How do I unlock the bootloader on my Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro? I own a "Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro" (model number SK17i) running Android 2.3.3 (Kernel 2.6.32.8-perf, build number 4.0.A.2.335). It's branded by Orange Austria. I'm looking for a way to root it, but all I could find doesn't help. I've read the xda-devel thread on rooting my phone and followed the xda-guide mentioned there. That doesn't work as planned.

The problem seems to be the branding. Fastboot won't recognize my device since I'm not able to unlock the boot loader. The phone just goes to normal charging mode, when I press [volume down] while connecting the USB cable (volume up will do nothing).

Hence my question: Is there a workaround to unlock the bootloader or an alternative way of rooting? I looked and found a method of unlocking the bootloader using the device's testpoint. According to one post there, the author succeded in unlocking his orange branded phone. For me the method described there results in a frozen s1tool and no effect on my Xperia.

Thanks for your help.

Edit:
Now it seems that nothing can be done if dial *#*#7378423#*#* -> "Service Info" -> "Configuration" -> "Bootloader unlock allowed:" says No.

Because your phone is branded by Orange Austria, the SIM card is likely locked.  SonyEricsson states: ... you can’t unlock the boot loader if you have a SIM lock protected phone

http://unlockbootloader.sonyericsson.com/which-phones#13182586887331&if_height=1139


Apple connectivity with Android devices I am considering a new phone and right now my choice is between iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy S3. I'm not overly concerned about apps since most of the stuff I use is available for both environments. I like the Samsung for its larger screen (4.8" vs. 3.5") because I use the phone to read email and web sites quite often, but I use a Mac at home and so I'm a little worried about connectivity / compatibility.

What I'm looking for is a worry-free, as automated as possible, solution to the following questions. I'm not afraid of spending some time setting stuff up, but after that it has to work reliably and automatically. I don't want to spend half an hour daily to manually connect USB cables, copy or convert files and sort out duplicates.

If there are third party apps that do all or most of this (e.g. SyncMate, MissingSync, etc) that you have personal experience with, please share it. I know these apps exist, but I don't know how they perform in practice, and they don't say whether the Galaxy S3 is supported (yet).

Calendar sync: AFAIK, works if you sync iCal to Google and Android to Google. Right?
a) How about multiple calendars?
b) How about recurring events?
c) How about reminders, notes attachments to events?
d) How about multiple participants and their acceptance / refusal replies?
EMail sync: I do not use GMail and don't plan to, mainly because I run my own mail server which can do IMAP. Is it possible to use your own IMAP service under Android, without losing any other functionality?
Contacts sync: The most important feature (this is what brought me to get an iPhone originally). Has to be 100% reliable, I have >500 contacts in OSX's Address Book, all with multiple phone numbers, addresses, photos, and notes. Is it correct that you can only sync your Android address book with Google if you use GMail for your email?
Data backup: ITunes takes care of backing up your whole iPhone setup when syncing so you can restore everything to a new device when necessary with a single mouse click. Also, there are apps that can restore and extract infos (like SMS, addresses, etc) from the backups on your Mac. How does the Galaxy, or Android in general, handle backup of data, apps, settings and the like?
Tethering: When I'm on the road I want to go online with my Macbook using the phone. With my iPhone 3G, this works beautifully. How does Android handle tethering and is it usable with OS X?
Notes and todo sync: Is there anything that can sync with the default Mac Note and Todo list or suitable third party apps?

Any other things I might miss when switching from iPhone to Android that I might have missed?

First, I am an pure Android user. I have never owned an MAC, so I can't comment on everything.

Since both use iCal, some kind of sync should be possible. But I wouldn't recommend that.
IMAP is no problem and you lose nothing. IMAP is supported by Android's mail client and K-9.
You don't need GMail for contact sync. I would recommend using Google contacts.
Android's philosophy is much about cloud backup and restore, therefore it's a feature of Android. But since Google can't fore the Apps to use that or even force the manufactures to enable the BackupAgent it's not 100% available for non-Google Apps/Devices. But if you have root and TitaniumBackup, the device can easily be saved and restored completely.
No problem at all here. It should work with any modern Android device.
Can't comment on that

I think that if you buy an Android device you should also use the Google services (besides GMail in you case, but that's no problem. I also don't use GMail, but everything else). So for 1. 3. and 6 that is Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Google Docs (now Google Drive, good for notes) and Google ToDo. If you ok with having your data within the Google cloud. But the synchronization is just awesome. You can use every Google service with the Google WebApps (or Chrome Apps) from you MAC

Other solutions are most likely some 3rd party tools that try to build a bridge from the Google world to Apple. Which may or may not work, may needs to be purchased, etc. There are just to many pitfalls that impair the experience.


How to backup broken screen phone when USB debugging IS NOT enabled? I dropped my Samsung S3. Now I cannot see anything, just a white screen with purple, black, and green lines. Before it blanked out, it wasn't recognizing my finger touch. Any idea on how or what to repair? I want to save my phone so I can backup all my data.

Screen has a small crack on the lower right part of the screen:

the colors are all messed up
can't press anything
can be turned on and can hear the starting sound
can still receive calls and text
USB debugging WAS NOT ENABLED

install kies and connect your phone with usb cable.  Then go to backup/restore and you can easily backup your important data from there.


Permission denied when I run insmod in terminal emulator I want to install a module (bcm4329.ko) in my nexus one phone. I have rooted the phone and installed Cyanogenmod too.

In Terminal emulator, I tried various commands but everything resulted in failure

$ insmod /system/lib/modules/bcm4329.ko //[Operation Not Permitted]
$ su insmod /system/lib/modules/bcm4329.ko //[throw the syntax/man page of su]
$ cd /system/lib/modules
$ chmod 777 bcm4329.ko //[Read only file system]

The error messages I received are enclosed within '[ ]' after every command. How can I install this module in my android phone. Any help please.

You need to remount the system partition as read-write, it's read-only by default.

mount -o remount,rw /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system


Why is not every Android Modification Open Source? Ok, this might sound a bit weird, but I am really wondering why not every manufacturer like Samsung or Oneplus has to make it ROM public under the GPL license? At least the kernel would have to be under the GPL 2 license because it is a Linux modification and the license includes that anybody has to make the changes public to anyone. Also the Apache license under which android is published should make it legal to edit and redistribute code, but you also have to give the source and state which changes are from you. So, my question is: Why is not every Android System sourcecode public to anybody?

Generally, most of the OEMs share the kernel source but there are some cases when they don't (XIOMI). The reason for not sharing it is present in the xda link.

  I want to specify one last thing for those readers who are not familiar with the distinction: GPL is a license and not a contract. Some jurisdictions see key distinctions between these two, as contracts are enforceable by contract law and licenses fall under copyright. So breaking a license’s term is still judicable. The distributors who don’t accept GPL’s terms and conditions can’t copy and distribute GPL software under law.

So OEM who are not in American market does this more often.

Every part of the code cannot be kept publically available. Because it contains many patents bounded by the non-disclosure agreement e.g. Camera Software. Some developer friendly companies publish the binary blob for such parts so that it can be used in any custom rom for the device e.g One Plus provide dash charge firmware and probably camera too as a blob.


Upgrading MIUI when installed on SD card I have MIUI 1.7.22 Italian installed on my HD2 running from SD card.

I found that there is version 1.8.5 available from the MIUI updater program on the phone. However, even if I download the ROM it doesn't get installed. It asks me to reboot in bootloader mode, so I suppose it works only with NAND-installed ROMs.

Do you know if it's possible to upgrade MIUI to 1.8.5 when running from SD card possibly without erasing all data on the phone?

It took me some time to customize desktop.

Looks like the latest version is 1.9.2.
I found a ROM in XDA Developers MIUI 1.9.2 SD HERE
Instructions of how to update MIUI SD are in the thread
Hope this helps.


Are there any problems caused by setting up my phone before the SIM card arrives? Bought a brand-new Samsung S4 mini and ordered a new SIM card which is due to arrive in a week. So far I've inserted the battery and charged it.

Should I turn it on, even without a SIM-card in it, or would all the settings go awry? For instance, I heard that WhatsApp needs some sort of SIM card (phone number) verification. Will Android keep nagging me about my email address and SIM card etc right from the start until I "give in"?

In short, I can wait till the SIM-card arrives. The question is: Is it better to wait (and if so, why)?

There is nothing wrong in turning on the phone and using it.
Put the phone in Airplane mode and start using Wi-Fi and install applications etc.

As for the nagging part, No, Google will not be nagging you to register your device or SIM till you choose to (if you have skipped registering the device in the first screen). Google never registers your SIM, it registers your IMEI/EMSI with your account. So even without SIM you can use Google account.

However, without registering the device with Google, you will not be able to enjoy any of the Google play services. Other services (accounts) can be used without any problem.

Whatsapp registers your mobile number (not SIM), if you are retaining the number you can activate Whatsapp in this phone (S4 Mini) by receiving message in another phone and entering the code in S4 Mini (the application has to be removed from that old phone since Whatsapp can run only on one phone at a time).

Also, Whatsapp can be changed from device to device without any issues, just have to re-register it when changing devices for the same number.

In short, just turn on the device and use like normal phone (except for calling). Nothing to be worried about.


Disable Briefing Notifications on Galaxy S8 It seems once or twice a day, I get some Briefing notifications on my Galaxy S8. The icon for these notifications appears similar to Flipboard, though I don't have Flipboard installed as a standalone application.

I believe these notifications may instead be coming from Bixby, which appears to use Flipboard for its news feed. Right now, I'm really not interested in using Bixby or its Briefings. I have the Bixby Home Screen turned off, and would probably even disable its dedicated hardware button if I could do it without rooting.

However, I can't find any options to disable notifications from Bixby nor any options related to turning off Flipboard/Briefing alerts. Is there something I'm missing?

Bixby --> scroll down till you see News --> click the 3 little dots on the right and disable notifications


Is there a widget for Twitter search? I'd like to monitor Twitter for certain keywords.  I wonder if there is a widget which displays live search results on my home screen, which are automaticly updated at a certain interval. I've tried almost every app in the store, but none provides this simple functionality.

