swiping music player does not kill the process? Swiping programs from the process-list should kill/shut them down, right?

I listened to music and then swiped the music player away but the music was still playing.

How come?

Does swiping not kill processes? if so, how can i close them correctly?

Taking Google's Music app as an example (I would wager most others are implemented similarly), there are two distinct parts that constitute the app:

The foreground processes and tasks that the user interacts with
The background service that actually handles music playback

Point 2 can be verified in this Android Developer's blog post wherein it is stated:

  Music playback runs in a service to allow it to continue operating after the user leaves the music application.

This distinction ends up being important when you remove an app from the recent tasks list. As covered in my answer to another question, the following is what happens when you swipe an app out of the list, as stated by Android engineer Dianne Hackborn:

  Actually, removing an entry in recent tasks will kill any background
  processes that exist for the process. It won't directly causes
  services to stop, however there is an API for them to find out the
  task was removed to decide if they want this to mean they should stop.
  This is so that removing say the recent task of an e-mail app won't
  cause it to stop checking for e-mail.

In this case, that means that the foreground tasks of the Music app are being stopped, but the background service (evidently) chooses to continue running. This is a product of the way the app is implemented, so you simply won't be able to stop music playback by swiping the app out of the list. Instead, you can try the following from the recent apps list (also covered in the above linked answer):

  If you really want to completely stop an app, you can long press on recent tasks to go to app info, and hit force stop there.


Unable to mount /system as read-write I want to modify a file under /system. The problem is that is read-only, and even with root I cannot set it as read-write.

I've tried the following:

Root Explorer (the automatic button)
A one click app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blogspot.superthomaslab.mountsystemrorw)
The following commands, on Terminal Emulator: su and after that mount -o rw,remount /system. Along with that some variants (specifiying -t, using -rw, mount -o rw,remount /system /system)

Some useful informations:

The device is a Redmi 3
Using android 5.1.1, on MIUI 6.4.7 (china developer version)
I have root access, and enabled it for the apps mentioned above
Bootloader is unlocked
No SD card
Output of mount | grep system: /dev/block/dm-0 /system ext4 ro,seclabel,relatime,discard,data=ordered 0 0

I would like to manage the /system folder directly from the phone. I'm pretty hopeless, I've tried googling 2 hours for a working solution. Thanks in advance.

I've found the source of the problem asking in the MIUI forums, the boot image will not accept a modified /system.

You have to use the adb interface: adb devices then adb disable-verity.

Disclaimer: I'm not responsible for any damage caused by these operations.


Samsung S3 - 40mb free ram of 1.5 gigs? My S3 has been lagging while I play in games or use aps. I've read that free ram is not supposed to be linked with lag but it seems that it must be. While in one of the games I play, my keyboard will not load, or will close randomly. I assume this is due to lack of ram to open it.

I have very few aps and almost no background processes. How is 1.44 gigs of my 1.5gigs of my ram being consumed?

on the Play Store there are several utilities to clean Phone and speed up processes. My favourite is this:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cleanmaster.mguard

Your excessive use of system RAM is (maybe) due to some persistently active process on your phone. Follow this guide to see yours (and maybe evaulate a uninstallation of some):
http://www.wikihow.com/See-What-Apps-Are-Currently-Running-on-Android

By the way, can you please tell us more information about your Android version?

Best regards,

Luca


Are Bosspy and Copy10 fake/scam apps? I want to install it on my daughters phone to monitor her activity.
I've tried researching it myself and I see a lot of reviews and posts in several forums saying they are legit apps, but I suspect they are all fake posters.

Was hoping someone here could provide some insight, thanks!

I couldn't find much real info/review about those apps. Some reviews say that they are fake, but one thing I can conclude is, both apps are not available on Google Play Store. As far as I can see, both apps provide their installer on their websites only (links are not provided to prevent spam, since it's easy to find them). As a user who often installs 3rd-party app from unknown source, I'd say to be very careful with these kinds of app, as they could be malicious, even though they are from their "official sites".

If you really need parental control apps on Android, it'd be better to try some that are already reviewed:

tom's GUIDE - 10 Best Parental Control Apps
your sphere - 10 Android Parental Control Apps.

All of these apps have been reviewed, and they are on Google Play Store, which is "more" secured. (Not saying that all apps on Play Store are safe, but it tends to, since Google did remove malicious apps on there)

Conclusion: in the end, it's up to you to believe which is which. If you can trust the developers, then you might just use it.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated to the blog/article and all of the apps at all.


Increase RAM through SD Card In Windows, it's possible to use SD card as RAM.

Is something similar possible in Android (with and without root)?

Yes it is. As on Linux, it's called Swap. It might be useful on devices with minimal RAM (512MB and less), but unlinkely on those coming with 1GB and more.

There are apps available helping you to configure swapping. You find most of them searching for swapper.


Storage and downloading files I bought a new phone and everytime I save a picture from Twitter, the browser or a bbm profile it always saves in my phone storage not my SD card. I was wondering if there's a way to make them save instantly on the SD card and show in the gallery.

I use a Huawei Honor 3c running Jelly Bean 4.2.2

In your settings, under storage, there should be a option to change your default write disk. If you change that to SD card, it should save your media to the card.


Create a playlist of Offline videos in YouTube YouTube's offline feature allows downloading selected videos so that they can be viewed later, without internet.

I downloaded few of these from different publishers and now have set of such videos in my device.

However, I could not find an option to create a playlist of these downloaded videos through YouTube app.

My intention is to create my own playlist from the set of downloaded videos.

Is this possible?

I suggest you download tubemate app. This downloads youtube videos to your device. Then,  you can easily make Playlist from downloaded videos.


web browser / plugin with mouse hover mode I'm having problems with websites where the only way to access a page is by hovering over a menu. Is there any way of doing that in android? Maybe an app which allows the screen to be used as if a touch pad on a laptop.

Thanks

Smartphones and tablets have an obvious problem with events like mouseover:  When there’s no mouse cursor, there’s no way to mouse over controls.

Some techniques may be applied as a work around, but it's hard to have them working decently.

Testing: with minimal success

Don't know what browser are you using, but with my phone:

  Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.3; en-us; U8510 Build/HuaweiU8510)

  AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko)

  Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1

If I long press the menu that contains a sub-menu presented with mouseover, it opens after about 3 seconds (even though, every two out of three, the click for the main menu gets triggered).

Ps:
The website used to test it was developed by me, so I know for sure that there's no support for mobile phones being used.


How can I enable mobile data periodically with Tasker? I tried juicedefender and it does exactly what I want, but since I already have tasker running all the time I am looking for a tasker recipe.

I would like the accomplish the following behaviour:

Disable mobile data when screen locked and there is no transfer. If there is an ongoing transfer, allow it to complete before disabling mobile data. Enable mobile data only in periodic intervals of 15 minutes.

A quite close profile is described at Tasker-Profile (Google-Translate English variant here). I will try to give an abstract here:

Basic Data On/Off

Tasks

You will need two tasks for this:

enable mobile data:

Net -> Auto Sync (set ON)
Net -> Mobile Data (set ON)

disable mobile data:

Net -> Auto Sync (set ON)
Net -> Mobile Data (set ON)

You may probably skip the "Auto Sync" part (especially if Wifi comes into play), I mentioned it just for completeness. Also, the Tasker -> PSAFE variable can be utilized to check whether the device is in power-safe mode (~ 1) or not (!~ 1).

