Wikipedia app or Gmail doubles Wiki image sizes when sharing them I am sharing a lot of images and articles from mobile Wikipedia app to my Gmail account. Today I noticed that either app itself or Gmail is doubling image sizes during this course of action.
For example, I stumbled across this image.

Corresponding Wikipedia page says:

500 × 373 pixels. No higher resolution available

I shared it to my email address the usual way (using three dot > Share) and when received shared email in my Gmail it turned out that the image has 1280 x 955 pixel dimensions. So it is two and a half times bigger than the original one.

As you can see above, the image itself is very blurred and artificially oversized. So, it is not Wikipedia hiding some actually bigger image resolution. It is either Wikipedia app or Gmail doubling image during share process.
Is this some weird feature that I don't understand? Or is this a bug introduced in Wikipedia mobile app?

This is because the Wikipedia app actually requests a fixed 1280px-width image when viewing it in the in-app gallery and sharing it from there.
When an image is tapped, the app allows the user to view the image in a special viewer (a.k.a. in-app gallery). The image shown in the gallery is actually a resized image.
For this specific image, the URL is
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a1/Kraszewski_manor_in_Do%C7%94haje%2C_drevaryt.Jpg/1280px-Kraszewski_manor_in_Do%C7%94haje%2C_drevaryt.Jpg

Note the 1280px in the middle of the URL. This link is actually an API for generating an image thumbnail with arbitrary width so that it is possible for Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons to generate a smaller/larger image than the original when needed.
When tapping the "Share" button, the app uses the image directly from the in-app gallery (which has been resized) and stores it locally as a temporary file for the purpose of sharing, which is why the width is always 1280px when shared.

One known possible workaround is to download the image first since it is using the original URL, and thus getting the original image with the original size.

Since the official Wikipedia app is open-sourced:

For end-users: feel free to file an issue for this to discuss if this is a bug or by design, and to let them know the user's expectation.
For developers: it is possible to modify the behavior of image sharing. The relevant code should be inside GalleryItemFragment.shareImage() for determining the source of the image and GalleryActivity.onShare() for the filename.


Disable "unlock with voice" notifications Xperia XA1 tl:dr - despite repeatedly choosing the "no thanks" option, my phone keeps displaying notifications to setup voice unlock. I Say "no" - as far as I know it is not enabled - but an hour later it asks me again.

How can I disable this feature permanently. (re-asking me to setup voice notifications).

Phone is Sony Xperia XA1 running Android 8.0.0

longer:

Starting yesterday, I got a notification saying "Unlock with your voice" - "Unlock your phone by saying "Ok Google". (screenshots at the bottom of the question)

Now, being a privacy conscious tin-foil hat wearing type - I do not want my phone to ever be listening to me for voice commands. No problem, I tap the notification - and another page comes up with a description, and two options: "No Thanks" and "I agree". I choose, "no thanks". The phone seems to be content with my decision. But.... an hour or so later, the notification returns. It's happened about 3 or 4 times now.

Screenshots:

Notification

No Thanks option page:

Remove Google Now Launcher (discontinued) from the homescreen and disable Google from Settings > Apps > Apps List.


How does changing the mixer_paths.xml increase volume? I've been trying to boost the maximum volume obtainable through the audio jack of my phone (Nexus 5). Instead of installing equaliser or volume boosting apps, I thought I'd go about this the technical way:

XDA forums suggest a "MOD" that involves modifying your mixer_paths.xml file located at /system/etc/ (root access naturally required) to increase your speaker or headphone volume beyond the set limits:

Find: <path name="speaker">
You will see this string just below it: "RX7 Digital Volume" value="88"
The value is the only part we are going to adjust.
For the mod above, I changed the value to "93".
The default value is "88" and I would suggest not to go over "95".

To change the Headphone volume:
Find: <path name="headphones"> Look for these strings below it:
"HPHL Volume" value="15"
"HPHR Volume" value="15"
Again all we are changing is the values (ensure both are set at the same number).
For the mod above, I changed the values to "20". The default values are "15" and I would suggest not to go over "20".

How does this work? Does Android artificially limit the maximum volume and this "MOD" bypasses those limits? Or does it compromise audio quality?

I visited this some time ago and explored some values within the file. As it can be hard to determine sound quality comparisons, I also compared the visual appearances of waveforms.

Here's a screenshot of the page:

Link

Note that I only listen to audio from my Nexus7 though headphones or external speakers.


Is it possible to combine address bar and search bar of opera mobile into one I had been using stock browser all the while. Recently, I found out that opera mobile is much more faster when I double tap to zoom in. I would like to switch my daily use to opera mobile. However, the shortcoming I found out is that, they do not have a single bar for me to search and type address. Is there any workaround or plugin for me to do so?

I don't know of any way to physically combine the two fields. However, the most recent update (11.1) added the following:

  One field does it all

  You can now type both web addresses
  and search queries in your browser's
  address field. Or, if you prefer, you
  can still use the search field with
  your favorite search engines.

So if you start typing into the address bar, you'll now be given the option to perform a search for whatever you entered. You just tap on the "Search: [text]" item that appears under the address bar:


Ring tone super-quiet on Galaxy S9+ I am having a problem with my ringtone on my Galaxy S9+.

Suddenly, my ringtone has become extremely soft - as if it was on the lowest possible setting (except mute).

However, it is on the highest, so it's definitely not a problem with the setting.

It is not a problem with the speaker because I hear well during calls or watching videos.
Furthermore, when I select the ringtone to change it, the sample play is perfect.
It is only when someone tries to phone that the problem occurs.

I have tried restarting the phone, going into safe made and many other things and can't seem to solve the problem.
It's almost as if it thinks it is sending the ringing to my air-pods. However, the bluetooth is turned off so it is definitely not connected.

Until recently it was only intermittent but now it is happening all the time.

It also happens with incoming WhatsApp calls.

I am using an mp3 for my ringtone but it happens also with build-in tones.

Software Information:
Android 10
Baseband version: G965FXXU8DTC5
Kernel Version: 4.9.118-18339721
Build: QP1A.190711.020.G965FXXU8DTC5

As suggested I am posting how it was "resolved".

Went to Samsung and it turns out that the bottom speaker isn't working.

That's why it is so weak. The fact that it works from time to time probably means that the problem corrosion or something similar.

This also explains two other problems I have had that I thought were unconnected:
The "beep" when plugged in (as I mentioned in the question)
The fact than when I am speaker lift at to my ear I can no longer hear the call. I guess that the sound then comes out only the bottom speaker.

Edit:
It turns out that it rings when flat on a surface only. It seems that when it is vertical it tries to ring from the top and bottom whereas when flat it only rings from the top.


Restricting Web Access to a single domain on Android tablets? Our sales team came to me earlier with a question about Android OS. I've never used Android, but I do know it is a Linux-based OS.

Frankly, I don't have the time to research for myself the capabilities of the Android OS. What I need to know is:

Is it possible to restrict web access to a single domain (domain.com, .domain.com, domain.com/)?
Is it possible to launch, on boot, the browser with a specific URL or perhaps if the home page is set, have it launch on boot to the home page?
Is there a 'Full Screen' mode for the browser that could be the default for whenever the browser is launched?
Can SMS/MMS/Email be disabled (if the tablet has those capabilities) but still maintain a 3/4G and/or Wifi connection?
Can I use a custom boot screen?

Since it's a Linux-based OS I imagine I could restrict the web access with IPtables or hosts files, but that of course means the OS has to support that, and I'm not sure if it does.

We hope to use a tablet running Android to tie in to our internal systems. The tablets will be in the hands of operators, who we do not want to be able to use the data connection for anything but our web-based application. Hence the need for browser-launch-on-boot, full-screen mode, and restricting web access.

Yes all this is possible but you'll have to root the tablet and whether or not that is possible will depend on the tablet.

Here's the answer to each request:

Yes, you have to edit the hosts file for which you'll have to root the device.
Yes, any browser (I recommend Dolphin HD) will let you set the home page, so just set this to the page you want it to launch with.  With the Launch After Boot app (~$1.60) you can set the browser to launch on start-up.
Yes, the aforementioned Dolphin HD Browser has a "Full Screen" mode under settings.
Since you are rooting the device you can just uninstall the messaging (SMS/MMS/Email) apps.
Yes.  This app requires a rooted device (and dropping $2): Boot Animation Changer Pro

All in all this is possible assuming you can root you device, and while it won't be easy, it also wont require you programming any custom solution.

Edit: I should have mentioned that going "Full Screen" on the browser will not prevent people from navigating away from the browser screen to other parts of the device but you can basically uninstall every single app that you don't want your people using, and uninstall the market so they can't install more apps.  You can also Password protect apps that you don't want people using with an app like App Protector Pro ($2).  Any enterprising person will be able to get around anything you do with some work but that can be said about any workplace restrictions.

Edit #2: Don't quote me on this but I'll bet you could use Tasker to furhter restrict access to the device and/or services.  Assuming you guys operate during set business hours and are at one bricks & mortar location, you can set location and time based restrictions so when they are in the store during business hours only certain things are possible. You would just need to password protect Tasker after setting it up.


Opening an .apk on Android shows a file list instead of installing For a client I build a private app which their employees can download on their tablet and use. To get the app, the employee opens Chrome on his tablet and navigates to an URL to start the .apk download.

This approach worked fine for the last few years, till a few weeks ago. Instead of installing the app, a folder is shown with the files of the .apk.

The only difference I noticed is the source that's stated in the 'Downloads' screen. On June 16th everything worked fine, the source says 'chrome-native://newtab'. As of July 1th, the source changed to the domain where the .apk was downloaded and this problem occurs:

The tablets are only used for this particular app. The company buys a tablet, navigates to the URL, downloads the .apk and installs it. It would like to keep it as simple as this.

I've searched everywhere, but still have no clue what causes this problem. Any ideas?

This problem occurs on Android 8.1.0, the upgrade form 8.0.0 to 8.1.0 may be the cause of the problem. But I still have no idea how to solve it.

The issue happens with an incorrect HTTP header.
If the request has the right Content-Type header: application/vnd.android.package-archive, the APK will be installed correctly.