There don't seem to be any widgets that let you monitor twitter for certain keywords, but here's a workaround that might do the trick.

Try an application like Meta widget. It can turn any webpage to a widget.


How to see which applications are saved on phone Recently I get a lot of warnings that the internal memory is full, which also led to full SMS memory.

What I did was to delete some messages, which seemed to work for a while.
Yesterday however, I installed some updates and those warnings messages came up again.

Is there a way to find out which application are installed on my phone?
A rather indirect way is to remove the SD card and see which applications are on.

Is there a way to figure this out in a direct way?

In the settings option you have Application Manager. In Application Manager if you swipe to the left you will get apps installed on the sd card. It should look something like this:


YouTube update enforcement bypass? +Reasons why the old YouTube app is superior The time bomb of YouTube's legacy versions has exploded:The “later” button to postpone the update has disappeared. YouTube is copying WhatsApp's update mesh.

I really wish to keep using a legacy version of YouTube's Android application, but now, YouTube has pulled the plugs by hiding the “update later” button.

Why have they disabled it in first place?

The application would probably still work technically.

Advantages of YouTube's legacy versions:

Unlimited search history.
Exiting search does not require to reload the results of the previous search or viewed channel/playlist/feed/etc., which saves time and occasionally mobile data.
I still had search terms from 2015 because I never updated. Search history with capitalization saved.
Profile pictures with the shape of a square. Superior field of view.
Less minimalism, more border lines. (I personally dislike
minimalism.)

Free from material design. (I do not hate material design,
but the rounded corners look loose. Windows 10's flat design is OK
becaubecause it looks still very angular. Although, I like the ripple
animation of mterial design.).

Full numbers instead of rounded numbers (YouTube calls them “abbreviated numbers”. Toxic minimalism) for ratings, view counts and suscriber counts. Rounded numbers are too shallow. (“2M” looks shallow, while e.g. the number “2.021.435” looks vibrant and ultimately sexier than a digit with one letter behind it. Additionally, “2B” can be confused with 28 on the first sight, while a a long number such as 2.039.721.486 looks truly unmistakenably immersive.).
Ability to pre-open videos from loaded search results before Internet connection has been established, so that I do not need to open it when the connection has established.
Ability to pre-open search pages too. Pre-opening searches saves the search query into the search history, so that I do not forget searching it the next time I open YouTube's app. Like a tiny sticky note.

How do I keep using the legacy versions of YouTube?

I know MixerBox, but MixerBox has no search history and multi/pop-up window support.

Google services framework does this. if you disable it, you get YouTube back, but google play can't load.


How do Android EMF detectors work? Searching the play store for emf detector shows a bunch of apps that can measure the electromagnetic radiation level and they do seem to somehow work.

What is the operating principle behind these apps and what kind of sensors are they using?

What level of accuracy these sensors provide and how do they compare to dedicated EMF detectors which sell online starting with ~$7?

In the Android docs I see: SENSOR_TYPE_MAGNETOMETER, SENSOR_TYPE_MAGNETIC_FIELD and SENSOR_TYPE_MAGNETIC_FIELD_UNCALIBRATED — can these possibly be used to measure EMF radiation levels and if so then which ranges are supported?

Update:

This question suggests that Android phones might be able to measure magnetic fields: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6961/can-smartphone-apps-detect-emf

The question does not only apply to android phones, but to all mobile devices. Our mobile devices use EMF to communicate. Mobile phones are, by definition, devices that can detect EMF since their ability to communicate depends on radiofrequency fluctuations in electromagnetic fields.  Our devices, especially smartphones, which are extremely reliant on internet services emit a huge amout of EMF radiation. That should imply that mobiles can precisely detect and manipulate EMF, right? No. Our phones are designed to work with only specific frequencies, from about 800 to 2.2GHz, so it is quite unlikely that a mobile phone can detect general fluctuations in EMF.
Now, the creator of the app might tell you that it uses magnetic sensor, and you might think that EMF can be detected using a magnetic sensor, since it is also (partly) a magnetic wave, but you cannot. EMF exists when a wave has both electric as well as magnetic parts.


How frequently are Android apps in Google Play updated? I wish to know how frequently apps in Google Play are updated on average? For instance, statistics such as average number of apps updated per day or number of days in-between 2 successive updates of an app (on average) might be useful to deduce this.

An example number that I wish to see is: 0.5% of apps in Google Play are updated every day (or something like this).

  I hypothesize that Android apps, given the easy development and
  distribution infrastructure, are updated much frequently than the
  desktop apps.

I wish to have more evidence to support this hypothesis. Please suggest link to any official information (or reliable from tech blogs) that would give insight into such statistics. Thanks.

From my observations of ~10,000 apps listed at my real-life categorized app-listings, the average app...

requests ~7 permissions
costs USD 0.88
was last updated ~1.5 years (~17 month or 492 days) ago

The last item, a little more detailed:

┌───────────────────────────────────────┬────────┐
| last updated more than 2 years ago    | 24.51% |
| last updated 1..2 years ago           | 20.27% |
| last updated 6..12 month ago          | 17.84% |
| updated within the last 6 month       | 34.87% |
└───────────────────────────────────────┴────────┘

As you've correctly pointed out in your comment, that doesn't sum up to 100%. The difference are apps currently not listed in any of the markets I cater for (i.e. Google Play, F-Droid, Aptoide). As unlistings may be (and sometimes have been) temporary, I still keep those for a few month before removing them finally. Plus add a little "rounding blur" ;)

So I'm afraid I just spoiled your theory...

BTW: Though you didn't ask for: Top categories of "max permissions per app on average" is, after "personal assistants" (31.7 perms/app) cheaper calls (22.2 perms/app – shame to him who thinks evil of it ;)). Only then come apps to remote-control your device (where many permissions make much sense, considered you want to control as much as possible), and "Antivirus", with ~19 perms/app each.

(Statistics as per November 5, 2014)


Is there a way to automatically sync photos taken on my phone to picasa web albums? Possible Duplicate:
  What's the most effortless way for “cloud” back up of photos taken with an Android phone?

Is there a way to automatically sync photos taken on my phone to picasa web albums?

In the Gallery I can see albums from the web synced to my phone but not the other way round.

This app does it using a pixelpipe account (auto-upload, not sync). There are some which do this through dropbox. For some reason, this is still not directly possible using picasa.


My wifi turns on randomly and automatically. I never turn my WiFi on because I have an unlimited data plan. I recently noticed that it is autonomously enabled randomly.

How can I find the culprit that keeps turning my WiFi on?  Is there a way I can catch the application that launched the WiFi enable Intent?

I have been going on a blind search thus far and I still notice my WiFi turning on. Thanks in advance! I have a Nexus 4 running Android 4.4

KitKat has a feature where, when Wi-Fi is turned off, it periodically scans for networks to allow Wi-Fi-based location detection to work. To turn this off:-

Go to the Wi-Fi settings
On the overflow menu (the three dots) select Advanced
Uncheck Scanning always available

Even when an app turns on Wi-Fi fully, this isn't done with an intent; rather, it's done by calling the method WifiManager.setWifiEnabled. Only apps with the permission  "connect and disconnect from Wi-Fi" can do this.


Access data on device with broken screen (Samsung Galaxy Ace 4) The screen on my Samsung Galaxy Ace 4 broke (running Android 4.4) and I really, really wish to get all my photos and other data off it. The phone has a pattern lock screen as well as an additional PIN if the pattern is entered wrong. I've tried numerous methods:

I can turn my phone on, hear the startup sound, all the buttons work (even the two touch buttons for back and menu)
when I plug in my phone onto my PC, the device shows up but is empty - need to unlock the phone first.
Touch doesn't respond, so no vision and no touch => no way to normally unlock phone.
Galaxy Ace 4 does NOT support USB OTG, so plugging in a mouse to TRY to do something is out of the question as well.
I don't have USB debugging enabled
The device was never rooted
Maybe that is why I cannot get ADB to work either...
There are a few software solutions available that claim to be capable of unlocking your phone's screen through USB, or being able to get your data off your phone, but NONE of them support Galaxy Ace 4 explicitly.
I DO have Airdroid installed on the phone, but WiFi and other means of connectivity are turned off on the device and I know of no way to re-enable them with a broken screen
therefore Google's Android Device Manager was of no help

At this point I feel I have tried everything. Is there anything else I can do? Screen replacement is roughly $100, and I don't care about this phone anymore as a device, I just want the data. Maybe it's possible to somehow connect a different screen (from a cheaper/older phone? Not just this exact model), it doesn't have to fit perfectly, it can even hang loose on a thread, I just need to unlock the device.

Recently we can often hear in the news how governments hacked someone's phone (a captured terrorist or such), so is there literally any other way I could get into mine? I do know both the PIN and the pattern, and of course credentials to my Google account.

AFAIK Samsung phones have WiFi option in their power menu so if that is true in your case and also if you have Airdroid configured to connect on having proper connection to a server i.e., PC than you may have a chance of communicating with the device.Do try and report back


How to make Gallery to NOT to search photos in some folders? I have many photos in many folders, but most of them are for work. I don't want Android Gallery to show those pictures when I start the app. Gallery shows 1000+ folders, but only 2 of them are pictures that I want to see. How to make Gallery not to show/search other folders?

Thanks

Place in every directory, you want to be excluded by the media scanner, an empty file named ".nomedia". Then restart your phone and the 'marked' directories should not be indexed any more.


Trying google mobile android on my pc In order to try google mobile android on my pc (See this Website) I downloaded the file liveandroidv0.3.iso and used the 'Universal Netboot Installer' software to write the image on USB device. After restarting all works correctly until I get the image 'Live android' but the OS doesn't launch and nothing happens! This can be due of what?

Best,

I recommend using the Android emulator if you want to experiment with Android without buying a device.  LiveAndroid isn't supported by Google and it hasn't been updated in quite a while.  It could be that your video card is not supported.

I'd also recommend using VMWare Player instead of VirtualBox if you really want to use LiveAndroid.


