectangle class when there is already a Rectangle class in the java.awt package. Still, the compiler allows both classes to have the same name if they are in different packages. The fully qualified name of each Rectangle class includes the package name. That is, the fully qualified name of the Rectangle class in the graphics package is graphics.Rectangle, and the fully qualified name of the Rectangle class in the java.awt package is java.awt.Rectangle.
This works well unless two independent programmers use the same name for their packages. What prevents this problem? Convention.
Naming Conventions

Package names are written in all lower case to avoid conflict with the names of classes or interfaces.
Companies use their reversed Internet domain name to begin their package names—for example, com.example.mypackage for a package named mypackage created by a programmer at example.com.
Name collisions that occur within a single company need to be handled by convention within that company, perhaps by including the region or the project name after the company name (for example, com.example.region.mypackage).

For an alterative angle on this the StackOverflow quesion is around naming a hobby project.  The naming could be something like rossc.android.exampleproject  since I don't have a domain of my own.


s3 bootloop switching to cyanogenmod with cwm As i managed to mess up, I need your help!
I wanted to switch from samsung s3standard 4.3  to cyanogenmod11nightly:

What I did:

with odin flashed CF-Auto-Root-m0-m0xx-gti9300.tar.md5 to get root
backed up data,apps,efs (no nandroid, didnt know at which point that would be done)
because I could find out ho to get the cm-11-20140121-NIGHTLY-i9300.zip to install without a custom recovery, I
reflashed philz_touch_6.07.9-i9300.tar.md5
deleted everything (data/factory reset, then "clean for new ROM", cache, dalvik)
went to Install from .zip -> SD Card -> no CM11 zip file there anymore!! I put it directly in the root of the sdcard

=> now bootloop. In the recovery I see only the standard folders, no usefull .zip

How do I get the CM11 zip again on the phone (or show it up if it is still there)?? And where exactly do i have to put it this time, as my "just in the root" option seemed bad.

I tried this
Problem with updating CyanogenMod - Phone will no finish booting up
but i cant get the ZIP to the phone, its not recognised in Windows as Phone/Folder =(

What is the next step before I brick everything?

As your device supports an external microSD card: take that card, put it into a card-reader (if you don't have one: now's the time to buy it; they come for less than 10 bucks), attach the reader to your PC. Now, copy the file to the root of the card, safely unmount, then put the card back into your phone. You should be able to flash it then.

For what possibly happened: you might have placed the file in the root of the internal SDCard. Recovery is looking on the external card.


What exactly does CalDAV-Sync do? Android has this Bug, that prevents you from using a standard CalDAV application.

This App corrects that bug:

  CalDAV-Sync is a CalDAV client for Android to synchronize events. Due
  to its implementation as sync adapter it integrates seamlessly with
  the native calendar app and widgets.(Also check out CardDAV-Sync)

  Important note for Jelly Bean users: To prevent the removal of your
  accounts on reboot install this app:
  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.jb.workaround.caldavsync

  This app will create new calendars on your device (one for each
  calendar on your server account)

How exactly does it solve it?

Is it an alternative synchronisation? Or does it correct the bug?

According to the fix app, the actual bug it fixes is 34880.

Basically, Play installs paid apps to the wrong location, specifically to /mnt/asec instead of /data/app.  When the service cache is generated on boot, that location is not yet mounted, so the service and the associated accounts gets removed.

This works around that by using the same account on a non-paid app, which installs normally, get picked up by the service cache, and this prevents the account from getting removed.


Whats ODIN mode in Galaxy Tab 2? I just pressed the power button and the volume up button in my Tab. I went into a screen called ODIN mode... It started downloading something... What is this?

This is the download firmware mode.

It can be used to upgrade official firmware via Samsung's own Odin software (or the 3rd party heimdall (also here)). It's also used to install a custom aftermarket firmware like CyanogenMod. Actually it allows more but installing firmware is the most common use.


Redmi Note 4. ADB pm uninstall some packages, Stuck in Reboot So I wanted to remove some apps pre installed.

I connected to my Redmi Note 4 ( Nougat ) via adb shell.

Used pm uninstall -k --user 0 <name of package>

Removed the following packages.

com.android.browser
com.android.email
com.google.android.apps.tachyon
com.google.android.music
com.google.android.play.games
com.google.android.videos
com.miui.cleanmaster
com.miui.cloudservice
com.miui.cloudservice.sysbase
com.miui.securitycenter
com.miui.weather2
com.mxtech.videoplayer.ad
com.xiaomi.mipicks
com.xiaomi.oversea.ecom
org.wordpress.android

According to me, I did not remove any system apps.
However now when I Reboot I am stuck at Reboot Screen (bootloop) with adb devices showing as connecting

I am able to boot into fastboot mode. Dont know how to make use of that here. Also I have a Ubuntu machine, so I am not able to use official MI tools which are mostly for Window users

Flash a fastboot stock rom, fastboot rom even has a option to flash without wipe.

If you have a linux i could guide you further on how to do that.


Samsung Galaxy S5 died suddenly and without reason Less than a month old my Samsung Galaxy S5 has completely died.

I was listening to music on my Galaxy S5 (<1 month old) when it cut out. The phone had 50% charge, but had suddenly turned itself off.

I restarted it and it showed only 10% battery life, so I turned it off--thinking this might be a battery calibration issue and I'd charge it when I got home and all would be dandy.

I charged it to 100% once home and began using it, and suddenly, the battery life began dropping 99, 97, 96, 95 probably once every second (the phone was also very hot) it died completely and will not turn on, will not charge, will not show any signs up life. Zero.

I've taken it out of the Otterbox case, taken out the battery, removed the SIM and micro SD card and still zero signs of life. Any idea what could have caused this of how to fix it?

This is likely a defective battery or similar. Seeing as you have just bought it, I'm not surprised that it is showing this behavior. You could probably pull up your warranty (assuming you haven't rooted it) and get it fixed for no charge.

In case it is not a defective battery, hold down the power button in addition to holding both volume button for about 10 seconds or so. If that doesn't turn it on I'd treat it as defective and get it fixed/replace the battery yourself (probably voids warranty, be careful)


What are the steps for rooting an Android device, in general? I'm aware that for different devices the particular procedures are different, but I guess there are principal similarities in the procedure.

So what are the basic steps to root your phone? What actually happens behind the scene, when someone follows any of the rooting guides available?

What is the magic that gives you root privileges to your phone? How are the user privileges handled afterwards?

There are a few parts to the process:

Unlocking or bypassing any bootloader protection, allowing the system partition to be written
Installing the relevant binaries to acquire root.

Both of these stages can vary from phone to phone, but here are a few examples:

Unlocking the bootloader

On many OEM phones, this traditionally involves exploiting a vulnerability in part of the system in order to rewrite certain partitions. Sometimes it will mean flashing a new bootloader, a new recovery (this is becoming common) or temporarily booting from an image over USB, in order to gain recovery access to the system partiton.

On the Nexus range of phones, and the development phones that were released by Google, it is as simple as running "fastboot oem unlock", though this will wipe the phone. Also, bowing to pressure from the development community, many manufacturers now offer an official route to unlocking the bootloader.

Installing the root binaries.

Once the system partition has been cracked then the rest is fairly straight-forward. It basically means installing the 'su' binary (this escalates to super user permissions), and an apk which provides an Android front end to 'su', and prompts the user when an app is requesting root permission.

There are several approaches to this second stage. The most common has been to use a pre-rooted ROM provided by the community. There is often a choice, from the stock ROM provided by the manufacturer and then tinkered with to add the binaries, through to a whole range of AOSP (Android Open Source Project) ROMs, such as CyanogenMod (one which I contribute to).

