Opening google hangouts or another voip based sms app from browser links My work requires me to text a number of people with a preset text message(ETA for their deliveries). We have a sms: link for each customer which automatically opens the sms app and pre-fills the number and the text message.

Problem is that I have a data-only plan on my phone and use google voice for everything. GV (hangouts app) can be set to open the sms: links but currently it redirects to default sms app after showing an error message about hangouts no longer supporting sms. Even though it does support it for GV users!

So I am looking for a workaround or another app that can allow me to click a sms: link and send the message via GV or it's own sms service.

I've tried things like 2ndLine and Fongo but they can either not be set as default sms app or can't handle sms links.

EDIT: I've got control over how the sms links are created. So if changing the format of the link can solve this then that is an option as well.
Currently the links look like --

Send sms

Answering my own question, but still welcome other better/easier to implement solutions.

There is an app - xvoiceplus that can make third party apps use gv for sms. This should do the trick for me however it requires xposed framework which in turn requires the phone to be rooted.

Installation instructions here


Remove bloatware from Acer Liquid Mini (E310) I am trying to remove Apps installed from phone vendor, like docs to go, without success.
I have read How can I uninstall applications that are locked by phone vendor? and similar topics and I have tried the Titanium Backup Chuck Norris mode but somehow documents to go appears again at reboot.
I tried to find a custom rom but for this phone it looks like there is no one.
Or maybe I wasn t great at searching...
How can I get rid of documents to go forever?

Installing a different rom simply did the job.

Right now I'm using 2.3.5

Unfortunately I just have guides in Italian and French but a little google translator did the job :)

French:

http://www.acer-club.fr/viewtopic.php?f=98&t=3336&sid=64e715b102a9932965fa871175c01da9

Italian:

http://www.androidiani.com/forum/modding-acer-liquid-mini/80562-guida-installare-android-2-3-5-su-acer-liquid-mini-custom-rom.html


MicroSD card not recognized anymore by Android phone Recently, I purchased a 32Gb Kingston MicroSD card for my Alcatel Onetouch Pixi running Android 5.1 with all the latest available updates.

When I first inserted the card, everything worked as expected and the phone detected the card. The only odd thing was that, on starup, the phone would display "Optimizing apps" and spend a long time going through 100 or so apps, and this occured at every reboot. Nevertheless, I had access to the storage, so I tried moving a couple apps to the MicroSD. This seemed to work but I eventually got some errors while trying to move apps, even when trying to move them back to internal storage. I had to reinstall a couple of apps, but everything else seemed to work fine.

A bit later, I noticed that the "optimizing apps" screen didn't appear anymore, so I checked and the SD card was not detected anymore. There was no difference between having the SD card in the phone or not. However, my computer could detect the card just fine. Other android devices also detect it normally. I have tried another MicroSD card and got the same result.

I tried cleaning the card gently, reformating it, and resetting my phone, but nothing worked. The MicroSD card should be compatible with the phone according to the infos I found online, which would be logical since it worked at first.

Is it possible to make the card functional again?

Is there an overheating issue in the phone/card combination, maybe? Some other compatibility issues (timings/delays) might play into here.
(I had a similar issue with a 128 GB SD card on a Samsung s5mini, the card disengaged during use)
My solution was to exchange the card for a different (well known) manufacturer/type.
You could try doing this temporarily at first with a card from somebody you know.

You could try testing your SD card for hardware errors on PC with H2testw (download source with high reputation) app,
no formatting needed. Just reformatting the card doesn't force the storage controller to actually access higher sectors on the card, so this doesn't give information about the card being physically ok.


If a micro USB charger supports data transfer for one Android device, should it then support data transfer for any Android device? In particular, I bought "1M Micro USB Charger Charging Sync Data Cable For Samsung Galaxy S2 S3 S4 WJ" on ebay, assuming it should work with any device despite the specific brand in the title. Testing on a Huawei and a Mpie Android device, 2 of the cables do nothing, 5 only charge, 1 is detected by one device prompting option to connect as storage -- however it is not deteced on computer so effectively only charges.

Note that I have successfully data transferred with other cables on these two devices.

Failed to find info online except on distinction between charge-only and charge+data micro USB cables.

A USB cable functions the same, no matter the device. It is just 2-4 wires in a casing.

Often, cheaper cables sold on eBay using thin, low-quality wiring that breaks easily, so it is possible that you got a batch of bad cables.


Standard email Android 4 client doesn't keep local copy of emails The new standard email client with Android 4, doesn't seem to keep local copies of emails once they are deleted off the server.

Honeycomb did. The email was downloaded to the tablet, and kept even after the email was deleted from the server.

I'm using an Acer A500 with Android version 4.0.3 (kernal 2.6.39.4+).

Email set up is 'normal'/standard POP3 account.
Setting is Delete email from server: Never
What am I doing wrong?

Are you really using POP3? It's a behaviour of IMAP... not POP3. If yes, it's certainly a bug. Better, use different email client like K9-mail.


Knox official warranty statement from Samsung I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (N9005), and it has a problem with GPS. It's definitely a hardware problem, as I changed the software and did everything, software-wise, to fix it, but no use.

I would like to send it for repair, but my knox bit is 0x1. I searched A LOT... on how to reset that, and I couldn't find a clear answer. (if you know one that's working, I'd appreciate that).

My question is: What is Samsung's statement on knox warranty? Is it that I lose warranty on everything if my knox bit is 0x1 or just to software issues? Many people have said many different things and I'm confused! I couldn't find any official source from Samsung explaining this... could you help me find one?

Thanks.

Your warranty is void. But try this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2740340
 Its a howto for resetting knox.


How can I view online all of my phone contacts that Android synced to my google account? We have an option in Android that allows us to sync/backup all our contacts to our google account. I did this and then later my phone got damaged and I can't switch it on again.

I would now like to view the contacts that were synced to my google account. Is there anyway I can do this online?

You should be able to see them within GMail or your Google account here


How can I move installed apps from the old microSD card to a new one, as I swap the cards inside my phone? In my Android phone, I have moved some installed apps from the internal storage to a MicroSD card. Now I swapped the microSD card with another microSD card inside the phone. How can I move the installed apps from the old to the new microSD card?

My phone is Kyocera Hydro Icon with Android 4.3. It seems to only have one microSD card slot and a SIM card slot inside. I can't find a second microSD card slot.

I can't move installed apps from old microSD card to my internal storage, because my phone doesn't have enough space.

Will it work if I copy the files from one sd card to the other, file by file, by connecting both microSD cards to a computer simultaneously:

inserting one microSD card to a computer, via microSD-to-SD adapter, and
inserting the other microSD card to the same computer, via keeping it inside the phone and connecting the phone to the same computer via USB cable?

Update: copy file by file from a sd card to another by connecting both to a computer doesn't make the phone work with the new sd card.

You could try Win32 Disk Imager to read an image from one MicroSD card and write it to another.

First, specify image name and press Read button:

Then change sd card and press Write button:

Moreover, if there is more storage space on the second SD card, try using free Paragon Partition Manager Community Edition to resize partition (note, FAT32 limited to 32GB):


Differences between OsmAnd and OsmAnd+ What is the difference between the free version of OsmAnd and the Plus version?

The only info I found seems to be outdated. While using the free edition the only limitation I noticed was the hint that I can only download 10 different maps.

As of 28/03/2013 the difference is that with the free version is limited to a total of 10 downloads (maps, voice packages, etc) and does not support offline Wikipedia content.

I know because I tried the free version and then buyed the plus one to be able to download entire european countries. Also I think is a really good application for 7 euros.


All calls are going to voicemail? I'm still able to make outbound calls without any issue, however inbound calls are going straight to voicemail.  As in instantly.  Not a single ring or even delay.  Straight to voicemail.  Of course I get the voicemails right away and can call back.  Wondering what setting I might have changed to cause this problem?

A coworker suggested going into airplane mode and then back out.  That corrected the problem.


Missing application shortcuts We got a generic Jellybean tablet, and some of the preinstalled apps (Chrome, Maps and others) do not appear in the app drawer for some reason.

They do appear in the Google Play list of installed apps, and in the included Apk Installer.

How can I create home screen shortcuts to these apps?

I see 3 solutions for you:

You can use QuickShortcutMaker (or any similar) application to add launcher to any installed application (or Android Activity).
Not sure if it helps, but you can check your launcher's settings. There should be item "Hidden applications" (or similar).
Install and use another launcher.


My phone can't start after backup failed I tried backing up my Galaxy S4 using this method:
http://galaxys4root.com/galaxy-s4-tutorials/how-to-backuprestore-rom-on-galaxy-s4-with-root-cwm-recovery/

1st backup failed but I could still boot the phone
When backing up, it failed halfway, it failed backing up /data/.
I rebooted my phone and found that my keyboard doesn't remember my custom words anymore.
2nd backup failed and I can't start the phone anymore
I rebooted into the recovery and tried backing it up again the second time.It failed halfway, it failed backing up /system/.Then I tried the backup again (without rebooting) and it failed immediately saying no space on the SD card (I am not sure if it's true)

So I rebooted the phone and it is showing the boot animation forever (I waited over 30 mins).

I tried restoring /system/ from the first backup but it didn't help.

I don't even know where the problem is, how can a backup break your phone??Any help will be appreciated.

I finally did a Wipe/Factory reset. I lost all apps and data, but at least I can use my phone again.

And yes, that was because I ran out of space in the internal SD card.


where can I find fuse.ko file for my huawei u8160? I have a Huawei u8160 running Cyanogenmod 7.2 .

I have been looking for the fuse.ko module for my phone, but whenever I find anything ,terminal emulator tells me that it is incompatible!

I want it to enable NTFS file system support using this tutorial

So I was wondering where I can find the appropriate fuse.ko module?

NOTE : I've already seen this link but I don't think that's what I want.

You can build that module yourself from the source code of the Linux kernel your device is running (presumably some Cyanogenmod kernel).