Conditions

These are the harder part. As for screen on/off, it's easy: Event -> Display -> Display unlocked for active display, Event -> Display -> Display off for display being switched off. The harder part is to check for still running transfers -- I don't know how to do this explicitly, but it probably can be done implicitly via above mentioned %PSAFE Tasker variable: With a running transfer, the device is less likely to be in power-safe mode. You probably need to experiment with this. Connect these conditions with the appropriate tasks to create profiles.

Periodical Checks

For these you need to add a variable to above tasks: %LCD, giving us the state of the display. So in Variable -> Variable Set Name=%LCD -- in 1. set to 1 (on), in 2. to 0 (off). Now create an additional profile:

Time: Repeat 15min
State -> Variable Value %LCD ~ 0
State -> Variable Value %PSAFE ~ 1

So it runs all 15min, but only when the display is turned off and power-safe active. We also need an additional Task:

Net -> Mobile Data: ON
Net -> Auto Sync: ON
Tasker -> Wait: 1min
Net -> Auto Sync: OFF
Net -> Mobile Data: OFF

Adjust to your needs.

Checking for possible transfers in progress

Again, I'm not sure how to check whether there's an ongoing transfer. A possible solution can be found in Google Groups, but I couldn't verify this. Though, as you might want to try it out, this is the basic extract:

  It's a Profile I created on my Droid to experiment with the concept of watching 3G traffic levels.

Profile: Net Traf 3G (62)
Priority: 2 CoolDown: 0
Time:  Every 10m
State: Mobile Network [ 2G:On 3G:On 3G - HSPA:On 4G:On ]
Enter: Read3gTraf (63)
A1: Test [Type:File Name Data:/sys/class/net/ppp0 Store Result In:%tg_exists Continue     Task After Error:On]
A2: Read Line [File:/sys/class/net/ppp0/statistics/rx_bytes Line:1 To Var:%TG_RX] Read Line [ %tg_exists Is Set ]
A3: Variable Set [Name:%TG_RX_CHG To:%TG_RX-%TG_RX_OLD Do Maths:On Append:Off]
A4: Variable Set [Name:%TG_RX_OLD To:%TG_RX Do Maths:Off Append:Off]
A5: Stop [With Error:Off] Stop [ %SCREEN ~ off ]
A6: Variable Set [Name:%TG_RX_RATE To:ceil(%TG_RX_CHG/1024) Do Maths:On Append:Off]
A7: Notify [Title:3g traffic active Text:%TG_RX_RATE kb since last check Icon:<icon> Number:0 Permanent:Off]

  %TG_RX_RATE will contain the kb received in the last 10 minutes, and can be used in a Context condition.
  If my phone is just sitting around, the background level network traffic is less than 20 kb per minute.  Surfing the web, it's 100 kb or way more per minute.  Your mileage may vary.
  Since /sys is really a virtual folder, the /sys/class/net/ppp0 folder only exists when the 3G interface is turned on.  When I turn on wifi, the dir /sys/class/net/tiwlan0 is created instead.
  (So by changing the dir path, I can also watch wifi traffic too.)


How do I disable GMail? Yes, this has been asked before, but neither really addresses my concern, and I don't have reputation enough to add comments to existing questions.

I've bought the cheapest Android 4 tablet with Google Play that I could find to have a device in the kitchen that syncs the family members schedules and displays them all in one place, edit shopping lists that sync with my mobile, shows the recipe I'm following while cooking etc.

As all family members are going to use it, I want syncronization of calendars, and I want to use my Google-account for which I have already purchased apps for my phone as the Google account in Google Play on the tablet, but  I do not, however, want the whole family to be able to access my email. So how can I turn off Gmail access?

As noted in the answers to the questions you linked to it isn't possible to just sign out of the Gmail application and not other Google services.

In order to achieve the functionality you want though have you considered using an application lock such as APP Lock? With this you can require a PIN to open the Gmail app. Whilst it doesn't turn off email access it will prevent the whole family from being able to access your mail.

N.B. If you have kids using it as well then it might be worth requiring a PIN in order to purchase anything on the Play store, this might prevent some nasty surprises appearing on your credit card bill. You can see how to do this here.


In-app purchase got cancelled, but money debited from bank Yesterday I was trying to make an in-app purchase (via netbanking as the payment option). After making the payment from the bank site, I was being returned to the app, when I was told "purchase cancelled". However, the money got deducted from my bank account. The transaction details in playstore web site shows that the purchase was "cancelled", and not "refunded". What do I need to do now to get my money back?

Please suggest.

If it's banks payment error you get refund in around 6 days. Or later you can ask the developer for a refund. You can mail the developer to his email given in developer details


Missing Keyboard on Lock Screen I got a system message that the keyboard had crashed. Then my keyboard won't restart. And now that my phone is locked, I can't unlock it to try any of the normal fixes, such has disabling and enabling the keyboard. Yes, I have restarted the phone, that's why it's locked now.

I need to save some of the contacts, so a simple factory reset won't work. ADB does seem to be enabled, but I don't know how export the contacts, or install a keyboard.

How can I either restore the keyboard, or export the contacts.

First things first. There's something that I'm confused about. You said that the keyboard crashed, but did you try turning the phone off and restarting it? That should reinstate the keyboard and you should be able to unlock upon restart.

You can also remove the battery from the phone to "kill it" and power it up again, in case it is needed to accomplish the above mentioned. Although removing the battery would be rendered irrelevant on phones with concealed (non removable) batteries (without opening the case, ofcourse).

In any case, to backup contacts from your phone, you can use the command "adb pull" to retrieve the following file:

  adb pull /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases/contacts2.db

https://chombium.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/android-how-to-backup-contacts-and-sms-messages/

EDIT: You will probably get a permission denied error, in which case you would need root access to do this. Post that, you could also try "adb shell" and copy the file to /sdcard


Opera off-road mode: Automatically switch on for mobile but off for wifi I like Opera's off-road mode, especially the fact that I can disable loading images specifically for it, but when on WiFi, I have to manually disable it, which is an extra step.

Is it possible to set Opera to use off-road mode for mobile data, but switch it off when on WiFi?

Note: I've tagged this with Opera Mobile because only Opera Mobile and Opera Mini tags are available, but I'm talking about Opera for Android.

No. There is no auto off-road mode in Opera.

My suggestion is that you keep both Opera for Android and Opera Mini on your device. When you're on mobile data, use Opera Mini. Else, use Opera for Android with off-road mode off.


Is Android Device Manager really useless? Android Device Manager is supposed to locate your phone and do remote lock and remote wipe. Problem is the phone can be switched to aeroplane mode or shutdown without unlocking it with pattern / pin / password.

Data connection will be lost seconds after the phone is stolen. So what's the point?

There is two parts to it,

Cell phone is lost : Lets assume its lying somewhere or someone found it. In this case you can use the Device Manager to locate the location.
Cell phone is stolen: This guys are smart, they know the technology, they know the hacks. They will switch-off with cell phone as soon as they can. They will wipe out our data and most probably brick the phone. Not sure, but I think they even change the IMEI number to make it completely untraceable. In this case Device Manager or most security software is useless.