How to enable Wifi Access Point / Hotspot on my Moto Droid (2.2) without editing the Kernal or flashing the ROM? I want to enable the Wifi Access Point (AP) functionality on my Moto Droid.  I don't mind rooting but I'd like to do this without having to edit the kernel or having to flash the ROM.  I have seen apps that enable wifi tethering but they require a netfilter enabled kernel.

Is this possible?  If it is, how do I get it done?

Here are a few points I want to clarify because I anticipate several people telling me to use PDAnet, which is a great app that I love but does not fit my needs here...

I want to enable my Droid as a Wifi AP, not just tether via wifi.  The point of this is that I want to be able to connect devices that are capable to connecting to wifi without having any client software on them.
PDAnet doesn't allow for wifi tethering at all.
Verizon does not offer Wifi AP service on the Droid 1.

When I first rooted my Droid (with EasyRoot), I remained on the stock ROM until I got annoyed by the OTA update message (and ended up switching to CM6).

However, I was able to use Wireless Tether without doing anything else.  No new kernel, no mods, nada.  Just root on vanilla Android.

If you've already updated to the latest version of Android via OTA, then I'm pretty certain you'd have to downgrade your phone to get root to work unless there is a new method to get root now.  I know for a fact that EasyRoot no longer works with the OTA update.


can I transfer a game app from galaxy s3 to galaxy tab 2 just got a galaxy tab 2 today and I would like to transfer the fashion story game my daughter plays on my galaxy s3 phone to it so she doesn't have to start from scratch... she's 8 and found it sooo long to get where she is at

Use Titanium Backup to backup the game + data and then transfer the backup to your new device where you can use Titanium Backup on the new device to restore the app+data again.

However, please check whether the app is compatible with your new device.


What is this usb property I stumbled upon property "ro.usb.vid=2970" so anyone know what it means and where it gets stored in which file because it's not in build.prop or default.prop..?

A USB device has a Vendor ID and a Product ID for the host to distinguish a device model. Both are 2-bytes integer. That ro.usb.vid is exactly your device's USB VID. It is located at/sys/class/android_usb/android0/idVendor
Use cat in a terminal to read its value and echo to change it (effective until next boot).
Also you can find your device's USB PID at/sys/class/android_usb/android0/idProduct
which is likely named ro.usb.pid in the same place. Again use cat and echo to access it.


Turn off the Cell Radio? Any way to simply turn off the cell phone radio?
This need has come up in ZOOM sessions using the zoom app because that app uses the "phone audio" rather than "media audio"
As a result, it is impossible to include meeting audio if you ChromeCast the session.  The video works, but the audio only outputs using the phone's speaker or audio jack.  Testing using an android tablet rather than an android phone shows that since the tablet does not have a cellular radio, the meeting audio is cast with the video.
Airplane mode is not an option since that would prevent connecting to the internet.
In addition, trying to address the audio using a bluetooth speaker doesn't work either... while it's possible to initially send bluetooth audio to the speaker, something unknown turns that off after a few minutes.
Any thoughts on addressing this would be appreciated.
Beverly Howard

Ok, just finished a long test session using ZOOM in an attempt to setup a ChromeCast viewing session with ChromeCast transmitting both video and audio ;
android cellphone
OS 8.1.0
The goal was to be able to participate in a remote class using a cellphone and ChromeCast to enable the use a large screen
ChromeCast "mirror screen" works to get the phone video mirrored on the large screen, but the Zoom App only uses the "Call Audio" which is not seen by ChromeCast
Connecting to a Vizio soundbar and connecting via bluetooth does not project the Zoom audio
Using a Bluetooth headset does connect to the Zoom Audio (this is probably bluetooth device specific)
It is also possible to use the phone's audio jack to connect and amplify the Zoom audio output.
Using Airplane Mode did not address Zoom App's use of "Call Audio"
Removing the Sim Card did not address Zoom App's use of "Call Audio"
It has been suggested that using a mobile browser app for the zoom interface might also work... have not tested that yet.
Hope this info will be helpful to others with the same need.
Beverly Howard


Free up space by only deleting older photos past a chosen date Google photos app has a "free up space" option where it will delete all photos that have been already backed up to Google photos from the local device folders.

The problem with this is that the recent photos I need can be accessed faster so long as they are on the local device. Eg. No internet access needed unlike from Google photos.

Is there a way to only delete those photos (which have been backed up to Google photos) but are older than a certain date?

That way, say, photos more than a month old can be deleted ( this freeing up space) but the current photos stay available on the device  for me to use easily.

Any way to achieve this?

Connect you phone to the computer via USB cable and use your favorite files management tool.


Syncing Firefox Android downloads in Dropbox I use an Android phone. I use Firefox and Chrome as browsers on it. I want to set the download location for Firefox to a location on Dropbox installed on my phone, such that all my downloads are directly synchronized to a folder which I can even access on my PC.

I am unable to do so. I have tried doing the instructions posted here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1028808

The other option is dropsync. Is there any option which doesnot involve using Dropsync?

The solution in the link worked on my Pixel 2 with Android 9, using a fresh install of Firefox 62.0.2. But it wasn't on my first attempt. It turned out I was too confident when entering the value of browser.download.dir.

Let's say I wanted to change the download folder from "Download" to "Music". So I put in the value /Music, since I thought I didn't need the help of a file manager to get the path of such a simple directory. But nothing happened. Files were still been downloaded to the "Download" directory.

When I actually used a file explorer (specifically, "Total Commander"), it turned out that the actual path to the "Music" directory was the oh-so-memorable /storage/emulated/0/Music. So when I changed browser.download.dir to that value, it worked.


Why "format as internal storage" is not working when installing new apps? I use my SD card with "format as internal storage".

When I plug my mobile on the PC I see a single huge storage with 10gb free.

But when trying to install a new app, is says that storage is full, and the "settings"->"storage" shows separated internal storage full and SD card with 10gb free.

Why it's not working? Is this a known issue?

I have a Moto G3 with Android 6.0.

All the apps you install go into Internal Storage by default.
You need to move them to your SD Card, even if you formatted it as internal storage.

Go to Settings -> Apps -> (Any Individual app) -> Storage -> Change -> SD Card.

PS : But you can't do this for most Google Apps and System Apps


Kindle Fire HD 8.9 not getting unbricked after going into fastboot mode I have a Kindle Fire HD 8.9 inch tablet on which I tried to install stock android OS but failed somehow. Now the tablet when started shows only Kindle Fire logo.I have tried various links on XDA and found that it can go into fastboot mode but nothing more than that. Tried Kindle Fire Unbrick Utility which is failing saying " device not found " . Same goes with Kindle Fire System Restore tool for Kindle Fire 8.9.
So the problem is storage part of tablet not getting detected. Due to which it is not possible to send/ copy system restore images / original rom / any custom rom to the tablet.
Can anyone help ?
Thanks in advance.
Following links I have referred :

https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2011126
http://rootkindlefire.com/kindle-fire-root/how-to-root-convert-kindle-fire-hd-8-9-into-pure-android-tablet/

From my understanding, if you can't boot into recovery by first pressing the volume down button and holding it, while pressing and holding the power button, your tablet is lost. You will need recovery to flash the firmware that came with your tablet, if I am not mistaken. If there is another way, you might want to wait for another answer. If your tablet is still under warranty, send it back to Amazon for a one time courtesy replacement.


Streaming a movie from Windows (Media Center??) to A500 Simple straight question: I own an Acer Iconia Tab A500 w/3.2 OS and a Windows 7 PC with lots of movies, including H.264 HD in Matroska format.

How can I stream that content, supposed that I installed K-Lite Codec Pack, on Android by installing the least possible amount of software? The tablet is already shipped with Acer ClearFi which is a DLNA implementation and looks compatible with Windows Media Center, however when I tried to play a non-HD movie in MPEG-4 format the default player reported that the fortmat is unsupported.

I'm new and a bit confused to Android video and home streaming. I don't know how codecs work in the Linux-like world.

[EDIT] About codecs (if these matter): on Windows, I can watch the videos with Windows Media Player too, not only VLC/MPC
I remember that once I was able to stream to my Xbox 360 with Vuze's embedded media server with live transcoding. Do I need something like that for streaming to Android too?

Thank you.

I use TVersity to stream to my Android device, Logitech Revue, Original Xbox, Xbox 360, etc. TVersity can transcode the video on the fly.

I have, in the past, been able to get Matroska container files to play, but not always and with varying results. Sometime they don't play at all, sometime they played fine, and sometimes they play, but the video is choppy and out of sync with the audio.

Being able to stream the video to your android device will depend on the video codec used to encode the video. If the device does not support the codec, it will not play. AFAIK, android, out of the box, does not support the matroska container, actually, there are a lot of formats that android does not support. Using something like TVersity on your "Media Server" allows you to transcode these videos in a format that the device will understand, and can play.


Why applications doesn't show up in "open with" list? Let's say, if I download image file from mobile browser, opening it leads to the "open with" window where i see all of the installed gallery apps to choose from.
however, there are other apps (i.e. upwork messenger) from where if i download the image file, while opening it, there doesn't show up any image editor/gallery aps, instead quite unrelated apps (i.e. ms word or pdf viewer shows up) so i just can't open images...
what could be the reason for that and how to force apps (i.e. image apps) everywhere to be shown up when opening the image files.

Android 10 bought about an important change regarding apps accessing data, which is a good thing for privacy. Quoting from answer

Before Android 10, any app could read or write any files to external storage (the place where apps store their data), if they requested the READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permissions. Starting from Android 10,apps can only access data created by them and not other app's data or common data like images, downloads etc.

This means access to external storage apps need to access it using Storage Access Framework (SAF) . SAF isn't new, it's been around since Android 5.0 but many developers didn't want to use it since it was not developer-friendly

The messenger app you are using isn't seeking  permissions through SAF, so it can't show "open with" options.

Install Local Storage app to overcome this limitation. From app description

Local Storage uses the new Storage Access Framework to allow other applications to read or write any file in your primary storage and read from secondary external storage devices.


Disable camera capture button? I have one app in which i am using barcode scanner, so i can't completely disable the camera. but i don't want camera to capture photos. I want camera in read only mode.

  Basically i want to restrict user from taking photos.

So is there any way to achieve this.
My device is rooted, so i can i modify the code of system's camera or is there any OS level setting or any app available.