How can I control media volume from a 3-button in-line remote? I have the standard HTC RC-E160 headset with 3 buttons and a mic. I can use the button in the middle to pause and play music tracks, and I can use the buttons on each side to jump to next or previous track. Is there a way I can use these buttons to increase or decrease the volume? I am thinking maybe something like quickly pressing one of the buttons two times to increase the volume by one increment? Is something like this possible?

Maybe I need a Bluetooth headset? Or a wired headset with a 5 button remote control?

I am using MortPlayer Music as my primary music player and it has some options to set the button action for the headset but I see no options for volume control.

You can use a headset controller app from the playstore (e.g. Jays or Philips Headset or HeadsetButton Controller) to use the "middle button" for that. Might take a few tries to find the correct app (if one doesn't work fine, try another -- I did the same and finally found one working perfectly, see my answer here). I'm not sure if they affect the other two buttons at all, or if you even could configure them -- but they allow me (having a headset with a single button) to perfom all the most necessary functions like play/pause, skip, vol+ and vol- with a single button.


Restore deleted system I have formatted the system using twrp now I can't flash the stock rom on my galaxy s3 sprint. I am getting the file_getprop: failed to stat "system/build.prop" status 7 every time I try to flash the stock rom.
Is there any possible fix for this problem.

The problem that I have faced was caused by trying to install update of android 4.4.2 for my galaxy s3 while the update requires the previous version which is MK3 (android 4.3). As I mentioned in the question, I have formatted and deleted the whole system that's why status 7 error showed up because "system/build.prop" was already deleted. The only possible solution I made was downloading and flashing the stock rom from the official site using od3n software.


Android/HTC One screen anomaly? I was wondering what has happened to my HTC One. Is it a hardware issue or an Android/software issue?

The screen has usually moved half way between when I enter and exit any app. Since a picture speaks a thousand words:

Notice in the picture/screenshot from my phone, that I have a partial view of both screens. That is strange and I am not sure what the problem is.

It most certainly is not a hardware related issue.
I would begin by rebooting the device.


Why is Clockworkmod taking up so much memory? Question: I was checking the memory storage and found that under miscellaneous, Clockworkmod took up 4.5GB of memory. Is that normal? I’m operating on a HC 3.1 3G 10.1 Tab. with 16GB only. Now I have 4GB left. The rest of the other files are less than 50MB.
Please advise.

I would check your /sdcard/clockworkmod/backup folder and remove any old backups you have in there.

You can also remove them from within Rom Manager under Manage and Restore Backups. Then click on the older backups and select Delete from the menu.


Where are my photos saved? I want to categorize/reorganize the photos in my gallery.  I feel like I've been all over the place in ASTRO, looking them, but I can't seem to find them.  I see my downloads, and some other photo folders I've moved stuff to while plugged in to my computer, but not the photos I've taken with the camera.

I've checked /mnt/sdcard/dcim, but all it has are three directories: Camera (empty), Icons (empty) and .thumbnails (full of cryptic cache files).  Same story at /sdcard/dcim (I think those two are symlinked).

Where are my photos?

If it makes a difference, I'm on an HTC Incredible.

edit

In my camera settings, it is set to save photos to the phone's memory, not my sd card.

Aha, found them!

/emmc/DCIM

Then most of them are in the 100MEDIA sub directory.


Move /#/data/app to external SD Folks I've rooted my device and installed Directory Bind. I'm not sure if I can move the /#/data/app folder to an external SD. There I have all my .apk files. But I seem unable to find this folder when I look for it in Directory Bind. I'm confused about it. I could sucessfully move the data files but not the .apks what am I missing?

What do you mean by the # in your path?

What you should do is this, Get Android SDK (http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html) if you haven't got it already, then enable debugging mode on your phone and connect your phone to your pc with usb cable.

In the file explorer lookup the symlink to your external sdcard. its probably /extSdCard or /external_sd

Now open up an terminal window and enter:

adb root
adb remount
adb shell busybox mv -f /data/app /extSdCard/

it would move the app folder to your external sdcards root dir.

Or download terminal emulator app and enter:

su
busybox mv -f /data/app /extSdCard/

This should work, if not let me know


Custom ROM dev and Networks How are International ROMs made?

I have downloaded and installed a little while ago a ROM which is the best I've ever used in terms of speed, smoothness, battery life, and customization and features. However, I am unable to make calls, send SMS and MMS and use the Internet (Mobile Data) due to the fact that I am in Australia and the ROM is not an International ROM.

I am a developer. However my experience in this regard is limited. How would I go about making this ROM support Australian networks? If you know anything at all I would appreciate your help on this. Even if its something as little as a keyword to search for because I have been searching for a long time and have not found a single result that was related.

There's no such thing as an international ROM. When you see (for example) a Cyanogenmod ROM "Samsung Galaxy S III International", it means that the ROM is for the international variant of the phone hardware, with the right drivers for that phone's hardware. The international variant might just have a different radio (to work on the right GSM frequency for your country), but sometimes the international variant is a completely different phone, with a different SoC or screen, but in the same case.

If your phone is an "international" variant, then a ROM that's for the US variant will be missing drivers you need. Fixing this problem requires finding the correct drivers for your hardware and integrating them into the ROM.

If there is only one variant of your phone, or the ROM is already for the correct variant, then you don't need an "international ROM". The only important difference between ROMs for different regions (in this case) is that they have network settings for networks in that region. You just need to get the right APN settings from your network operator (you can probably find them on their website), go into the Mobile networks settings in your phone, and input the correct settings.


Why did auto-sync start to upload that much? It's been a month now that the auto-sync option on my phone makes it upload 30 MB per day (in addition to my usual upload/download rate) and still download only a few hundreds of KB. It blew up my quota in only 10 days so I had to deactivate it. The only app that I installed at that time was the Google Doc app.

I recently reactivated the auto-sync and I unchecked the doc sync in: Settings > Account > my account, but I'm still uploading 10 spare MB per day. I only kept Gmail, contacts and calendar syncing (just as before).

My questions are:

Do you know what can cause this, why it changed without any visible reason ?
Are there third-party apps using the Android auto-sync option to enable/disable their own syncing process ?

Note:

I use 3GWatchDog Pro, and this spare MB are shown under "Android System" so it's not very helpful.

If relevant, my device is the Motorola DEFY

Background

There are several applications that use the auto-sync feature from Android to regularly update their contents. In fact, according to the Google documentation, you can configure synchronization options for any of your apps.

Auto-sync is used to allow applications to synchronize data on their own schedule. This can be disabled, and accessing each application, you can manually sync its data.

Take note that automatic data synchronization is disabled if Background data is unchecked.

Some examples of accounts that can be found here are Google; DropBox; Viper; Facebook.

Configure general sync settings

To access the list of accounts currently using auto-sync, thus enabling or disabling the auto-sync for each one, you need to:

Tap your device "home" button;
Tap "Settings";
Tap "Accounts & Sync".

From here you can see your accounts using auto-sync, what define whether they are allowed to auto-sync or not:

 indicates that some or all of an account’s information is configured to sync automatically.

 indicates that none of an account’s information is configured to sync automatically.

Upload/Download

Depending on the accounts using auto-sync, they can send as well as receive data. As your account data grows, the data synchronization uses more KB to keep your information up to date on your device and on the host.

While synchronization doesn't transfer all the information back and forward, only transfer the "new stuff", since the last sync their may be a large amount of data to be updated on one side, thus causing a large transfer of data to take place.

References

Android OS: Accounts & sync settings


Google sign-in for apps loops I have several apps that use sign in with google for authentication. Problem is, the sign in screen loops back to select an account after presenting the alllow %app to access these parts of your google account. I hit allow, and it sends me back to account selection instead of signing in.

It's not just one app it's every non-Google app doing it.

Device is a Pixel 3 XL on Android 10.

How do I get it to let me sign in with google in 3rd party apps using google play services? Ones that open a browser to authenticate with google are working fine

It was a temporary failure on Google's side which has since been fixed.


Prevent any Android app from changing WiFi state At some point in the last year I noticed that my Android device (HTC 10, Android 8.0.0) WiFi would turn on even when I had it turned off. I found out there is a permission called CHANGE_WIFI_STATE, which allows apps to enable/disable WiFi on my device.

I don't want this to happen. I want to be in full control of the WiFi state, for several reasons including the desire to avoid using bad WiFi without forgetting the access point name and key.

Is there any way I can achieve this without uninstalling the guilty apps? Ideally, I'd like to revoke access to the CHANGE_WIFI_STATE permission for all apps present and future, but I would be OK with doing it per-app too.

You can use Android's native permission manager (appops) to debar apps from using that permission. While you can use appops command using adb, it can become a pain because you need a PC to get that job done, unless you have root access. As an alternative, there are third-party GUI frontends for appops in Play Store, of which, I use App Ops - Permission Manager. It can work with both rooted and non-rooted  phone, although, it would still be relatively painful in non-rooted mode.

The app shows tutorial at initial startup, to setup the mode to grant it the requisite privilege. After that, you just find your app in the list, and toggle that permission listed with the title "Connect and Disconnect from Wi-Fi".

Under App Ops app's settings, you can setup a template (allowing or debarring a permission) which would apply on all the newly installed apps.


Installed CM12 on Sprint Galaxy S4, GAPPS crashing upon start So I just installed CM12 for my Sprint Galaxy S4 using TWRP 2.6.3.0, after doing the format of the internal SD and factory reset (guessing the factory reset after format is probably not needed). I installed the cm-12-20150302-NIGHTLY-jfltespr and gapps-L-2-25-15. It loads the splash screen for CM, upgrades all the apps, and then once it comes up for me to start configuring CM I get tons of pop ups stating all the gapps have unfortunately crashed. Any idea what I've done wrong and how to fix it? Unfortunately, I think I deleted the backup I took when I did the format. I'm looking for an old backup I think I saved to my gdrive, but hopefully there is a simple fix to my dilemma?

Try different Gapps package, my recommendation is PA-GAPPS (notice: they work on all ROMs, not just Paranoid-Android)
This is in case that the only apps that are crashing are Google apps. In case all apps crash, you might not have wiped correctly before installing.