Store webpage as PDF using tasker I am sending a post request to a site.

The output site should be saved as PDF (similar to printing the page), so that I can download many online pages as PDF and store.

No authentication.

Example:-
www.website.com/test.php
post params: link=test&test=true

As far as I know, tasker can't convert any web page (or any document) to pdf. An alternative approach can be letting a third party site to make the pdf and then downloading it with tasker.

After a little googling, I found  http://www.web2pdfconvert.com.  This may serve your need.


Recent vs Running vs Downloaded apps What happens when you:

Swipe out an app from Recent section?
Stop an running app by going into Running section?
Force stop an app by going into Downloaded section?

Even if you remove an app from Recent section and stop it by going to Running section, you can see the Force Stop button is enabled for app in Downloaded section. Why is it so? What kind of processes are running for that app?

Partly answering your question: What actually happens when you swipe an app out of the recent apps list? So basically:

would be like tapping the back-button from within the app until you're out of it (as opposed to just hitting the "home" button)
means killing the app by sending it a "friendly exit signal"
IMHO the same as the previous item (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not entirely sure with this)
Force-Stop would forcefully remove all of the app's processes on system level (here the app would get no chance to interact, so it cannot even save its state or data. In easy terms: all system resources will be removed from it, so it can no longer continue to run)

For further information, also see:

Closing applications
What is the right way to close apps in Android?
How can I stop applications and services from running?
What does the “Force stop” button mean?


Turn off notification sounds and vibrations while allowing phone calls to trigger sound and/or vibration on Nexus 5 I have a Nexus 5 running Android 4.3.2. I want to turn off all sound and vibration notifications for all apps, while allowing phone calls to trigger sound and/or vibrations. Is there a way to do this?

I have tried following the advice at How can I turn off Notification Sounds and leave phone sounds on but the answers don't work. There's no separate slider for notifications, and the AudioManager app doesn't shut off vibrations. I have tried the official Google answer but there's no setting, Vibrate -> Never, and setting notifications to silent does not stop the vibrations. I've tried the individual app settings, too, but there's no setting for vibration in the official twitter app, for example.

I can stop specific apps from sending any notifications at all, but that's not what I want. I want the notifications to show up in the drop-down, I just don't want any sounds or vibrations.

This is an issue I have as well, it lies with the apps, whose settings override the default ringer and vibration settings. In order to completely disable vibrations you will have to disable them in Settings > Sound, and individually in each app.

Twitter app you will have to go to Settings >  and there is a Notification Settings sections that allows you to disable vibration.

As an aspiring developer, it will be my goal to default to system settings but allow for customization, as it should be...


How can I get a vanilla Android device? OK I'm about to buy an Android phone for development, but I will try to keep this question from becoming a shopping recommendation.

I want to have vanilla Android on my phone (i.e. not Sense or TouchWiz or something similar). Can I just buy a random phone and somehow revert it back to vanilla Android? Is there any risk of compatibility problems or hardware problems when doing that?

An easier option is to buy a phone that comes with vanilla Android, but the options are limited. As far as I know (i.e. not much), the only phones with pure Android are Nexus One, Nexus S, ADP and ADP2. Is that really it?

Yes, you should buy a Nexus One or a Nexus S. If you buy another phone like e.g. HTC Wildfire, you can't easily get the "vanilla" Android.


How do Android apps implement the share button? I was wondering how Android applications and Android implements the share button and share mechanism. For instance, when I hit the share button on YouTube, a list off apps to share to pops up. How is this list determined? Is there a specific "share" intent, and then all spots capable of sharing the type of intent provided in the intent extras show up? What is the technical name of the design pattern used to implement this? Thanks.

I'm not a dev, so I just can give a raw explanation: apps declare in their Manifest which Mimetypes they understand and willing to respond to on share actions. For this they define so called "intent filters", e.g.:

<intent-filter>
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.SEND" />
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
    <data android:mimeType="application/*" />
    <data android:mimeType="audio/*" />
    <data android:mimeType="image/*" />
    <data android:mimeType="message/*" />
    <data android:mimeType="multipart/*" />
    <data android:mimeType="text/*" />
    <data android:mimeType="video/*" />
</intent-filter>

So whenever you hit the "share" button, the content-to-share is evaluated and matched against apps having declared their willingness to receive the format.

Sources:

Intent Filter to capture all sharing Intents (StackOverflow)
Receiving Simple Data from Other Apps (developer.android.com)


How do I turn off the cascade of tones that happens every time I end a call? I have a Galaxy S phone, and every time a call ends it plays a cascading series of 4 tones.  Regardless of how my phone's ringtone volume is set - e.g. even if I have it on silent mode - these tones play.  It's especially annoying when I'm wearing my headset, which seals against my ear, making these tones much louder than the call was.  I have to jerk my headset away from my ear unless I want to endure it, and I don't like to complain, but it's f-ing LOUD.  Is there any way that I can disable this end of call sound?  It doesn't matter which headset I use; this is a function of the phone itself.  Can't find anything in the manual about it, either.

On my phone (Galaxy S) it's in Settings -> Call settings -> All calls -> Call status tones -> Call end tone.


Stuck rooting HTC device I am trying to root my HTC One S following the instructions on HTCDev

I generated an Unlock_code and everything works well until Step 13.
In Step 12, I typed

fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin

in cmd which returned the expected result of:

...\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
sending 'unlocktoken' (0 KB)...
OKAY [  0.148s]
writing 'unlocktoken'...
(bootloader) unlock token check successfully
OKAY [  0.016s]
finished. total time: 0.171s

According to HTCDev, I sould now see a disclaimer, but my smartphone remains in the Fastboot USB menue.

My smartphone should be connected to my pc since I can see it in cmd

\platform-tools>fastboot devices
SH23XW403779    fastboot

Any ideas? Thanks

After relocking and unlocking again, it worked for me.


How can I mount an ext4-formatted SD card with correct permissions (with root)? I see some mentions here of creating an ext4-formatted SD card, but no guide. This closely-related question suggests there is no way to do it, but my question differs in that my phone is specifically rooted.

I formatted my card as ext4 (GUID partition-table); my Cyanogenmod phone mounted it at /mnt/fuse/sdcard1. I followed instructions here to mount the card at /storage/sdcard1, by creating the following script at /data/local/userinit.sh

#!/system/bin/sh
REALMNT=/mnt/fuse/sdcard1_real
if ! [ -d "$REALMNT" ]; then
  mkdir "$REALMNT" || exit 1
fi
mount -t ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk1p1 "$REALMNT"
sdcard "$REALMNT" /storage/sdcard1 1023 1023 &

I restarted and attempting to copy a file (using ES File Explorer) and paste it into its parent directory, which failed:

/storage/sdcard1/foo/bar.mp3: open failed: EACCES (Permission denied).

I can actually play the file fine, so I can open it. FWIW, when I try copying from the original mount point (/mnt/fuse/sdcard1), I get a slightly different error:

Failed to copy the file bar.mp3

I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S3 with Cyanogenmod 10.2.0-i9300.