Any Helpwill be appreciated! ThankYou!!

You could consider using an app locker, e.g. Smart AppLock (App Protector). Photos are taken by the camera app, regardless of whether you invoke it from the app drawer, a shortcut, widget, or via pressing the camera button. So if you lock the camera app (and the playstore app, so the user doesn't simply install an alternative camera app -- also make sure to disable unknown-sources and lock the settings app), only somebody knowing the password/pattern you've set up to protect those apps can use them.

Explanation: While blocking access to the camera app, this does not affect the barcode scanner. The barcode scanner for sure accesses the camera hardware, but not the camera app: the latter would not know what it aquires (just that it focusses on "something", but it's not recognizing what this "something" is and so would not know whether it aquired a barcode correctly). You can also verify this by checking the permissions the barcode app asks for: its permission list will for sure include Hardware controls: Take pictures and videos, which means it accesses the hardware directly. For accessing it via another app (e.g. the camera), it would not need this permission but rather call that app via an "intent" (see: what is intent in android?), so that called app would do the intended action.


Xposed framework on android L (5.0.2) I would like install Xposed framework. My device is running Android L (5.0.2). The Xposed framework is compatible with android 5?

Sorry, but the XPosed Framework is unable to work with ART (the default runtime on Android 5.0).
The fact that the code is compiled/optimized during installation blocks rerouting functions and injections done by XPosed.
XPosed will also refuse to install on Android 5 because it's not done, yet.
The developer said: "I am working on it, but it's far from being done. I'm not even able to install it. It may take more than 6 months to see an alpha version of XPosed on ART."


What are the signs your (stolen) phone has been wiped/hard reset? I had my 2-week-old HTC One stolen. Unfortunately, I was not aware of the Android Device Manager or the ability to turn on remote wipe functionality (nor I had any remote tracking/wiping apps installed). My phone had a lot of private stuff on it. I really dread this stuff being in someone else's hands.

Since the theft to restrict access to my private information, I logged out all other Google sessions, changed Google account password, switched 2-step verification to another device, revoked access permissions to apps on my stolen phone and the phone. However, the best case scenario for protecting my information would be to wipe the phone.

I would like to know the following:

Having changed Google account password and done all of the above, will I still be able to push apps to the phone through Google Play (e.g., Plan B or Android Lost)?
Having effectively stopped my phone from syncing with Google (change passwords etc), if it is switched on with data connection will it still show up on Android Device Manager?
Is there a way - taking into consideration all the stuff I have done to prevent the thief from logging into my apps/account - to find out if the phone has been wiped? e.g., Android Device Manager will stop showing it as registered?

No, as the device will require the new password before it will successfully log in to the Play Store app to download any apps.
Again, No as it will not send any data to Google because you've changed your password.
I'm not aware of any way to find out this information. Unfortunately by changing your password and ending sessions there is no way to communicate with the device using your Google account.


turn on nearby friend in android Facebook told me that I must follow these steps to enable Nearby friend:

To turn Nearby Friends on or off on an iPhone or Android:
Tap More
Tap Nearby Friends
Tap Setting
Tap to turn Nearby Friends on or off

I'm using Facebook latest on Android with Samsung Core Prime and I can not do those steps cause of I dont see Nearby Friend on the screen,
Please help me for enable it!
Many thanks!
I can not screenshot the phone, but I swear I can not see the the "nearby firends" button at all.
samsung told me do these steps, but it's totally no help!

  To capture a screenshot, press and hold the Home Home key and the
  Power/Lock key simultaneously until a white border flashes around the
  edges of the screen. The screenshot will be copied to the clipboard
  and saved to the Screenshots folder in the Gallery.

Those are the correct instructions.  However, Nearby Friends was launched last April as a gradual roll-out.  As far as I can tell, it's still not generally available to everyone.  I do not have the option myself.


What is this icon that looks like a headphone cable? My phone got unlocked in my pocket and appears to have changed some things in the Google Now app (although I'm not sure this icon is related to that). I have never seen this icon anywhere before. I am using LG G4 stock android 6.0.

What is this icon and how can I revert whatever change caused it to be displayed?

The icon looks like an aux cable which suggests that your phone thinks that you have plugged in some headphones.

Assuming you haven't, you can try peering into the headphone socket (use a bright light) to see if anything is trapped in there. If there is you can try blowing into the port to see if that will dislodge/remove it, or turn if so the port is at the bottom and tap gently to see if that helps.


How to transfer pictures from hangouts onto my computer How can I transfer the pictures that are on my android hangouts (sent and received messages), so that I can preserve them before I clear my android for space?

I think those are saved at Google and synced across all your devices. Try and log in from a PC, go to gmail.com, then look your hangouts to the left. If you can see your pictures there, it's safe to wipe your phone. You can also save the pictures from there to your PC if you want - but they're safe where they are.


How do I withdraw an app rights to enter internet in CyanogenMod? On a rooted device it should be possible to forbid certain apps to contact internet connection

How is this possible in CyanogenMod 10.0?

An app like Root Firewall (needs root) should work.

  ☆ Block Internet access for any apps:


Unlock android phone from PC I need to move some data from my HTC one m8 to a Samsung Galaxy S8. The only problem is that the HTC's touch screen does not work so I cannot unlock it (it's locked with a PIN). I don't have a keyboard adapter for this phones port so I cannot plug a keyboard or mouse into it. I can plug it into my laptop so can I unlock it from there?

I found a solution after all, you have to keep pressing the volume down button so that the phone does not lock itself and shut the screen off. This gives more time to mash the screen to enter the pin.

The screen barley works but sometimes if I press hard it registers it.

After it was unlocked I again used the volume down button in order to stop the phone locking after a few minutes of inactivity. I then plugged it into my laptop and moved the data from the phone to my desktop.

I could have disabled a pin or disabled auto screen lock in the settings but the screen was just too messed up so certain on screen buttons did not work.

I still need to somehow back up my scribble app notes. The back button in the app does not work and clicking the back button next to the home panel closes the app rather than closing the text editor and going back to the main screen where all my notes are.


How does my android phone load lower quality versions of pictures on the web? Anyone else noticed this? Even when I use my tethered connection on a computer or on the phone its self, the phone loads lower quality versions of all jpegs (I think) you look at on the web.

I guess this is to save bandwidth? But how does it do it without getting the original picture first? Which would negate any benefit of course!

It could be your provider. In the netherlands, t-mobile has an option (or at least had, I don't remember seeing it lately) to scale-down images in their proxy. As all your requests can go trough their "image" proxy at a click of a button (probably something to do with your APN, most likely server side even?)...

So it might not even have anything to do with Android..

It might be, but I don't remember if it was in my case, the Web 'n' Walk Accelerator

There's some google hits on that, though most of them semi-old. On this link some tips on how to fix it with that webnwalk stuff, probably not what you are looking for, but also some hints on how to send an "always reload" message to the proxy. Maybe that helps. Otherwise you might need to google some on tmobile and proxy/accelerator.


Is there an Android calendar with limited security permissions? I've just bought an entry-level Samsung Europa, running version 2.2. I'm technically-minded but new to this OS. I'd like to find a calendar that runs in limited security permissions, so that my calender isn't synced to anywhere over the internet. I am happy to take responsibility for my own backups.

I have signed up for a Google account to run the stock Calendar app (it mandates it), to access Google Maps and to access the market. I've set the Google account to "Sync is OFF" in General Sync Settings, and I've turned off Auto Sync. I've kept Background Data turned on, and turned off Google syncing in the Calendar options. I am hoping this combination of settings means that my calendar will not be copied off the device, though I'm not confident this is the case.

I wasn't aware until after purchasing that app-level security permissions could not be modified in Android - some light research just now suggests that one needs to root the device to get that feature. (I may well do that, but I want to get a working set-up first). Since the sandbox permissions for Calendar are do what you want, I've been looking at alternatives. Jorte Calendar requires wide permissions, and Smooth Calendar looks like it just relies on the standard Calendar app as storage, as I think does GO Calendar Widget.

I'm okay with limited data flowing to Google/Microsoft/BigCorp - such as map usage or market searches. But I'd plan to avoid using remote storage for private data: my contacts, texts, calendaring and so forth (there's something about Calendar refusing to start without a Google or FB account that is a touch irksome). I could use a local calendar on my old Sony K660 without wondering if it was being copied without consent - are there calendar apps that will do this? Or is rooting & resetting perms for Calendar my best option?

Addendum: in Privacy Settings, I've turned off Back Up My Data. Turning it on then off again reveals this dialogue box message: Are you sure you want to stop backing up your settings and application data and erase all copies on Google servers?. So that's a reassurance that file system data won't get synched by the stock OS - just Contacts and Calendar to go :-)

Post Addendum: I suggested in the comments that I might use the Corporate feature, in which one can add a Microsoft Exchange account. However this appears sadly to be subject to similar privacy objections that I apply to the Google account requirement. The user is asked for an email and password, and is confronted with this message:

  By activating this application you accept that part of your mobile phone data (comprising IMEI and model name) will be stored, processed and used by Samsung for the purpose of reporting activation of the application to the licensors of the application software itself. Such data held by Samsung will be dealt with strictly in accordance with Samsung's privacy policy. A copy of the policy is available upon request. Continue?

Admittedly this is a small privacy risk compared to the wholesale copying of a calendar or contacts, but it still emphasises the point that the corporate storage of ones data is essentially mandatory. (Added here for the benefit of search engines on this topic.)

That said, it may still be worth a go. For those of us without access to a real private Exchange server, one would need to find something to emulate one, so that the Google account can be removed. Once I've settled into using the phone, I will look into these alternatives - and this in particular. Also of interest is package support in some Linux distributions - not much for OS X yet, but I will keep on looking!

To answer my original question, I've found aCalendar, which has very limited sandbox requirements. It just asks for Your Personal Information, which it needs to write to the shared calendar store - impressive! As I've said elsewhere, this leaves calendar items prone to accidental synchronisation with Google, but for most people this is acceptable.