There are some other methods. For example, some phones (eg Galaxy Nexus) can use a "superboot" bootloader, which tinkers with your existing ROM as bard of the boot process. It is flashed to your phone using the fastboot program.

Typically there will be a single favoured approach for any particular phone.


Unwanted unlock code screen on Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 This screen has been appearing lately. It appears in a few seconds after I have inserted a SIM card, rebooted the device, and draw the right pattern or inputted the right unlock code. The screenshot of the unwanted code is below.

Model number: GT-N8000.
Android version: 4.1.2 (stock).

This looks like you have a tablet with SIM lock.

You have to unlock your tablet to use another SIM card (or a SIM card from another provider). You have to contact the provider which has sold the tablet for the first time.


Samsung Galaxy 5 gmail password How do I get to my gmail password on Samsung Galaxy 5.  I needed to change
the password on other devices and need to change on phone
Thank you

Your Gmail account is not tied to a certain device- it is universal across all Google services. You can change your password in your Google account settings. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/41078?hl=en


Display On when plugged in Is there a way to keep the display "ON" whilst the device is plugged in?

I am running Android 2.2 Froyo on Samsung Galaxy S.

Settings > Applications > Development > Stay awake


LG G4 Interruptions: How do I prevent my phone from randomly going to "priority only?" Priority only will go on randomly (probably a couple times a day). I don't have any "downtime" scheduled. Anyone else facing this issue? How do I fix it? Thanks.

I don't have this issue, never have seen it.  I wonder if it is an app or some other service causing it?  Which carrier do you have?  My only suggestion would be to install Tasker and set up a profile so that if your phone goes into priority mode, Tasker changes it back.  Of course this means if you want to manually change it you'll need to temporarily disable that profile.  It's not a very elegent solution, but it might work as a workaround...


How do you set the default search engine in firefox? In firefox if I type a bunch of words instead of a web address and hit go it does a google search.

You can install addons for other search engines and they appear in a list below the address bar and you can click those to perform the search on that engine instead.

Is there a way to make one of these search add-ons the default?

Figured this out by looking at the desktop version.

Enter "about:config" into the address bar.
Search for "keyword.url"
Set the value of this setting to the new search provider. For example: "https://www.duckduckgo.com/?q="

UPDATE:
This has changed in the newer versions of Firefox (desktop version too).
You now have to install search engine addons.
Then enter "about:addons" in the address bar.
Long press on the search engine add on that you wish to be default and select "Set as Default" from the menu that appears.


Moto G8 plus - Android 9 - no support for sms message restore from Google backup - how do I manually access these messages? I need to restore a Moto G8 plus running Android 9, turns out according to the carrier the crucial messages app does not support restoring SMS. Can I debug and manually access these messages? If so how?

If the SMS are restored successfully, you can use ADB:
adb shell content query --uri content://sms

That will print all the content of the table sms in the database "/data/user_de/0/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/mmssms.db".


Manually add UID to a system group Let's say i create a custom group on Android (We will call it GID 5000) and i want to add users (apps) to this group, how can i manually add the app's UID to GID 5000 ? If possible, without touching the APK.

Based on Linux, Android supports the addgroup and adduser commands (I just checked on one of my devices, and the command exists). I'm not sure whether it supports the full set of options available on Linux, but what should work is at least

# create a new group
addgroup [--gid ID] group
# add a user (app) to that group
adduser <user> <group>

From the adduser man page:

  If called with two non-option arguments, adduser will add an existing user to an existing group.


How to set my wallpaper from my Dropbox? I have copied a bunch of images into my Dropbox on my pc and sync'd them to my phone. Does anyone know how to use these images for wallpapers on my phone?

The only way I can think of is that I can use something like Astro to copy the file to my gallery locally on the phone, or to share my dropbox pictures folder on the web and browse to it.

Although copying the file into dropbox and then copying it again seems crazy. Is there a better option?

You're right I just played with trying to set a Dropbox image as my wallpaper, and can't believe that there isn't an easier way. Part of the problem seems to be that if you Open a dropbox image, it isn't sent to the Gallery or the system default image viewer (which would let you do things like set as wallpaper) but Dropbox uses its own (HTML?) viewer.

There are feature requests in Dropbox's "Votebox" that are requesting features that would fix this. It's probably worth heading over there and letting them know that you'd like this feature, this option looks like the most likely (but you can just go to Votebox and search for Android to see all the relevant ones):

Add Dropbox photos to Android gallery

Update: If you download photos from Dropbox, they do appear in the gallery in a folder called "Photos". Now that they're in the Gallery, you can set them as wallpaper the same as normal. You might need to force the media scanner to start before they'll show up in the gallery, this previous question has options for forcing that to run.


Won't placing a cuostm ROM file before factory reset remove it from the phone? I have run CM12.1, OxygenOS, and now Exodus for a while now on my OnePlus One - but for the life of me I cannot remember where you have to place your new ROMs zip file.

When flashing a new ROM you should start from a clean slate so you do a factory reset wipe. However, as it seems that this basically wipes all the data from the device, where should I place the ZIP files I want to install later on?

If I access my phone through USB on my computer I assume that I can only access the data-partion (/"SD card" partition) and these get wiped any way, so how and where should I place the new ZIP files?

It is noted in the link you mentioned:

  Depending on your device and its configuration, you may have options for wiping internal storage, external storage, sd-ext, android_secure, and/or an option for formatting data. There’s almost no reason that you would ever need to use these items.

(Emphasis mine)

For a clean wipe, you can get rid of everything under /data except of /data/media/ which in particular gets mounted as the emulated internal storage by Android. In short, it houses your files and serves as the internal SD card (/sdcard). You can however get rid of /data/media/0/Android directory since it contains files related to applications installed in your currently installed ROM. Those files may or may not interfere in smooth functioning of your new ROM after a clean wipe.

Advanced wipe can be performed from TWRP through Wipe → Advanced Wipe → choose appropriate boxes. Remember, Internal Storage there means /data/media and Data means /data excluding /data/media/.

If you still intend to wipe everything:

As Salesman wrote, you can use an external SD card to store the ZIP. If your device (OnePlus One does) supports USB OTG then you can use a  USB drive as well to store the ZIP. Otherwise, as Death noted, side-loading is also a good option. In the side loading mode, the zip is served or as you said, streamed. You would need version 1.0.32 or above of ADB client in your PC to do side loading.

To initiate side loading, from TWRP go into Advanced → ADB sideload → swipe to begin sideload. In the PC, provided that you've adb setup and device plugged in using USB, issue the command:

adb sideload PATH   # PATH is file path of your ROM's zip in your PC.

Once side loading completes, you can do whatever you want in TWRP.

By the way, using MultiROM for OnePlus One you can get rid of all of this dilemma.


Download google offline map from PC? I have an android device that has no internet connection.

Is there a way to download a google map for a certain region from my PC, and then copy this map to my android device so that I can use it offline there?

Specifically, I want the full map of Cuba, with all zoom levels.

You can not use Google Maps in offline mode according to its description. There are some tutorials in the Internet like these Google Maps Offline but are not recommended as it lasts only for 30 days in your device according to the tutorial. So looking at alternatives we have this app called Maps.Me which is totally as good as Google Maps. I have this app for myself. Try it.


How do I stop the Adobe Flash Player updates from installing themselves? The Adobe Flash Player 11.0 update keeps installing itself on my HTC Desire. At over 17 MB that pushes me into the "Low space" zone and then my gmail stops refreshing etc... which is a disaster.

Now while I can go into Settings -> Applications and can uninstall the update (which leaves me with the stock version of the Flash Player which is fine for me), a couple hours later Flash reinstalls itself again. Not only is this annoying but it also cost me a lot of bandwidth.

Is there any way I can disable updates for this default application?