Recover files of an App My phone is a Motorola MOTO G (first generation). Due to some troubles, I had recovered the factory settings of my phone. But I forget to backup some data of an app (Tricount). A this point my phone was not rooted.
My question is: is it possible to recover the data files of this application?
Currently, I just rooted my phone and I am currently making a RAW copy of the android system using command adb shell su -c "cat /dev/block/mmcblk0" | pv > mmcblk0.raw. My idea is to used extundelete command to recover the files after extracted the partitions using Testdisk.
Do you recommend to search files in a specific partition? I am not really familiar with the android filesystem...
EDIT: One other method (I don't have tested yet). In terminal 1

adb forward tcp:5555 tcp:5555
adb shell
su
/system/bin/busybox nc -l -p 5555 -e /system/bin/busybox dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0p12

In terminal 2

adb forward tcp:5555 tcp:5555
nc 127.0.0.1 5555 | pv -i 0.5 > mmcblk0p12.raw

NB: websites:

http://www.df.lth.se/~jokke/androidfilerecovery/
http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-nexus/general/guide-internal-memory-data-recovery-yes-t1994705

EDIT: unfortunately, it seems that Android overwrites the files when you recover the factory settings (for security raesons) and so it is impossible to recover the files... :-(

What kind of App is Tricount? Meaning is it came pre-installed in your phone or you download it from Play store such as Google Play Store?

Answer to above question is IMP as Android File system maintain clear distinction between system apps (which are shipped by your device OEM) and Downloaded apps.

Assuming that it is a downloaded app, you can check below location:
/data/data/app-package-name
Where app-package-name is the name of the package (Given by the Developer who developed Tricount app).


How to make my cellphone a router or a hotspot thing with a constraint My computer is connected to internet but I dont have a router(and I dont want to buy one) to use it on my phone. So I was using the usb "reverse tethering tool" which i could use succesfully.

But now I want to use my phone as a router so that I can connect to internet from anywhere in my room with other phones.

And yes I dont want to buy a router, My PC doesnt have a wifi or bluetooth connectivity.

Thankyou for your time.

Sincerely,

Jasser

I am using samsung galaxy S duos GT-S7562.

You can turn your device into a Wifi Hotspot (there is an option in the general settings, usually with the other connectivity settings).

Generally, you will need to pay your Cellphone provider to allow you to use this particular feature (although there are ways to get around this - but that is another thread).

Bottom line, there is an option in the settings - if your phone can support this, you will easily be able to turn it on.


How do I transfer my phone numbers to an Android phone? I just bought a new Android Phone (HTC Hero), but I need to import my Outlook contacts with all their phone numbers.

Any directions as to how to do this?

Your aim needs to be to get the contacts in to the Google account that it is associated with the phone. Once the contacts are in Google, they should automatically synchronise to the phone.

The first step is to create a CSV from your Outlook contacts:

From Outlook, do the following:
File -> Import and Export...
Choose Export to a file
Choose Comma separated values (DOS)
Select the Contacts folder
Choose a filename to export to and OK it
Hit Next and then Finish and let Outlook create the file

Now that you have your file, you need to import the CSV file in to Google Mail.

Log in to Google Mail in the normal way
Select Contacts from the left navigation bar
From the top right, choose Import
Choose the CSV that you just saved from Outlook
Hit the Import button

Once that has finished uploading, your contacts should be available in Google Mail. They should automatically sync up to your phone within a few minutes.


Install from unknown sources on Nook Tablet I am using a rooted NOOK Tablet with Android Gingerbread, and am installing an application from an email. I am using the NT Hidden Settings application to enable the installation of apps from unknown sources. I check the box and click OK knowing the dangers of 3rd party applications. I go back to the email, click the attachment, and when I hit the installation screen, after I had just checked it, it says install blocked. I returned to the setting and the check box I had filled in was now empty again, and I am caught in the loop forever. What can I do to make the app install?

As I wrote in my above comment, one way would be:

Get ADB working on your computer (see: Is there a minimal installation of ADB?)
Download the .apk file to your computer
Switch on USB Debugging on your device, and then connect it to your computer via USB (order is important here: first enable the option, then connect)
Use adb install <file_name.apk> to install the app

For subsequent installs, you of course can ommit the first step, as ADB should already be set up then :)

Alternative approach (untested):

Install some terminal app on your device (e.g. Android Terminal Emulator)
Save the .apk to your SDCard
Start the terminal app, and run pm install </path/to/filename.apk>

Again, the first step is only needed once. I've not tested that second method, so I'm not sure whether it requires root or the "unknown sources" option. As adb install only seems to be a wrapper to pm install, the latter is not that likely.


Youtube App Version 4.0.8E crashes on open I am using an HTC One X on UK network Orange, unrooted.

The latest update to the Youtube App ( version 4.0.8E) crashes on launch every time. If I uninstall updates to go back to the pre-installed version then it works fine, so it seems a safe assumption the new update is causing this.

Is there anything I can do other than wait for the app authors to resolve it?

I have a LogCat file linked here:- https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1159676/StackExchange/YouTube%204.08E%20logcat.txt

Rob

This can sometimes happen during an upgrade if old, incompatible data or config is stuck in the app's storage.

Have you tried clearing the data and cache on the Youtube app?

Go into your phone's Settings -> Apps -> All scroll all the way down to the YouTube app and tap it.

You should now be on a screen showing all kinds of info about the YouTube app, Force Stop the YouTube app if its still running, then about half-way down should be a Clear Cache button. Press the Clear Cache button and then try launching the YouTube app again to see if it fixes the problem.

If not then go back into Settings -> Apps -> YouTube, ensure YouTube is stopped (with a Force Stop) and then try both the Clear Cache and Clear Data buttons and try launching YouTube again.


Xiaomi Mi A1 - Touch screen, capacitive buttons, fingerprint scanner dead A week ago all the input sensors (touch screen, capacitive buttons, fingerprint scanner) on my Xiaomi Mi A1 died, completely out of the blue. The device had never been rooted, and was running the stock ROM (Android One, Android 8).

I tried a factory reset, but nothing changed. I then tried re-flashing the stock ROM with MiFlash and TWRP. I ended up bricking it, but revived it by deepflashing - I shorted the test points to put it into EDL mode, and reflashed the stock ROM with MiFlash. This worked, but was stuck in a bootloop, where the booting animation would hang forever. I tried flashing a custom PixelExperience ROM, with a clean stock ROM and wiped partitions, but it also hung on the boot animation.

I eventually fixed this by flashing the persist partition in EDL mode (I knew this would destroy my IMEI, but I was out of options).

Now the device boots successfully, and I can use it with an OTG mouse with both stock and PixelExperience ROMs.

However, the original problem persists. The input sensors still don't work at all - there is no feedback from any touch. In addition, it can't connect to any mobile network (IMEI = 0). It can find WiFi networks, but not connect to them. It also appears to occasionally do random touch events on the screen.

At this point I am very much out of ideas - does anyone have any ideas of what might be the issue, and any suggestions of what I could try next?

Thanks :)

I'm sorry. but I believe that it is a hardware issue. The touch feedback and the capactive key feedback is sometimes carried over by the same flex ribbon. So, it could be either a loose connection of the flex cable and/or a broken flex cable or some other type of hardware issue with the touchscreen.

The fingerprint should use a separate connection and it definitely does as it is on the back. So, it could also be something wrong with the motherboard.

I do not see a software issue here. Also, with all that you have tried, I do not see much that you are left with. The best idea would be to bring the device to a Xiaomi service center. I hope you live in a location where it is officially sold and you have warranty coverage.


I turned off some apps that were necessary, now things dont' work I have a Samsung Galaxy 3, around a year old.  Recently it started spontaneously rebooting all the time (like every ten minutes).  I looked on line for possible explanations, and found sites telling me to delete unnecessary apps that could cause it.

So I looked at what apps I'm running, found lots of things that I didn't know what they are, and turned some of them off.  And now - no surprise - things don't work right.  Symptoms:

When I try to send messages, it (messages) sometimes (not always) immediately shuts down and I can't send them.  Sometimes (not always) I can't read them (beyond the first line that shows in the message list).
I no longer have phone call logs - old logs are gone, new ones not created.
I keep getting messages saying Touch Wiz Home is not working.  What is Touch Wiz Home?  It is on my list of "all apps" but not in the Running list, nor in the Turned Off list.  Same for TouchWiz easy home.  What is the difference between them?
Almost ever time I get a call, it rings maybe once and then I get a message saying I missed the call.  (This may have been happening before as well - I don't get many calls, so I'm not sure.)

I assume I turned off things that I shouldn't have, but I don't know which things.  I don't know how to take screen shots on the phone and post them here, but here's a list of things that are turned off:

BadgeProvider

Best face

Blurb Checkout

Bubbles

CapabilityManagerService

ChatON

com.android.providers.partnerboo...

DirectConnectManager

DirectShareManager

Drive  (google drive)

Dropbox

Dual Clock (digital)

Favorite Contacts

Flipboard

Google Backup Transport

Google Calendar Sync

Google Contacts Sync

Google Play Games

Google Text-to-speech Engine

Group Play

InteractiveKeyguardTutorial

LogsProvider  (that sounded likely, I just turned it back on)

Market Feedback Agent

MobilePrintSvc_CUPS

MobilePrintSvc_CUPS_Backend

Multimedia UI Service Layer

S Memo

Samsung Link

Samsung Print Service Plugin

Samsung Push Service

Software Update

Story Album Widget

TalkBack

Trim

Weather (that's accuweather, which I thought I'd uninstalled - though it shows 0
bytes, so maybe it's just an icon?)

Can anyone tell me what else I should turn back on to solve these problems?  it looks like logs might work again now that I turned it on.  I now have the logs predating when I started turning things off, though not those from the past week.  Progress, maybe?

Thank you!

catteau

p.s.  In the interim I put in a different battery, and I don't think I'm having the spontaneous reboot problem any more.

Turn on all apps names Google

Favorite contacts

Story Album Widget

CapibiltyManagerService

Multimedia Ui Service layer

MobilePrintSvc_CUPS

MobilePrintSvc_CUPS_Backend

com.android.provider...


Change the user in Skype I have several Skype accounts. How can I change the account used by the Android Skype app? I don't see a way to log off/log on. Should I de-install & re-install from scratch?