Happily, the UI of this calendar is excellent, with only a couple of niggles (in particular, the small screen of the Europa makes it very difficult, occasionally impossible, to touch on calendar items in the 7-day view). Issues aside, I am likely to settle on this app, unless a better one comes along!


Mac OS X fastboot is just waiting (HTC M8 T-Mobile) I'm trying to run fastboot oem get_identifier_token on Mac OS X Yosemite but I get stuck on "< waiting for device >":

➜  platform-tools  ./adb devices
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
List of devices attached
FA495WM04764    device

➜  platform-tools  sudo ./fastboot oem get_identifier_token
< waiting for device >

I have enabled USB debugging
I have tried both sudo and no sudo on fastboot
I have tried restarting, changing USB ports (although they are just two on my Mac Book Pro Mid-2012).
The SDK is the latest one, downloaded today from http://developer.android.com/ together with Android Studio
I also tried downloading just fastboot-mac from HTC dev site, same happens there.

Any ideas?

As others have commented you need to reboot your device in bootloader (fastboot) mode.

Easiest way, is to use the command

adb reboot bootloader

Your device will reboot and will end up in the fastboot mode. Now you can use the fastboot utility.


Log for WiFi on Android Tablet Is there a log that records WiFi connectivity events/issues? I keep getting disconnected when using my Nexus 10 tablet and other devices on the same network do not.

There are several applications available that will read the log. In Android there is only one major log, where everything is written to.

Per application a different Tag is used in the log. So to find out information about the WiFi, you have to find out what the exact tag is. That way you can filter out all these messages, for me it was something like "WiFiStateMachine" for WiFi.

Next to the application mentioned by Abhishek Sha (Log Collector), there is also aLogcat. I have used this application multiple times, and always helped me to find the problem.


Enabling Multi User Feature on Realme 3 Can anybody help me with enabling the multiple user feature like stock Android without rooting. I've tried getting the default.prop through adb and changing some properties and then replacing the copy on the phone with that but it wouldn't let me, cause my phone is not rooted and it's telling that I don't have permission. I don't wanna try rooting the phone just yet, cause it's a relatively new unit.So there's probably no stable root guide for it yet and so I don't wanna accidentally hard brick my phone.

Please somebody help me with this.If you have any suggestions and thank you in advance.

No, multi user feature is not available in Realme 3 containing Coloros 6.And you cannot enable it without rooting. Realme 3 is based on Mediatek chipset, so you will not get good support for third party ROMs. But in future this phone will get RealmeUI update, which may bring multi user feature.


How to achieve a basic setup of LineageOS with root and Google Assistant? It appears there are 4 things needed to get what I would consider a basic LineageOS install working so apps can run correctly with root.

LineageOS
SU addon
Google Apps/Google Play Store
Google Voice Assistant

Could someone outline how to set up the last one "Google Voice Assistant"?  I also noticed there is no complete guide that I could find on StackExchange for setting up the above on LineageOS.  So I guess something like a guide would probably could be helpful as a canonical question.

So this is actually pretty easy if you phone is already unlocked.

Boot into recovery mode
Wipe the phone.  I advise going under advanced and checking everything unless you have files you need.

I wipe everything including internal storage but you don't have to
Install the zips starting with LineageOS, SU addon, Google Apps/Google Play Store & Google Voice Assistant.  You should not reboot your device until all are installed.
Reboot you device out of recovery mode and go through the set up menus.


Does the Samsung Galaxy S2 support DC-HSDPA I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 running Cyanogenmod 10.1.3 which equates to Android 4.2.2.

I would like to know if my phone will support DC-HSDPA or not? Will it just work?

Is there anything I would need to do in order for it to support DC-HSDPA like upgrade the RIL or is it just not capable at the hardware level?

After some testing over the weekend with a service provider who provides DC-HSDPA I can confirm that the Samsung Galaxy S2 does not support the protocol.


App is kept in memory, content is not On my GPE S4 (Android 5.0.1), if I change from Firefox or Google Sheets or ezPDFreader to another application for more than 1 or 2 minutes, and come back, the data is loaded again. It is not only bad for my data plan, but is also time consuming. I monitor data usage, it is not just re-rendering.

On my Nexus 4 (Android 5.0), applications in the background keep content for an hour or more. It is quite strange, as they have the same amount of memory, 2GB.

Is there a setting for this? How can I avoid unnecessary reloads?

The problem is in RAM usage of your firmwares. Nexus has a fewer "stock app" processes running in the background, thus it consumes less random access memory, so there is more of it for user apps. This means, you can launch more apps simultaneously without having some of them to be killed in the background!

Samsung tried to include as more "cool features" as possible to their devices like a pretty (and heavy) TouchWiz, much of bloatware, and all other "special" features also consume RAM.

There are several ways solving this issue:

One of them is switching to a custom ROM. Like CyanogenMod. It will really help you, but u might loose some of your phones abilities (mostly useless of them).

Another one is, you can disable all the bloatware, uninstall some unnecessary apps, that run in the background (you might have to root your ROM for some of them) disable ALL unused features like Live wallpapers, and much more. Disable some autorun apps, using 3C Toolbox (root). For more info, Google "how to free ram on" and your device name.

I strongly reccomend you to do a backup of your ROM before you begin! Otherwise, be really careful!
Good luck :)


Google Play app doesn't auto-update Ever since the new update of Google Play app, I couldn't get the apps to automatically (in background) update.
But instead, they only update, when I open the Google Play app a few times

I have auto-update and notificatoins checked. I have auto-update apps ofer WiFi only set.

I have JB 4.1.2 and Galaxy S3 GT-I9300.

I think any auto-update/notification settings relate to apps installed via the Play Store, not the Play Store itself.  That's updated occasionally by Google.  You could try and force an update, if you're convinced one is available and that you're missing it, by going into the Application Manager and uninstalling updates for Play Store, then clear data, and clear cache, then running the app again and seeing if it forces the download of a newer version.

(Incidentally, I have the S3 too, and am currently on v4.1.10 of the Play store. Which version are you on?)


To show Mobile Bookmarks of Chrome in Desktop? I would like show my bookmarks in my Screen because some webpages work better than any application.
It would be also create an application-like-button for a webpage if possible.

Possible through some widget.
However, I did not find any existing widget.

How can you create an-application-like button for a webpage?

How can you show your mobile bookmarks of Chrome in your desktop?

My final solution to the task. Use Google Keep which integrates nicely to your Internet browsers. During the time of asking the question, I did not know about Google Keep. You get there nice frontend where you can easily add a link and there many links such that the presentation of many links is also nice with the preview of their contents.


Why my apps are getting auto-updated despite "Don't auto-update apps" checked? In Google Play Store, I have set "Auto-update apps" to "Don't auto-update apps". Still, I have apps automatically updated.

Why?

Still, I get notifications.

Now apps have separate auto-update option in Play store. So disable it, uncheck it.


How can I change the language on my phone? Possible Duplicate:
  How can I set the locale and language?

Is there some way I can change the language of my phone's operating system? I mean status bar, options, everything -- I want it to be in Spanish.

On the Nexus S go to Menu -> Settings -> Language & Keyboard -> Select Language.


"Screen Recording" in LG Android I have an LG V40, and in both Android 9 and 10, it seems that the "Screen Recording" app is always running, and not possible to keep it Stopped.
Greenify shows it as running in "Foreground":

If I force hibernation, seconds later it will be running in Foreground again.
It is not possible to disable this app, and it requires access to Camera and Microphone:

These permissions cannot be removed either:

Should I be concerned?
Is there any way I can fully disable this app?
My OS is European.

Use adb to disable the app. And download a trusted  screen recorder.
For installed apps:
adb shell pm list packages should list all the packages on your device. Then use adb shell pm disable <package_to_disable>
to disable an installed app.
For system apps:
For system apps just the disable command is different  adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 <package_to_disable>
if you want to see the disabled apps use adb shell pm list packages -d
Take a look at this https://www.xda-developers.com/disable-system-app-bloatware-android/


How to copy events in KitKat 4.4 Calendar? How do I copy events in KitKat 4.4 Calendar? That possibility to copy events has been removed from the calendar.

It seems the only option are third party apps. I found Informant, which is sort of like Pocket Informant (same dev), I used on my blackberry. It seems that stock apps for Android are becoming more and more featureless. I guess "they're" trying to promote using third party apps, I guess, I don't know.


"Android OS" is continuously downloading something in the background, how can I stop that? My HTC One V (on 4.0 ICS) seems to be continuously downloading something even when it's inactive, and it's using the battery abnormally fast.

My data usage graph:

(click to enlarge)

On the first picture, the brown line is for the "Android OS" element, which as you can see is responsible for at least 60% of the data consumption. I don't know what Android is downloading, but it does it continuously and it has a big effect on my battery's life. When I disable mobile data, the battery usage line becomes flat (see second picture). How can I check what exactly "Android OS" is doing? And how can I disable this activity?

Here is the battery usage graph. As you can see, the line became flat when I've disabled mobile data.

(click to enlarge)

I've found the culprit! I went to Settings > Call > Internet call settings and deleted the SIP account I had once created and forgot. The phone kept reaching the SIP server (probably to check for incoming calls).

I had to install a packet sniffer on the phone (tPacketCapture) to see where the requests where going and realize I had configured a SIP account.


How to fix recovery mode I cant go in recovery mode I try the combinations and it not work I always rebooted and bypass the recovery how to fix this

You have a very vague question, but generally speaking there are a few ways to boot into recovery mode:

Most devices have a key combination that should be held down when powering on.  You can find many of them on CyanogenMod's wiki.  Search for your device, and if it's supported you'll usually find the instructions on the Info or Installation page.  If it's not a CM-supported device, your device manual or web site may have the information, or you can look online.
From the Terminal Emulator app (available for download), you can enter the command reboot recovery.
From a shell, if you have adb installed, you can boot into recovery with the command:  adb reboot recovery typed from your computer.
Some ROMs (such as CyanogenMod, but others as well) allow you to select booting into the recovery from the "Shut Down/Reboot" menu in Android.  You may need to enable this feature.  In CyanogenMod 12, it can be enabled via the Developer options as Advanced reboot.
I believe some 3rd-party apps such as Rom Manager can also cause the device to boot into recovery mode.
If you are able to start in bootloader mode, some bootloaders will allow you to boot directly to recovery.  This can be done via the UI (on a Nexus device, use the volume up/down to select the correct boot mode, then press the power button to reboot to recovery).