You should be able to configure auto update via the market place. Open the market place go to my apps and find Adobe Flash Player and untick the "Allow automatic updating" box.


Photos copied via bluetooth from LG 4X HD to Xperia Z are no longer sorted I recently copied all my photos and videos from my LG to my Xperia Z using Bluetooth. It took a while but the all copied over fine and are in  a single album, My Album, under a folder named Bluetooth.

The problem is that they are now unsorted. On the LG phone, I had all of the media files organized by different albums but now they are all in a single album.

Is there a way to copy these using Bluetooth or another method without losing the album structure and naming?

It seems you have lost your folder structure ("albums") due to the Bluetooth transfer. A possible solution would be to copy not over Bluetooth but rather with a Computer (USB) or over Wifi and a network share, to retain the folder structure.

There are many file managers available in the play store which can use network shares. You may also consider using DropBox or that kind of service.


How to select a power supply for a given Android device There are a variety of products on the market which provide a power supply for Android devices through the ubiquitous MicroUSB 2 port.  These include adaptors for 12V "cigarette lighter" car DC power supplies, adaptors for AC (120-240V) domestic power supplies, solar power supplies, AA battery power supplies, and so on.

One consideration with all such products is the maximum current they can supply.  This is generally 500mA at a minimum, but I have seen up to 2 A.

How can we know what current our device will draw, so as to select a power supply which will maximize its recharge rate?  What is the maximum current that can be supplied via a MicroUSB connection?  How can we know if our device is able to safely use a power supply which can supply more current than it draws?

I'm not aware of any way to find out the maximum current the device will use except checking the charger that came with the device and assuming that the manufacturer suppied the most efficient charger suitable.

The maximum current for USB connection is 5A, but usually the range used by phone/tablet chargers is between 0.5A and 2A.

Note that the amperage of the charger only tells what is the maximum current that the charger can supply, so it's safe to plug a 2A charger to a device capable of 0.5A current.


Nexus 4 screen goes blank while there is an incoming call I am using Nexus 4 running on Kitkat 4.4.4 and facing a weird issue since a few days.

Whenever there is an incoming call, I can only hear the ringtone/vibrations but no display.
If I press the power button, I can not see the incoming call screen. So, I can not receive the call at all, even if I unlock the screen.
After this, if I try to call back, the outgoing call screen is not seen but the call goes through and I can continue with the call - but without the outgoing call screen. That means, I can not hang up the call if the phone is only ringing on the other side.
This behavior is random but frequent. After a reboot, everything comes back to normal.

Any way out to stop this? Any pointers would be helpful.

Exact solution for this issue was not found. This is not happening after I have updated my phone to Lollipop.


Backup all apks from device using adb: why this loop in bash script doesn't work? You can do adb shell pm list packages, and after reading through the list, do an adb shell pm path "com.yourpackage" to get the full path and do a simply adb pull.

Fact is: I want to automate this. I thought about a really simple bash script:

for apk in $(adb shell pm list packages | sed 's/package://g' | sort); do
    # If you just do an echo, IT WORKS
    # echo $apk
    # But here it doesn't work
    adb shell pm path $apk
done

But that simply doesn't work. It seems that "$apk" becomes lost or something and nothing is shown in that snippet. I don't know if it's a subshell problem, or some peculiarity when using variables that got through an adb shell.

Should I create a script apks.sh just using pm list, for and such, push it to my device, run adb shell only once and execute apks.sh?

It doesn't work because adb  adds carriage return in the output. You can read Gilles' answer for more info on that.
All of you've to do is remove the carriage return. Here's the tweaked script of yours:

#!/bin/bash

for package in $(adb shell pm list packages | tr -d '\r' | sed 's/package://g'); do
    apk=$(adb shell pm path $package | tr -d '\r' | sed 's/package://g');
    echo "Pulling $apk";
    adb pull -p "$apk";
done

You can use -p with adb pull if only you've version 1.0.32 or above of adb. sort is not needed, as I see it.


How can I use the Android Paid Market from a region where it's not available yet? I live in scandinavia and the Market for paid applications is not available here yet. Is there any way I can enable it? Or a workaround?

You need to install an application called Market Enabler, note this only works on rooted phones . You can download it from here


Add background/shade on app name I would like to have a background appear around my app name, like in the image below. I have looked around quite a bit and have not been able to find anything to help me achieve this. Are there any settings/ways to have this feature? Or do I have to use 3rd-party app?

The screen showing the app name with dark background from aHome Theme: openSUSE
(click image for larger variant)

You can use a different launcher, I know Nova Launcher can do this. You will have to setup all your apps, folders and widgets again though.


Does deleting your Android apps data delete your personal files? I use Redmi Note 3 with Android 6.0.1. Out of 10 GB internal storage, 4.5 GB is occupied only by apps. I see that app data and app cache eat up a lot of free space. I safely delete app cache data.But since that's not enough so I want to delete my app data also. But all my files in my phone are important to me so I want to be sure that deleting my apps data won't delete my personal files. Some of the apps whose app data I intend to delete are Google play services, Google drive, Mi Browser and Google chrome. I am not sure what files does this 'app data' contain and I don't know if there's any method to know that.

Clearing an app data DO delete files from your phone. Becuase those files are associated directly with the apps that you are deleting. Any other files which are not AUTOMATICALLY created by the app being deleted will not be deleted when you clear an app's data.

So, go ahead and feel free to delete an app's data. But be careful deleting an app's data actually resets that app into a freshly installed app state. And if you delete the Google app's data chances are that you might lose some bookmarks, history or any preferences you have set previously.


Change Android USB Device Name for Windows Explorer When I connect a Motorola Moto E (gen 2) using USB to a Windows 7 computer, the phone is shown in Windows Explorer as "MotoE2(4G-LTE)" which is a bit techie, but I know immediately what it is.

When I connect a Motorola Moto G (gen 2), it is shown as "XT1072" which I don't find very helpful.

I can edit the name in Windows Explorer, which is useful and permanent in that I later get that same new name if I connect the phone to a different computer.

However the popup on connection still uses the XT1072 name

I assume the USB device name is determined by the phone. Can I change XT1072 to something else (e.g. MotoG2) in Android settings?

It is just a name for the device that the manufacture put there. Change the name, call it what you like, it does not matter.

The pop up is part of Windows and will call on the device's real name (what the manufacturer called it). This device name is embedded into the your mobile device and can not be changed without going down to a low level of programming.

In your phone spec on GSMarena, you will notice that your phone has multiple names.


Double Security for Gmail My phone has a pattern lock and I want friends to be able to unlock it with the pattern, however, I do not want them to have access to my gmail. Is there a way that I can force gmail to ask for the password every time I/someone try to open it?

I've read that the password tokens are an intrinsic part of the Android OS, is there any way I could do such a thing without losing the notifications of new e-mail?

Thanks!

You could use an app locker like Smart App Protector. This will protect your installed applications using a password or pattern.


Where are displayed shortcuts stored? Often after a reboot, crash or USB usage, icons of apps go missing.  Both in the "Home" screens and "Applications".

Currently I have four screens of apps, three in Home. Some of the icons understandably vanish when the SD is taken by eg. USB Storage to PC mode (because they are in part stored there), but often refuse to reappear even after restarting the phone.

Is there config file stored somewhere in my rooted Android 2.2 responsible for the current desktop layout of shortcuts?  Or way to back it up & restore (even the stale shortcuts), or force refresh based on existing apps in internal or external memory?

App specific settings are usually stored in the internal storage folder accessible only to that app. While apps do have the ability to write to external storage and lose access to that data when you mount it, I doubt that is the case here.