Ok, so the secret is that there is a settings page but to get there you have to tap your avatar/icon at the top of the chats history. Then the "Disconnect from Skype" option is at the bottom.


How can I see which (system) apps are installed with which account? I have three different Google accounts on my phone, with one the default one. I want all apps to be installed on that account. I've just noticed that one app was installed with an account that is not under my control. Strangely enough this is a system app.
How can I see which apps are installed with which account?

System apps come with OS before even adding accounts. They have nothing to do with which account you use.
Google accounts matter only for user installed apps either if it is a paid app or if auto backup is enabled for that app and you backup your apps.
Only exception I can think of is that your device is rooted and you installed an app that can be made into a system app, and you are now assuming that this system app is associated with Google account.


Rationalising the utility of swap in Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830 I am trying to get my hands on the average read/write speed(s) of the RAM bundled on the said phone. Just wondering how this faces off with a Class 10 micro SD. I was thinking if the Class rating was high enough, maybe using swap might be a good idea.

Q1.) Is there a Class rating that is performing almost onpar with the RAM random access timing?
Q2.) Is my theoretical basis invalid?

Thank you!

According to this discussion on MoDaCo, the RAM throughput of an Acer Liquid is 1.3 GB/s.  Even if the Ace's RAM is slower (unlikely) it's got to be way faster than the Class 10 SD card speed (10 MB/s write).

So yes, your theoretical basis is invalid given that Class 10 is the highest rating.  Even UHS-II cards with a "theoretical" max speed of over 300 MB/s are slow compared to RAM, and few phones support SDXC cards anyways.


I get an insufficient storage space error when trying to download an app and I have several gigabytes of free space I have my phone set to use my SD card as default storage. When I attempts to download the Facebook for Hulu app from the Google store it always gives me this error message. I checked both apps both take around 40 some odd megabytes. I have around 4 gigabytes of free space on my SD card. I have around two gigabytes of free space on my internal storage. Can you tell me what's wrong?

Apps don't necessarily install on an external SD card. Normally, they would install on the system memory and then, if capable, the app can be "moved" to the SD card. Moving still leaves part of the app on the phone memory and usually increases the overall size of the app.

Long story short- make sure you have room on your device's internal memory to install apps.


Sim card factory reset my S7 without asking permission Used the device for a long while (without sim) amassing a huge number photos and work files very important to me....

finally put an active sim card in. Without any prompts, phone begins downloading an update, then powers down to 'install update' then proceeds to reset and 'erasing data' ....

Boots up into setup as if i just got the phone.

All my apps, photos, data gone.

A) Is it possible to recover my data

B) why on earth did it do thiss

[Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge with Telus (Canada) sim card]

A.) Unfortunatelly if you didn't made a backup from your pictures, apps, data it's all gone.

B.) I'm a bit confused because your phone won't be download and install any system update without prompt. The auto download part is hardly possible but the auto-install part, is quite difficult to believe.


somehow newly saved contacts get disappeared I'm using MOTO-G Turbo edition. Somehow my newly saved contacts get disappeared. Sometimes it saves and works fine but sometimes it saves and did not show me in my contacts list.

Can anyone please suggest me what should I do in this case? Thanks in advance!

I have the same issue with my Moto G (3rd gen) with just one google account.

When new contact adding it will disappear. I resolved my problem by the following solution. The solution was to disable google contact sync. I fixed my problem. But I not sure what is exact cause for this issue. This is a workaround solution.

I hope this is a help if someone doesn't want to sync contact with google.


Samsung Galaxy s3 mini Wifi Connected but not working I have a Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini and my Wi-Fi worked perfectly fine.
Later, I went on my phone and my Wi-Fi said it was connected but when I went on social media and stuff it said it wasn't connected. I tried everything. Please help.

First off try turning airplane mode off and on. That will often fix things. If that doesn't help, restart the phone. If that doesn't help, try hard-reset.com/samsung-galaxy-s3-mini-hard-reset.html but make sure to backup the phone data first.


Absolutely cannot reset my Moto G 2nd gen tracfone So I have had my phone sure Christmas and everything has been functioning properly. Now all of a sudden my phone has no bars anywhere I go, I cannot use the home button, notifications don't work, quick settings menu doesn't work, and my lock screen doesn't work.

After looking through multiple online threads I have decided to factory reset my phone, but one problem, my factory reset button is greyed out for some reason. When I try to hard reset my phone via the command prompt thing that, you can only get to by holding the buttons a certain way when it's starting, I go to "Factory" and it just starts up normally. Although if I go to recovery my phone shows an Android guy with a circle and a slash through its chest.
I have tried all 4 options I have under the command prompt thing with no avail.

I am running Android 6.0 if that helps.
Also my brother has the same exact phone and Android version but we can't figure out why his still works

Any suggestions?

I have the EXACT same situation (had it since Christmas, had all the same issues you listed when I updated to Marshmallow, and my mom has the same phone and factory reset hers with no problem). I just did this so I'm not sure if it's just a quick fix, but I got my notifications and lock screen back (home button still doesn't work though).

Go into settings and click "users"
Switch to your guest user (if you don't have one set up, you can probably set it up)
You should get any notifications that are for the whole phone (ie if there is WiFi available or if your storage is close to full; app notifications shouldn't come up)
Go back into settings>users and switch back to the owner account on the phone.
Your lock screen should return, along with any notifications you missed. The drop down settings menu is accessible as well.

Like I said, the home button is still unresponsive for me, and I'm not sure if this is a long term solution, but at least it's something!


Why does my Samsung GT-i9000 not detect USB connectivity (not a driver problem)? I have made several searches across many boards but failed at finding a solution for my problem yet, even though it's been reported by some.

My phone was working fine for about a month, I was using the mass-storage technique without a problem until it stopped working one day.

Now, when I plug in my phone by usb to any computer, the connection screen will not come up, the battery charging icon sometimes fails to appear as well and I can hear the computer detecting a new device but it will not recognize it.

I did a hard reset on the phone, which ended up in 2.1 instead of the 2.2 i had, and the problem persists.

I have tried everything, from usb debugging mode to uninstalling/reinstalling drivers, even tried with my friend's cable and it does the same thing...I am very frustrated!

Anybody got a fix for me?

How do you know it is not a driver problem?

You've tried different cables? hopefully one that is confirmed to work with another phone.

Have you tried a different computer?

If its still dead to USB- then it sounds like a hardware issue with the phone, if you're under warranty then take it back!


Google Reader App that fetches the full article content I've been searching and hoping to find an app for Android that syncs up with Google Reader and has one key feature.  The feature I'm looking for is the ability to fetch the entire news article that you're reading.  Certain websites (CBC News in Canada for example) allow you to "read more", however this opens a new browser instance to view the rest of the article. I'm looking for the ability to have that content scraped inside the application for reading.

Reeder for iPad has this functionality. Does anyone know of an app for Android that does the same?

NewsRob Pro also fetches the full feeds.  You can choose between Readability and some other methods. It works but I'm not a huge fan, it was just the best one that I found (I didn't try D7 though).


Keyboard Switcher-Does Not Display on Navigation Bar I have the Nexus 9 and the HTC folio keyboard.  I cannot get the keyboard switcher to display in the navigation bar.  I have checked the settings for apps and both Google keyboard and Swiftkey apps are enabled and the notifications boxes are ticked. I want to display the switcher so that can turn off the folio keyboard which is a battery hog.

things have changed a bit in Lollipop. On the Nexus 6, for example, there's a new softkey you can use to change keyboards.


My tablet is not turning on I have a tablet not  two years old, a few days ago it was left in a hot truck for about two days. Now it won't go past "fast boot menu".

I have tried everything, I even tried charging it and the battery keeps saying 0%, how can I charge my tablet and turn it on?

There's a fairly good chance you overheated a component in the device. Most likely a charging component or someone. There isn't much you can do besides going to a phone/tablet repair shop. But that could cost more than the tablet itself.


Where is the Home folder? On my linux system I have a directory in /home where all my personal files and local program configurations are stored. Where does Android store that type of file?

There's no direct equivalent in Android. Each app has its own directory in /data/data (for a multi-user system, it's /data/users/n). Apps are encouraged to show a metadata-based view of user data, instead of requiring the user to worry about individual files. Each app stores the files and databases that hold its documents, and its configuration files, in its directory.

For data that already live in files, the SD card contains appropriately-named directories such as /sdcard/Music, /sdcard/Movies, which are shared between all apps (with the appropriate permission).


Symbian like internet connectivity in android? In Symbian, i can connect and disconnect internet connection directly from my PC. i.e. when i use a dial-up connection on PC the mobile works as a modem. The internet connection is established just for the PC (connection is not shared between mobile and PC) and mobile can not use the internet.

In android however the connection is first established on mobile and then shared with PC and i can not disconnect directly from my PC.

I want the Symbian like connectivity where i can connect/disconnect the internet connection from the PC and use it only on my PC(no sharing).

Is there any way to do it ?

Looks like you can use Llama to achieve this (wow, Llama can do what Tasker can't? Or does Tasker just not mention it in its manual?). Basically, it should work like this (taking from one of it's screenshots on the playstore app page):

When "charging at home" => Enable Wifi Hotspot

I know, that's not exactly what you described. But it should give you a raw idea. Get yourself the free Llama app from the Playstore, and take a closer look at its possibilities. You might find a "rule" closer to your requirements there.

Alternatively, there are other automation apps available (like e.g. the mentioned Tasker). One of them might do the job better for you (e.g. offering "USB connected" as condition, and "enable USB tethering" as action -- I would wonder if Llama could not do that as well). At least, this example should have got you started.


Kies unable to connect to Samsung Galaxy S3 after rooting After I rooted my Samsung Galaxy S3 GT-I9300 phone, I was no longer able to connect to Kies to do a sync. Does anyone know why?

I have tried to reinstall Kies on my laptop, performed "Troubleshoot connection error", and deactivated USB-Debugging BEFORE I connected my phone for the first time. But the same issues remained.

When I performed *#1234# to view SW version, the PDA option was not one of the options there.

There are no issues with my USB connections as I have no problem downloading apps from Google Play on my laptop.

Pls advise how I can resolve this issue?