==EDIT==

su
ls -l /mnt/fuse
drwxrwxr-x media_rw media_rw   2014-03-04 22:08 sdcard1

That was all. There is no sdcard1_real in this directory, so I suppose the script is failing?

==EDIT2==

I tried modifying the script to troubleshoot. The script begins fine, but then fails on mkdir "$REALMNT" with the error /data/local/userinit.sh[6]: : not found.

==EDIT3==

I know that the script doesn't work, so fixing it might solve my question, but I thought the following was interesting. I formatted my SD card in my Linux computer, and transferred some files to it. Oddly enough, permission errors only occur in the subdirectories that I created. In the root of the partition (via /storage/sdcard1), I already have write permission.

This was supposedly fixed several months ago, but people are still reporting problems. I can read items on the card, but do not have write permission. To fix it, I combined strategies from a few sources.

Partition card with MS-DOS partition table and ext4 filesystem. I used GParted on my (Linux) desktop computer.
Insert the card into your phone. (You will probably not have write access now.)
Open the terminal emulator, installed by default in Cyanogenmod.
Type in the following (I recommend WiFi Keyboard for large blocks of text). Give the emulator root privileges when it requests them.

The $ and # indicate prompts, so don't type them in.

$ su
# chown media_rw:media_rw /mnt/media_rw/sdcard1
# chmod g+w /mnt/media_rw/sdcard1

This changes the SD card's permissions. The owner and group change from system to media_rw, and it also gives the group write access.


How do I read a vCard? so someone tells me i need to call a few people.  they send me a vCard called contacts.vcf.  i import it.  i open my phone app and start to dial, but wait...i don't know their names.

How do i look up a recent vCard on my phone?  How do i know who's contact i've been sent?  when i navigate to a .vcf file, i can't open it.  all i can do is import it.  polaris office won't import/open it.  is there an android txt editor i can use to peruse a vCard?

yours truly,
Confused by vCards
Note 3, kit kat

You should be able to open a vCard file in any basic editor. Navigate using a file manager to open up the vcard in a text editor. It should display the contents.


Sent messages not synced on first install of new SMS apps I just installed Textra to try out as a new primary SMS/MMS app. However, I've noticed that none of my previously-sent messages seem to have been imported into Textra. I see most (if not all) of my received messages, but none of my recently sent ones are there.

I recall having something similar happen when I downloaded Android Messages, to try out as an alternative to Samsung's built-in app.

Is there any way to get this all synced up, so I can have my complete history (at least, everything from since I started using this phone) in whichever SMS app I end up choosing?

Platform: Android 7.0 on Samsung Galaxy S8+

Software Versions:

Android Messages 2.2.076
Samsung Messages 4.2.00.143
Textra SMS 3.37

Try this work around

Disable Textra as default SMS app
Take a backup of your stock SMS app messages using SMS backup and restore
Set Textra as default messaging app
Restore messages using SMS backup and restore backup, which you just created
All the messages  (before you installed Textra ) should be available now on your Textra or alternative app


Is it normal that most or all rooting apps get so many virus warnings? For example, here are some results from VirusTotal:

TowelRoot
The variants of Framaroot (1, 2, 3)

Why is that? Can anyone point to a clean rooting app?

Yes, it's normal. Think about what a rooting app does. It exploits a vulnerability in the operating system to get elevated privileges, and drops a new binary so that it will continue to have those privileges, completely subverting the security of the system. In a way, a rooting app is a virus. You certainly wouldn't want to install one by accident, so it's correct that your antivirus should warn about it.

If you want a "clean" method of rooting, the only way is to use the official method, by unlocking your bootloader and using the recovery to root.


How can I install Marshmallow? Apparently there's this really fun flappy bird game built into Marshmallow that's even better than the one in Lollipop. I've got a Nexus 5 and really want to play it ASAP. How do I go about doing this?

I'm looking for both a Multirom-compatible zip and the conventional way which involves wiping your device.

How can I upgrade my Nexus 5 to the latest and greatest version of Android?

Conventional Way
This is what you want if you have a Nexus device but you've never heard of/don't use MultiROM. You should have an unlocked bootloader. If you don't have this, take a look at the useful CM guide to unlock your bootloader.
Also, make sure you have adb and fastboot installed and know how to use it. Backup any and all data beforehand (doing a nandroid backup is probably best)

Grab the Marshmallow factory image from here. The Nexus 5's codename is hammerhead and you're looking for the 6.0.0 (MRA58K) file.
Check the checksum of your downloaded file against the one listed on the page just to be safe. This ensures the download went smoothly and you don't accidentally flash corrupted version onto your device
Untar the downloaded file, extracting recovery.img, bootloader.img, system.img, etc.
Connect your phone to your computer via the microusb cable. Use adb devices to make sure  adb is working fine (turn Developer mode and USB debugging on first).
Use adb reboot bootloader to enter fastboot mode
In Linux/OSX, cd to the folder containing the extracted files and run sh ./flash-all.sh to flash everything. If you're running Windows, double-click the flash-all.bat file.
Your device should automatically reboot to your new Marshmallow system. (Note that the first boot might be agonisingly long)

MultiROM
Here's what you want if you use MultiROM. This method has the benefit of allowing you to keep your old system and all your existing data. You can then easily switch between Marshmallow and whatever you were running previously.
You should have an unlocked bootloader and a custom recovery like TWRP installed, of course.

Grab the MultiROM-flashable zip from this XDA thread. (You may also want to grab and flash the radio.img if you didn't install the Developer Previews.)
Reboot to your custom recovery and add a new ROM in the MultiROM menu.
Use adb sideload hammerhead_mra58k.zip (or adb push beforehand) to transfer the zip file to your device
After installation, reboot and choose the Marshmallow ROM to boot into


Wear 2.0 update can't voice text I have a Moto 360 Sport that just updated to android wear 2.0. Since the update, when I say, "Ok Google, text Joe Hello World" the watch says, "Oops, I can't do that right now."  This worked fine before the update. I have given the watch permissions to my contacts and Google accounts since it asked. The same problem happens when I tell it to make a note. The phone is connected when I try that.

When I go to the watches contacts app, select a person, and select text, after listening to my input the text gets stuck on a spinning icon until I give up five minutes later. Phone call works thought from the same app.

Anyone else lose text functionality from the update? Any fixes?

I found the solution in another form and will post it here.
https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/android-wear/gHxkMCzX-q8/Ju9ciHIICgAJ

  Joe Ellett said:
  On the watch:
  Settings, Unpair with phone.
  Do not set up the watch yet.

  On the phone:
  In Android Wear use the Disconnect... option.

  In Android Wear, use Settings, Device settings and touch the watch name, Touch UNPAIR WATCH.

  Settings, Bluetooth. If you still see the watch, touch Forget... the watch so it no longer appears in the list of paired devices.

  Settings, Device, Apps, select Google Play Services, Storage, Clear cache and Clear data. Uninstall updates.

  Settings, Device, Apps, select Google App, Storage, Clear cache and Clear data. Also Uninstall updates.

  Settings, Device, Apps, select Android Wear, Storage, Clear cache and Clear data. Also Uninstall updates.

  Play Store, Apps, My apps, touch the Update all button.