When you install and move an app to the SD Card, you are not moving the entire app. Some core content of the app still stays on the internal storage. However, moving an app to the external storage has some interesting side effects. The app is completely disabled when you connect your device to the computer, on pre honeycomb devices. Android 3.0 onwards, the USB storage was switched to MTP, which allows the device and the computer to access the storage simultaneously.

In your case, when you connect to the computer, the apps on the SD Card are disabled, causing them to disappear temporarily. As for them not reappearing when you disconnect and restart your phone suggests that there is a bug in the launcher you're using. Try using a different third party launcher instead.


Is it possible to extract Nexus 7 serial number through command line (e.g., ADB)? I'm possibly into a rare situation. I have a Nexus 7 LTE 2013 that suddenly stopped showing anything on the screen. It looks like turned off all the time, even the LED light does not turn on. I tried charging it in various ways and it did not help.

I contacted Asus and they asked me for the serial number, which I don't have. They said I can find this on the box, which I don't have either.

Using ADB, while N7 is connected to my Macbook Air, I did adb devices and it shows up a device that is "offline". When issuing the command adb get-serialno, it says unknown. It looks like the device is not dead but probably the screen is.

Is there any tool that can get me the serial number through command line?

Update:

I had an alarm set on the device. Today the alarm was fired and I heard the alarm ring from the device. I could only turn off the alarm by holding the power button.

The "device offline" output means that the device is detected, but it refuses any operation because the user didn't allow that particular computer to connect (secure ADB). Your device is up and running, and displaying a confirmation window on its non-functioning screen. You could try to power the device on and blindly hit the OK button after unlocking the screen, then all ADB commands should work. Alternatively, if you have used ADB with another computer, try it with that.

Also, all devices offer some kind of ID even in this state, displayed by "adb devices"; this is the serial number most of the time. See if it's the right format.

Edit: "fastboot devices" should show the serial number too. Also, it should be easy to put the N7 into fastboot mode even without a screen.


Find a list of all apps that launch at boot time I am using Android 5.1.1 (EDIT: 6.0.1 now) in a Samsung J7.
I want to get a list of apps that launch at boot time1.

What are the alternative clear ways of identifying such list? (preferably native from Android)

I could not find anything native. I did find other options/posts, but I am not sure how certain were the posters about the methods, with contradicting info, so I explicitly ask:

This answer gives Android Assistant as an option.
I installed it, and checked Monitoring -> Startup Manager
It shows two tabs (User, System) with lists of apps2.
The two lists total 41+83=124 apps.
AirDroid, AlarmReceiver (I could not identify this app) and Maps.Me are in the first list, e.g.
There is no mention to any permission.
This would do the job.
This answer suggests checking the list of apps that have RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED permission, among the list of 138 permissions.
This would list apps that are able to launch at startup (although not necessarily doing so?).
Permission Explorer shows 151 apps with this permission.
aSpotCat shows 68 apps with this permission.
App Permission Watcher shows 48 apps that can “run at startup” without specifically quoting the name of the permission; for instance, this does not list Skype, which shows up in the other two. This might be checking User apps, but then 48<>41, and AirDroid or Maps.Me are not in here.
Permission Friendly Apps also shows 48 apps that can run at startup3; it does not list Skype.

So at this point, I do not know which is a sure way, and what is each app checking...

1 At this point, I do not mean to modify the startup list, but only check it.

2 Moreover, there is a checkbox for each app to Select ítems to kill on startup.

3 I did not check if these are all the same as App Permission Watcher.

On Android 7+, you can do:

~$ pm query-receivers --components -a android.intent.action.BOOT_COMPLETED

Or:

~$ dumpsys package resolvers receiver | awk '/android.intent.action.BOOT_COMPLETED/{p=1;next}/:/{p=0}p {print $2}'

Related: Disable autostart on boot


fastboot doesn't see device I've read a lot of articles about this problem but I can't resolve it. I decided to install my developer application on phone using wifi. To do this I need to do some things with my phone. The first step is to unlock bootloader. I stack on step 8, fastboot oem get_identifier_token shows info < waiting to device >. adb sees my device but fastboot can't. An idea?

My phone is HTC Wildfire S and these are steps which I am following:

I restarted phone and entered into FASTBOOT USB mode
I tried to run fastboot oem get_identifier_token command but without success.

I use Windows 7 Professional and my phone is recognized as HT1CSTR05155.

Are you rebooting the device into the bootloader and entering fastboot USB on the bootloader menu?

Try:

adb reboot bootloader

Then, look for on-screen instructions to enter fastboot mode.


How to repartition of Samsung Galaxy Core GT 18262 By adb? My phone storage is 8GB but my phone showing I have System storage is 1.5 & Internal storage is 1GB. Please how I fix it.

You cant repartition using adb. You will have to use Odin (the samsung flash tool).
Get Odin.
Download or create partition information file (PIT) and flash that using odin.
Ofcourse your data will be wiped out.

If you decide or have to create partition file yourself, you can use EFS professional/PIT Magic for that. Just be extra careful and make sure you do your research. Corrupt partition data is never a good thing.

Also, I kinda didnt get how you could get just 1 GB as usable internal memory, it will probably help if you connect your phone to adb and run the command adb shell dfand post here output. But again, if you feel like you must repartition, go ahead.


Dangers of modifying a manufacturer firmware I have a device that uses UBIFS instead of YAFFS, and the system partition is truly read-only. As a result, I can only modify the system partition by completely reflashing it. My device is also not fastboot-friendly, so the only way I can flash it is to modify the manufacturer firmware.

Naturally, I would like to root it this way.

If I modify the manufacturer firmware, test it in an avd, and it WORKS, and then flash it to my device using stock recovery, what are the risks/chances that something will go wrong?

The risks involved by reflashing a firmware are :
In case something went wrong during the flashing process (You should have to be very careful while it is flashing tho), The phone will be PERMANENTLY RENDERED unbootable, or you might PREMANENTLY brick your phone.
I strongly suggest you to not to try to do anything above if your device has a warranty from it's manufacturer, otherwise, You may confirm trying to attempt that.


How can I update my password in Cisco Jabber without having to reset Jabber? I have changed my password in Cisco Jabber through some non-Android device. I also use Cisco Jabber on Android though. How can I update my password in Cisco Jabber for Android without having to reset Cisco Jabber?

After I changed my password in Cisco Jabber, (amazingly) I can still sign in:

However, instant messaging, phone services and voicemail are not available:

I know I could reset by  Cisco Jabber application, but I would rather avoid that, since as its name suggests it resets everything:

Notes:

after clicking on the sign out button, the user is redirected to screenshot 1, and they can still sign in even without specifying the password. The user isn't asked for the new password, amazingly.
restarting the Cisco Jabber application or rebooting the phone after signing  out doesn't help.

I had this same problem and resolved it by going to Accounts -> Instant Messaging and manually changing my password there.  Then reset the program and when you open it again it should work.


My Samsung Galaxy S III claims that a screenshot was "copied to clipboard". What? I'm used to the Palm Treo 700p, running Palm OS.  On Palm OS, the system  clipboard can hold only text.

I now also own a Samsung Galaxy S Relay, running Android "Jelly Bean" 4.1.2.  This is a phone rather similar to the Samsung Galaxy S III, but with a slide-out physical keyboard included.

I take screenshots in the usual way it's done on a Galaxy S Relay.  I hold the Power + Home keys at the same time for a few seconds until I see a white border around the edge of the screen.  (Not for too long.  I don't want my phone to suddenly power off without saving anything to disk.)

Now:

Like a Galaxy S III, my phone then saves a screenshot to a "Screenshots" photo album.
Like a Galaxy S III, my phone shows a notification labeled "Screenshot captured".  I can expand the notification using two fingers to see a preview of the top few centimeters of the screenshot, and then can tap "Delete" or "Share".
And, like a Galaxy S III, my phone displays a pop-up "toast" message at the bottom of the screen which says Copied to clipboard.