I couldn't connect my S3 to Kies and tried everything other users posted (usb debugging, scanning pc for viruses, etc...) and I stumbled upon the fix that solved my issue and I've now connected with Kies and have full functionality with Kies and no issues with my S3.
THE FIX:
On the S3 device:

Pull down from top of home screen (swipe from top of screen downward) to the screen that shows (across the top) Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc...
Check to see how the device is connected "Connected as a Media Device" should be shown.
Mine said "Connected as a camera" and I changed that to "Connected as a Media Device" and instantly connected to Kies.

Hope this helps!


How to launch apps from terminal In linux I like to launch the applications from the terminal. Most of the time it is the fast way to launch apps especially on repeated use. In android there are good launcher like Fast app search tool will do the job well. But I still interested in launching apps fom the terminal. For that I installed JS Terminal but I can't see any app names. Even pressing Ctrl + T does't show any app name.

Use this:

  am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN -n <package_name>/<full_class_name>

as referenced here

For example:

am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN -n my.domain.myApp/my.domain.myApp.myClass


How to block any app from being installed? My mom has an android tablet and she doesn't even know what a site is, her e-mail, or even the password of her facebook account. She's an average user. The internet is facebook in her eyes. She has no need for apps or anything, it's just, only, precisely facebook. All is facebook.

How can I completely disable installing apps in android so they can't be installed in any way or form, I mean, not by URL, not by clicking, not by app store, not even by another program. Just disable the entire thing altogether.

Doesn't need to be safe, have locks, passwords etc. I'm not trying to secure the device from intruders, attackers or robbers, I'm trying to secure it from its very own user.

Please help. I just had to remove two anti-virus apps that were opening adware pages when she tried to open facebook lite, and that's obviously a no-go, apps which she "had not installed." Clearly there's some voodoo going on here for them to just popup, or maybe she just did it unknowingly, but none of that's relevant. How can you just disable installs so this couldn't ever happen again?

First, disable the primary source of installation. On most devices, it is the Google Play Store but your device might have been shipped with a non-Google market app as well. So go to Settings → Apps → (three-dots line → Show System) or (All Apps) → your market app → Disable.

Second, disable the Package Installer system app. This provides the GUI for sideloading. So if you disable it and attempt to install an APK (through a file manager, by drive-by download, or when pushed by a third-party app) you would definitely fail. At this point, it is irrelevant whether Unknown Sources is disabled or not, but you may keep the latter disabled from Settings → Security.

Third, an app can still be sideloaded through command-line, preferably through ADB. Keep Developer options disabled and hidden (default). This is untested but revoking executable permissions (requires root access) from pm binary for user 2000 or for every user might help. This however, may cause device instability so take backup from a custom recovery before you proceed with this step.

Your user would be fine with the first two steps. It's not like they would deliberately try to find a way to install an app if they are not tech-savvy already.

Alternatively, in your particular situation you can use an ad-blocker app. The best ones require root access though.

Or, why not use a kiosk-mode app? Limit your mother's activities to certain set of apps she should use. That's an another option on the table.

Choose wisely.


Samsung Galaxy I9000 not detected by Odin in download mode Samsung Galaxy GT-i9000 not detected by Odin in download mode.
I have Windows Vista and Kies is also installed on the P.C

You have to stop kies.
It has a thread in the background, so seach this in the taskmanager and stop the process.


How do I increase the size of logcat buffers? How do I increase the size of /dev/log/main by a factor of 10? My understanding is the log has a fixed size (16K?) and rolls over when that limit is reached. I'd like to find out what the log size is currently set at and increase it by a lot.

I'm debugging an issue that occurs infrequently when the device hasn't been used for a long period of time (maybe an hour?). I've instrumented the code with log messages so I can understand what is happening when the bug occurs.

My problem is my instrumentation causes the log to roll over in about 2 minutes. I would like to increase the size of dev/log/main by a factor of 10 if possible.

To find out the actual size of the ring buffer, you can use

$ adb logcat -g

To adjust the size of the ring buffer, you might try

$ adb logcat -r <kbytes>

At least that's what some tutorials say. For more details, you might want to read "adb logcat" Command Options and Log Buffers.

P.S.: I guess those settings (manual adjusted ring buffer size) will not survive a reboot -- just to consider.


TLS required but not supported by server I recently upgraded my phone to ICS and now when I try to access my email I get the error message:
"TLS required but not supported by server"
What can I do to fix this?

So turns out some of the email settings got munged and it was simply a matter of deleting the account info from the phone and then adding it in again.


Revive a dead phone? I don't have any background information, but my coworker showed up today with a nonresponsive Samsung Galaxy Gio. It will not boot. When plugged into the power charger, a half-full battery displays and just stays there.

Attempting to turn it on while holding the home button has no effect.

I swapped batteries with her (this is a company phone; we all have the same model). My phone works fine with her battery, hers does not work with my battery. Tried gently brushing off the battery contacts in her phone, no go.

Anything else to try before sending to the manufacturer?

It could be that the phone is stuck in a boot loop at or before the OS has a chance to load. According to XDA, to get into the recovery partition, start with this: Home button + Volume button - + On button.

If you can get into fastboot mode, you can issue a command from the PC with a usb cable. After seeing if the device is there with "fastboot devices", try "fastboot erase cache" and try to boot. If that fails, "fastboot -w" will essentially do a factory data reset. Of course, your coworker will lose all her data, but at least the phone might boot.


Will changing the HBOOT affect my ROM? Device: HTC Desire (Bravo)
ROM: Aurora 4.1 - http://android.elrincondelmovil.com/roms-desire-90/rom-aurora-v4-1-sense-3-0-android-2-3-5-oct22-1639/?langid=1
HBOOT: Stock (Revolutionary)
Radio: 5.11.05.27

I'm looking to upgrade my ROM to Tiny ICS which like many ROMs claims to run smoother on the CM7r2 HBOOT. So my questions are:

Is it really worth changing my HBOOT?
Will changing my HBOOT wreck my current ROM?

Sorry if this is somewhat 'noobish' but I just felt it would be better to be safe than sorry.

This answer to #2 in your question is, unfortunately, "maybe". The CM7r2 HBOOT (along with several others) is maintained by AlphaRev, and they note in their website's FAQ:

  Will this touch my currently running ROM?

  We try to leave the current ROM and datastructures completely intact.
  It is, however, advised to ALWAYS nandroid backup your phone before
  you run this procedure.  You will then always have a correct/current
  backup to fall back on in case something breaks.

So it's designed to flash without affecting your current ROM install, but it's a bit of a delicate process so there are no guarantees. There is generally always a certain amount of risk involved in these types of things, but especially so when dealing with the bootloader/HBOOT. Make a backup. If you can, copy the backup onto another device (your computer, for instance). Always prepare for the worst and hope for the best when it comes to data that you don't want to lose and you'll generally be fine.

As per your question about whether or not it's worth it - this sort of depends. The reason that some ROMs support certain versions of HBOOT and not others is because the different HBOOTs are designed to create different partition layouts on your device. There is a table on the website which details the layouts, and which I'll summarize here:

Name               /system   /cache    /data
---------------------------------------------------
Bravo Stock         250M       40M      147M
Bravo N1Table       145M       95M      197M
Bravo Data++        180M       5M       252M
Bravo Sense         180M       40M      217M
Bravo Oxygen r2     100M       5M       332M
Bravo CM7 r2        145M       5M       287M

Certain ROMs are designed to take advantage of the differing partition layouts, making them incompatible with others. For example, a ROM with a lot of stock components and additional packages may need more than 145MB of space for its /system partition, so flashing it on the CM7r2 HBOOT would not work. It's generally best to stick with whatever the ROM author recommends, which does mean that switching may be necessary in some cases.


How to create an update.zip file that can copy & rename a file? Here's exactly what I'm looking for - I need an 'update.zip' file that can copy a file (example):

/system/framework/file-to-copy.apk

to another folder:

/system/

and then it would rename the 'file-to-copy.apk' in the 'system' folder to:

renamed-file.apk

and copy it back to:

/system/framework/

It would have to overwrite an already existing 'renamed-file.apk' in 'system/framework' folder.

Note: The permissions can NOT change.

Is it even possible to do this?

Any help would be appreciated!

Actually you can do that by using the run_program syntax in updater-script to execute a shell script that moves/copies/pastes files while in recovery. But of course, you must extract the files that are to be pasted in somewhere (/tmp for instance).

Part of the updater-script:

package_extract_dir("stuff", "/tmp/stuff");
set_perm(0, 0, 0755, "/tmp/stuff/movefiles.sh");
run_program("/tmp/stuff/movefiles.sh");

The sample shell script can be like this (named movefiles.sh in this case):

#!/sbin/sh
# Backup files
cp /system/framwork/something.apk /path/you/want

# Paste files
cp /tmp/somethingssss.apk /system/framework/something.apk

# Set back permissions (the copied file has the same permissons, but the new ones does not)
chmod 644 /system/framework/something.apk

But remember, the EOL of updater-script and the shell script must be the same, in UNIX format, or else it won't work.


My Android device with USB host does not recognize my WiFi Adapter dongle. Is there a way I can install a driver or do anything else? I bought an Android device that doesn't come with WiFi but comes with USB hosts and, as stated in the site, supports Wifi dongles. But mine is not working.

I successfully plugged in a USB mouse, keyboard, hard-drive and a bluetooth dongle but specifically the WiFi dongle doesn't even turn on (the light doesn't turn on).

Is there anything else I can try?

You need to find a WiFi dongle with a chipset the device supports. Each chipset requires different drivers, so you'll have to find one that's supported. There a discussion thread on the site you linked to about exactly this.


Google chrome search results different view I'm using latest version of Google Chrome in my android. Recently, the view of Google search results have changed.

I don't like this view because address is  in a grey color background and search results are in full black and white . I tried all settings to figure out why this change has happened.

It's really disgusting seeing this view

How to go back to previous view?
Here is the link for image for more clarity

Google might be doing some A/B testing with their UI - iirc they did that a few years ago with black/dark/light blue shades for links. Could you try using incognito, another device and/or another internet connection? Then you can work out how they are targeting you - in any case it's probably temporary.


How long device has been running since last charge? In Android Lollipop, how do I see how long it has been since the last time I charged the battery? I mean I can get the approximate time by eye-balling the graph shown in Settings -> Battery. But, is it possible to get a precise time period like: "your device has been running x hours y minutes since last charge".