  Let all updates complete. This may take several hours. The best thing to do is to put your phone on its charger overnight, with the phone having a steady WiFi Internet connection. Double check the next morning by going to My Apps again.
  Reboot.

  Now set up the watch as if you had just unboxed it. Do NOT try to pair the watch manually, let the AW setup process do it for you.

  Let all updates complete. This may take an hour or so. If your watch is one or more major releases behind it may take several hours. The best thing to do is to put your watch on its charger next to your phone on its charger, with the phone having a steady WiFi Internet connection.

  Reboot watch and phone.

I had to tweak these instructions slightly on my LG G5. Instead of uninstalling updates on Android Wear, I had to uninstall and re-install, since it did not come with my phone. I skipped the step to clear Google App, so that may be an unnecessary step. I also skipped rebooting my phone and watch as the last step, since it was already working by that point.

Also fair warning, uninstalling updates to Google Play Services caused some of my other Google apps (calendar, inbox, etc) to start crashing and throwing errors. To be expected but when I updated Google Play Services again it lost my chrome bookmarks somehow.


How to use Wifi re-installation code? I've a Samsung Galaxy Ace but my Wifi is always not in range.

Google Helps state:

  Use WiFi driver re-installation Code *#*#526#*#*...Reinstall the
  firmware for Wifi. Try it on other Routers as well  this is a common
  problem with Androids. as i see (seen in lot of forums people
  discussing Wifi problem of Androids) My cousin bought the same Handset
  and he is having same problem. If it doesn't help show it to your
  vendor from where you have brought it

How do I use the WiFi driver re-installation Code *#*#526#*#* ?

These are called dialer codes, so naturally try typing it into your Dialer as if it were a phone number.  I just did it on my Vibrant and got this:

WlanTest Engineering Mode
Status...
Unloading Normal Driver and Loading Mfg Driver

Driver loading successful


I used AutoRec on my LG Gpad 7.0 LTE and it wiped my storage When I used AutoRec, a recovery tool on my Android tablet, it instantly shut down and whenever I connect it to a PC, it shows up as a removable storage device and there are only 2 remaining folders titled /Images and /verinfo with 8.26 MB on the storage in total.

What happened? Any assistance? I think I completely formatted my tablet and I hope that isn't the case.

Change camera mode PTP to media mode MTP type connection...then you will be able to see the storages of internal & external as  removable device ..
Go to setting > usb connection
There you will find the option to change connection mode


Backup to Google Drive - Disabled by your admin. Why does my device show is? It's preventing me from restoring my backed up apps. I'm trying to restore my apps that are backed up to Drive. I  keep getting this (screenshot) and cannot change so I can restore my apps. I even did a factory reset and was not offered the option to restore my apps. I don't have any idea what was done to make it return this now about the admin. It's my personal phone and nobody else uses it. I don't have a school or business account either which is where the help tells you to go and change admin.

Any help please there to resolve this. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

From Google Product forums , this has been widely reported by Nougat users and is a false alarm

Reply from Google help yesterday (08 Aug)

  We just received a feedback from the Android team. The error that you are encountering is actually being displayed by accident for some Android Nougat users. It has no effect on your data being backed up or not. The status of backup being on or off is correctly captured in the first 'Backup & Reset' screen, and can be controlled by the user. For now, you can safely ignore the error message until a fix is rolled out by the Android team which should be around September 21, 2017.

(Emphasis Supplied)

Other users have reported that they have been able to restore despite the warning


ICE Emergency Contacts on Emergency Dialer Screen On my Samsung Galaxy S 4, I can add contacts to the "ICE - emergency contacts" group. When I initiate the emergency dialer, there are four gray buttons with plus signs. Pressing any one of them brings up a list of the contacts I added to that group.

Each of the buttons acts the same. I would think that you should be able to assign one contact per button and have the button show a name or relation.

Is it possible to do this? How?

Once you hit the gray box & that ICE list pops up, I believe you just have to select a contact from that list in order to assign that person/phone number to the box.

Just be careful with assigning contacts to the gray boxes because it can be very easy to pocket dial these people. In case you're interested in removing someone from the gray box, you select the menu button while on the "Emergency Dialer" screen & it'll give the option to remove the contact from the gray box.

Hope it helps.


What is the difference between Peak schedule/Off-peak schedule in Android mail application? In Android mail app, what is the difference between Peak schedule and Off-peak schedule

When you setup a Mail for Exchange, the default synchronization mode is Direct Push.  With Direct Push, the device maintains an open connection so that information is delivered to the device as it becomes available.  The setting for Direct Push in Mail for Exchange is called “Always on.”  The alternative is a Scheduled Push mode where the device is set to check for new messages at a set interval.

Though Direct Push offers more up-to-the-minute message delivery, for some users, increased battery consumption may be a trade-off.  If your battery is not lasting as long as you would like, set a Scheduled Push interval by changing the Peak sync schedule and Off-peak sync schedule in Mail for Exchange.

So you can setup high-frequent mail checks with peak schedules for the time periods when you get more emails and off peak schedules when you normally do not receive more emails, (e.g. after office hours.)

Should you require how-to on setting up the schedules, refer this article.


My screen got broken, how to see on the computer what I'm doing in my device? My Android device screen got broken and I can't see what I'm doing. That's the only wrong thing with my device, the rest is apparently working OK. Is there any way to send my device screen to my computer?
I don't want to work blindly anymore!

You don't have to continue working blindly, you can use Droid@Screen: it shows the screen of a real or emulated Android device on a computer running Windows, Mac OS or Linux.

Droid@Screen is a stand-alone Java Swing GUI application that shows the screen of an Android device on a computer. Its author says that its typical usage is showing an app demo or during training, but it also fits your case.

In order to use it, you need the following to be installed in your computer:

Java 6 (at least)
Android SDK, installed and configured.
Environment variable ANDROID_HOME (or ANDROID_SDK_HOME) pointing to the Android SDK installation directory. (Optional)
USB driver for the target Android device installed.

Note: USB Debugging must be enabled on your device. (Thanks @JasonC for the heads up)

I have been using it with my Galaxy Nexus and I must say that despite a little lag between what happens in the phone and what is displayed in the computer screen (2-4 s), it does what it says. You don't even need to be rooted for that!

You can download it from the author's site, where you also can watch a complete video and text instructions about its installation and usage.


Insufficient memory message in error I have a brand new 32GB SD card barely used, my phone even shows that it has 31.23GB of storage available, however when attempting to download an app it says I do not have enough memory. I have double checked that the SD card is the default storage on my device, but to no avail. Please help, I just got the memory card and can't even use it.

Google Play downloads app data to internal storage first then installs the app to external, hence the low storage message. There is no way to change this without rooting and using a symbolic link.


Best backup strategy (apks and app data)? I would like to backup my phone a regular basis. TWRP provides a full system backup and recovery option. This is fine but too inflexible for me and bound to the phone itself.

I want to backup all apks and its' data from a running system (not recovery) and restore it back to the/different phone(s) with different Android Versions (6, 7.1).