You can find out which kernel your device is running, and with which compiler it was built, using cat /proc/version.  Try finding the corresponding kernel sources in the Cyanogenmod repositories.
The kernel configuration file used to build your kernel (.config) should come with the kernel sources.  If you're lucky, you can dump it with zcat /proc/config.gz on your device.  Put the .config file into your source tree.
Find a matching compiler.  Typically, one of the compilers coming with the NDK will be fine.
If the kernel uses modversions, you first need to build the kernel to get the Module.symvers file right.  Assuming the NDK's cross compiler is in your path, try:

make -j4 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-androideabi-

One you have a kernel, add the modules you need to the configuration by using the xconfig (or menuconfig) make targets:

make -j4 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-androideabi- xconfig

Build the module.

make -j4 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-androideabi- modules

If insmod'ing the module fails with an error saying that _GLOBAL_OFFSET_TABLE_ was not found, try adding the -fno-pic option:

make -j4 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-androideabi- XTRA_CFLAGS=-fno-pic modules

Good luck.


What are the features that TouchWiz has that vanilla Android does not have? What are the features that TouchWiz has that vanilla Android does not have?

This question is similar to What are the features that HTC Sense has that vanilla Android does not have? but for Samsung TouchWiz.

Home Screen

Up to 7 Home screens, with the ability to add and remove screens at will, and drag them around to change the order (pinch zoom the home screen)
Customizable dock area at the bottom of the home screen, allowing you to add/remove up to 4 apps.

Apps List

'Screen at a time' sideways scrolling apps list
Rounded square backgrounds added to all app icons in the app list (see here)
Pre-installed apps (or apps present during the last OS upgrade) are in alphabetical order, new apps are added at the end in the order they're installed.

Home Button

Holding the Home button brings up a list of 6 recently used apps, along with a Task Manager button
Holding the Back button and tapping the Home button takes a screenshot on the Galaxy S, for the Galaxy SII use Power+Home

Samsung Widgets

These are home screen widgets that Samsung include, and are in a separate Samsung Widgets category pre-Gingerbread, post-Gingerbread they are in the main Android Widgets list with the word "Samsung" under them instead of "Android". Exact widget selection varies depending on OS version and network.

AccuWeather Clock
Buddies Now (messaging shortcuts for nominated contacts)
Calendar Clock
Daily Briefing (News, weather, stocks, social media updates)
Days (create new entries in the Diary app)
Dual Clock
Feeds and Updates
Program Monitor
Y! Finance Clock

Samsung (and other) Bundled Apps

Samsung AllShare (DLNA)
FM Radio (for models with hardware FM radio)
Kies air (shares phone data, and allows control of some phone functions over wifi to a PC web browser, first pre-installed with Gingerbread, available in Samsung app store for older OSs)
Memo (notepad app)
Mini Diary (create diary pages with daily details, memos and photos)
My Files (file manager)
Samsung Apps (Samsung's own app store, currently only free content in there, but some of the apps are normally paid or ad-supported on the Android Market)
Social Hub (messaging app combining email, SMS and social networks)
Task Manager
ThinkFree Office

Modified Apps

Contacts (History and Activities tabs, linked to Social Hub and social network account updates, showing recent posts by contact and recent interactions with them)
Gallery (interface to select either scrolling wallpaper or static, portrait wallpaper)
Music (Disc View interface added, allowing sideways scroll through albums showing the artwork on a "CD" shape)
Videos (extra codec support DivX/Xvid in particular)

Region specific TouchWiz features

Throughout most of Europe and Asia, Samsung's Mobile Tracker feature is included in the Security settings allowing remote password setting, tracking and wiping of mobiles registered on the http://samsungdive.com website

Version specific TouchWiz features

Eclair (Android 2.1) - TouchWiz included Wifi tethering as a standard feature before it was brought to the main Android OS in v2.2.

(except where noted, all from TouchWiz 3 on a Gingerbread Galaxy S)


Use Google Photos from within Camera app on Samsung Galaxy S7 Is it possible to make the default camera app on the Galaxy S7 use Google Photos instead of Samsung Gallery?

I like the preinstalled camera app, but pressing the thumbnail icon in the interface will always open the Samsung Gallery, even though I have set Google Photos as the default app for photo viewing.

For newer devices, creating an "app shortcut" has been recommended in various articles and discussion forums (e.g. at lifehacker.com). This however doesn't seem to be available on the Galaxy S7.

Opening the gallery is hardcoded in the camera app of your device.
There's no way you can change it. Atleast not for now. Maybe in later updates, they'd make it available.


Regarding internal storage files I'm new, hope I do everything right. Ok, I found a file in my internal storage where the path includes DRAWING/TRACKING/DRAFT . I found out there are 907 files within this main file. I hope i make sense. How did these files get put here & how can I delete them.  When try accessing the files,  I get the error msg that I don't have the correct app to open it.
 I'm on a samsung galaxy J7-perx.
Thanks

You cannot open those files simply because your phone does not have any app to open such files. For example, if you don't have a word processing app, but try to open a .docx file, you'll be unable to open it. Similar is the case here.

If you cannot open those files,you don't need to look for an app to open them, because I can assure you that you'll not be able to understand what is written in then.

Here is what you can do:

Step 1: Scroll through the files, and see if you can associate the file name to any app already present in your phone.

Step 2: If you cannot do that, then copy the whole main folder as it is, with the subfolder, to the sd card.

Step 3: Delete the main folder.

Step 4: In the next few days, try opening every installed and enabled app and use it as normal. Make sure that you use each and every app at least twice after deleting the folder from device storage.

Step 5: If any app misbehaves, then those files belong to that app, and restore then from the sd card to the device storage.

If no app misbehaves, then those files are residual files of some app which you have uninstalled recently or in the past. You may try using each app for a week or so to make sure they don't misbehave. If everything is alright, you can delete that folder from sd card.


App Installation Fails Every Time My wife uses a Droid (first gen) running v2.2, and in the past month or so she can no longer download or update apps from the Market. We've tried rebooting the phone without any luck. The phone has internal storage available, so I don't believe that's an issue. Please help!

If she is rooted, try the following here.

Otherwise, does long pressing on the download --> cancel, then re-starting the install work?


Do I need to wipe when upgrading from CM10 to CM10.1? I am using CyanogenMod 10 on my device and saw that CM10.1 (Android 4.2) is available on get.cm.

If I upgrade, do I have to wipe my phone or will it just work?

Or what problems will I have to expect if I don't factory reset it before?

It just works, no need to wipe.

You don't need to wipe, according to a blog post on CyanogenMod's Google Plus channel:

  Upgrading from CM10 to CM10.1

  As you may have noticed, we started updating some devices from cm10 (Android 4.1) to 10.1 (Android 4.2) during the weekend. The upgrade process has been tested extensively for the older devices (manta and mako didn't have that problem since they started out with 10.1), so you should be able to update directly without losing any data.

  The single application known not to work is the Clock: Our changes to 4.1's clock to add the Stopwatch and Timer in CM10 aren't compatible with Google's own implementation of those features in 4.2 (which we're using in cm10.1); If your clock starts crashing after upgrading to 10.1, simply go into the Settings -> Apps menu, choose Clock from the All tab, and hit "Clear data".


Can't boot to system (lineageOS) after updating TWRP I've been using lineageOS 14.1 for a long time on my Galaxy S4 mini (gt-i9195) and recently wanted to try some apps requiring root access.
In the developer options I could set root access only to "ADB only". I tried installing su from https://download.lineageos.org/extras via TWRP but the installation failed (probably because I tried installing the arm64 version instead of arm, I'm guessing retrospectively?).
Anyway, I decided to upgrade TWRP to 3.3.1-0 (from 3.0.1-0 before I think) following random advice I found online.
I started flashing 3.3.1-0 to the recovery partition via TWRP but it got stuck while "Patching system unconditionally".
After more than an hour of this I powered off and restarted into recovery mode.

Surprisingly, TWRP now boots as version 3.3.1-0 without any issues.
However, whenever I try to boot system into lineageOS I just get the Samsung startup logo and then the screen stays black.

Any idea how I might be able to start up lineageOS again?
I would try rolling back to an older version of TWRP maybe, but I couldn't yet figure out how to get the image file onto the phone.
I tried installing adb on my desktop and plugging the phone in via USB but adb devices does not find the phone.
Might Odin work for this despite not having the standard ROM and without wiping the phone?

Unfortunately I don't have a backup, as I didn't have the storage space for it.
But while there's nothing super important on the phone I would still of course prefer not having to wipe everything.

Solved it without any data loss by putting a zip of the same LineageOS version I was using on a SD card and re-flashing with that from TWRP 3.3.1 (wiping only cache and Dalvik).

Thanks @Robert.

I still don't understand how exactly I screwed my system partition in the first place but I'm happy anyway.


How to store system app's settings on /system partition? I have a system app, and I need that both the application itself and its settings shall be in /system partition.

I can change the application to be in system by moving from /data/app to /system/app.

Yet, I see that the configuration/settings are still saved somewhere in /data (not sure where).

Is it possible to change it to be in /system? If yes, how?

Thanks.

You can't. Configurations / settings / cache / databases of every app (system or user) are stored on /data or in /sdcard/Android/ for some apps. That's why /system partition is of limited size as compared to /data. Android works that way. Apps aren't built to read and write settings to /system partition as it holds a read-only filesystem, only changed during OTA updates. A read-write /system partition won't fit into Verified Boot  mechanism implemented by Android for security and to prevent malware attacks.

Further reading: Android Partitions and Filesystems


Fastboot devices returns nothing I have Asus Fonepad 7  dual sim (Build ver. 5.5.1).

I want to root my device.

adb devices recognizes my device properly.

Debugging
   mode is on.

Even device enters in fastboot mode by executing adb reboot-bootloader in terminal (I am using Ubuntu 14.04).

I have set
   up android rules in /etc/udev/rules.d/99-android.rules .

I've
   found out my vendor id and product id using lsusb (when the device
   is in fastboot mode).  I've made corresponding entry in android rules
   file.  But even that didn't help.

I've tried sudo fastboot devices
   also.  Every time I get nothing but a blank line.

Somebody please help!!

A bit of googling indicates that several people have had to build fastboot specifically to work with this device.  I found this one for Linux (last post) and have verified that it runs and isn't malicious: https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/topic/494961


Can't chown or chmod files on android phone Hi there i got some files on my android phone and want to make them executable. Permissions are root:sdcard_rw. I cant remove tha sdcard_rw with chown, and cant make the files executable with chmod.

I have managed to change the permissions and make things executable by booting into twrp and using its console. Before that i have tried it with termux su and tsu where both had root permissions. Maybe its not a solution but a workaround.