Hold on.  What?  The screenshot was copied to the clipboard?

Can the clipboard, in any version of Android, hold images?

The clipboard (like on Windows for instance) can hold different types of data.

Raw images (like your screenshot) are one of those possible clipboard contents and thus you can paste them in, given that the app you use allows you to paste image data from your clipboard.

The supported data types that the clipboard can hold are mentioned in the Android Documentation (https://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/ClipDescription.html).
I believe it either saves an Intent with the type ACTION_ATTACH_DATA or a Uri to your image or holding your image as a data string (Base64 encoded).


Find what app is causing popups, NOT in notification bar I am getting these popups regularly. They do not appear in the notification center so I can't find out what app is causing them. The only app I can think of that I have installed recently, I have already deleted and they still appear. I am using the Nexus 4 Android 4.2.2. None of the ad detector apps have found anything.

How can I determine what is causing this?

Here is a screenshot of an ad, and a screenshot of my task manager immediately after. I am not sure if the app would have to be running to show the ad:

If these popups are appearing in front of other apps, look through your installed apps to find any with the "draw over other apps" permission.  Most apps don't have that permission, so this should help to narrow down which one might be the culprit.


Can't see Macbook WiFi access point on Android smartphone I'd like to connect my Android phone (Samsung Galaxy Nexus running Stock JellyBean) to my Macbook Pro (early-2012, running OSX Lion) via an access point created by my Macbook Pro.

Sadly I can't even see the access point on my Android phone.

Does anyone know a possible solution to this problem?

Additional information: A nearby Windows-PC and iPhone can connect to the AdHoc-network of the Macbook. The android phone can connect to all other wifi.

In Snow Leopard (sorry, I don't have a Lion to try this with):

In System Preferences > Sharing,

Enable 'Internet Sharing'
Enable 'To computers using AirPort'
Click the 'Airport Options' button and set up hotspot's network name and encryption. The AirPort will have to be off for this button to be active.
'Ok' to back out to the Sharing pref pane.

On the Network Preference Pane, or on the menu bar,

Turn on the AirPort.

Your device should see your Mac as a WiFi access point.


Backup using ADB without root or usb debugging I have a Nexus S (on android 4, not rooted) device who's not able to boot. It opens and get stucks to the X screen. I can only access the recovery mode.

I tried to backup data via ADB, but the phone haven't activate USB debugging so I can't connect ADB backup (and it won't show in adb devices). I can only get signal via USB when I go in "update via ADB" option, then the device show, but only the sideload connection is activated.

How can I backup the data on the phone? Or how could I activate the USB debugging mode while in recovery?

You may need to 'upgrade' the driver to the adb version.
Open Device Manager, find your phone and right click it. select "update driver software". On the window that appears choose the "let me pick" option. You should then see a couple of different drivers, select the one that includes "adb" and click ok through any further windows. (remember which one was selected before so you can repeat this to return to the 'normal' driver)
You should then be able to run the adb backup.


cannot add exchange mail on Nexus S running 4.1.2 I am not able to add an exchange email account to my Nexus S.  When I select the add account, corporate, and put in email and password i get to next page with the ssl option and press next, I get error message that it couldn't open connection to server.

This is a new account for me, but it works just fine on my WIN 7 laptop, so this is clearly an issue with Android.

Any suggestions?

This is an issue of login name and server name.

After entering your email address and password. Don't click next, but click Manual Setup.

The next page should ask for your username, password(properly fill in for you already), and Exchange server.

Username: <Windows Domain>\<Windows Login>
Exchange Server: (you should know, or find out from your Outlook setting)

Good luck!


Best software to enable speech-to-text on HTC Desire One of the notable features missing from the HTC desire that is found on the Nexus one is the speech to text.

I am using google voice search and am impressed therefore what is the best software (free or paid) to enable the dictation of emails and text messages.

Have a look at Vlingo: http://www.appbrain.com/app/com.vlingo.client

It learns over time and many people find it more accurate than google's voice recognition.


What exactly is this App Data that is being backed up to Google? Anyone know exactly what "app data" consist off? I'm refering to the new App Data-backup adapter that Google pushed out a while ago.
I have a notes application. From what I can see, it don't save the notes to the memory card unless I choose to export them. Question is, are the notes saved in the data folder and are my (very private) notes therefor somewhere within the Google cloud now?

(This backup happened behind my back - I have all sync adapters turned off, but this one was installed silently and of course enabled by default. I'm not comfortable at all with this.)

Google has documented details of the Android Backup Service and of the Data Backup Framework on its Android Developers website. The descriptions are targeted to developers writing applications but are still helpful:

Android's backup service allows you to copy your persistent application data to remote "cloud" storage, in order to provide a restore point for the application data and settings. If a user performs a factory reset or converts to a new Android-powered device, the system automatically restores your backup data when the application is re-installed. This way, your users don't need to reproduce their previous data or application settings. This process is completely transparent to the user and does not affect the functionality or user experience in your application.

They also specifically address user privacy:

Google securely transmits backup data to and from Google servers in order to provide backup and restore features. Google treats this data as personal information in accordance with Google's Privacy Policy.
In addition, users can disable data backup functionality through the Android system's privacy settings. When a user disables backup, Android Backup Service deletes all saved backup data. A user can re-enable backup on the device, but Android Backup Service will not restore any previously deleted data.

TL/DR: If the Notes app is configured to use the Android Backup Service and has defined your notes as data to include in the backup, then yes, your data is being stored on a Google server. Toggling Backup my data will delete currently saved personal information from Google's servers that is associated with your Google account. This will affect all of your current apps' backed up data.


Help identifying tablet I don't know if here is the right place to put this but I need your help identifying what I believe is a Chinese tablet that a friend of mine received as a gift.

The problem is that it is locked in the boot loading process (it only displays Android on screen) and I need to reinstall it. The only information I have is what dmesg returned when connected via USB

:~$ dmesg | tail
[161396.250396] usb 2-1.1: Product: Android
[161396.250399] usb 2-1.1: Manufacturer: USB Developer
[161396.250401] usb 2-1.1: SerialNumber: 20080411d412e5d
[161401.258415] scsi10 : usb-storage 2-1.1:1.0
[161402.252904] scsi 10:0:0:0: Direct-Access USB 2.0 USB Flash Driver 0100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[161402.253268] scsi 10:0:0:1: Direct-Access USB 2.0 USB Flash Driver 0100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[161402.254146] sd 10:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg9 type 0
[161402.254372] sd 10:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg10 type 0
[161402.257914] sd 10:0:0:1: [sdh] Attached SCSI removable disk
[161402.260390] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdg] Attached SCSI removable disk

I already try to find the serial number and the manufacturer on Google but I can't find anything related. I took some pictures from the tablet and the box

Box

Front

Back

Thanks

Using ADB (comment if you need help getting that setup):

Connect your device to your computer

On the command line in the directory containing adb.exe

Use this command: adb connect localhost:5555

(assuming you are on windows, let me know if otherwise) Then do: adb bugreport > report.txt

That should give you a whole bunch of info in a txt file in the same directory you executed the command. In the file you can search with a text editor (notepad for example) for all the info your heart could desire.


How MIUI releases based on different Android versions have same features? I would like to know how MIUI can provide features on all devices that have the same version of MIUI on it, without the same Android version?

Android version is mainly developed by Google. OEMs like Xiaomi modify AOSP to inject their own features. Other OEMs like Samsung, Huawei also do the same but they don't make visual changes as much as Xiaomi does. Even community based ROMs like Lineage, Omni and their offshoots like AOSP Extended, Resurrection Remix also have an almost standard set of modifications which they do to every AOSP release.