This is what i already did: As far as i can say. It doesn't work.

adb backup -f /path/to/backup-file -apk -shared -all -nosystem
adb restore /path/to/backup-file

Titanium Backup would be best option, you can have scheduled backups and it has worked consistently for years on my devices. Another option would be Helium by ClockworkMod but both apps require premium to use the automatic backup option.


How to leave a Whatsapp group without informing the entire group? Gradually we realize that some Whatsapp groups are useless because what could be an important post is lost between tons of offtopic silly videos and images.

Mute the group still shows new images about new conversations.

Leaving the group creates discomfort among the participants.

How to leave a WhatsApp group without the other participants knowing?

Or is there any way to hide the group from the conversation list?

What you are asking has not been implemented yet.

  How to leave a WhatsApp group without the other participants knowing?

Sorry. They will know when you leave: "Rogério Dec has left the group" will be there for all to see and know.

  Or is there any way to hide the group from the conversation list?

Partially. If you archive the group, it will disappear (actually go to the bottom) from the conversation list. However, when someone in the group sends a message, it will be seen again. Archive it again.


How to mount userdata_b in stot_a in A/B partition device? I have a Tissot (mi a1) with TWRP dual booted by separating vendor_a, vendor_b, userdata_a, userdata_b. It is dual booted by cosmicdan's twrp with Resurrection remix ( slot_a) official and Dotos official ( slot_b). I want to mount userdata_b in resurrection remix or vice verse.
I have already tried these steps by no result.

create a folder named 'data2' in " /data/local/tmp/data2" .
open terminal.
run su.
Enter "mount -o rw /dev/block/mmcblk0p52 /data/local/tmp/data2" (as 52 is my userdata_b partition).
no error showing but nothing mounted.

Is there any way to mount this?

Go to android update if it's update is available than the phone would have to be connected to a power source while it rebooted to recovery mode and actually flashed the update.All in, you're talking 30 minutes to an hour to install an update, and nobody has time for that. Even disregarding that hurdle, many users would just ignore the update out of fear for the bugs and UI changes it might bring, leaving their systems dangerously exposed to malware and hacks.

When you take a new phone out of its box, the operating system is installed on the first hard drive (partition "A"). When an update becomes available, it gets downloaded and installed to the second hard drive (partition "B").

The next time you restart your phone, it simply boots off of the "B" partition instead, which means you're now running the new Android update.A/B system updates, also known as seamless updates, ensure a workable booting system remains on the disk during an over-the-air (OTA) update.

This reduces the likelihood of an inactive device afterward, which means fewer device replacements and device reflashes at repair and warranty centers. This approach is already explored successfully by other commercial-grade operating systems, such as ChromeOS, and Android 8.0 comes with the necessary platform changes to conduct streaming updates.

Allow to cancel a proxy resolution request
1 Fix terminating a transfer while resolving proxies
2 Add unittest for TerminateTrasnfer between ranges
3 Cleanup the RetryTimeoutCallback()

A/B system updates affect:

Interactions with the bootloader
Partition selection
The build process
OTA update package generation
The existing dm-verity feature guarantees the device will boot an uncorrupted image. If a device doesn't boot, because of a bad OTA or dm-verity issue, the device can reboot into an old image.


Why are third party apps entirely excluded from USB OTG since Android 7? Android KitKat rendered SD cards next to useless for writing, but did not affect USB-OTG at all.

Android 6.0 put USB OTG into read-only, which can be a good thing, but sometimes, I want to write to OTG.

Android 7.0 entirely hides OTG from anything else than Google built-in Stock File Manager,  which is not even nearly as good and functional as ES File Explorer from 2012. (yes, 2012. No typo here.)

Is that for security reasons?  But what if I actually want read/write OTG access?

What's next? Removing Internet access for security reasons?

Though my phone could have Android 7, I've stuck with 6 because of compatibility with a few Xposed modules so I don't know if this helps you, but a file manager named MiXplorer has it's own OTG driver, so maybe it could r/w your OTG device. By default this is disabled, you need to turn it on in the settings.

Please let me know if it did work for you


Can I send / retrieve MMS messages via WiFi? Is it possible to send / retrieve MMS messages via WiFi or is it mandatory to be connected to my provider via the mobile data connection?

If a user has an active WiFi connection, what happens when there's an incoming MMS?

It could be done technically. AFAIK all communication between MMS enabled components is done via standard TCP/IP.
But in a regular provider setup the MMS store and forward server(s) (MMSC) are only reachable via the providers network. That's why you can not send and receive MMS via WiFi.

It's also the reason why you can not make a call and send/receive an MMS simultaneously when you have only 2G (GPRS/EDGE) connectivity.

Normally android will drop the GSM data connection if there is WiFi connectivity and all data will be routed through the WiFi interface, but there is one exception: The MMS traffic will still go through the mobile data connection.


Android CPU usage: What do the red, green and purple bars and the numbers mean? The Internet as a truckload of myths about this. Today, it is time to bust the myths.

When the CPU usage bars that can be enabled in the developer options are being displayed, there is a list of active processes and three numbers above.Upper right screen corner (also covered by bars):

14.41 / 20.85 / 40.19

And then, there are three bars for each list item:[Green bar (usually the longest)] [red bar] [purple]

What do these bars and numbers actually mean?

 I would appreciate an explaination.

From Android - Handset built in Developer Tools - “Show Cpu Usage” option meaning?

Leszek's answer

  Numbers in the first row shows average CPU usage in time intervals 1 minute/5 minutes/15 minutes. Color bars shows how much time CPU spends in userspace(green), kernel(red), i/o(blue).

Also see the accepted answer for a developer explanation


Is a 'Send security reports' notification legitimate? Note 4, 6.0.1 Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Verizon SM-N910V), Android 6.0.1

After a sudden reboot, my phone displayed a few system notifications in Chinese, and is now displaying a new notification (screenshot attached). The weird header alignment and a few typos ['Samsungs'; 'MMC(Mobile Country Code)'] put me ill at ease, and Googling this service from Samsung doesn't turn anything up.

Also, after this reboot a few details are off:

The lock screen background changed to one of the Android defaults (I had a plain black background)
The font reverted to the default size (I had it set to small)
The settings buttons (screen rotation, data, etc.) in the pulldown menu changed order
The interface seems more responsive

What does this mean? I shut off the device and am going to talk to Verizon, but I'm hoping people here might have some ideas.

My phone occasionally reboots for no reason (every couple of weeks), but I am not sure this is related. I haven't seen these symptoms before and Googling didn't turn up anything quickly.

Text

Id go call Samsung from a different phone if your scared to use it. i know Samsung can make screenshots and ask to send a report. Samsung is also made in Korea so that maybe Korean characters you see.  i wouldnt be to worried glitches happen.


Will an Asus Transformer Pad Infinity work in the UK if I ship it over from USA I want to ship my Asus Transformer Pad Infinity from the USA to the UK as it's cheaper. Will I run into any compatibility issues? (It does not have 3G.)

The Transformer Pad Infinity itself would function fine in the UK. You would probably have an issue with the US charger and would need to get an adapter or charge via USB. As far as I can tell GPS and WiFi should work the same no matter where in the world you are.


Podcast app which supports old episodes well? I am looking for a podcast player app which will let me subscribe to a podcast and listen to the earliest episodes first, eventually catching up to the current episodes.