Opening URLs in Tasker and get HTTP response and content successfully I am currently doing an automation in Tasker wherein I can open URLs on browser one by one. So far, I have successfully opened URLs by putting the URL list in a text file and have Tasker access it. My problem is, I want to know if each URL has been successfully or better, get the site content? How do I do this? Even if a site has been successfully opened, HTTPR still returns -1. I don't understand why. I also don't know how to use HTTP Get. I'm using Android Emulator by the way. Please help! Thanks!

There's a nice German tutorial on AndroidPIT (same page using Google Translate), explaining this in detail. Moreover, you might want to check with the Q&A How to check success status of opened URL in Tasker?.


How to start the kiwi browser always incognito mode? I want to start the kiwi browser always in incognito mode.
How can i do it ?
I know there is a option to click on incognito mode, But I want it to start with incognito mode.

The method might not be optimal but it works for me.

Open the app drawer, Long press on Kiwi browser icon.
Two choices will appear: New tab and New Incognito tab. Long press on New Incognito tab to create a shortcut.
Optional: If you there is a Kiwi browser on your home screen, delete it. Edit the shortcut name from Incognito tab to Kiwi Browser if your launcher allows it.

Caveats: If you open Kiwi Browser from the app drawer,  it will open a new tab not a new incognito tab.


Com.android.systemui Ok so I have a samsung galixy note 0.8 and whenever I hold the home button to see what tabs are open a message comes up saying that my com.android.systemui is not responding. My screen goes black for a second but I can still see my apps.  Then it shuts off and turns back on. This started yesterday.

I had the same on my Samsung Note, I deleted google from my Note and that's the trick. Google probably needs to fix a bug in the last update, but until now it is not fixed yet.


Exchange Client That Supports Rules I set up rules in Outlook (which is synched to a Microsoft Exchange server) to automatically filter emails to specific folders, based on sender.

I have been able to sync the Android email client to my mail server, and the inbox contains all of the folders I had set up in Outlook.

My problem is that the Android email client offers no way to sync ALL email folders at once.  I have to sync each individually, which is not really feasible with over 20 folders.

Is there a better email client that will sync with Exchange AND allow synching of all folders under the inbox?

Thanks,
Seth

You can configure your rules on your server account to do that, so you don’t need the filtering rules on every client. Is very practical.

But don't remember now if K9 Mail client offer filtering/rule system

Also there is SEVEN Mail client that if i´m not wrong you can create and modify server-side email rules. With SEVEN you will get  PUSH mail notification for mail, exchange, imap, yahoo, etc...

Note1: Your can create the rules through OWA(Outlook Web Access). Rules created through OWA are Server side rules. Your Exchange server should have a OWA access point. Usually something like : https://owa.yourserverdomain.com


Why can I not install Firefox on my HTC G1/Dream with CyanogenMod 6.1? I have a HTC G1/Dream with CyanogenMod 6.1, based on Android 2.2.1. I would like to install Firefox, which requires Android 2.0 and up. But I cannot find it in the Android Market, and when I try to install it remotely from the web Android Market, I can see "This article is not compatible with your device".

What could be the origin of my problem?

Firefox also requires an ARMv7 processor. The HTC Dream/G1 is officially unsupported because its processor is ARMv6. See the supported/unsupported device list on the Mozilla wiki:

  These devices have ARMv6 processors and are not compatible with
  Firefox for Android:

  ...

  HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1, Android Dev Phone 1)

  ...


How can i switch to next field in web form using Android browser? How can i switch to next field in web form using Android browser? There is no tab button, which Im using on my PC.

I use the default Android keyboard and it has a Tab key that pops up beside the space key.  It looks like this: –>|


Uninstalled system keyboard I rooted my phone and uninstalled keyboard application without  backup.. Now i removed my root. I need keyboard. My phone is galaxy star pro. Android version 4.1.2. Help me.

Try:

1) You can install gapps for your model if available.
2) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jlsoft.inputmethod.latin.jelly.free
3) http://google-keyboard.en.softonic.com/android


How can I disable chat heads? My grandmother has a Motorola Droid Maxx 2 running Android 6.0.1 and she would like to disable chat heads entirely, for text messages and Messenger. A preliminary search through her notification settings, Google, and this site yielded no results. How can she do this?

There should be a menu called "Advanced Features". Tap on that and then you will find something about smart pop-ups. Find the messaging app and disable it from there.

On my Samsung A50:


How to send photos to Chromecast? I have made a bunch of shiny photos with my Nexus 4 and now I want to watch them on my Chromecast. Trouble is that the standard photo application wants me to upload the photos to the cloud and then add them to an album.

Is there an easier way to watch my photo gallery on my Chromecast? A cloudfree solution that just shows all my photos on my device would work best.

There are a handful of different apps you could try, each with varying amounts of features. A few specific examples:

Allcast - Also supports other devices like Roku and Xbox. Casts pretty much any kind of media.
Dayframe - Intended mostly for casting pictures as a slideshow/digital frame.
PhotoCast - Can display photos in a few different styles, including one that plots the location of geotagged images on a map in the background.


Default Samsung S4 messsenger application name I disabled all the default samsung apps on my S4. I was using google messenger. Now I want to revert back to the samsung apps. I need to go into all apps menu and find the default samsung messenger one to enabled it but I can not find it.

What is the name of the default samsung s4 messenger application?

You need to go to settings>applications>application manager and go to disabled apps tab where you see all your disabled apps.

P.S App you searching for, called Messenger


Note 3 Won't Power On Ok so less than 30 minutes ago my Note 3 was working fine! I put it in my pocket and looked at it again and it was off and wouldn't turn on. It had plenty of battery left at the time though I don't know exactly how much. First thing I did was take it to the charger. The battery icon wouldn't show up so I pulled the battery and tried booting into recovery. That did not work either. I tried to power it on without the battery in via the AC charger. (Yes some phones will boot without a battery). That also failed. I tried a different AC adapter of the same rating. It failed. I tried a different cable, fail. Etc etc. Any ideas? Also it's worth noting that when it was plugged up to the charger it got reasonably warm. The battery didn't get warm. The area around the Snapdragon 800 got warm. With and without the battery in whilst on the charger it still got very warm. (Like it was trying to do something very load intensive?)

It sounds like a defective unit. I would send it in for warranty replacement. If it is getting warm while plugged in the power is shorting out the unit causing it to show no life but receive power.


Is it possible to open a locally saved Flash file on the Ideapad A1? Is it possible to open a Flash file (.swf) locally on Lenovo A1 tablet? (Something like open it through the Android browser?)

Thanks!


Samsung devices: dual networking I have the following setup: a Wi-Fi device which is NOT connected to the internet, like a drone or IoT device. The data of the device shall be uploaded to the internet.

While it is possible to connect to both networks within an app using the ConnectivityManager, it is not possible to use the mobile internet outside of the app. The devices have Android 6.0 or higher, so it should be actually supported by the Android system. But it seems to me, that Samsung did not implemented that support.

How do I use the mobile internet for instance to receive mails or push notifications while I am connected to a Wi-Fi which has no internet itself.

Thanks.

Similar questions have been asked here:

Can an android phone connect to both Wi-Fi and mobile data network at the same time?
How to enable dual networking in Android shell?
and
How do I connect to a wifi ap and 3g network simultaneously?

However due to the bounty description I will try to aggregate these facts and expand a bit since the answers were not marked as accepted.

Short answer it is possible to have dual networking but workarounds differ slightly.

From this source : Switch seamlessly between WiFi and Cellular with Multipath-TCP You can make use of Multi-TCP.

Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is Multipath-TCP is an extension to TCP that allows the parallel usage of multiple Internet connections.
Multipath-TCP is already implemented for the Linux Kernel, but not yet integrated into the official upstream kernel.

The source code (and some precompiled kernels, including Android builds) can be found here: http://multipath-tcp.org

Extra source with reference to Samsung device: MPTCP on Android Devices , and MultiPath TCP - Linux Kernel implementation.

In another source,  enable wireless and 4g at the same time  Users claim they were able to enable dual networking with the following workaround (quoted):

Turn off wifi in the normal way (from the phone's user interface) if it's not already off.

All the following steps done in a root shell:

load the drivers

busybox insmod /system/lib/modules/cfg80211.ko
busybox insmod /system/lib/modules/wlan.ko
start wpa_supplicant to connect to the first available wireless network. The wpa_supplicant.conf file I list below is the one maintained automatically by the phone as you join new networks. If you want more control (e.g. connect to only a specific network), copy the wpa_supplicant.conf file somewhere, modify it as needed, and specify it on the command line.

wpa_supplicant -B -Dnl80211 -iwlan0 -c/data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf

dhcpcd

busybox pkill dhcpcd
 rm /data/misc/dhcp/*
 dhcpcd wlan0

verify route

busybox route

For me this is showing the original default first on the list (goes through rmnet_usb0) followed by the new one configured for the wireless lan wlan0. Traceroute shows the traffic going out the first one.

Now, at this point if you try to enable wifi normally from the phone it will not work. To make it work:

ifconfig wlan0 down
 ifconfig wlan0 unplumb
 rmmod wlan
 rmmod cfg80211

And you can turn on wireless again

Alternatively with script:

# enable dual-networking:
pkill dhcpcd
svc wifi disable
svc data enable
netcfg wlan0 up
cd /data/misc/wifi/.
wpa_supplicant -B -Dnl80211 -iwlan0 -c/data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf
dhcpcd wlan0
ip route add x.x.x.x via x.x.x.y # add any desired local route

# disable dual-networking:
ip route del x.x.x.x/x via x.x.x.y
pkill dhcpcd
pkill wpa_supplicant
rm -rf /data/misc/wifi/wlan0
netcfg wlan0 down
svc wifi disable
svc data disable

(A script runner is needed to run these scripts and root; you can get one here: SH Script Runner

And they noted:

It works perfectly but note that you don't actually see the wifi icon turning on, but if you run netcfg | grep UP you will see that the wlan0 interface is up and running (as well as the rmnet_usb0 mobile data interface, both of them will be up and will have the expected IP addresses) and you can access your local LAN while your mobile data 3g/4g whatever provides your default route to the outside world.