Finally, you can also tell the device to start the recovery on the next boot by manipulating the cache partition, but that is more advanced and I think one of the above methods will probably work for you.


What are the limitations of syncing PC settings (Firefox) with my Android? Is it possible to sync the Firefox settings (including add-ons) on my PC with my Galaxy 10.1 tab?

You cant sync addons or settings between the PC and android due to differences in the platform. The only things which can be synced are bookmarks, passwords, history and even open tabs. Firefox 11's addon sync works only between the PC versions


How reliable is ICS face unlock? After following a liveblog of the presentation where Google announced Ice Cream Sandwich, one of the more interesting features announced was the ability to unlock your phone with your face. As in, the front facing camera is able to determine if the person in front of the camera is the owner of the phone.

What is the rate of false positives and false negatives for this feature? Can it be fooled by a photograph of the owner of the device? If it fails to unlock automatically, is there a fallback password/pin mechanism to unlock the device?

The ICS' config screen says it's for low security situation. It shouldn't be used for cases where you have sensitive information, and more for the casual user that uses their phones for personal photos; not the type who carries their company's next secret world domination plan. While face unlock is a gimmick, it's a cool gimmick nevertheless, and I'm sure it will be used by the casual users who values convenience more than security, as it is basically an automatic unlock for them.

  If it fails to unlock automatically, is there a fallback password/pin
  mechanism to unlock the device?

Not sure about that; but all stock unlock mechanism has a fallback to unlock using your Google Account username and password. I don't see why they wouldn't do that with face recognition.


Unable to bluetooth pair Galaxy S5 with BG-BluBox I paired a BG-BluBox external sound cube to a Samsumg Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition successfully.

At a later time, I initiated a pairing of the BG-BluBox with a Samsung Galaxy S5 (Android 5.0). The pairing was not successful*. I am now unable to pair this device with the S5.

I have located the Bluetooth app under Device Manager and have deleted data and cache and restarted the device.

I have also wiped the cache partition.

In both of the above cases, the outcome is the same. The Bluetooth app on the S5 still shows other paired devices as before, shows the BG-BluBox, but the S5 reports that the PIN/password is incorrect when I try to pair.

How can I pair this device with the S5?

*I may have had to enter a PIN, which I may have entered incorrectly. This was a while ago and I don't recall the details now.

Based on our chat discussion, consolidating

By entering PIN correctly on the sound box, you are able to pair with S4 or any other device
This doesn't repeat with S5, even after clearing the cache and data of S5 (The first way is to to clear cache and data of Bluetooth app from Settings > Applications Menu > Application Manager.

3.There is no option of resetting memory of sound box and it remembers the last known good connection, which in this case is S4

Available information points to a problem with S5 persisting to remembering the wrong PIN entry and attempting to pair

To fix this,(Considering your device is NOT rooted), would suggest to factory reset your device after taking back up of data and attempt to pair

EDIT:  You had mentioned that clearing Bluetooth app data/ cache did not clear the saved settings for S4. Which makes me suspect that cache of app is not being cleared. Suggest try this to clear cache of your device -turn your Samsung Galaxy S5 off and press at the same time Power + Home + Volume Down buttons to enter in Recovery Mode. Inside Recovery Mode press “Wipe Cache Partition”  and reboot your phone.  This option I understand had not been tried. You will not lose data. If this also doesn't help, factory reset would be the last resort

Meanwhile, you can mail OEM of sound box to get instructions on resetting or clearing it of stored device information and do that as well to have a clean slate


Zip file is corrupt error in TWRP TWRP and TWRP Treble give me error of "Zip file is corrupt" when I install zip roms or files. I wiped all the things that needs. (/Dalvik Cache, /System, /Data, /Cache) but nothing changed.

I redownloaded 2 or 3 times and checked the MD5 and it was all fine.

If your zip file is corrupt then no wiping will change anything.

You'll need to redownload the file, and check the checksum to see if it's been corrupted during transfer. If yes, you may want to redownload it again, using a different mirror.

Alose, be sure to get the right OpenGApps package for your Android version and device CPU architecture.

EDIT :
My bad, I didn't read your whole comment. Have you tried reinstalling TWRP (again, checking the checksum) ? If EVERY zip file is seen as corrputed by TWRP, it might be your storage that's damaged. Using the "Repair" function may help.


Multiple keyboards for multiple applications Is it possible to have different keyboard for different apps, say I want to have Emoji Keyboard for facebook and twitter but Google Indic keyboard for my whatsapp is this possible.

Mobile : HTC Desire 820

OS : Android 5.1

You can use tasker with the Secure Settings plugin:

Condition: Application (chose the app)
Task: Plugins › Secure Settings › System+ › Input Method (chose the keyboard)

If you just want to use 2 different keyboards, create such a profile for the keyboard you use with "fewer apps". In the condition, chose all the apps that should use that keyboard. You might need to add an "exit task" reverting back to your "default input method".

For more than 2 keyboards, create one profile per "special keyboard" the same way.


Sending emoji via SMS with UTF-8 (rather than UTF-16)? Trying to find out why emoji caused even short messages to being sent as multiple chunks I came across this question, explaining this happens because they are encoded UTF-16 rather than ascii.

My question, now is: is there a way to have them sent in UTF-8, instead? Most of the messages I send contain many latin letters and very few other characters, so they all should be much shorter if encoded in UTF-8: is it possible?

I'm running Cyanogenmod 11-M12 (Android 4.4.4) and, in case it matters, I use the SwiftKey keyboard.

In case this is not possible, is it a matter of the SMS protocol, or is it due to the OS, or even to the keyboard?

Thanks a lot!

Sadly this is a limitation in the SMS protocol.

The "ascii" charset is not the normal we are used to in the computer world, instead it is a 7bit (or GSM 03.38 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_03.38) and very limited.

If one single character is used outside of this 7 bit charset, it is switched to UCS2 (See more information about UCS2 not exactly being UTF-16 here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-16).

With 7 bit, each character takes 7 bits (doh), and with UCS2 each character takes 16 bits.

While coding some SMPP (the SMS protocol) integrations, I've seen sporadic support for other charsets, but I do not think this is at all adopted in the wild.


Why does my Nexus One power off with 15% power remaining? Once my Nexus One's remaining power drops to 15%, it automatically powers off. On turning it back on again, it reports that it's now on 0% power.

Do all Nexus Ones behave like this, or is it just mine?

Possibly relevant apps I have installed are:

BatteryTime Lite. This gives a percentage power in the notification bar. I thought it might be mis-reporting, but the value it reports always seems to match what the phone reports in Settings > About Phone > Battery Use
JuiceDefender. This turns the data connection on and off to try to preserve battery.

I can't see settings in either of these that would turn the phone off at 15% power.

I'm currently on Android 2.3.4, but I think this happened on earlier versions too.

Probably your battery does not hold as much charge as it used to, and so your phone's estimate of 15% is incorrect; the battery is actually almost dead.  To get a more accurate reading, try the following:

  RECALIBRATION:

  A recalibration is mostly needed, when dealing with different kernels (ROOT!). Most custom recovery images provide the option "battery stats wipe" under the menue "Wipe".

  Here is how ya do it!

  Enter Recovery Mode
  do a full nandroid (or nandroid+ext) backup
  Enter "Wipe"-Menue
  do "Battery stats wipe"
  reboot
  Calibrate the battery by completely draining it until the phone completely shuts itself off.
  Turn the phone on again and let it shut itself off one more time.
  Then charge your phone while it is off for over 8 hours.
  This will fully charge the battery so that when the Android is turned on, it now sees the battery as full.


Is there a default/stock sound recorder app? In most of the Android phones sound recorder has a different look and feel and slightly different functionality. So is the sound recorder is a basic feature of all Android phones?
Can I assume that it will be present in all Android phones or is it specially added by manufacturers and there might be a case where it may not present in some phone devices ?

There is no default sound recorder in Android. Some manufacturers add one to their stock ROMs, but the closest thing on a Nexus device is Google Keep, added in 4.3.

If you assume that a voice recording app is present in all Android phones you'll be caught out.


How can I run a python script in terminal emulator? I tried running a python script in terminal emulator (app) with "./script.py" and I get an error saying "permission denied" so I googled how to do this and it said I have to download a file called python.sh but their link is down so I can't download it and when I google the file I only get results for how to load .sh files in python... So does anyone know how I can do this?

Its to run a twitter bot even if I close the app...

You could use UserLAnd, GNURoot Debian, or Termux. Termux is probably the most lightweight, and also has Swipe keyboard support (have to swipe the entire input to the side to access it), and you can enable an extended keyboard that pops up over whatever keyboard you use to access arrows, Tab, Ctrl, etc. UserLAnd also has the extended keyboard but no Swipe support, and runs a full version of Linux in a chroot environment so you can have root access using sudo or the root user.

Using Termux & UserLAnd on an unrootable Android and both are amazing. rsync is the greatest thing ever to keep project changes up to date because AFAIK it's not possible to edit the data stored in either of their filesystems directly using an Android app, but can be done using vi/vim/nano/etc inside of Termux or in UserLAnd's session (have to connect to it through SSH or VNC).

Just make sure to follow the suggestions during UserLAnd setup and grab ConnectBot and/or bVNC -- those are currently the only supported apps to connect to it. Also, while it claims to be able to setup for a single app I have not seen any directions for that, and have no idea how it would be possible as the UI doesn't seem to have anyway to do so.


LG L3 : difference between system memory and internal memory I'm using LG L3 E405, and when I see memory usage in App Manager. I see there three sections: First is system memory (just about 200M), second is internal memory (1 GB) and last is my sd card (8GB).

I know difference between internal memory (is internal sd card) and normal sd card. But I don't know purpose of system memory. It's too low, and often applications are installed to there. After install, I must move those apps again to internal memory, but not all I can do this.

Please help me figure out this point.

You better go to Cellshopes, get "Root" on your Adroid device, but it's too risky and oftentimes warranty will be voided once it happen.