You can also customize AOSP to build a ROM of your own choice with required features.


How does Google Maps estimate my location without GPS? I was wondering how Google Maps on my Android phone can locate me with a good accuracy when my GPS is disabled.

At first I though it was with the cell tower but I'm not sure it can achieve this precision and it is way better when the wireless is enabled (the accuracy go from 1600m to 100).

What I don't understand is that I have a dynamic IP - it's not supposed to be linked to my address. For example wolframalpha locates me with a very bad precision (the country is correct) and it's the same for all other IP location services.

How does this work?

Google and others like Apple and Skyhook build a Database which links WLAN BSSIDs to a geographic location. A BSSID is like the MAC Address of a access point that gets broadcast by that access point. It is therefore "publicly viewable" if the BSSID broadcast is enabled, which is the default for most access points. The BSSID operates on a lower layer than the IP stack; you don't even have to be connected to an access point to receive these broadcasts.

Every time you run Google Maps or Navigation with GPS and WiFi enabled and if your device is able to get a good GPS fix, the currently visible WLAN networks and your current location (the GPS fix) are uploaded to Google to build and update the database. This technique is sometimes called crowdsourcing. Every Android device acts therefore as data collector.

Since most access points are static in their position and only cover a small area - the coverage radius is approximately 100m - they are ideal anchors for a good location fix without GPS.


How can I use shell commands and interact with the Linux system underneath? Android is based on Linux and has a Linux kernel underneath. Is there any way I can use shell commands and interact directly with the Linux system? E.g. A shell app that has access to the Linux system?

Yes there is,

Check out the application Better Terminal or Android Terminal Emulator both are support from 1.5


Full Disk Encryption on Google Pixel XL vs Google Nexus 6P I am wondering if I have the same full disk encryption with a Google Pixel XL as I did with the Google Nexus 6P.  On the Google Nexus 6P it would not load anything before being prompted for a password, On the Google Pixel XL it appears to load into the OS before I unlock it.

Is it loading into the OS ( I see my wallpaper when I input the password, this suggests to me it is )?  If so, wouldn't this be less secure than with the Google Nexus 6P?
Can I configure my Google Pixel XL to act this way?

I know the Google Pixel XL has two disks (partitions ?) so it can update in the background and update much faster.

The Pixels use file encryption instead of full disk encryption. Only FDE requires preboot authentication. File based will decrypt based on hardware secrets to boot the OS and background services. Once you enter you pin/code/etc, it unlocks your user based files.


How do i change the way contacts display? My contacts are in list form but my favorites are a thumbnail with a picture, etc. How do I get my contacts to change to this display?

It isn't supported by default in the stock Contacts provider. However, you can use a third party contact management application that allows thumbnail view. One good option would be Contacts+.


How can I display image formats not supported by the email app, e.g. TIFF? As I'm using K-9 Mail for my email app, sometimes I get a tiff attached to the mail, but I cannot watch it. Even Tiff2PDF will fail :(.

Any idea how I can get this to work?

The picture viewer of my HTC Desire work fine for TIFF...

Do you try Astro?

BeamReader is able to do it, but it's expensive... However, they offer a 10-day free trial.


I am using motorala g .I have problem sending contacts via SMS how to resolve it I am unable to share the contacts via SMS there no such option can anyone help me

what is your android version ? ,
check this question and search please before send a question.
and also you can use import/export at " Contact " if your android version is support this option.


Nvidia Shield OTA Updates and Rerooting I own an Nvidia Shield tablet, and Nvidia has released an update to Android 5.1. I have a rooted device and may upgrade soon. So I have some questions:

Will I be able to install this while rooted?
If I tried, could it brick my device?
If I installed it would it unroot me?
If so how would I re-root? I rooted by unlocking the bootloader and installing CWM by the instructions at here.
I unlocked the boot-loader, if I re-root, would it erase my data or brick my device?

Probably Not.

Android updates before Lollipop checked each system file and replaced them but after Lollipop, the updates check the whole system block as a part and update it. Since rooting modifies the system files, the System Block won't match and the update will abort.
Since you have a custom recovery, the update won't even go that far because you need Stock Recovery to install it.

TL;DR: Attempting to update won't brick your device; but why leave it to chance?
On the off chance you install stock recovery and proceed with the update and it works, yes, you would loose root. You can reroot the same way you did it before.


view detailed permissions Recently, Google grouped its permissions making it nearly impossible to tell what an app was asking for.  Is there anyway to tell what fine grain level permissions are being requested from an app before it's installed? What about after?

I waved Good-Bye to the Google-Play website right after their last relaunch already, as it became pretty inconvenient: slow to load, and lacking important details. Luckily, there are some good alternatives available:

For my "research", I prefer AppBrain, which is an "alternative front-end" to the playstore one could say offering a "retro design" – as if it were the Playstore-a-while-back. Not only do you find all permissions listed separately again, they also place a "red triangle" on the permission tabs if an app requests permission (combinations) possibly raising concerns. Only draw-back I recently noticed is their dropping of the app-developers website link.

If you want to check directly on your device, for one AppBrain also has their own app. But as I haven't checked that lately I don't know how it lists permissions – so I rather recommend you Galen's StripSearch app. This not only shows you permissions, it also lets you filter your search by them:

StripSearch (source: Google Play; click images for larger variants)

The app comes with some pre-set filters to use straight away. You can modify them, or even create your own (as the one in the second screenshot). The app works pretty well, I'm using it myself.

As a quasi-companion I might mention my own site, which offers app listings by real-life categories as well as an app search similar to that of Galen's app – with the difference that my site only covers about 10.000 apps (corresponding to about 1% of the amount GPlay has). But my listings also link to reviews and other related information for its apps, so it might be worth a look still :) And if you click on an app's name there, it also reveals all its requested permissions – additionally linking each permission to detailed explanations of its meaning.


How to add the voice typing key to the LG keyboard on Android 6? How can I add the voice typing key to the LG keyboard on Android 6? I use an LG 4.

E.g. on Gboard I could:

(Click image to enlarge)

Here it goes:

Open Settings → Language and keyboard → LG keyboard settings and there go to keyboard height and layout, then to QWERTY keyboard layout.
There you will have option to rearrange some buttons. One of them will be settings button (a gear like button). On it will be 3 dots. Tap it and the microphone icon will show up. Just tap on it and you are good to go.

(Click image to enlarge it)


Is there any way to save data i.e. Screenshot/ photo to external storage by default I am using Moto G. It is Android 6.0. Internal storage 16Gb.
Now I want to store all screenshot and photo/ video taken using default camera app and whatsapp/ other social media data to external storage.
What is problem:
As I came to know the option to select "save to external memory" or selecting external memory as default is removed from android 6 and above.
I know there is no short of internal memory but I want to keep/ preserve these data on external card even if I remove/ swap the external card. say for legal purposes.
Now the problem is if I format external SD card as portable it there is no option to select this as default storage. If I format external SD card as internal storage I can not remove it without loosing data.
So Is there any way to make apps to save all data to external storage by default.
I don't mind where apps are installed. Only I care about screenshots/ camera photo/ audio recording/ video recording/ whatsapp data etc.
Thank You all

Try this solution:
https://android.stackexchange.com/a/217936/218526
The Directory Binder option in Lucky Patcher might work as well. Haven't tried it out myself though, so no promises.


Caller cannot be heard When the my Nexus 4 is called, the telephone caller can only be heard when loudspeaker is switched on or with earphones - is this normal? - is this a case for warranty send-back?

No, it's not normal. The following might seem obvious if you're familiar with Android, but it's worth a check.