Other workarounds:

Using Super Download Lite

The developers of the app claim that it has the ability to perfom dual networking on android devices by combing 3G/4G and Wi-Fi networks.

Modifying the routing table

Another source: http://ironings4.rssing.com/chan-3701516/all_p2.html.

Provided details on creating a bash script in order to modify roting table to allow both 3G/4G work with Wi-Fi. Here is the script:

pkill com.android.phone sleep 30 route add -net 10.0.0.0 netmask 255.0.0.0 dev ppp0 route add -net 15.0.0.0 netmask 255.0.0.0 dev ppp0

The above is an example for a couple of address ranges to redirect to 3G connection  to the routing table via linux shell for using INTRANET via ppp0 for a few address ranges, while all the other destination addresses normally go via Wi-Fi.

The trick here is to force an application on the phone (or maybe it is a service, called com.android.phone) probably related to 3G radio interface to crash while you are connected to wifi, the 3G signal indicator will go down for a few seconds and soon after it will return to normal but this time with both H(SDPA) and Wifi icons showing on the notification area on the upper right of the screen.

In another article: Let WiFi and 3G connection work together by hacking ConnectivityService.java   (migrated to XDA forums)
The offered how to accomplish the task by hacking connectivity service:

Fully quoted:

“The goal of COIN project is to use WiFi and 3G connections simultaneously. So it conflicts with the policy of Connectivity Service, but there is no configuration to edit the policy, and it is hard coded. You can find the clue in ConnectivityService.java:handleConnect function.

Our current solution is quite brutal, which is to mask the eyes of Connectivity Service by modifying its message handler entry like the following:

// must be stateless – things change under us.
 private class MyHandler extends Handler {
 @Override
 public void handleMessage(Message msg) {
 NetworkInfo info;
 //added by COIN to disable Connectivity Service
 int networkState = 8; //not any following state
 /*use static google dns server for wifi and 3g*/
 if (msg.what == NetworkStateTracker.EVENT_STATE_CHANGED) {
 SystemProperties.set(“net.dns1″, “8.8.8.8″);
 SystemProperties.set(“net.dns2″, “8.8.4.4″);
 bumpDns();
 }
 //////////////////////////////////////////////
 //switch (msg.what) {
 switch (networkState) {
 case NetworkStateTracker.EVENT_STATE_CHANGED:
 info = (NetworkInfo) msg.obj;
 int type = info.getType();

…..

And then compile the modified ConnectivityService.java in the android source code tree, you can get an new services.jar file in framework directory. Replace the existing services.jar on the cell phone with the following adb commands, then reboot the phone

 adb shell “mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system”
adb shell “chmod 0777 /system/framework”
adb push services.jar /system/framework
 adb shell “chmod 0644 /system/framework/services.jar”
adb shell “chmod 0755 /system/framework”
.”

Conclusion

While I couldn’t test some of the workarounds myself, I have learnt most of these might have worked in earlier android builds (based on the evidence) so I am not   sure if the same is applicable in android 6. This feature seems likely to be implemented with emerging technologies evidenced by Multipath TCP technology described. For all the workarounds require root.

Hope this brings some light.

References

(Included in body text)


Getting rid of Samsung's Gallery app notifications? (or even the entire app) I'm currently using a Galaxy S5 mini with Android 5.1.1 and one thing that I find particularly irritating is Samsung's Gallery app that keeps giving notifications. For some reason I can't seem to turn them off.

There appears to be no setting in the Gallery app itself to disable it. And I cannot disable or remove or uninstall the app itself.

If I go to Android settings, Sounds and Notifications, Application Notifications, for most apps in the list I can block the notifications. Strangely enough this is not the case with a few built-in apps like Gallery:

I also looked in the Application settings for Gallery, unfortunately the "Show notifications" checkbox and the "Disable" button are both disabled.

Is there any way to get rid of Gallery's notifications, or rather just get rid of the app entirely?

Gallery is a stock app, you can uninstall it without root by following this guide on XDA.

Link
https://www.xda-developers.com/uninstall-carrier-oem-bloatware-without-root-access/


What app can I use to take pictures and add a searchable comment to them? I am looking for an app that fits these needs:
I would like to take a picture, then add some text or a description. I would like to be able to search for the picture based on the text. For example say you visit a museum. You take 100 pictures and each one you add a description like "first metal suit of armor that was used in battle in France". So then you can search for words like "France".
Google Keep is close to this but I'm looking for something more specialized and intended for this purpose.

You can use Google Photos. It will provide you 15GB of online storage to backup your photo. Once you backup your photos, you can search with the term 'ID card', 'flowers'.
You can write comments in each photo but that is not needed. This app will also segregate people with face identification ML-models


Show time with seconds How can I see the time with seconds on a Nexus 4? The settings give me the option to only change the date format, but not the time format.

Try any of these:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=smsr.com.acc
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.ne.topaz.psy.androidapp.SecondStatus
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gridred.digitalclock.custom.lite&hl=en

This one claims to show the time including seconds in the Status Bar
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appsynapse.bottime&hl=en

Be advised that displaying seconds will consume more battery.


Dialed names are not shown (htc u11) Contact name is stored in Google. But when I dial it, and finish the call, it shows only the number without name as if I don't have the name stored. And it only happens with my new stored numbers, and since one week till now.

How to solve this?

It's possible that you have saved the same number in two or more contacts. Either that was by you or it was caused when importing contacts from another source. I had similar problems and it was solved when I deleted duplicates.


SD Internal make my Motorola X Play 3rd generation reboot and unmount sdcard I bought the fastest 32 GB SDCard : Sandisk Extreme USH-I card ( Ultra HD )

Then, I formatted it as Internal Storage ( I have Android 6)

Now, my phone reboots sometimes, and also my sdcard is unmounted frequently.

So, a lot off apps doesn't work, because they need data on the sdcard.

The only way I found to fix it, each time, is to extract phisically the SD, and insert it again... this works for like 2 hours....

Is there anything I can do about it???

It is not uncommon for this to occur if the write speed capabilities of the SD card are not sufficient, we have seen many examples of this with the Moto X Pure/Style and Moto G 2015 on XDA where a U1 card does not have fast enough sustained write speeds, and replacing it with a U3 rated card works beautifully. I am not personally familiar with your Moto X Play, but it is very similar to the G series hardware-wise.

This could also be an few other issues, like a poor connection to the cards contacts. Sometimes placing a couple layers of scotch tape on the back of the card can increase tension enough to keep the card in contact with the tension contacts in the microSD slot.

This could also be a fake or counterfeit card, you can use SD Insight to check it.

Not to count out it could just be a defective microSD card, or defective hardware, but you would have to eliminate and try the other issues above before moving to this conclusion.


How can I fix this Heimdall Control transfer failed (result -9) for flashing a recovery? I am getting a "WARNING: Control transfer #1 failed. Result: -9" problem that looks like it might be causing a failure for heimdall to flash a recovery to my Samsung Galaxy S Duos GT-S7562 phone.

I am running Ubuntu 13.04 (raring ringtail) and Heimdall v1.4 RC1.

I have the phone unplugged and off.  Then I turn it on to "download mode" and then press the up key to accept the download mode option.  Then I plug it into the usb cable to the computer.  Then I run the heimdall detect program and find that the device is detected.  Then I run the following to install the custom recovery.

I obtained the "recovery.img" file from a "recovery.tar" file that I got from a root kit zip file.

Is there a way to get around this error?  What does "-9" mean as an error code?

~$ sudo heimdall flash --RECOVERY /tmp/recovery.img --verbose
\ Heimdall v1.4 RC1

Copyright (c) 2010-2012, Benjamin Dobell, Glass Echidna
http://www.glassechidna.com.au/

This software is provided free of charge. Copying and redistribution is encouraged.

If you appreciate this software and you would like to support future development please consider donating:
http://www.glassechidna.com.au/donate/

Initialising connection...
Detecting device...
      Manufacturer: "Sasmsung"
           Product: "MSM7x27"

            length: 18
      device class: 2
               S/N: 0
           VID:PID: 04E8:685D
         bcdDevice: 0100
   iMan:iProd:iSer: 1:2:0
          nb confs: 1

interface[0].altsetting[0]: num endpoints = 1
   Class.SubClass.Protocol: 02.02.01
       endpoint[0].address: 82
           max packet size: 0010
          polling interval: 09

interface[1].altsetting[0]: num endpoints = 2
   Class.SubClass.Protocol: 0A.00.00
       endpoint[0].address: 81
           max packet size: 0200
          polling interval: 00
       endpoint[1].address: 01
           max packet size: 0200
          polling interval: 00
Claiming interface...
Setting up interface...

Checking if protocol is initialised...
Protocol is not initialised.
Initialising protocol...
WARNING: Control transfer #1 failed. Result: -9
WARNING: Control transfer #2 failed. Result: -9
WARNING: Control transfer #3 failed. Result: -9
WARNING: Control transfer #4 failed. Result: -9
WARNING: Control transfer #5 failed. Result: -9
WARNING: Control transfer #6 failed. Result: -9
ERROR: Failed to send data: "ODIN"
Releasing device interface...

Second update (success):

One or more of the following ended up solving my problem (I tried all at once instead of trying each sequentially, sorry!):

Connect the usb cable directly to computer, not through a hub.
Use the Heimdall command line option " --RECOVERY" (instead of "--recovery").
Use the newer Heimdall 1.4 final.

Thanks to Evan Carroll for the info borrowed from other questions!


Is it possible to prevent the screen turning off when pressing the power button? I run an app on my handset which really needs the screen to remain on for it to function properly. The app already seems to attempt to keep the screen on as the screen timeout seems to be disabled when the app is running, but I can still turn the screen off by tapping the power button.

I do my best not to press the power button, but sometimes I do it by accident.

My question is, is there any way of stopping the power button from turning the screen off? Perhaps there is something the original app developer can do to disable this?

This is on an unrooted device. I'm on Android 4.1.1 , HTC Sense 4+ stock rom

You can prevent lock button from turning off you screen by altering your settings.

Go to your settings
Select Security
Deselect the check box Power button instantly locks


Monitor activites of an app and see what it is sending over the internet Few months ago, I installed an automation app called MacroDroid, but after few days I uninstalled it. Now today, when I was checking apps in /system/app I stumbled upon an app called MacroDroidSystemHelper (com.arlosoft.macrodroid.helper)

I had granted the MacroDroid superuser access when I was using it so it may have made the app that I found today a system app.