How to select ALL text in web browser? On my Nexus One's built-in browser, I am able to copy web page text to the clipboard by:

selecting Settings > More > Select
text,
then dragging my finger from top to
bottom (of the screen), seeing page
content highlighted in pink,
then the moment I release my finger,
the pink highlight goes away and is
replaced by a friendly message:
"Text copied to clipboard".

I can then paste it to a clipboard "viewer" app (which is not really a clipboard viewer but rather a clipboard "paster").

The problem is that, no matter what I do, my finger doesn't seem to pick up the entire text on that page. There is always something missing: A few characters from the page start, or from the page end.

Is there something similar to Ctrl+A on Windows?

On my device running 2.2 Froyo, that method (from 2.1) was replaced by long-pressing on text to select it.  Two "handles" appear at each end of the selection, and you can drag them wherever you want (e.g. to the top and the bottom).  Maybe try that.  If it doesn't work, what Android version are you using?


Connecting to Adhoc Wifi I setup adhoc connection in Ubuntu Linux. How can we connect android devices (2.3.3 and 4.0) to the adhoc wifi internet connection?

Simple answer: Android does not support Ad-Hoc networks by default (see also the ad-hoc-networks tag-wiki, which tells you this and more). This means, you will need to root your devices, and use an app for this specific task, which is known as reverse-tether.

Some solutions are summed up in the following questions (or rather in their answers):

How to share internet among 2 android devices?
Enable Adhoc on Jelly Bean
Connect android phones through adhoc wifi network
How can I establish an AD-HOC Wi-Fi connection on my tablet?

As I did not use this method (had no need for it), I'm not sure what "easy solutions" really do. But if I remember correctly, OpenGarden's WiFi Tethering supports this, as does MANET Manager.


Can I merge two, or more, separate Titanium backups In this case I'm looking to restore SMS messages from Titanium.

I have made a backup of all SMS. Then I started on a new ROM without restoring SMS. I then made a new backup of the current SMS.

Is it possible to combine those two separate backups so that when I restore I will get my SMS from both backups?

As I understand, if I restore one backup, then I restore another backup it will not combine them but rather write one over the other.

This is more like a manual job, but can be done.

With Titanium Backup PRO/Donate version, you have this feature (compare versions here):

  Backup/restore SMS, MMS, call log, bookmarks and Wi-Fi networks in the portable XML format!

You can combine both SMS backups into a single XML file format and restore it to your phone all in one. Afterwards, perform a backup like you usually do, to have it all together.

Ps: Will probably require you to go back and forward, but here's a guide:

Backup to XML the existent SMS on your device;
Restore the old SMS to the device;
backup the old SMS to XML;
Edit both XML files to merge them;
Restore all back to your device.

You can refer to Titanium Backup website to collect more information or to request support from the developers.


Unable to debug in LG Optimis L7 I am unable to enable debugging mode in LG Optimus L7 Dual. I am connecting the mobile to my PC and choose LG Software mode(read this in a blog that had discussion about LG Optimus). The USB Debugging option in Developer Options is greyed out. Once i unplug it, it glows and I enable it but when I connect and try to debug,my eclipse does not identify the device. Any help will be much appreciated.

As your computer is running Windows, you need to install the appropriate device driver first. Most manufacturers offer one for download on their resp. websites, specifically tailored for the device in question; but that would also mean you'd need multiple drivers if you had multiple devices.

A good solution reported to work fine with multiple different devices, and also supporting Windows 8 fine, is Koushik Dutta's universal adb driver. This would hence free you from the hazzle of possible driver conflicts, if you one day decide to use a different/additional device.


How to root OnePlus One? I want to root my shiny OnePlus One device aka flagship killer. There is no dearth of guides available on Internet and accessible easily via Google, but I'm not sure which one to follow as I don't want my device to face issues during rooting which could make my phone unbootable.

How can I root my phone safely?

Device : OnePlus One (bacon)
Android version : CM 11S, COS12, or COS13
Status: Untouched bootloader
Storage: 16GB or 64GB

It is true that the guides available for this device are extremely large in quantity. Rooting OnePlus One is fairly easy, safe and doesn't require any prerequisite knowledge of Android OS internals, though having it would ease you to root with confidence.
Note #0: The instructions will wipe everything on your phone including Stock Recovery, and you might possibly not receive OTA updates (I although receive them with no issues). Also, while this guide may seem lengthy (since written from the perspective of a completely new user), the instructions are one of the safest to ensure that any troubleshooting, if required, can be done easily.
Note #1: If you're worried about your data, whatsoever it is, please refer to this one-stop guide - Full Backup on non-rooted devices. I personally prefer adb backup combined with Helium app available at Play Store for free.
Following instructions require ADB and Fastboot tools to be installed. Regarding installation, there is a very helpful guide here - Is there a minimal installation of ADB.

Windows users may look here and this for dedicated solution, or use this popular hassle free installation tool called 15 seconds ADB Installer suggested at this guide.
As for Linux users, ADB and Fastboot are usually available in the repositories of most of the popular distributions and covered already in this aforementioned guide. See this if in want of an easy installation. Many errors faced in using them are already answered on Android Enthusiasts. Otherwise, running as root user on system (not recommended) solves most of them.
I'm unfamiliar with OSX so can't recommend anything :(

Note #2: Before proceeding for further instructions, make sure your device is working fine with ADB and Fastboot.

This is required for any OS user to verify (step 3. in Windows section, and Useful fastboot commands) here for smoother further experience.

Also, when you'll try adb related commands, a confirmation on your device will be shown to accept the ADB connection initiated from your system. Allow it and check the box to remember it for future,

Note #3: - I'm instructing this as an Ubuntu Linux user, although rooting from Windows is fairly simple.

Once you have everything setup and backed up, you need to open a Command Prompt with elevated privileges and enter into the ADB installation directory.
Mostly the command will be like cd folder_location\ where folder_location is the location of the ADB installation folder.
If this is overwhelming at first, you may refer to this guide (see instruction 0. Installing proper fastboot and adb drivers).
About Linux users, I'm assuming they are aware of basic know-how of playing with their favorite terminal application. Google is your friend, always remember.

Note #4: Keep your phone adequately charged, possibly above 70% before venturing into anything unknown to you such as rooting or flashing. Also, this guide  summarizes many points of this answer.

Part #1: Unlock the Bootloader of OPO
While this is not important to continue, you may look them out of curiosity:

What is a Bootloader?
Why it is locked?
What happens when the Bootloader is unlocked on a device?

Instructions:

Plug OPO into system using USB cable and enable the USB debugging.
Gain Administrative in Windows or Superuser in Linux privileges in your CMD/Terminal. For Windows, enter into the ADB directory as well.
Type adb devices to confirm that your device is connected. If you can't see your device somehow, consider querying Google.
Enter  adb reboot bootloader to put into Fastboot mode.
Enter fastboot devices to confirm fastboot mode is getting detecting by system. In case if you can't see any device serial no. or something similar, then query the same into Google for troubleshooting.
Enter fastboot oem unlock -  this will unlock the Bootloader of OPO and as a default mechanism, will wipe your device.
Enter fastboot reboot to reboot your device. If this doesn't reboot the device or stay stuck at Fastboot screen, you can power-off and power-on by pressing down power key consecutively with few seconds gap.

Congrats! your device is now unlocked for innumerable modifications.

Part #2 : Install and boot into a Custom Recovery via Recovery Mode
You may check them out of curiosity:

What is a Recovery and a Custom Recovery?
What is Recovery Mode and what does it do?
What are Clockworkmod (CWM), TWRP and Philz Touch?

Instructions:
While I personally prefer Philz Touch Recovery (being elegant), I've instructed for the most popular one, the TWRP recovery. Instructions for Philz Touch Recovery and CWM are also similar. Apart from these three, I'm unaware of any other recovery for OPO.
(The instructions in this section are divided into two parts: 2.1 and 2.2)
2.1:

Download any recovery viz. TWRP Official (preferred), Philz Touch, CWM, or TWRP Unofficial. Some folks prefer fork of Official TWRP called TWRP Unofficial. You may Google them to suit your needs.
Rename1 the downloaded .img file into recovery.img. For Windows users, place this file into your ADB folder. For Linux users, either cd into the selected Download folder, or know the file path of downloaded file.
Go to Settings -> Developer Options and uncheck Enable Cyanogen Recovery.
Repeat steps 1-5 from Part #1 to enter into Fastboot mode with surety.
Enter fastboot flash recovery recovery.img. Linux users who didn't cd into the selected download folder should replace recovery.img with file path of .img. This command will flash your downloaded Recovery into the Recovery partition of OPO, and as obvious, Stock Recovery can't be booted into.
Repeat step 7 of Part #1.

Congrats! You've successfully replaced Stock Recovery with Custom Recovery.
OR,
Some folks claimed that OPO can be booted into live Recovery without replacing the Stock Recovery which ensured them OTA updates survives. I could not achieve success but they did. Follow 2.2 to boot into a live Recovery.
2.2:

Repeat steps 1-4 of 2.1.
Enter fastboot boot recovery.img. Linux users who didn't cd into the selected download folder should replace recovery.img with file path of .img. This Fastboot command will boot into the downloaded Recovery without touching any installed Recovery. It may take few seconds-minute to boot into this Recovery.

If you can see the Recovery with options like Install Zip, Advanced, etc, and TWRP or the name of your downloaded Recovery mentioned somewhere, then you've booted into your downloaded Recovery. Congrats! Otherwise, you may troubleshoot using Google or go with 2.1 straightly.

Part #3: Flash SuperSu zip and install SuperSu app to enable root access
You would be aware of rooting if you've come here for it. But in any case, you may look at some nicely written answers about Rooting, what rooting would enable you to do, or this short but useful guide at Lifehacker.
You can find many superuser clients that intercepts root access by apps in your device and interactively asks you to take action. Popular ones for OPO are SuperSu app by Chainfire and Superuser by Koush. I'll use the former one here.
Note that most of these Superuser apps requires their own binaries to be flashed into the system to work with their apks.
Instructions:

Download SuperSu zip file from here. The name might be similar to  UPDATE-SuperSU-vX.YZ.zip.
Put this .zip file into the root directory (Home folder) of your Internal SD card. You can do so by firing up your favorite File Manager.