Or any app that can give me this info? All battery apps seem to concentrate on telling me how much longer the device can last from now. No history info.

Note: I'm not asking about the up time :-)

From a root terminal on your device:

dumpsys batterystats | grep "Start clock time"

That will give the date/time of when the device was last disconnected from the charger (while fully charged), rather than the time since, but comparing to the current date and time is easy enough.

I did come up with a more complicated command you could save to a script to yield a 1d 2h 3m style format:

busybox expr $(date +%s) - $(dumpsys batterystats --checkin | grep "l,bt" | busybox awk -F',' '{printf "%i", $10/1000}') | busybox awk '{printf "%id %ih %im\n", $1/60/60/24, $1/60/60 % 24, $1/60 % 60}'

To explain that:

Get the batterystats line that includes the milliseconds-since-the-epoch time of the last charger disconnection
Use awk to strip out that time and convert it to seconds
Subtract it from the current time to get the interval in seconds
Use awk to format it


What is this `.appodeal` file? I recently discovered a new file on my phone, named .appodeal, at the base of the Internal shared storage folder.

It appears to be a text file with just 4 characters: e30=.

How can I tell what app left it there, and what nefarious/tracking purpose it has?

The phone's currently running Android version 7.1.2.

This is generated by the Appodeal advertisement SDK integrated in some of your installed apps, likely to act as some sort of flag.

As for telling which app generated it, aside from going the hard way (installing and starting the apps one-by-one), you should also be able to use tools like MyAndroidTools to check the services and broadcast receivers an app possesses. Apps with ad SDKs will likely have services and receivers dedicated to maintaining the SDK.


How do I get Android 2.3 on my Verizon Droid 2? Possible Duplicate:
  When will my phone get the Android 2.3 update (Gingerbread)?
  How do I root my device?

I have a Droid 2 with Verizon and the Android version is 2.2 (froyo).

I am looking to update to 2.3 (gingerbread) but when I go to the check for updates section it says it's up to date. How can I get 2.3? I have never rooted before but if that's what I have to do to get it then I will. Any resources that could point me in the right direction would be much appreciated.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1124744

It's not finalized, so make sure you read everything.


How can I know which apps are currently connecting to the Internet? I have a Samsung Spica running Eclair (rooted). I've noticed on a number of occasions that inspite of the Autosync option turned off, the sync icon appears in the notification bar. By default, Gmail, Calendar & Contacts are set to sync whenever the Autosync option is turned on.

I don't use any scheduler app like Locale or Tasker.

Is there an app or some way to see which app is connecting to the Internet at any given time? Or can someone verify if this sort of behaviour of the sync icon appearing is normal?

OS Monitor does that. Shows the name of the app, and the IP address of the connection (including a WHOIS with a map when you click on it).

EDIT: I should mention that the sync icon TYPICALLY indicates a system-level sync. Do you have every item (GMail, Contacts, Calendar, Facebook) explicitly turned off in the settings?


Nexus 7 (2012) no longer connecting via USB Mac OS X I plugged my original Nexus 7 into my Mac earlier today to build an application onto it for testing. It failed, and then I realized that the tablet did not appear to actually be connected to the computer.

Symptoms: Tablet charges, but no notification about being connected. Tablet does not appear in ./adb devices (nor in ./fastboot devices when device is in bootloader), and Android File Transfer will not find it.

Tried: Rebooted both tablet and computer, tried different USB cables and USB ports. Tried MTP, PTP, and neither. Tried USB Debugging on and off.

My Nexus 4 connects to the computer just fine. Both N4 and N7 are running Android 4.4.2

UPDATE: Tested my roommate's Nexus 7 (same model) on my computer, and it connected fine. Tested my Nexus 7 on his computer and saw the same lack of connection

EDIT: now fairly convinced that it's a faulty hardware USB port on the tablet. Wiggling the cable will cause the device to show "USB Debugging Enabled" and "Connected as Media Device" notifications, though the computer still doesn't recognize it

You can try another way: wireless connection via Wifi. Some apps such as Airdroid, Web PC Suite can help you transfer files by Wifi. Connect the two devices by scanning a QR code, then you can send files between the two devices easily.


"Battery use" information screen not reporting apps I've got a Samsung Galaxy S (international version) that I've just upgraded to Android 2.2 (Froyo) and now the battery usage page in settings (Settings => About phone => Battery use) only ever reports the following items: Display, Cell standby, Phone idle & Voice calls.

Although I upgraded only a couple of days after having the phone, I'm sure that it originally showed usage of other things like apps & live wallpaper... It's kind of useless how it is now, any ideas on how I get it displaying all usage again?

Though I do not have an answer to your question - I suggest you check PowerTutor (at powertutor.org) and see if it helps in the interim and/or long term


App Updates - Are they dependent on Google Market? I noticed on another android phone there were "updates" such as new Youtube, Gmail, etc. I never received a notification for these on my device. Are these delivered via Google Market, or is there another app I can use to update these other than Google Market?

App updates notification can come from the app themselves, but most commonly they come from the Play Store. Play Store will notify you for any updates to system apps (i.e. apps that originally comes with the phone) and apps that are installed through the Play Store; it won't notify you about updates to side-loaded apps our apps installed by third party market.

Third party market may also have their own update notification mechanism; which is completely unrelated to the Play Store update mechanism. They may or may not provide update to system apps, although most don't. Amazon App Market for example also provide updates notification. Note that update notification on third party market depends on the app developer updating the app on the third party market, some developers might update their app on Play but not on third party market or vice versa for various reasons.


Verizon Droid X Stopped Sending SMS I have a Droid X running Gingerbread on Verizon and it is completely unable to send SMS messages. It receives them fine but every message I try to send is rejected. The details of the message reveal the following:

  Cause Code: Addr.Vcnt., 0

Rebooting the phone seems to fix the problem, but only for a day or so.

I also seem to have completely lost 3G connectivity on the phone as well when it is in this state.

*228 on the phone fails until I can reboot it, but once reprogrammed there seems to be no lasting positive effect.

Has anyone seen this before? Does anyone have a resolution?

EDIT: I've just discovered all outbound calls immediately fail as well with no details as to the failure.

I called VZW, and they actually told me it was a bad Google update pushed to my phone prematurely, and that "Google would be fixing it in a couple weeks." Amazing that Verizon won't even take responsibilities for their OTA updates, but blame it on Google.


Is it possible to delete my Facebook account and not lose the info synced to my Evo? Last weekend I turned off the automatic sync feature on my phone and deleted my Facebook account. It appeared that all of the info on in my calendar was still there so I thought I did all that I needed to do. By this weekend all of my birthdays and events were deleted from my calendar - except 3 that were linked to Facebook - and all the ones that I manually entered (not linked to Facebook) were gone! I tried to reactivate my Facebook account, and re-sync everything to get the info back, but its not working.

How do I get the info back into my calendar, and delete my Facebook account/remove the Facebook app and sync stuff from my phone? Is it possible?

Assuming your phones calendar is syncing with a Google Calendar, then the easiest way to do this may be to export your friends' birthday info from Facebook and import it into Google Calendar.

Our sister-site Web Applications has more info on doing this:

How do you extract friends' birthday and contact information from Facebook?
Import birthdays of friends from Facebook into Google Calendar?


Cannot install some apps on Galaxy Note 10.1: parse error I downloaded Awesome note Hd and Awesome note-jujuburi. But I can't install both of them on my Galaxy Note 10.1: my device showed "parse error".

I activated Unknown sources, and cleared data/cache in Google Play, but this error note remains.

How can I fix this?

"Parse error" often means a particular application will not run, and therefore, cannot be installed on a particular device. This restriction is often set in apps using the android:minSdkVersion and android:targetSdkVersion tags respectively. If the Android firmware version installed on your device does not fall within the supported versions defined by the tags, then you will get the "parse error" message during installation.

Or, the Android package file (APK) is corrupted so the Application Manager cannot verify the checksum in order to proceed with the installation.


Turn off search history on Chrome? If I search for for example "lemon" in the address bar in Chrome on Android, days later if I start typing "L" it will show "lemon" in bold text as a suggestion.

I have already gone to the Activity Controls and turned off everything there except "Device information".

I simply can not find anything to turn off this behaviour, but surely there's got to be a setting for it??

The setting might be for future prediction. In your case you have to delete from history. So maybe clear the data.

Or more specifically as you asked for chrome Android, long press on the prediction and a pop-up will come stating "Remove suggestion from history?". Tap yes.


Use android phone with broken screen as WiFi camera The screen of my android phone is broken and since I couldn't find a replacement screen I thought of using the phone as wifi camera. I've installed IP cam and use the android.screencast to control and setup the device using USB cable.

However, the color depth of the screen is extremely low with color banding and all this like if it has only something like 8-bit color depth. I have another phone of the same brand available and tried the same steps on that phone and it works with high color depth.

I blieve that due to the missing screen android might fall back to a default color depth as it cannot probe the screen as to which color depths is available. Unfortunately this means that basically my nice idea is useless as the quality of this IP camera is terrible and useless.

Does anyone has an idea of how to change the color depth so that I can continue to use the phone for the described purpose?

Are you sure that the camera isn't damaged as well?  IP Webcam has settings for resolution and quality, but I don't see anything indicating that it's tied to the screen of the device.

Actually, I'm not sure we're using the same cam app.  Maybe it would help to try a different one.  I used 'IP Webcam' because I was using mine for video.  I'm sure there are good options for still shots.

You can also try using something like TinyCam Monitor (free) to view the stream if you're viewing live video.  It makes for an easy security camera system.


How do I re-enable swipe to unlock? I recently encrypted my Android 4.4.2 device (S4 Active) and have now unencrypted it. However the only options I still have to unlock my phone are PIN and Password. When I attempt to change it it now states that swipe is turned off by; Administrator Policy, Encryption Policy, or Credential Storage.

How do I go about setting this back to how it was? Is it even possible or am I stuck using PIN or password?

I wonder if you say you have decrypted your phone because my phone (CyanogenMod 11) says explicitly that the only way to decrypt is a factory reset. http://imgur.com/iFXxsbC.png

So in your case I would look if your phone is really decrypted.