I tried to launch it but it doesn't have an interface.

While checking its permission I came to know that it has the connectivity permission, hence, I have to find out what data it is sending to internet. How can I monitor its activities?

(Click image to enlarge)

It appears that MacroDroid now (I've v3.10.1) doesn't go with the approach of installing helper file inside /system as default option. Instead, it now uses it as a backup approach and only when you're having an issue with GPS/NFC. If you've that file inside /system then either it was installed when you were using a version older than v3.10.1  or you deliberately chose to fall back to older technique via its settings.

The latest version of that helper file is 1.2 and following are the permissions mentioned in its manifest:

android.permission.WRITE_SETTINGS - Allows an application to read or write the system settings.
android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS - Allows an application to read or write the secure system settings. Not for use by third-party applications.
android.permission.NFC - Allows applications to perform I/O operations over NFC.

In order to connect to network, it must ask the permission android.permission.INTERNET - not present in the manifest. So you can be rest assured that the app, on its own, won't be able to send any data.

That said, given the nature of the title, you don't need to monitor activities of an app (no benefits) if your goal is to find out what data it is accessing or is sending. You can use XPrivacy in this case. It requires Xposed Framework. XPrivacy can notify you when the app tries to access a privacy sensitive permission. That would give a rough estimation of the extent of data app may be accessing.  You can use a firewall to restrict app's access to internet and get notified whenever the app tries to access network.

Still, in order to see the data the app is sending, you would have to capture it or sniff it at least. Answers for Capturing mobile phone traffic on wireshark
 and Monitor network activity in Android Phones may prove to be helpful. (I've not tried any of the solutions there.)


Internal and external SD storage inaccessible as root I'm having a bizarre issue where apps, adb, etc. can properly access my internal and external SD storage without issue unless they are running as root, in which case they are completely inaccessible.  This is on my Oppo Find 7 running ColorOS 1.2.7i (Android 4.3), and I've verified that I am not suffering from this issue with WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE.  I am not sure when this started occurring but I think it was after an OS update quite a while back.

When I run mount in an unprivileged adb shell, it has these entries that do not appear when I run it as the superuser:

/dev/block/vold/179:65 /storage/sdcard1 vfat rw,dirsync,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1023,fmask=0702,dmask=0702,allow_utime=0020,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro 0 0
/dev/block/vold/179:29 /storage/sdcard0 ext4 rw,seclabel,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,discard,nodelalloc,noauto_da_alloc,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/block/vold/179:29 /mnt/secure/asec ext4 rw,seclabel,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,discard,nodelalloc,noauto_da_alloc,data=ordered 0 0
tmpfs /storage/sdcard0/.android_secure tmpfs ro,seclabel,relatime,size=0k,mode=000 0 0

I can remount those partitions elsewhere while root and access them just fine within the same shell, but the permissions are funky and no other root apps can access them:

$ su
# mkdir /storage/sd_test
# chmod 777 /storage/sd_test
# ls -al /storage | grep sd_test
# drwxrwxrwx root     root              2015-05-28 15:17 sd_test

... good so far ...

# mount -o rw,user,umask=0000 -t vfat /dev/block/vold/179:65 /storage/sd_test
# ls -al /storage | grep sd_test
d---rwxr-x system   media_rw          2015-05-28 15:00 sd_test
# chmod 777 /storage/sd_test
# ls -al /storage | grep sd_test
d---rwxr-x system   media_rw          2015-05-28 15:00 sd_test

... different permissions, but I can see and read/write the files inside ...

... Root Explorer shows it with the "original" permissions but the folder is empty ...

# mount | grep sd_test
/dev/block/vold/179:65 /storage/sd_test vfat rw,dirsync,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1023,fmask=0702,dmask=0702,allow_utime=0020,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro 0 0

... hmm.

My /etc/vold.fstab just has one line:

dev_mount sdcard /storage/sdcard1 auto /devices/msm_sdcc.2/mmc_host

And /fstab.qcom:

/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/system         /system      ext4    ro,barrier=1,discard                                wait
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/userdata       /data        ext4    nosuid,nodev,barrier=1,noauto_da_alloc,discard      wait,check,encryptable=footer
/devices/msm_sdcc.2/mmc_host                          /storage/sdcard1   vfat    nosuid,nodev         wait,voldmanaged=sdcard:auto
/devices/msm_sdcc.1/mmc_host/mmc0/mmc0:0001/block/mmcblk0         /storage/sdcard0   ext4    nosuid,nodev,barrier=1,noauto_da_alloc,discard        wait,voldmanaged=sdcard:29

How can I fix this?

So, it turns out that SuperSU automatically checked off its "Mount namespace separation" setting without telling me!  I had no idea it even had such a feature, much less that it was broken.


Difference between ADB shell and TWRP terminal TLDR:
When booted into TWRP (not the Android OS), is there a difference between running a command on an ADB shell and running it in TWRP's terminal? Specifically something that messes with partitions? Is it safe? Are different results to be expected?

Background:
I'm having a problem with my OnePlus One. It seemingly randomly reboots or turns off instantly. Sometimes refusing to start again unless the power button is pressed for about 30 seconds or the battery connector is disconnected and connected again. According to this article, the issue might be a corrupted partition. It suggests running:

`make_ext4fs /dev/block/mmcblk0p15

over ADB. Unfortunately it is impossible for me to get ADB to recognize my device properly. I did everything that this article suggested, but it didn't help. I tried to scan for ADB devices while in booted into TWRP (no devices showed up) and I tried to scan for devices while booted into Android, but as soon as I enable USB debugging the phone constantly disconnects like multiple times per second. I tried using a powered USB extension as suggested here, but it didn't help. I also measured the current draw and it constantly switched between ~230mA and ~270mA (the PSU would have allowed up to 5100mA). Also, I refuse to do ADB over WiFi for security reasons. It would also most likely be a pain to get the firewalls to allow it.

I also wonder if there is a way to find out if any of the other partitions are corrupted (there are like 50 devices listed under /dev/block/).

I wouldn't tamper with partitions currently in use – which would be the case when the system is booted up. While booted into recovery, they are not in use unless you explicitly mount them (or if they'e auto-mounted, you can unmount them and still have a system running).

So things like repartitioning or formatting are better done from recovery. Same applies to imaging (dd) where you want to be sure the contents don't change while you create that "disk image", as you want it to be consistent (not an issue with partitions mounted read-only of course).

And again this applies if you want to repair the file system: the corresponding partition must be unmounted for that, which cannot be done e.g. for the /data partition while booted up normally – fsck (File System ChecK) requires exclusive access to it.

As for your underlying problem: I'd recommend to boot into recovery and run a file system check first to see if any partition is corrupted. In most cases, fsck is also able to repair the corruption, and you'll keep your data that way. If fsck finds issues it cannot solve (or you want to be "absolutely sure and clean"), you still can run that make_ext4fs – which of course would mean "all data lost". If you do that on /system it also means you need to flash a ROM afterwards, as your OS would be gone. And if you do it to any partition other than /system, /data or /cache (or the SD card), you might brick your device as you wouldn't know what to put there to bring it to live again. Oh, and also make sure the partition you want to "format" is really using ext4 before running make_ext4fs against it. While it should be transparent, an unexpected file system might confuse the OS :)


is it 100% safe to install Custom Roms I wonder if is possible for those people who download the Android source code and customize it then release their custom roms to hack the API or any other part of the codebase like GMail client or network stack so to push in the rom some kind of spyware, virus and so on...

my main concern is that I like to experiment custom roms made available by any developer online but I really would not like to get my traffic sniffed or my Google Account pwd stolen.

Any idea? is Android safe by default in this way or could it be altered?

No piece of software that you install on any hardware of any form is 100% safe unless you are the author or you've read all of the source code, verified its safety, and built it yourself. Okay, so this may be something of an oversimplification, but it's actually not too far off in most cases.

Custom ROMs are no exception to this. Yes, a ROM author could put spyware, a backdoor, or just about anything else they wanted into a ROM if they wanted to maliciously exploit it. With AOSP ROMs I suppose the possibilities are somewhat magnified since the Android source itself could be modified to contain some kind of exploit or spyware.

It's also worth noting, however, that running a manufacturer stock ROM isn't necessarily a safer option if you're concerned about privacy.

The question "is Android safe by default" is in some ways kind of a meaningless question. Is it designed to be safe? Well yes, data is protected at the application level and apps are sandboxed. Any OS is intended to be safe, but all of that goes out the window when you run a ROM that's not pure AOSP. On top of that, the nature of code is that it has bugs, with Android being no exception. Custom ROMs and manufacturer ROMs alike can absolutely have the potential to introduce (either intentionally or unintentionally) ways for your data to be sniffed or stolen.


Use 3G connection on my Android in Ubuntu I would like to use the 3G connection on my android with my Ubuntu. Is there any method to do so?

Easy Tether from Mobile Stream should work. It's a way to share your internet connection with another device via USB. Get the Lite version (does not support https, or tethering to gaming consoles) or the Full version.

  Supports Windows 7/Vista/XP (32-bit and 64-bit), Mac OS X
  10.7/10.6/10.5/10.4, Ubuntu 10.4+ and Fedora 13+

Full version supports the following:

  Tether PS3, Wii, XBox via PC Internet Connection Sharing, you need a
  computer for game console tethering.


What should my tablet be charging at? I just got a RocketFish USB wall charger with 2.4 amps and 5 Volts. The charge meter that I am using is telling me that it is charging at 50 mA. I also notice that when I try to turn it off to charge, it will have a red 'X' on the battery icon when I turn it back on while it wasn't there.
Is it safe to be charging it with this charger? Should it be charging this slowly?
The charger model number is RF-AC1U2N.

Although charging it slowly will not have a problem, in your case your shouldn't as it is giving a 'x' mark..But you should take care you're not using your tab while charging. Since the charging process is slower than normal, if you simultaneously plug in and use the tab, the battery might deteriorate. Also use quality charger.


How to prevent Android from creating LOST.DIR on SD card? After the phone restarts, there is a LOST.DIR folder created on the external SD card. Is it possible not to create this folder if nothing is lost?