I've tried Google Listen and PodCat, and neither one seemed to handle this case well. I don't want to install a paid app and start a 15-minute-trial until I know what to expect from it.

It should also be reliable at remembering the current position in a paused-and-ignored-for-a-while podcast, and download/delete automatically so I generally don't have to manage it except to actually listen.

BeyondPod ($7 but well worth it) will do everything you mentioned in your question.  I have tried DoggCatcher and a slew of free apps and I've found BeyondPod to be the best.

You sort you podcasts from newest to oldest, or oldest to newest, or longest to shortest, or shortest to longest.  You can also break them up into categories which I find helpful.

Also, it is very good at remembering you place.  I regularly start one podcast then switch to another, then another and find that I can always return to the unfinished shows without losing my place.

There are also numerous autoupdate and auto delete options.  You can set certain categories of feeds update on a certain schedule.  You can set the auto delete globally, on the category level or at the podcast level, telling it to delete podcasts of a certain age, or tell it to only keep so many podcasts, or delete after listening.  Its also easy to mass delete all "listened to" podcasts with just two clicks.


64 digit Hex WiFi passphrase doesn't seem to get accepted I use a 64 digit hex passphrase on my router that I want to use with Android. However Android (CyanogenMod 7) doesn't seem to accept the password (no errors, just nothing happens when I enter it). I have also tried manually entering the information into the wpa_supplicant.conf file but to no avail.

What could be the problem?

That has worked fine when I recently tested it with CyanogenMod 7 and 9 (and also stock HTC/Samsung/Motorola).

Just enter it into the usual passphrase input box but without any colons. Just type in only the 0-9,a-f letters. This should work then.

Here's a sample wpa_supplicant.conf entry with a fake key/AP:

network={
    ssid="insecureAP"
    key_mgmt=NONE
    auth_alg=OPEN SHARED
#   128 bit key:
    wep_key0=0123456789abcdef0123456789
#   64 bit key:
#   wep_key0=0123456789
    priority=90
}

Note: 64bit correspond to 10 hex digits and 128bit correspond to 26 hex digits (with WEP standard)!


Missing 2.2 GB of space on my micro SD card I pulled my micro SD card out of my phone (LG G3) and inserted it into my PC (Kubuntu 14.04). I was in the process of moving several large video files off of the SD card onto my computer. Moving these videos would have given me 4.0 GB of free space on my SD card.

As the process appeared to finish, I encountered an error that said the last of the files (2.5 GB) could not be deleted (from the SD card). And my file manager could not access the directory (/DCIM/Camera) that held the video files I was moving.

I safely ejected the SD card, then re-inserted it. Everything appears fine and the video files I was moving are all apparently gone. However, there is only 1.8 GB of free space on the SD card, not the 4.0 GB of space that there should be available.

How do I recover this missing free space? I would prefer to use my Linux desktop tools to do the job.

If there were problems with the file system (which your error message suggests), broken files may have been "re-allocated". For such things, *nix systems have a special directory on each file system, usually called LOST+FOUND or, on FAT file systems, LOST.DIR. Whenever things could not be "assigned to a file", they are placed there with some "cryptic" names.

So I'd suggest you mount the card on your Linux PC again, and check for that directory. If there's something in that directory, that could be the "broken" video files, and you simply could delete them to re-gain your space.


Android Screen In virtualbox Rotate 90 CCW? I install Android 4.4 x86 on virtualbox in windows 8.1
That was Ok But when I install my first app pheed on it .
now when I run pheed app my screen rotate 90 ccw like as image .

I try some stakoverflow post about android screen landscape and portrait but none of them help me .
I tried some shortcut key like as :

  ctrl+f9
  ctrl+f10
  ctrl+f11
  ctrl+f12
  Or press them twice in lessthen a second but none of theme fix it ?!!
  have any idea to fix it ?

There are some hotkeys listed for ICS, which hopefully still work with Kitkat:

  Rotating the screen: (to get that operate we must to have activated “Auto-rotate screen”)

  Press F12 two times in less than 2 seconds = Rotate 90º to the LEFT.
  Press F11  two times in less than 2 seconds = Rotate 90º to the RiGHT.
  Press F10 two times in less than 2 seconds = Rotate 180º.
  Press F9   two times in less than 2 seconds = Normal view 0/360º.

So I'd say try hitting F11 twice should solve your issue – after activating screen-rotation.


Android Device Manager not Ringing The ring for 5 minutes function on Android Device Manager is a great tool that I have used multiple times to find my phone (which I happen to misplace quite often).

The thing is, it doesn't work.  Or rather, my phone will not ring even when given the cue from Android Device Manager to ring.  I have it set up on my phone, and am able to locate my phone just fine. However, when I click ring, my phone beeps once, and there is a notification that says "Android Device Manager" with the subheading "Ringing...", but my phone never actually rings.

Does anyone know why this happens, or better yet, how to fix this? Any help would be great.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S6, and yes, Android Device Manager is set as an administrator on my phone.

edit: Upon looking into the Phone Administrator settings in Security, I found that the permissions do not mention anything about ringing the phone (https://goo.gl/photos/gt1iE6piQTVfYvnHA).  Is this because that permission isn't at the administrator level, or do you think it is unavailable for some odd reason?

Update: So I managed to figure out that the only way it will ring is if my notifications volume is on.  However, I don't usually have that on, and it will not turn that volume on full or even on at all by itself.

I also disabled battery optimization for Device Manager, but unfortunately it does not seem to do anything.

This issue seems to be caused by Android Device Manager not being able to raise the ringer volume on your phone before ringing the alarm tone.

To solve this, you can create a MacroDroid macro that will automatically raise your ringer whenever an Android Device Manager notification appears on your phone, so that the alarm tone will actually ring. MacroDroid defines a set of trigger(s), action(s) and constraint(s) as a macro.

Download the MacroDroid app for free on your phone.
You will need to create the following macro:

Trigger:  Notification → Notification Received:
From: (hit show non-launchable apps) and select Google Play Services and Android Device Manager
Text Content: choose contains and type in "ringing" (or just some/all of the text from the notification that appears when you attempt to ring your phone; this might vary by phone).
Action: Volume Change
Hit the checkbox next to "ringer" and slide the ringer slider up to something high, then press OK. Then hit the checkbox next to "Notification" and slide the notification slider up to something high as well.
Constraints: none

Test out your Macro by attempting to ring your phone from Android Device Manager on your computer. If it works, you're done. If it doesn't, try the following:

Add an action to your macro to Set Priority Mode, set it to all.
Add an action to your macro to play a sound of your choice, that might work.
Ensure the Device Manager notification text matches that which you specified in your trigger.
Try changing the action to a ringer volume increase, a one-second wait, then a notification volume increase.

Important Note: If you want your ringer to quiet down again after Android Manager rings, you can add a wait before next action to your actions, then do a ringer volume change back down.

Hope this helps! Comment below if this doesn't work for you or if you have a question, I'll help you out if you need it.


Android x86 Stuck at A N D R O I D x86_64:/ I downloaded Android x86 7.1 from Android x86 Project website. I have made a Virtual Machine for it in the VMware Player. It's stuck at

VMware settings are as follows:
 1 Core,
 2048 RAM,
 20GB IDE Virtual Drive.