Open url links to the Washington Post in the Washington Post app Is there any way to force my phone (pixel, Android 8.0) to open url links to the Washington Post with the Washington Post app? This kind of desired behavior works automatically with other apps/urls for me like the New York Times and Google Maps, but for some reason not with the Washington Post.

This behavior is decided by the app developer, if Washington Post doesn't let such action, then you won't be able to do it.

If they do allow it, then usually the first time you press on a link it will ask you how you want to open it. So it's possible that you have selected the browser as the default. To change that, go to settings>apps>[name of your browser]>defaults>clear defaults


disable sync when in mobile (3g) network How can I enable auto-sync only when wifi is available? I have a small data plan and I don't want to waste it on sync.

There isn't a way to do this in the default settings for Android devices and most people are surprised to learn that they can keep sync on full time without exceeding even modest data plans.

I would recommend checking out Tasker.  It's an Android application that allows you to automate almost anything on an Android device.  You can use it to automatically toggle on your auto-sync setting using the WiFi state as a trigger.  Tasker is a bit pricey, so please read on.

This widget, if it lives up to its billing should do the trick for you, read the comments, you'll see it turns on sync when wifi is present. It's not named very well, but check it out: wifi AutoSyncAuto Toggle


What is an OS2SD ROM? I was going to install this CM 12.1 ROM to my phone, but it is listed as OS2SD. What is OS2SD? I could not find anything about it on the internet. Also, the thread says this:

  Notes for OS2SD:
  Before you start: I cannot stress enough cwm backups/restoring will not work with this OS2SD release! And data MUST be formated NOT Optional!
  1. You MUST Backup All data or it WILL be lost!
  2. You MUST Format /system, /data, /cache, and /sdcard0 in cwm/twrp.
  At this point you can format sdcard0 as ext4.
  3. Install the new CWM/TWRP the old one will not work from now on!
  If you didnt before now would also be a good time to format the internal storage which in the new recovery is now /data to ext4.
  4. Once formated first flash the OS2SD rom
  5. Then flash GAPPS and/or other packages.
  At this point you can restore data. Note the kernel is special so you cant use older ones so you can only restore things like /data backups and adb/titanium backups.
  6. Then reboot and enjoy the extra space!

Does this mean that my CWM backups won't work? And does OS2SD mean it will format and install to my SD card?

Thanks!

Judging from the name OS2SD (Operating System TO SD) and from the line that reads OS2SD friendly TWRP recovery, handles partitioning of sd card for OS2SD in this XDA post, it seems that it's a particular flavor of Android that's made to be installed on an appropriately formatted external SD. Aside from that, I was not able to get more info.

Anyone is invited to improve this answer with more info.


app or widget or other solution for turning just cellular radio off/on I recently acquired an umidigi one with android 8.1 oreo naked/stock image in place and voice over wifi as well as voice over lte support.

When device is in location with wifi connection, which is most of the time, i want quick way to disable cellular radio to force a voice [ and text ] over wifi connection to be established and to conserve battery power that would be otherwise expended on the cellular radio at these times.

Currently i am accomplishing this by selecting airplane mode and then re-enabling wifi to leave me with just cellular radio turned off thus forcing the voice [ and text ] over wifi connection to be setup.  Its a cumbersome two step process and a three step process if i also want bluetooth radio enabled at these times.

Its unfortunate that the drop down menu "mobile option" doesn't turn off cellular radio voice as well as data services instead of just mobile data services.

Also would be nice to have a configuration option that would tell phone to establish voice [ and text ] over wifi if wifi connection is present and only resort to voice over lte or 3g/2g gsm connection in the event that wifi is not present as opposed to now where it does the reverse and only uses voice [ and text ] over wifi when cellular options are not available.

Well you can always use Tasker.

More information on how to use tasker at: https://tasker.joaoapps.com/userguide/en/index.html


Error "help: permission denied" when using ADB Using this tutorial, I installed ADB shell. I actually just wanted to mess around and see what can it do. My device isn't rooted but that's ok, I'm not trying to do anything dangerous. Just trying run normal user linux commands.

USB debugging is enabled.

So I typed:

What's that supposed to be? Is really exit the only supported command?

First of all help is no actual command that comes with the Linux system (even though many systems like Ubuntu have one). If you would like to see valid commands, just list all files inside /system/(x)bin with the appropriate ls <directory> command.

If help is listed there then it may not be your usual help command you know from windows.

It may also be a limitation by the manufacturer so that terminal access is restricted to the system only.


Samsung note 3 keyboard shortcuts Any keyboard shortcuts comparable to their windows counterparts on the note 3?  Ex. Copy and paste ctrl-c and ctrl-p.  Looking for a alternate way despite pressing and holding a field of text.

Any assistance appreciated.

There is keyboard app in the Google Play Store called Swype which has many handy shortcuts - such as copy, paste, select all, etc. The shortcuts involve swiping certain keys. When I use Swype I find these shortcuts to be incredibly efficient and helpful.


Why don't I have a "users" setting? How to enable? I've been fighting with this for over a year now.  I keep finding instructions that say to go to Settings and click Users.  I read that this setting is available on ALL 4.2+ tablets, but not some phones.  Well... it isn't on mine!  I've tried rooting and installing Xposed Installer's Multi Users module thinking "aha! that oughta do it!"... but no, even then it says to go to the Settings->Users, which isn't there.

Why in the world is my menu different than everyone elses'?

It is a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0
Model number is SM-T210R
Android version is 4.2.2

Wow, after a year of searching I finally have my own answer.

I don't know why, but my unit would never update from 4.2.2.  Any time I tried checking for an update, I would just get a "failed" message.

I found these instructions for manually updating to 4.4 (KitKat) and that worked as well as introduced the previously-missing Users menu!


I want to use my phone as a GPS, but I don't want to turn on high accuracy to assist Google's wardriving. What am I to do? I like using my phone as a GPS.  It has all the sensors and storage and everything.  Even if I can't find a good app yet.

However (since I am concerned about leaking private data, I have turned the location setting to device only, which means it only uses the GPS radio), Waze constantly nags about turning on "high accuracy" location; meaning it wants to scan wi-fi, bluetooth, and everything else.  Which means that the OS will be shipping that info to Google/Alphabet HQ.

How can I use my phone as a GPS without assisting Google's wardriving efforts?  GPS by itself is highly accurate, or at least it was until Google decided to harvest wi-fi locations via a distributed Android network.  Or am I misremembering something?

Are these nags just part of apps, or is there something I can do to mitigate incessent nagging?

You can use the "Device only" location mode, found under Settings->Location->Mode. The key performance impact of this setting is in the time to first location fix. It can take minutes to find your location initially, but later updates will be quick.

I am not sure whether you also need to disable use of WiFi and Bluetooth for scanning purposes, but if you are concerned about privacy I would disable these:
Settings->Location->Scanning


Can Titanium Backup successfully backup and restore Google Authenticator between ROMs? I have a rooted Nexus 5 running stock 4.4.2. I want to install another ROM such as PA4 or CM11 (also 4.4.x based), but I have about 5-odd items in my Google Authenticator install which are a pain to configure all over again on the 'new' device. Will using Titanium Backup to backup and restore Google Authenticator preserve the settings and tokens?

I read somewhere that it doesn't work if you move between major versions of the OS and even though I'm moving from 4.4 to 4.4, I am changing the base ROM, so I'm not so sure.

If anyone has tried this and hasn't been able to move GA over gracefully, I might just stick around with the stock ROM for a little while longer, because I only just got this phone a couple weeks ago.

It worked fine for me.

I recently replaced my Sony Xperia Z with a Nexus 5. I copied over the Titanium Backup files and restored them, including Google Authenticator. No problems to report, I can still connect correctly to sites and apps requiring a code.


How can I see the pointer location, and simulate it? I want to see the X and Y axis of my touch location in Android, and want to use the x and y axis by typing it into a shell extension, to simulate an actual touch on the screen. Can anyone help?

Go to

Settings
Developers Options
In Input section check Show Pointer Location option.

If developer option is not enabled go to :

Settings
About Phone
Click Build Number multiple times.


Can't boot into recovery or fastboot and not going to EDL completely (Redmi Note 4) Please read the full text and help me if anything can solve my problem. Also I can't go to Mi help center due to this lockdown, so can you suggest ways the help center person would do to fix this issue?

I have Redmi Note 4 (SD).
I flashed MIUI 11.0.6.0 port for mido (ROM discussed in this video.)
It had many bugs so I was trying to flash back to stock ROM using Mi Flash Tool (old version).

I was using linux for fastboot and adb commands and for Mi Flash Tool i was using win 7 in virtual box

I selected clean_all&lock.bat
But after systerm image processing it gave me error

  error message said something about partition not been empty(sorry cant remember the exact error and log file also doesn't exist anymore)

Now my phone was on fastboot mode for atleast 5 hours so I used

fastboot reboot

via linux terminal.

But phone didn't boot and gave me black (empty screen)

I thought might be battery is low but when I connected it to charger nothing happened.

I couldn't boot to recovery or fastboot mode (and can't do it now too).

I searched on internet more for help and found about EDL mode.
I tried that but Virtual Machine wasn't loading the Qualcomm driver so I installed windows 10 .

ALSO
I searched about the error on internet and found the solution to use latest mi flash tool.

So I tried with that. BUT I AM NOT SURE IF IT IS CONNECTED BY PROPER EDL MODE BECAUSE MI FLASH TOOL INSTEAD OF SHOWING COMX AS DEVICE NAME, IT IS SHOWING MY INCOMPLETE FASTBOOT DEVICE NAME .

I clicked to flash by selecting clean all&lock but it gave me this error

  The volume does not contain a recognized file system.Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted.

ALSO THE DEVICE IS SHOWN IN LATEST VERSION BUT NOT IN OLDER VERSION IN EDL MODE

Then after many attempts to flash

Now it shows this

  $fastboot -s 34564c88 getvar product   2>&1  | findstr /r /c:"^product: *MSM8953"   || fastboot -s 34564c88 getvar product   2>&1  | findstr /r /c:"^product: *mido"   || echo Missmatching image and device

It was stuck at this for like 1000+ seconds.