Users who used 2.1:

Easy way : Go to Settings -> Developer options and enable Advanced Reboot. Hold Power button, tap Reboot option and choose Recovery. Your device will now boot into the Recovery.
Typical way: Repeat steps 1-3 of Part #1 and then enter adb reboot recovery to boot into Recovery.

Users who used 2.2:

Repeat all the steps of 2.2 to boot into live Recovery.

Tap Install Zip. Select .zip file you downloaded and choose Yes to install the file. It will show some text as output and will eventually complete. This step will flash SuperSu app compatible binaries into your Android OS. If any unexpected error shows up, query the same into Google Search.
You may now Reboot you device.
(Update: not needed anymore) Go to Play Store and install SuperSu app.
Launch the app. If it shows a popup, choose Continue and you'll be presented with two options where you've to choose TWRP/CWM. It would cause a reboot. If you're not asked for anything by that app, then everything went fine and you're ready to use SuperSU as a superuser manager.
You may now launch this app to tweak some settings suitable to your needs. Also, check whether it has been successfully installed and working or not by using any app that requests root access, such as  these apps.

You've now successfully rooted your OnePlus One device. There are many  methods which claims to be one-click, completely automated, etc. However, I can't possibly cover all of them and wouldn't, to keep the focus at only one method. :) Anyway, some notable mentions are:

Bacon Root Toolkit
OnePlus One Toolbox
See Methods/Apps in this answer to see what popular rooting methods exist for other Android devices; some might work on OPO as well.
You can look for a solution more easily on OnePlus Forums, since it's the common shared source of information for many OnePlus One users including me.

Objective Completed.

1 Per the information received from Rob W here, it is necessary to rename the downloaded recovery to recovery.img, else the fastboot command may execute but wouldn't take effect.


Wi-Fi hotspot with access of device storage Is it possible to create Wi-Fi hotspot on Android phone with access of device storage through that network?

I'm able to create hotspot OR share storage through network, but is it possible to do it together at same time, with just one device?

Your question is not quite clear and I assume that you wanted to turn on Hotspot on your first device and connect to the Hotspot on your second device and access the Internal Storage of the first device.

What you could try is by using a File Manager app called "FX File Manager: The file manager with privacy" and it is available for download in the Google Play Store

Step 1:
Open up FX and navigate to the Web Access feature.

Step 2:
Turn on your Wi-Fi Hotspot

Step 3:
Turn on Web Access by pressing on the "Power On" button

Step 4:
A web "link" and a password will be displayed and you will need to type in this "link" on the second device (make sure you are connected to the first device's hotspot on your second device)

Step 5:
Enter the "link" displayed in Web Access and enter the password if prompted.

There you have it, you should have access to your first device's storage!


samsung galaxy s2 continually flashes and will not turn on I hope someone can please help me!! I have had my galaxy s2 for about 1 year with no problems until now.  I have never dropped the phone or gotten it wet etc...today I forgot to pay my bill and phone was shut off by ATT. Once I realized, I paid the bill and had it turned back on.  When it came back on, I could make and receive calls however I Could not connect to the internet or use facebook without turning on WIFI.

If I tried to use internet with no WIFI it said no internet connection.  I then decided to turn the phone off by pressing and holding down the power button.  I waited a few seconds then tried to turn the phone back on.  It began to boot up by flashing the normal samsung galaxy s2 screen.  Instead of fully booting, it continually flashes the samsung galaxy s2 screen over and over.  After 10+ minutes of this, I decided to remove the battery and try it that way.  I am still having the same issue!

The battery is fully charged and when I try to connect it to my computer, the computer does not reconize any decives.  I have a lot of pictures, videos and contacts that I am extremely afraid to lose because I have not copied them to my computer for quite some time....I pray that someone can please help me!!

As far as I can tell this is what you need to do. NOTE: This information comes from my research and not my experience and while this may make your phone usable you may lose your data. I suggest removing your microSD card as it is most likely where your pictures and video are:

Download ODIN from here
Register at Sammobile here
Download your firmware here
Open ODIN
Put your Firmware.tar file in the PDA box and tick PDA (DO NOT TICK OR UNTICK ANYTHING ELSE)
Attach your phone to your computer using your USB cable and click Start. Don't do anything else until it is done.


Nexus 7 (2013) OTG cable with flash drive doesn't work I just bought Nexus 7 (2013) and an OTG cable. I wanted to connect a flash drive to it. When I connected it, nothing happened.

I tried to find the folder with my flash drive contents in /etc - there was nothing about my flash drive. I searched in /storage/emulated/0 - there were contents of my internal SDcard. I downloaded some applications from Google Play (e.g. Nexus Media Importer, OTG disc manager). It worked, but only for reading.

Is there a way to write to my flash drive? Please notice that I DON'T want to ROOT. (And sorry for my poor English)

Unfortunately, root is required to be able to write to flash drives using USB OTG on the Nexus 7. You can only read files without root.


"Unfortunately, Google Play Store has stopped." Android 5.1.1

Whenever I open Play Store, I recieve the message "Unfortunately, Google Play Store has stopped.". I can't seem to make it go away, I've tried restarting my tablet and clearing cache and data of Play Store.

Disabling and uninstalling Google+ doesn't solve it.

From my personal experience, clearing the Google Play Store App cache may restore functionality. It's a very simple and quick fix that might help! :)


Device does not boot I have a OnePlus 6T i disabled my magisk hide and rebooted but it gets stuck in the animation of a red dot and two white dots revolving around it after sometime it boots in twrp.

i have uninstall.zip for magisk but the names on my sdcard are weird and when i try just putting the magisk uninstall via mtp among the crypted files using my pc it says "this device has either stopped working or been disconnected"

sideloading modules says magisk not installed

thanks

You could also wipe data via TWRP.

This had happened to me as well, just select reboot in TWRP, then change current slot to a and then click system.


When I search for apps, what determines the order in which they are ranked? When I search for apps in the Google Play Store, what is the determining factor of the order in which they are presented to me?

Is it the number of downloads? Or reviews? Or total star rating?

Thanks!

Its a combination of the three, plus more. Google play store factors in what you like (e.g. the "like installed apps" tab) the popularity (which is also the only factor of the "top [insert catetrgory that's not grossing here), how much money the app is making and its overall rating. Apps marked as editors choice have their own tab, but don't get shoved up to the top of the other categories unless they should be there for whatever reason applies.


'Failed to access device' when trying to root Samsung Galaxy S 2.3.3 with Heimdall I want to install CyanogenMod on my Samsung Galaxy S. In order to do that it needs to be rooted first of course. For that I followed the the explanation on the CyanogenMod wiki to the letter.

However, when I execute heimdall flash --kernel zImage in the command prompt I get the following feedback:

D:\SGS\Heimdall>heimdall flash --kernel zImage
Heimdall v1.3.1, Copyright (c) 2010-2011, Benjamin Dobell, Glass Echidna
http://www.glassechidna.com.au

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

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

Initialising connection...
Detecting device...
ERROR: Failed to access device. libusb error: -12

I'm unable to find any information about this error :-(.

Type: Samsung Galaxy GT-I9000
Firmware: 2.3.3
Baseband: I9000XXJVO
Kernel: 2.6.35.7-I9000XWJVH-CL184813
OS: Windows Vista

Alternatively: where can I find a clear, non-confusing, guide on how to root a Samsung Galaxy S? There seem to be hundreds out there but so far I didn't find any that worked for me with working links and clear explanation.

See the following page for downloading the required files:
http://www.theandroidsoul.com/how-to-root-xwjvh-android-2-3-3-rom-for-galaxy-s-i9000/

Install Samsung Kies but dont keep it running while flashing as it will interfere with the process. Required only for the drivers.
Download CF-Root kernel. File name – CF-Root-XW_NEE_JVH-v3.2-CWM3RFS.zip.
Unzip the above file. You will get the .tar file – “CF-Root-XW_NEE_JVH-v3.2-CWM3RFS.tar”.
Download Odin. File name – Odin3 v1.7. Extract the zip file to get Odin3 1.7.exe. Run Odin by double clicking on it.
Switch Off your phone. Wait for vibration to confirm complete switch off.
Boot your phone in Download Mode — Press and hold “VolumeDOWN + HOME key + POWER button” together.
Connect your phone to PC now. You’ll notice “Added! !” message in the message box.
On Odin, click the “PDA” box and select the .tar file you got in step 2 — CF-Root-XW_NEE_JVH-v3.2-CWM3RFS.tar
Do NOT select any “.pit” file in the “PIT” box, and make sure “Repartition” button is NOT checked.
Leave the “Auto Reboot” and “F. Reset Time” buttons checked.
Click the Start button on Odin to begin installing the CF Root kernel.
After the CF Root is installed, phone will restart.
Your phone is rooted now. Note that surperuser app is there.


How can I tell whether I am booted into the A or B partition? Android can install to an A or a B partition. This seems to be a default these days. How can I tell which one I am booted into using adb?
I am using LineageOS 17.1.

The right-most way (bootctl)
The command to provide this information is bootctl. As root (having run adb root), you can use this like this,
$ adb shell bootctl get-current-slot

Note this is the slot's number, you resolve that to the letter with,
$ adb shell 'bootctl get-suffix $(bootctl get-current-slot)'

See also: How can I boot to a specific partition with ADB?, which also uses bootctl
Using getvar
$ adb shell /bin/getprop ro.boot.slot_suffix
_b

Other ways
From /proc/bootloader_log
This command from adb shell
$ grep -i 'DEBUG: boot_' /proc/bootloader_log

Or like this,
adb shell "grep -i 'DEBUG: boot_' /proc/bootloader_log"

It return output like this,
avb_slot_verify.c:325: DEBUG: boot_b: Loading entire partition.

I believe that's in reference to the b partition that it's booting from.
From /proc/cmdline
You can also parse this out of /proc/cmdline
$ adb shell 'cat /proc/cmdline | tr " " "\n" | grep -i slot'
androidboot.slot_suffix=_b