LOST.DIR is just a storage space (directory) for files that were recovered upon boot. You can safetly remove it with no problems. The sysytem keeps it just in case you want to get your recovered currupted files back.

A quick google search yielded:

LOST.DIR - what is it?

As for preventing it from being created, just prevent the SD card from becoming corrupted. Here are some things to keep in mind while using an SD card:

Always eject before removal
Never remove while files are being modified
Never remove from Android device while device is on

If you have your device connected to the computer, the SD card will usually automatically mount itself on the computer. Remember to eject it before disconnecting the device.

This thread has a ton of good info. Basically the gist of it is, if you are following all of the precautions to keep the SD card from getting corrupted (ejecting before removal, ect...) then the SD card is partially incompatible with your device. If you move to a higher class SD card, the problem usually goes away on its own.


MAM and android: fingerprint option never shown We're trying to configure Intune so that people with Android devices can access their corporate email through Outlook for Android. In the Access Requirements blade (dashboard > client apps- app protection policies > intune app protection - properties), we've activated pin (including simple pins) and fingerprint for accessing the apps.

Whenever a user tries to access the corporate email through outlook, it's prompted to install the intune app (company portal app) from the store. After doing that, the user is asked for a pin after setting up the corporate email account in outlook. After the specified timeout, the user will be asked for a pin again. However, the app never allows the users to use fingerprint to unlock the app. It will only allow the user to enter the pin.

The intune portal seems to imply that I should be able to use a fingerprint (instead of a pin) to access the mail, but we've tried it in a couple of Android Devices (oneplus 3t and 5t) and the fingerprint option is never shown...

Any ideas on what's happening?

Thanks.

Finally found it... in order for it wo work, you need to create a work profile and associate the fingerprint to that profile...


SD applications return to Internal Memory I have a Samsung J7 prime with Android 8.1, the issue is that my applications can be moved normally to external storage, but then it appears again in the internal memory. (when google play store updates the apps). Is there any way to avoid that?

To avoid updating apps it can be changed in settings when updating is allowed. Or u can shut it down all together then manually run scans to pick and choose which app you want to update.


Is there a alarm clock app that uses UTC time? Is there a alarm clock app that uses UTC instead of local timezone?

The reason I ask is that I am tired of this daylight savings time idea, so my plan is to set 1 time in a non DST timezone like UTC and then use that time as wakeup in the morning time all year.

In Russia there is no DST anymore as of 8.02.2011. Therefore you could set your timezone to MSK and set your alarm depending on the time difference to your location.


Deactivate start of app I have an app called "podcast" on my phone. unfortunately, when i try to open it, android closes the app because "it slows down my device" and gives me this notification: "Podcast was closed. to use it again, deactivate automatic start of the app".

I downloaded autorun manager to do this task, but it doesn't seem to work with my phone because it's unrooted and has a android-version which is too new.

what can i do to get my app running again?

I think it's an absolute joke that my phone deactivates an app automatically and i have to put so much effort into finding a solution.

In most cases a startup manager does not require root to disable an app from startup unless the app is a system application. I am not too sure as to why autorun manager is requiring root, but I would suggest installing a different app to manage startup apps.
In the past I have used Startup Manager to do this.
Try this app and see if it fixes your issue.


Will removing a google account from a device delete the game data? I have an android phone from my friend because i need to get some game data with a code from my old account for a game. The thing is, he is logged in his account rn. If i go to settings,google then accounts and i remove his account will his game data be wiped? If yes,when i login back with his account will his data be back or no? Please anawer quickly, i dont have much time. and btw i cant acces my google play account because i use ios.

different games have different ways to save.
most games have their save on google cloud, and some game place it on private server, or local storage.
Most western (google play requiring games) store their saves in google server, meanwhile eastern have their own server for save.

why dont you mention your game title for a better understanding?
because different game have different rule


Making mediaserver immediately scan a file created through ADB The mediaserver in my stock and rooted Android 6.0.1 (running in Nexus 6) doesn't detect new files created or moved to into /sdcard using adb. It doesn't detect until I do a soft/full reboot which I find unacceptable to perform.
I'm able to manually run mediaserver using command-line to begin file scanning again# and I want this to be done automatically and immediately whenever a new file is created under /sdcard. At the moment, I have Tasker run the mediaserver whenever USB cable is unplugged.*
The obvious choice here seems to be an automation app of which I tried Tasker and Automate, and both amazingly failed to detect new files, particularly under /sdcard/Music, when created through adb. However, if an app created files in any directory under /sdcard those two apps immediately detected the changes. I also tried pushing files to /storage/emulated/0/ instead of /sdcard/ and made corresponding changes in those two apps' triggers.That step didn't benefit me.
It is to be noted that I observed this problem in stock Android 5.1.1 and a CM13 snapshot build as well.
So, how do I achieve the goal?
Update
I'm aware of the possibility of creating an alias in the OS running in my PC which would execute a script providing a way to push the file as well as run the mediaserver. However, it is something I would like to avoid as much as possible.
* I was using it but later switched to a script executed from PC using an alias. However, I do not want to depend upon any of the two methods. My fingers are comfortable with typing adb push instead of adb_push or some other but single word.
Update 2

I do not intend to restrict myself to a particular directory, such as Download and neither pushing files into the latter actually works.
I would like to stress that I'm not asking for how to run mediaserver. That I already know. All I'm looking for is: Whenever I do adb push FILE /sdcard/FILE the mediaserver should automatically and immediately kick in and scans the file. Regardless of any perceivable performance issue, I want it to kick in every single time.

Update 3
Okay, I may be using an incorrect term. Perhaps mediaserver and media scanner are terms for two different things in Android. In the case of confusion, please stick with
"media scanner" for both the current revision and the bounty note.
Update 4
# Courtesy of androidyue for this helpful resource, any of the following command in preformatted text is what I can use in my device to make media scanner scan the file.

# FILE_PATH refers to the location of pushed file in Android. E.g. /sdcard/Music/lolcat.mp3

am broadcast -a android.intent.action.BOOT_COMPLETED -n com.android.providers.media/.MediaScannerReceiver
am broadcast -a android.intent.action.MEDIA_SCANNER_SCAN_FILE -d file://FILE_PATH   # guaranteed to work. See https://goo.gl/lH0CLT for proof.
am broadcast -a android.intent.action.MEDIA_MOUNTED -d file://FILE_PATH

Update 5
Per the suggestion from Manubhargav, I tried Sarkie's MTPFix available here. It didn't work, both in stock Android 6.0.1 and CM13. I saw the following entry when I enabled the service for that app.
04-07 09:38:14.771  3383  3383 I MTPService: Watching /storage/emulated/0

I later pushed a sound file into /storage/emulated/0/ and nothing showed up in my music player. Logcat also didn't display anything useful either.
By the way, this app uses FileObserver, so I'm not surprised if it couldn't detect files created using adb, since it is the same issue with the automation apps I tried.

Note: Please post an answer only when you've tested it yourself. Thank you!

Okay, it seems the answer is trivial. My fingers don't have to lose the comfort of typing adb push, yet I would be able to cause media scanner scan my pushed file, automatically and immediately. Here's my script tweaked to my needs:

(Note: root access is not required in Android)

#!/bin/bash

function push_file () {
    target="${@: -1}";
    file_path="${@: -2:1}";
    [[ "$prog_bar" == "-p" ]] && adb "$@" || $call_adb push -p "$file_path" "$target";
}

function broadcast () {
    file_name="$(basename "$file_path")";
    [[ `echo "${target: -1}"` != "/" ]] && unset file_name;
    [[ `echo "${target:0:1}"` != "/"  ]] && target="/${target}";
    $call_adb shell 'am broadcast -a android.intent.action.MEDIA_SCANNER_SCAN_FILE -d '"\"file://$target$file_name\""'' > /dev/null;
}

if [[ "$1" == "-s" ]]; then
    if [[ "$3" == "push" ]]; then
        prog_bar="$4";
        call_adb="adb -s $2";
        push_file "$@" && broadcast;
    else
        adb "$@";
    fi
elif [[ "$1" == "push" ]]; then
        prog_bar="$2";
        call_adb="adb";
        push_file "$@" && broadcast;
else
    adb "$@";
fi

I then setup an alias named adb in .bashrc like this:

alias adb='bash FILE'  # FILE refers the file path of the said script

This was possible thanks to the very helpful article: Handling positional parameters at Bash Hackers Wiki.

Note: the script  more or less requires a *nix based OS in PC with version 4.x of Bash installed and support for .bashrc. If you intend to use the script, you're encouraged to edit it to suit your working style.


Why I can delete my user from an old phone without deleting everything on my new one? So, I bought a new phone (Nexus 5) and I created my account and user. My old phone (Nexus 4) has the same user as a matter of fact, the problem is that I gave my old phone to my mother so she could have a better phone. But, several things are sync between the phones, like the photos and the calendar. I tried to create a new user for her or even delete my user from the old phone but I couldn't find any option to do that. Any suggestion on how to solve that?
Thank you in advance!

You need to create a new Google account for your mother, and then delete your own Google account from the phone.

To add an account:

  On your mobile device, open the Settings menu .
  Under "Accounts," touch Add account.

This is how to delete your account.

  If you're using a device with multiple users, each user has separate account settings so make sure you’re logged in as the correct user before removing any account information.

  Open the Settings menu  on your device.
  Under "Accounts," touch the name of the account you want to remove.
  If you’re using a Google account, touch Google and then the account. Important: When you remove your Google Account, all the email, contacts, Calendar events, and other data associated with that account will no longer automatically sync with your device.
  Touch the Menu icon Menu in the top right corner of the screen.
  Touch Remove account. If this is the only Google account on the device, you may need to enter your device's pattern, PIN, or password as a security measure. This ensures that only you or someone you trust is removing the account from your device.

Source: https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/2840815?hl=en


Assigning a "default" wireless router I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 7.0, which I use with a Verizon wireless router.  Somewhere nearby there is also an "xfinitywifi" wireless access point which appears in the tablet's wireless setup page.

I've noticed that when I walk out of range of my own access point, my tablet attempts to automatically connect to this open hotspot.  Unfortunately, the "open" "xfinitywifi" hotspot actually requires some kind of Web login and the tablet stalls while attempting to connect to it.  When I walk back in range of my own router, the tablet often continues trying to connect to the xfinitywifi router and I have to re-select my own manually.