I searched about it and tried this solution. In this it tell to delete line 10 and 11 but in mine file it was present at 4 places so i deleted them all.

But then it got stuck at next command in clean_all&lock.bat file

  [9:39:38 PM  34564c88]:start process id 8956 name cmd
  [9:39:38 PM  34564c88]:info1:$rem fastboot -s 34564c88 erase bk12 2>&1
  [9:39:38 PM  34564c88]:info1:$if not 0 == 0 exit /B 1
  [9:39:38 PM  34564c88]:info1:$fastboot -s 34564c88 oem device-info   2>&1  | findstr /r /c:"Device unlocked: true"   || echo Device oem locked

To give a try I deleted this line too but then it got stuck at next line.

ALSO TO ACCESS EDL WE NEED TO SHORT JTAG PINS BUT MY LAPTOP (WITH WIN 10) ACCEPTS IT WITHOUT DOING THAT

Alecxs helped me with the solution so I am posting the solution that worked for me.

Install MIUI 9.6.8.0 fastboot ROM (it works with this only) and extract it to C drive.
Run MI flash tool and select the extracted folder.
Now boot the phone to EDL Mode and immediately click refresh and then click flash.
Because if you are even 2-3 seconds late then process fails.
Wait for flashing to complete and then the phone will reboot.
If it doesn't reboot then just check (press them a little bit) all the connectors on motherboards of phone (display, fingerprint and battery) and then connect to charger. Battery icon will appear and now you can power ON the phone.

BOOTING TO EDL MODE

  Don't remove battery. Not required.

To boot to EDL we need to short JTAG pins that are present on right side of fingerprint connector. (And not the 1st and 4th test points shown in many videos on internet).
And while shorting it insert the usb cable immediately.
You will see red led light blinking.
Phone will be shown as COM4 (probably).

  For more information search google with test points for Redmi Note 4

  You will be forced to update to MIUI 11.0.2.0 because you will face
  various bugs like

  mi cloud won't sync
  fingerprint won't work

OTHER THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND

If you decide to update to MIUI 11.0.2.0 then don't install RedWolf or ** OrangeFox** recovery because when you enable OTA updates in them and flash MIUI 11 rom you will get *ERROR 7 * message and and when you reboot you phone will stuck on MI logo.
When stuck on MI logo then don't try flashing rom again using Mi Flash Tool by booting to Fastboot mode (if you can boot to it) because you will get System flashing error.

FIX FOR STUCK ON MI LOGO

  Requirements

  unlocked bootloader
  adb and fastboot tools
  fastboot extracted rom (can be MIUI 11)

If you are stuck there then don't worry. Try if you can boot to Fastboot Mode (Vol - with power key). If not then try recovery mode or repeat EDL method. If yes then read ahead.

If you can then install adb and fastboot tools in your PC. And paste all images folder files of MIUI 11 fastboot rom to adb folder.
Now type the following:

Check if phone is accepted by

fastboot devices

Now flash system.img by

fastboot flash system system.img

After completion flash boot.img by

fastboot flash boot boot.img

After completion flash recovery.img

fastboot flash recovery recovery.img

After completion flash cache.img

fastboot flash cache cache.img

  If you want to completely erase user data and make the device a newly
  bought then type

fastboot erase userdata

  After completion type

fastboot flash userdata userdata.img

Flashing is completed

Now just type fastboot reboot. Phone will boot properly now.

  If you are using MIUI 9 or 10 rom to fix stuck on mi logo then when
  the flashing is done you will face numerous bugs in rom like

  mi cloud won't sync
  fingerprint won't work properly


WhatsApp Calling Recording I have an android phone (Samsung Galaxy S6). Does WhatApp Record Incoming Voice Phone Calls Automatically ?
In my call info log I see incoming, the length of time and a storage amount (40MB or so).
Can I access this incoming voice call recording ?
If WhatsApp doesnt record incoming or outgoing calls, how can I record them myself ?

No whatsapp calls are end to end encrypted and it doesn't record calls.
You can use Whatsapp call recorder to record calls. Remember to disable internet access of the app for more privacy :)


Where (and how) does Android store music playlists? I've noticed that Android keeps the same music playlists across music apps. Where are these playlists stored? How (in what format) are they stored? Can I access them remotely via the USB storage link, or is there instead an app I can use to access them?

Related question: Music transfer and playlists

They're stored in your music.db file - mine is /data/data/com.google.android.music/databases; I'm not sure if this is exactly the same across all devices but I'd guess it probably is.

They live in a combination of the LISTS and LISTITEMS tables, which are defined as such:

sqlite> .schema lists
.schema lists
CREATE TABLE LISTS(Id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, Name TEXT NOT NULL,
    SourceAccount INTEGER, SourceId TEXT, _sync_version TEXT,
    _sync_dirty INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, MediaStoreId INTEGER,
    ListType INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, ListArtworkLocation TEXT);
CREATE INDEX LIST_SYNC_INDEX on LISTS(SourceAccount,SourceId);
sqlite>

sqlite> .schema listitems
.schema listitems
CREATE TABLE LISTITEMS(Id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
    ListId INTEGER NOT NULL REFERENCES LISTS, MusicSourceAccount INTEGER NOT NULL,
    MusicSourceId TEXT NOT NULL, ClientPosition INTEGER NOT NULL,
    ServerPosition INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, SourceAccount INTEGER, SourceId TEXT,
    _sync_version TEXT, _sync_dirty INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    ServerOrder TEXT DEFAULT '', ClientId TEXT);
CREATE INDEX LISTITEMS_ORDER_INDEX ON LISTITEMS (ListId, ServerOrder, ClientPosition);
CREATE INDEX LISTITEMS_SYNC_INDEX on LISTITEMS(SourceAccount,SourceId);
sqlite>

Interestingly, if you're using the new Google Music Beta, playlists that you create don't seem to appear in other apps but they do have entries in the DB. It looks like this is possibly because the MusicSourceAccount field is set to your Google Music account id; other apps set it to 0, and those appear across all apps that take data from the DB.


Phone doesn't ring or show missed call, later a voicemail appears I have an AT&T Samsung Galaxy 2 and have had a sporadic problem:  A person calls me, my phone doesn't ring, kicks them over to voice mail, doesn't show as a missed call, and then the voice mail shows up on my phone as much as an hour later.  I have tested this from my land line and sometimes the phone does everything it's supposed to and other times doesn't ring and doesn't log a missed call but records a voice mail.

I had the same issue. You will have to change your phone notification settings. Go to "settings," then "call", then "phone settings" under "other call settings."  Scroll all the way to the bottom of the call setting screen and select "phone notification preview" (To show caller ID for missed calls and voicemails on locked screen and status bar).

Most likely, you downloaded an app on your phone that adjusted your phone settings. I hope this helps.


Widgets of installed apps do not appear in list I just bought my father a chinese phone, seems to be working great except after I install an app, it does not appear in the widgets list.
I have tried several apps (Wifi Manager, Gsam Battery monitor) on several launchers (Default, Zeam, GO Launcher EX). I even set English instead of Hungarian, nothing helped.
The default widgets (Bookmarks, Calendar, Gmail, etc) are in the list.

Is there some setting I am missing?

This can (and certainly will) happen when installing apps on SDCard. Normally, the system should prevent this (or rather the dev, by defining the "install-location" accordingly in the app's Manifest).

So if the apps were installed on SDCard, go to Settings→Apps, scroll to the apps' entries, open them (one by one), and move the app to internal storage. If the widgets do not appear right away after that, they should do so at least after a reboot.


Android Backup manager - restore from Nougat to Marshmallow Earlier Device: LG Nexus 5X.
My Device: OnePlus 3

Earlier, I was able to use Tap&Go or just import all the data by signing into my Google Acc.
However, with my device, when I used Tap&Go or Google account sign-in (tried few hard resets), I was not able to choose my earlier device
get data from. Only my old Galaxy Nexus was shown.
This resulted in phone not being setup, apps not being automatically installed or have the data restored...
I had to install apps manually however my data was not restored.

As it always worked well, I guess the issue might be with my earlier device running a newer version of android than my device (Nougat vs Marshmallow).   Or that some services are missing?

Anyone got into the same situation and can help?

I have tried restoring using adb bmgr, but it resulted in device not visible as well. Nexus 5x sees all 3 devices while OP3 sees just the 2.

shell@OnePlus3:/ $ bmgr list sets

33dbec2b8d69e175 : ONEPLUS A3003

3bcd9da5b052e84e : Galaxy Nexus

bullhead:/ $ bmgr list sets

34d36f59351444be : PiTRiS - Nexus 5x

33dbec2b8d69e175 : ONEPLUS A3003

3bcd9da5b052e84e : Galaxy Nexus

Any chance this is an issue with nougat, that it can't restore to Marshmallow? Or any other way how to force restore from 5X?
Thanks

For reference: One way is to use Titanium Backup app on older phone and then just restore the app's data on newer phone after transferring the backup data. The same thing could be accomplished using adb from your home computer, but you'd have to backup each app's data separately.

see this thread for more:
How to backup an Android device?


Android phone powers on spontaneously during charging I want to charge the phone while it's powered OFF.
But it automatically turns itself ON during charging.  It may be 87% or 90% or 100%.  I don't know the exact reason.
Model = LG-K430n.
I don't like cell phone radiation and I rarely use the phone at all.  I just want it to be OFF most of the time.  This is driving me nuts.

It's by OEM design. See support questions and in particular this one My phone automatically turns on when I connect the charger. Why? which says

Your smartphone will turn on automatically when the charger is connected. Please be assured that it is a sign of normal operation.

And to prevent it from turning on

To charge when your smartphone is off, connect the charger first and press the Power button to turn off your phone. The display will not be turned on.
When the remaining battery is less than 5%, the battery temperature is too high or low, or the smartphone is turned off due to the high temperature, the screen will not turn on.


Enable Dark Screen on Samsung I'd like to try out the dark screen mode on my Galaxy J7 max but the option has been greyed out and I was wondering why. Any clues? This option is found under Accessibility>Vision

If you turn on the talk back feature, dark screen will work but if you turn talk back off, dark screen stops working. I think this is because it was only made for the purpose of privacy for people who have bad vision and need talk back.