Android has separate volume levels for media (such as music), notifications, and in-call. It also has a separate volume level for when you're using headphones, to avoid deafening yourself by plugging in headphones when the volume is high. It could be that the "in-call without headphones" volume is very low, and the other volumes are normal. Try turning up the volume (with the physical volume keys) while you're in a call (with no headphones plugged in), and see if that solves the problem.

If not, it sounds like a hardware problem with the speaker that goes next to your ear. There is a separate speaker for when it's on speakerphone, or for music or videos. In that case, a warranty claim would be the appropriate course of action, especially if this is a new phone and it has always had this problem.


Volume controls with Apple in-ear headphones I want to be able to use the volume controls on a pair of Apple in-ear headphones with my Google Nexus 6P (running Android 6.0). The play/pause function of the middle button works but not the volume +/- .
I understand that there is a difference in the wiring standards between iPhone and other devices for the volume buttons.

My questions is:

Is there any application or software fix for this?
If no software fix, is there any other solution?

Maybe the easiest solution would be to use a pair of headphones that have the correct wiring, but I did like these Apple headphones.
Thank you for any suggestions or answers on how to possibly solve this.

There is no software fix because it uses physically different pins on the headphone connector. The hardware simply does not support it. There are plenty of good android compatible headphones out there though.


What are the Standard Controls for Headphones on Stock Android Kitkat? I have Bose MIE2 earbuds and a Nexus 5 running Android KitKat 4.4.2. The earbuds have a two-sided button:

Hitting this button in different ways during audio playback triggers different actions. I'm trying to figure out the controls. So far, I've found:

single tap, either side:

Google Play Music: play/pause
Audible: play/pause
Stitcher Radio: pause, but no play

double tap, either side: forward one track

Google Play Music: forward one track
Audible: nothing, just pauses and plays (interpreted as 2 single taps)
Stitcher Radio: nothing, just pauses (interpreted as 2 single taps)

press and hold, either side

All Contexts: voice google search

There are also supposed to be ways to answer and make calls, but I haven't discovered them yet.

Questions

is there a standard reference for what the different tap patterns are supposed to do?
is there a way to program the controls to achieve a consistent interface across applications?
do all headphone manufacturers implement basically the same headphone controls, so that apps for manipulating one brand will work for other brands?

is there a standard reference for what the different tap patterns are supposed to do?

Basically, what you have noted is how most BT headphones function with their buttons.

is there a way to program the controls to achieve a consistent interface across applications?

No, since each app maker decides whether or how to implant/interpret BT controls. It can be quite annoying when playing from different apps and the pause button does not work.

do all headphone manufacturers implement basically the same headphone controls, so that apps for manipulating one brand will work for other brands?

From my experience, owning several BT headphones, the buttons are always the same, but the placement is not. I tried finding a BT standard in hopes to find if the buttons are standardized, but I was not able to make any grounds.


How do I open a Photo attached to a text Message? I have just bought a Samsung Galaxy S and have been sent a Text message with a photo but cannot find out how to open the photo to view when I touch the message thread it just comes up with message details help please still trying to get used to the phone and cannot find in manual!!!!

Try this:

On the messaging app, (without opening any thread), tap on the menu key and go to Settings.

Scroll down to Multimedia message (MMS) Settings section and turn off "Auto-retrieve"
Next time you view the message, the message will display a download button.
Make sure your mobile data is on, and tap on the button. The image will be retrieved and displayed inline on Galaxy S.


Is it possible to open Hotspot while we are using wifi? I have tried but you can only use one at a time either WiFi or Hotspot but it'll be great if we can use hotspot while we are using WiFi.

No. Its not possible.

Creating a WiFi Hotspot requires using the WiFi interface. And the interface, at the moment, supports using it for one thing at a time, either connecting to a Router with it, OR, creating a hotspot (router) for others to connect to.

As a side note, it would have even been nice to have your phone to connect two WiFis for faster browser. But that's also not possible either, at the moment.


Android wifi (oreo) dropping. Because of pihole? First of all, my apologies if I'm posting in the wrong forum. I'm a bit lost in the SE galaxy. But since my issue is quite complex and specific, I feel this is the best place. Let me know if I'm wrong.

So for the issue:

I'm using a home router, lent by my service provider. It's local IPv4 is 192.168.1.254.
I have a raspberry pi (IP 192.168.1.15) running a dns service (and ad-blocker) called pihole, configured to use unbound (full recursive dns) on the same machine as its upstream source.
The router is running a dhcp service and points to the raspberry as the default dns server.

I have no problem on my computers, either in wifi or ethernet. Network configuration is alright, DNS is indeed coming from the pi.

Now I want my nexus 6P using the latest version of android to be able to use wifi at home. So I simply connect it to the router wifi, same as I did with my laptop, which is doing great. However, the smartphone is doing his own stuff. Sometimes all will be great, and more often than not, it will drop the wifi saying that there is no internet connection.

Of course I tried a bunch of stuff:

Setting network configuration in the phone instead of letting DHCP do its job, no change.
Changing wifi channel, no change.
Rebooting router, phone, and both, no change.
Whitelisting google services like ad service gstatic check and whatever appeared in my pihole admin panel: seemed to solve the problem at the moment, but a few days later, not that great. And not really what I want.
Try both "google" and "no provider" as wifi quality check provider in the android wifi settings. No effect.
Use external DNS servers like 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8: seems to do the job. But absolutely not my goal.

Note that dns request going through the pi can take up to 1 sec to be answered since it's doing a full recursive search. And I suspect the problem is coming from here.

So does anyone have any idea how to get my phone to stick on this wifi network? Btw, my phone is not rooted and I'd like to avoid going down this road.

I have a similar if not the same problem - my S7 (Android 8.0.0) works fine with the exact same setup that you have until "the next morning": I have to disconnect and then reconnect to my WiFi in order to access the internet (or get proper DNS resolution?).

I could not yet find out the root cause (is the DNS changed/lost?), but I just installed a network analyzer (called "Ping & Net") in order to see if the DNS server on my phone is lost over night.


Can I tether iPhone 3G to EEE Pad Transformer? This is somewhat simmilar to Can I Bluetooth tether my Android to iPhone?, but since it is 7 months old and belongs to different Android version, I will ask again.

I want to buy EEE Pad Transformer (which comes with Honeycomb) and I want to tether it with my iPhone 3G, which supports only Bluetooth tethering. Will that be possible? (I will clarify - I want to tether the 3G connection, that I have on iPhone, to EEE Pad)

I know that the question is half about iPhone, but I think it is more about Android, since I know bluetooth tethering works on iPhone 3G end, I just want to know if it will work on recieving end on EEE Pad Transformer.

Tethering an iOS device to an android device will cause a wormhole to open and suck them both in. I don't recommend it.

the non-sarcastic response to bt tethering on honeycomb


How to copy a message without the message sender's name on Telegram? Until not long ago when you copied a message on Telegram, only the message text was copied. This was a distinguishable feature of Telegram when compared with WhatsApp where messages where copied prefixed with the original sender name and date.

More recently things have turned around and now WhatsApp is copying messages without the sender and date info, while Telegram is prefixing its copied messages with the original sender's name.

How can I copy a message without the message sender's name on Telegram?

There are two ways on Telegram to copy messages:

Tap and hold + copy = will copy the message with the sender's name
Tap + copy = will copy the message without the sender's name


Galaxy note 10.1 reset s-note picture import preferences When I tried to import a picture earlier I accidentally set the S-note picture import preference to Gallery. Before that I was given the choice to import from Astro etc. .

I tried to delete all s-note data/cache in the preferences, but I was unable to reset the picture import to the non default value. (It didn't even delete the Documents on the device, they were back after a reboot).

The reset to default values button in the Task manager is greyed out.