Is there any way to configure the WiFi settings so this does not occur?

Try to use WiFi Prioritizer. it aims to solve a simple problem by attempting to automatically reconnect to a higher priority wireless network when it comes in range while still being connected to a lower priority wireless network
hope it helps.


Write text messages using Vim I have an Android phone (Motorola XT 1068 Moto G) that I use mostly for sending text messages.

Being a heavy Vim user, I'm frustrated with the low speed of writing messages using the Android keyboard.

Is there some way I can use Vim to write text messages on the phone?

With AirDroid + withExEditor

First, you establish a connection between a laptop or desktop computer with a proper keyboard and the Android phone.

On the phone, install the AirDroid app.

On the laptop, use the web application to connect to your phone. Currently (2018-06-21), this requires a free registration.

Using "Messages" in the web application (see screenshot below) you'll be able to write text messages on your laptop, sending them via your phone.

To write those messsages conveniently using Vim, you can use the withExEditor add-on for Firefox and Chrome.

After installling the add-on, and doing some additional setup on your laptop, you can use gVim to write your text messages.


Not recieving messages from only one WhatsApp contact When I first met the love of my life, he insisted that we use WhatsApp to communicate. He lives in Brasil and uses WhatsApp on his Windows Phone. I'm in the United States and use WhatsApp for Android on my Motorola Photon Q.

Over the past few months, our ability to communicate through this app has deteriorated. He says he receives my messages, and that he replies to them, but apparently I don't see them. This is frustrating, to say the least, and puts a lot of unneeded stress on both of us. I've worried myself sick over it.

He says that I'm the only one this happens to, and that communication with his Brazilian contacts works just fine. One of my friends in the Philippines just got WhatsApp for Android and I can communicate with him perfectly.

I'm really clueless. I've scoured the Internet for answers, but I can't seem to find any. I can send messages, and in the rare time that I do receive the messages from my boyfriend, it is late at night. I never receive any during the day. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the app countless times, and my WiFi connection at my house is perfect. But this seems to only be getting worse. He says he sends me several messages a day, but I only get some of the messages about every other day--usually every two days.

I'm not a tech by any means, but it seems like there might be something wrong with the different versions of WhatsApp. Android communicating with the Windows Phone. So if this is the case, then my question here is unneeded. I've contacted WhatsApp Inc. with my concerns and have yet to receive a reply.

This sucks, to say the least.

UPDATE: I have contacted one of my boyfriend's friends in Brasil. I can communicate with them perfectly. They said y boyfriend said there was an issue with his phone. But I'm not sure that's the case. I uninstalled WhatsApp and downloaded it through WhatsApp's website. I can now see when my boyfriend is online and when he types. But I do not receive the messages he sends.

In order to understand if the problem is of your phone or of something else, ask your boyfriend if he sees a double-check or just one check (✓) near the messages he sent you, but you didn't receive.

If there are two checks, the message was delivered to your phone, but for some reasons it isn't shown up. Maybe because of a malicious application?
If there is just one check, the problem is on the side of whatsapp as messages are sent to their servers but not delivered to you.


Google Nexus 7: I can't manage my device administrators Can someone please help me?

I've installed the McAfee protection on my tablet and later changed it to Kaspersky. When trying to deactivate McAfee as device administrator it didn't work. Therefore now I can't uninstall the app.

I've also noticed that I can't deactivate any of my device administrators.

I've tried to Force Stop the application on the Installed Devices menu, but the option isn't available.

I don't want to reset my tablet and loose all the data. What should I do?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

I had the same issue. Unfortunately if you have tried to check\uncheck more than two or three times you will end up resetting your device. Explained here

https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=53130


Samsung Galaxy S Firmware Update I'm experiencing trouble with the 2.1 to 2.2 update. It looks like this advice doesn't work for me as I have no Software Update button. I also tried this advice but it seems that I'm not able to put it in the download mode (it just doesn't apper). Can someone help me with the issue?

I also have next message in KIES:

As to KIES:

My firmware version is 2.1-update1.

My answer on that other question wasn't quite right -- I have a US variant on the Galaxy S, and the process to get into download mode isn't exactly the same.  I'll update that answer shortly, in the meantime here are the Odin instructions:

Go to this XDA thread and download the newest firmware for your region.  Download Odin for Windows (search for "Heimdall" if you are on Linux).  Then do the following:

Put your phone into Download mode

Remove the battery
Hold VolumeDown plus the Home key plus Power.  While holding,

Reinsert the battery.
Release the Power button, still holding the others, about 1 second after the white "GT-I9000" text appears.
After a few seconds a yellow triangle with an android in it should appear, this is Download Mode.  If it doesn't, try this again while holding Power the whole time.

Start up Odin.
Attach the phone to your PC via USB so that Odin recognizes it.
Load the .zip file you downloaded (the ROM/firmware) into the PDA field of Odin.
Load the 512 .pit file into the PIT field of Odin.
Check "Re-partition".
Hit Start.  Odin will tell you when it's done; if it fails, reboot your phone and try again.  (This happens occasionally).

Note that if you need to back anything up, you should do that beforehand and save the backup to your PC, since everything (except probably the external SD card) will be wiped on the phone.  Also note that you do this at your own risk; Odin is very powerful and misusing it can damage your phone.  I've used it dozens of times myself safely.


Will I damage my Android device by charging it using a generic microusb + car adapter? I need a second charger and a car charger for my Evo 3D and the same for my wife's Nexus S, but I don't want to pay exorbitant prices for them.  Will I fry or otherwise damage the devices using something like this couple with a cheap microUSB to USB cable priced about the same?  Will the devices complain about using "unapproved" chargers and refuse to charge like some iPhone models do with some 3rd party chargers?

USB, mini-USB, and micro-USB cables are standardized, the voltage and amperage are the same across all standard compliant USB chargers. As long as the charger is a standard, generic micro-USB charger then it should be alright.

That doesn't make it impossible for a manufacturer to create a non-standard plug that looks like a USB plug, but they're pretty much screwed up if they do so.


Copy message text in android 7 In my past phone (Android 6) I could long tap a message and sow "Copy" context menu.
Now in Android 7 I see only some strange icons on taping a message.

Could somebody advice how I can copy message text?

This icon on the top means copy. Pressing this button
should copy the text to your clipboard.
 This icon means share. After pressing this icon, you shall be prompted with multiple apps on your device that allow you to share this message.
This icon means forward. When you press this icon, you'll be able to directly forward this message to somebody else.
This icon means info. Pressing this icon will show you more information about the message. (e.g. sender, server, etc..)
This icon stand for delete. By pressing this icon will the message be deleted.


Where is the chart that shows device model popularity? There is a box-chart that showed the list of android devices out in use, and the relative popularity of each.

I'm not sure if this is Google Developer provided, or by some 3rd party, but I'd like to relocate this chart of hardware popularity.

Does anyone know the chart I'm referring to?

Many third-parties do this statistical work. Here's one I can find that's relatively new (Aug. 2015) and in English (Chinese groups do it too but I'd not bother looking for it because people here likely can't read). It's also interactive.


TWRP: vendor partition is not existed I try to flash LineageOS on a OnePlus 5 (cheeseburger).  I installed TWRP 3.3.0-0 from here. I repeatedly wiped the partitions.

What I cannot manage is to adb sideload LineageOS 16.0.  I get this message:

Starting ADB sideload feature...
Installing zip file '/sideload/package.zip'
Error: Vendor partition doesn't exist!
Updater process ended with ERROR: 7

I have read here that I should install the latest stock ROM (from here), but that results in almost the same error message:

Starting ADB sideload feature...
Installing zip file '/sideload/package.zip'
vendor partition is not existed, exit ota!!
Updater process ended with ERROR: 7

How can I create/populate/fix that vendor partition?

OnePlus 5 didn't support project Treble out of the box, so there was no /vendor partition. However with update to Android P (as explained here), said partition was created to support Treble. If you didn't undergo that OTA update, you must haven't /vendor partition on your device.

You can also create the partition yourself from within TWRP if you are a bit tech savvy. parted or gdisk can be used for the purpose. But playing with partition table could be risky if you aren't sure what you are doing. You can see the partition table of your device in given link.


Multiple Google Accounts and the Market I have multiple Google accounts like below:

Account A (my primary account).
Account B
Account C

I only have the extra two accounts for gmail (via Google Apps for domains) and don't use them for anything else.

I only want to use Account A on the market. I currently have an annoying issue where the market app keeps using Account B, so I end up downloading things to Account B by mistake.

Is there anyway I can remove these other accounts from the market or set some sort of default account?

Thanks

Update: I know that I can press menu in the market app and select a different account, but this is annoying because it defaults to Account B. My crazy theory is that when looking for updates (in the background), it first checks Account A and then B. Because it checked account B last it leaves that as the active one. Account C has never downloaded an app so it doesn't check for updates.

The only way to remove the other Accounts from the Market is to unsync them from the phone.

Settings > Accounts & Sync > Click the google account > Press Remove Account

Perhaps remove all three, add your Account A, load the market. Then go and add the other two accounts through Accounts & Sync and not through the market.

This should leave Account A as the default.


How can I override the Device Administrator security policy so that I can disable the lock screen? On Android 2.2 Froyo, I added my Corporate Exchange Email account to the phone, however, the security policy set by the "Device Administrator" requires that I enter a 4-digit PIN at the lock screen and a maximum 10 seconds idle.

How can I hack my Android, through root access or otherwise, such that I do not need to follow this security policy. I am very annoyed at having to enter the PIN every time I want to use the phone, because I open/close it so often through out the day?

If you buy the TouchDown app (30 day free trial available), the lock code will not be on the phone, but on the app. That's ever so much better.


How to manually sign into WiFi network? I'm connecting to a WiFi network that I know show ask me for the username and password in the web browser when I go to access the internet. However it's not doing that when I go into my web browser. I'm sometimes presented with the sign in prompt right when I connect to the network, but not always.

How do I go to the sign in screen?

This sounds like a hotspot, not a usual password-protected network. If, once you connect, it doesn't tell you to sign in but you know you must pass the registration for the further access to internet, open any internet page... and it will redirect you to the signing screen, if the network is really protected.


Is it possible to flash an app via custom recovery? If it is, will it become a system app? I wanted to have an app as a system app without rooting it. I was wondering if it's possible to flash/install an app through custom recovery as we do with Gapps and other stuff.
So, I came up with an idea to flash it via recovery, but I don't know whether it will work or not. If not, is there any other way to make an app a system app without rooting?

Yes, it is definitely possible and has been done many times. The method to do so is explained in this article.
Briefly, the main steps from the provided link are following:

Download any similar zip template
Extract it; there will be 2 folders - META-INF & system
Make a folder with the name app inside the system folder
Paste your APK files in the app folder
Zip META-INF & system into a file
Flash it


Full Charge Notification When my battery is fully charged I would like a Notification Sound. It used to make a certain tone.I went to my settings, and tried to find it  there but it gave me no information to do it. I tried searching Google but it was of no help. I look forward to hearing from you. I hope someone could help me.

Why don't you try an app for the purpose? On Google Play, a search for "full charge notification" brings up e.g. Battery Full Notification. I've just tested that app, and it works for me.


How do I access to my Whatsapp backup in Google Drive? My phone was stolen and I was unable to reclaim my number from my telco. Therefore I'm not able to login to Whatsapp with my stolen number. There are very important messages and contacts that I have to retrieve, and I knew that the backups were in Google Drive, but I can't locate the backup file. Any help that I can retrieve my chat history from Google Drive?

There are commercial Products that claim that they are able to extract Whatsapp backups from Google Drive:

Elcomsoft Explorer for WhatsApp

Extract and Decrypt Android WhatsApp Backups from Google Account


How can I attach a default sms template text to a specific contact number? I would like to attach a certain text to a specific contact number to used as default text when I want to send a text.

In other words: as soon as I select a contact to send a text message to: some default text should already be inserted.

I am aware that programs like tasker can do this. Although undoubtedly a very impressive program, it seems to me to be an overkill to install a program like this, just to have this one feature.

Is this possible ?

chompSMS by Delicious Inc. available from Google Play Store.

  with lots of extra features like Quick Reply, Quick Compose, Scheduled Messages, Passcode Lock, Privacy, Easy Pick Emoji's, Templates (text snippets), Signatures, heaps of customization options (notifications, ringtones, colors, fonts, wallpapers), Blacklisting and much more!

May diverge a bit from your precise goal, but works like a charm to achieve the same end.

You can use this app to have a ton of templates prepared, and use them when texting someone.

Instead of typing over and over the same thing on different messages, either at the beginning, middle or end of a text, you just long tab the message body and pick up the desired template.


Updating Android on a Rooted Tablet I have an Android tablet that I rooted to attempt to install a different OS. After I failed and restored my tablet to a backup that I had made earlier (it's still rooted), I tried to update Android. It checked for updates, and promptly displayed a box that said "Your device has been modified. Software updates are not available." Is there any way that I can update my tablet while it's rooted?

I ended up just installing CyanogenMod. They have features that stock Android should have had from the beginning, and support pretty much every Android device on the market for many years after Google and the various device manufacturers abandon it.


"Not Found" apps hanging up my autoupdate... what can I do? I have a couple of apps that give a "not found: The requested item could not be found" error when I try to update or view them in "my apps" in the market. (PDA Net is one of them). If I do an auto update (update all) the update process tends to hang when it gets to either of them. I still have the apps on the phone, and they work fine but I can't even get to the screen where I would turn off auto-updating for them. What can I do?

You will not be able to update them, they have been pulled from the market by either the developer or by google. PDA Net for example was recently pulled by google. You could see if the developers offer an alternative means to download, either from their website or a 3rd party market, like amazon app store. Then remove then from your device so they no longer appear in your google market. Then reinstall them via the 3rd party market, or by "sideloading" them.


why non rooted android does not support sdcard formatted with ext4? Prone to data loss, fat32 or exFat are the only options right?
I just lost many files on a sdcard.
Formatted on linux desktop, to ext4, android will not reconize the sdcard, despite it could.

my question is: why this non-sense?

lollipop here :(

is our only option for quality, to root the smartphone?

yes , not make any sense , the better I could get until now is mount ext4 , with adb root

Mounting a ext4 formatted sdcard on Android Marshmallow

more info here: https://android.stackexchange.com/a/204616/119381


Can I hide a specific Google Now place card? Google Now is very cool, and I like how it shows places you may be interested in nearby.

I'm wondering though, is there any way to tell it "No, I'm not interested in that place, please don't show it to me again"?

Note that I don't want to turn off the nearby places cards entirely, I want to see those, I just want to dismiss specific places and not see cards for them again.

Can I do this?

Note also, if there is a way, it doesn't necessarily need to be in Google Now, ... if there's even a way to go on the web and add the place to an ignore list or something or anything.

An individual place can be swiped away, but there is no way to tell Google Now to never show you a specific place again.


How to mute phone completely but keep watch's notifications vibrate? I have and android phone and an android wear watch (specifically, LG G3 and sony swr50).

If I get all the notifications on the watch, I prefer my phone to be completely muted - not ring, nor vibrate.

BUT, when trying to mute everything on the phone, the watch gets muted as well - everything gets into no interruption mode.

Is there a way to mute the phone completely (sound and vibration) but still have vibrations on the watch?

There is an option in the Android Wear app to mute your phone when the watch is connected. This will mute your phone (even stop it from vibrating) but your watch will vibrate (for all notifs that would normally vibrate on your phone).

BUT: there has been a bug since forever where the watch suddenly starts buzzing again. It works most of the time though..


Install application in SD card or external USB drive without root? Is it possible any of the following in a non-rooted Android device?

Install an application "manually" (without using Android Market/Google Play)
Install an application in an external SD card
Install an application in an external USB drive connected to the device

Yes. See: Can I install apps on phone without using the Android Market?
You can't install directly to the SD card. In many cases you can move much of the app and its data to the SD card, but the OS and the app have to support it. Even then, you need to install normally and then move it, and you can't move 100%.
Not without a custom ROM, and maybe not even then.


Connecting a USB stick: OTG cable required or will standard USB (charging) cable work? I am wondering if it is necessary to buy a USB OTG cable to access a USB stick from an Android (4.4) phone, or if it suffices to take the Micro-USB-to-USB cable that comes with the phone (for charging) and connect it to the USB stick (via a female-female adapter)?

I would do away with a lot of connections, and just do a Phone > USB OTG > USB Stick connection. An OTG Cable is very cheap anyway. You can get one for a USD1 (at least here in the Philippines), or less.


Why does stat report no space on / (root) but space available on /system? On my rooted Android 4.4.2 Samsung Galaxy S4 phone with armv7l chipset, if I start a shell, I can use the stat command, but some devices report strange.  In particular, the / device shows zero size, zero blocks, wheer as /system reports valid numbers:

root@jfltevzw:/ # stat /
stat /
  File: /
  Size: 0           Blocks: 0          IO Block: 4096   directory
Device: 1h/1d   Inode: 1           Links: 31
Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (    0/ UNKNOWN)   Gid: (    0/ UNKNOWN)
Access: 1970-01-01 00:00:00.000000000
Modify: 2015-04-25 00:48:54.000000000
Change: 2015-04-25 00:48:54.000000000

root@jfltevzw:/ # stat /system
stat /system
  File: /system
  Size: 4096        Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   directory
Device: b310h/45840d    Inode: 2           Links: 25
Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (    0/ UNKNOWN)   Gid: (    0/ UNKNOWN)
Access: 1970-01-01 00:00:00.000000000
Modify: 2015-01-10 01:52:27.000000000
Change: 2015-01-10 01:52:27.000000000

Looking at my mounts, I see these two entries:

/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/system /system ext4 rw,seclabel,relatime,data=ordered 0 0
rootfs / rootfs rw,relatime 0 0

Why does my root partition show via stat as having no space available and is there a way to reliably determine how much space is available from a shell command or via a C entry point such as statvfs() that is also reporting zero space available to my application.

stat reports 0 space/blocks on / because
/ = ramdisk which lives in ram, ram is not a block device.
Your actual ramdrive lives in storage with your kernel an dt.img
on a specified emmc partition labeled boot .

The combined ramdisk, kernel binary, and dt.img (device tree binary)
are known collectively as your boot.img

The boot image also contains some actual directories [real] that function as placeholders, they are usually /data /dev /proc /system

Also your ramdisk contains the necessary *.rc and *.sh configuration and shell scripts necessary for booting you device and establishing/bringing up your operating system. The ramdisk also contains your device's selinux policy configuration, sepolicy and context files, lastly your ramdisk contains the /sbin directory, which is where the adb daemon lives and usually charger, healthd, and ueventd binaries and any manufacturer specific binaries related to services, usually security. The ramdisk/ramdrive is temporary and is dumped out of memory when you powerdown or reboot, and reloaded to it's designated place in memory when your device boots up again.


any pdf reader with annotation feature (open source)? I am looking for a pdf reader for android which can also  annotate, select, highlight text. Any open source option?

Like Foxit Reader?

Adobe Reader X for Android v10.3 now supports annotation, highlights and commenting. It is not open source, but it is free to the end user.

There are currently no open source Android PDF utilities that have worthwhile annotation features. This wiki page at the University of Massachusetts Boston lists several open source android PDF viewers, with links: http://howto.wikispaces.umb.edu/PDF+Annotation+with+Android

(I can't post a reply containing more than two links, my apologies.)


Unable to reach Google Play does not recognize my device I have the HUAWEI G520-5000 mobile phone which was bought in April 2013 from China during a business trip. The device, despite of being locked for China Mobile carrier, is working properly for my carrier (Cosmote) in Greece. I don't have problems with talking or accessing the internet. My problem is that my Google account does not recognize my device and I can not use the Google Play store and it is impossible to install even the simpliest application. I suppose that the problem is the Android OS on my device which seems to be modified by China Mobile and Huawei (only Chinese apps are accepted by the device and the s/n of the OS is also pretty strange (something like 123456ABCD).
I would appreciate if somebody could help me out with my problem. Thanks

The following worked for me, but requires root:

install Total Commander
open it
browse to /system/etc
look for a file named hosts
long-press the file, then chose to edit it via the CMD editor
comment out the second line (place a # in front of the digit)
save the file (approve superuser request for Total Commander when asked for)

Now the problem should be solved!