One has to delete the Gallery user settings get the choice for the Import back.


Phone Not Seeing School Wifi When I go to school and try to connect to the wifi network (with my Blu Life One X) it doesn't show any of the networks. The thing is that when I am at home I can see and use the wifi network and at school many times I'll see other peoples wifi hot spots available. So do you think this is a problem with my phone or with the school somehow? All the people I know were on the network last year and have no problems but due to an update that came out I had to forgo all of my saved networks. I appreciate any insight that I can get on this thank you.

Your phone's WiFi capabilities might not meet the supported range of your school WiFi networks. For example I have a 2.4ghz wifi network and a 5ghz wifi network from my router. The 5ghz frequency can only be seen on iPhones and not my android device personally, as iPhones tend to support higher wifi frequencies than most androids.


Mobile data is set to auto turn on with command but isn't working I'm using 2 apps, "MacroDroid" and AutoInput", I set a command(Macro) that would turn on mobile data and location. But when I sent the text, it shows that mobile data and location are "on" but only location works.
And when I try to manually turn on data it won't work unless I restart my phone.
Why is this happening?

Edit : From comments. OP used adb commands to give elevated privileges to an unrooted device for MacroDroid

Using adb commands to gain elevated privileges is a hack and is not guaranteed to give you behavior as on a rooted device

With macrodroid this holds true for turning data off /on. See my comment in the app forums and developer 's reply

  The common behaviour I see is that it does actually enable/disable data but then you cannot modify it later using the system controls until you reboot. However anything that is done via a hack like this may be subject to failure on different devices as it's always possible to have different implementations from other manufacturers that prevent the hack working.


Why is DoubleTwist launching and playing when I remove the headphones? I can't figure this out.

It appears that if I'm using Google Listen, and I remove the headphones from the jack, Listen automatically pauses (which I expect). But then DoubleTwist launches, chooses an MP3 at random, and starts playing (which I don't want).

Further, it seems that if I pause Listen before I pull the jack, it doesn't happen.

I say "seems" because I'm having trouble getting consistent results.

The long-and-short of it is that DoubleTwist is launching and playing a track when I remove the headphone jack for no apparent reason.

Has anyone else encountered this? How can I stop it?

(Unrooted Motorola Droid, Android 2.2)

Sounds just like a simple bug in DoubleTwist's app, and you should probably send them an email reporting it.  Programmers have access to system "events" (for lack of a better word) and we use these events in conjunction with the state of our app to trigger certain behaviors.  Like, if I created an app similar to DoubleTwist, I'd handle the system event of you unplugging your headphones to check if an mp3 is playing, and then I'd immediately pause it so that my app doesn't embarrass you by blasting your music out loud every time you unplug your headphones.  They could be performing this type of check (when receiving an alert from the system that the state of the user's headphone jack has changed) and either reading the state of the headphone jack incorrectly or evaluating the "are we playing audio" state of their own application (or both).


Where is Settings.apk on Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 (4.4.2) I can't find Settings.apk file in /system/app directory. I use the latest stock firmware. Where can I find this APK on this device?

You're right, in kitkat(and up) it maybe deleted from above address but,

I found this on Lollipop 5.0.2 in :

  /system/priv-app/Settings/Settings.apk

Hope you can find it.

Edit : file founded in KitKat-emulator (API-19) with below address :

  /system/priv-app/Settings.apk

Proof :


Installing G2X firmware on the LG P990 O2X? I saw that EaglesBlood released a pre-alpha of Jelly Bean for the P999. Is it possible to make this boot on the O2X P990? I live in Europe.

You may be able to boot, but the likely hood that things like the camera, wifi and other things, working are slim. Even when it is "the same device", just a variant (like the vibrant, captivate, galaxy s, fascinate, for example) flashing a ROM not made for the specific device will not work.

The differences in the hardware causes modifications to the ROM. Everything from the wifi chip, to the camera can require custom drivers.

Most likely, you wont even be able to boot though.


Android OS background data usage Recently set up 2 Android smart phones for my sons earlier this month (around Dec 12th, 2015). On one of the phones, Android OS is showing a HUGE spike in background data usage. From Dec 12th until Dec 25th, Android OS used maybe 233MB of data. However from December 25th until 3 days later (December 28th - Yesterday) it suddenly used 4.30 GB of data!!! WTH?!?!

The family mobile data plan for each line is 6GB through T-Mobile. He was no where near the limit prior to Christmas. Suddenly POOF... over 4GB of mobile data used by the OS. WHY?? What happened? Did his phone get hacked? I have Kaspersky Internet Security installed on the phone since it was set up.. no alarms showing an issue. So what changed in the past 3 days??

The few apps installed barely account for any data usage. Yet Android OS is hogging it all. Is something lurking under that moniker?  Not happy one bit. See attached images for reference.

The same thing happened to me.
While setting up Android there's an option for backing up all data to Google. It might be enabled on one of your sons phone.
Goto settings ->backup & restore
Make sure "back up device data" is not checked.
I did the same and it worked.


Strip /lib from installed apk Most apks have a /lib dir inside with .so files that can be several megabytes. Some even come loaded with libs for different architectures (arm, mips, x86). Libs for relevant arch are copied in /data/app-lib/[package name] at install time, so they take double the space.

I tried to strip the apk from the /lib folder, rewrite, zipalign and put back to install location /data/app or /system/app or /system/priv-appto reclaim some space.

Tried with Chrome v78, it went from 45 mb apk to 15 mb...
Other apps too.
Everything seems to work.

Anyone thinks it's a bad idea? IMO the very Android system should perform this operation by default at install time...

edit 13 Nov

I wrote a script to automate the strip operation, just have to copy the apk to strip in a dir where this script resides, along with zip and zipalign binaries.

#!/system/bin/sh
for filename in `find . -name '*.apk'`
do
        ./zip -d $filename "lib/*"
        ./zipalign -fv 4 $filename $filename.new|tail
        mv $filename.new $filename
        chmod 644 $filename
done;

On my device I can swap original with stripped apks on the fly and they (usually) run fine  without rebooting, even system apps.

Based on my experience, modifying an APK file after the installation is not a big problem as long as you don't touch the DEX files. Especially the native libraries for other architectures than the one of your device can usually be stripped without problems as they are totally ignored after the installation.

However there are apps that implement extra security checks (usually banking, finance, streaming apps with DRM or otherwise extra hardened apps) that performs some sort of self-test to check whether they have been modified or not. Modifying those apps will end up in a non-working app.


Lg stylo2 moving apps to sd card problem I have an lg stylo2 from virgin mobile running android 6.0.1. I'm trying to free up some internal space by moving some apps to the sd card. Everything i have seen says that you go to apps, storage and click change. There's a problem. There is no change button on my phone, for any app.

Is this something that virgin mobile turns off or what? If i have to root the phone, which i am not opposed to, does anyone know how for this particular phone? I haven't been able to find a tutorial yet.

Thanks

According to this it was a feature removed in Marshmallow update.
Quoting user tommytm75 from the android central forum:

There is no solution yet. I have the same issue. After going back and
forth with LG, finally someone answered my question.  This is the last
email I got from LG.
Hi Tom,
Thank you for contacting LG!
We regret any inconvenience you’re having.  Upon checking, I’m afraid
that the Adoptable Storage feature  has been removed on the
Marshmallow update of the LG G Stylo  and this means you may not be
able to fully use the SD card as internal storage of the device. I’m
so sorry to disappoint you in this matter.
Should you have any other questions,  please feel free to contact us
again via Email, Live Chat, or Phone by calling 1-800-793-8896.
Thank you and we wish you all the best.
Sincerely,
Edrian
--- LG Customer Service

Source: LG G STYLO - not enough memory on sd card?