PC Specs:
Intel Core i5-2400
4GB of DDR3 RAM
250GB HDD // if that helps :P

If you want to run Android without installation:

From the grub menu after booting the installation media, choose advanced options then:

"Live CD VESA mode - no GPU hardware acceleration"

and if you already installed android and you want to boot it, in the grub menu press 'e' to edit the boot command, press 'e' again to edit the first command which starts with "kernel".
 Append this:

 nomodeset

to the and of the command and press Enter to save, finally press 'b' to boot from the modified command and it will boot up successfully.

I tried this with CM 14.1 and Android 7.1 images and it works after I had the same problem with VMWare Workstation 14.


Where do I find emails sent from the Samsung Mail App using a POP3 Mail Account? I have a Samsung Smartphone with a POP3 Mail Account on Samsung Standard Mail App.
I need the Emails I've sent with this account in my new Exchange Account on another device?
I think I may be able to transfer them if I find where they are stored on my phone.

Any ideas?

Maybe you can just move messages from POP3 Profile to IMAP Profile from your favorite email app.
If not, emails are stored in /data/data/com.android.email/databases/EmailProviderBody.db .
The non-rooting method

You can get these files with adb when usb-debugging is enabled in developer settings, then run from cmd.exe:
adb backup com.android.email

Convert backup.ab with android-backup-extractor after java is installed:
java.exe -jar abe.jar unpack backup.ab backup.tar

Extract EmailProviderBody.db from backup.tar with 7-zip.

Convert emails to *.eml with AndroidEmailExtractor after Groovy is installed.

Import the *.eml files in outlook express, move the messages to imap Sent folder, sync imap with new device.

The root method:
(If POP3 on your new device is ok for you)

View the ownership and file permissions from adb shell (new device)
adb shell
su
ls -lnZ /data/data/com.android.email/databases

Copy all EmailProvider.db* EmailProviderBody.db* to the new device (or folder database) from cmd
exit
exit
adb push C:\Android\Backup\email\databases /data/data/com.android.email/

Restore ownership and file permissions from adb shell, where 100xx is the uid from above
adb shell
su
chown -hR 100xx.100xx /data/data/com.android.email/databases
chmod 0660 /data/data/com.android.email/databases/*
chcon -hR u:object_r:app_data_file:s0 /data/data/com.android.email/databases

Reboot the device. Old emails should be restored to the new device.


Adaptive internal storage : analysis What are the possible difficulties occur if I use external SD card using Format as internal storage ? I have checked this link:
How does the "Format as internal storage" feature work in Android 6.0+?

Here are some doubts:

Does internal storage space increase, if no why?
Whether any memory problems with TWRP, Titanium backup?
What to should I do, If I need to switch with another SD card as external OR restore to earlier?
What will happen, If I accidentally boot device without SD card?
What to do after upgrade? (upgrading to higher android versions OR to lower android versions )
Will this action improves performance?

The internal storage doesn't increase itself, but external storage start behaving like internal (you can move apps to it and so), so you can say you have more internal which is used for apps mostly
With titanium backup you shouldn't have any problem as with other apps, for TWRP I can't say anything because I didn't have that experience, but since adopting is android feature recovery shouldn't make you a troubles
If you pull out SD card which is adopted app which is on SD card (adopted storage) won't function for obvious reasons, and SD card can't be used with other phone because of encryption. If you put other SD card instead of one you have adopted new card will behave normal, like external storage.
Nothing special, just apps which were on adopted storage (SD card) won't work, and instead of their icons there will be little green android, also data stored on adopted storage won't be there (obvious).
Don't know about this one, but as I said adopting is android feature so there shouldn't be any problems, but as we know sometimes after upgrading phone goes little crazy, so there is chance you maybe should perform factory reset, but just maybe.
If on performance you think on faster loading apps, that won't happen, SD card are way slower than actual internal storage, but there won't be much difference in loading time maybe for some big, very big games/apps, basically, most of people who adopted their SD cards done that because they needed more space for apps
So if you want to adopt SD card make sure that is at least class 10 that would be minimum, and speaking from my experience adopting could kill your SD card not really kill it but kill r/w speeds so it becomes 10x slower, happened to me with 16 GB transcend, also it is possible that SD card was crap.


How to enable hidden Arabic keyboard without rooting? I've Samsung Galaxy S3 device.
(Model-Number: SPH-L710)
(Android-Version: 4.1.1)

I want to enable the hidden Arabic keyboard without rooting, or an extra keyboard application.

Is it possible?

Try this:
- Settings > Language and input > Keyboards and input methods

Tab Samsung keyboard settings, then select Input languages, you will get a list of Downloaded and Available (to download) languages.


Quickly switch my phone between locked and unlocked without going through the menus? I want to be able to quickly disable and enable Screen Lock, without having to manually go through Settings -> Security -> Screen Lock every time.

Is there a way to create a button on your home screen where, when you press it, it switches the screen lock from "Swipe" to "Pattern"?

You can download macrodroid from the play store. I looked through it and you can use this to disable/enable the screenlock with a shortcut on the home screen. It is simple to use and you can probably figure it out yourself.


Use mobile internet though connected to WLAN On  an Linux based system I created a WLAN Hotspot. I want to provide a single webpage via a webserver on this system. When I connect my Android devices to it they expect to get internet over this connection. But since the Linux host is offline the Android devices are able to see only the webpage and can't reach the internet any longer. I don't want the connected Smartphones to lose their normal connectivity.

Is it technically possible (for example by using any special WLAN settings or Hotspot configuration) to tell Android devices anyhow to use the WLAN connection only for accessing the single hosted webpage and to use their own mobile Internet (cell net) for any other internet access?

This question implies the question if it is possible to use mobile internet via cell network while beeing  connected to a WLAN network on Android devices.

The Linux system currently is a Ubuntu Desktop machine and will be a Raspbian (Debian) on a Pi later on.

The solution was to let the Android device create a tethering Hotspot and make the PC/Pi connect to it instead. Then the Android device is able to connected to the Webserver on the PC/Pi while still beeing able to talk to the internet. Additionally the PC/Pi is able, too.


My iRola DX752 will not turn on My son got an iRola DX752 with Android 4.2 jellybean for Christmas. It worked fine Christmas and now it won't turn on. It is fully charged.

What can I do to get it to work?

You can do a factory reset . To do this you press the Vol UP and power key together .If that wont work, try the Vol Down as I may be wrong . You should at some point of messing with the buttons get a Broken Android picture of the robot . Then you play with the buttons and get to a menu that has "Factory Reset "


Get rid of google market localization limitation to install an app I'd like to test last HBO GO android application to see how they implemented chromecast, but I'm in Canada and my devices are registered to play store Canada so I'm not able to install it. I have been looking for the single .apk on the web but I'm not sure if I could trust those I found.
Does any body has an idea how I could get it or how to get rid of the localization limitations ?
Thanks

Try this - http://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/#guide

This site allows you to copy the url fromm the official app from Google Play and download it without a hassle. Enjoy.


Is extreme battery saving possible on Android? What is the most extreme battery saver method out there? I don't need anything (location, data, nothing) except phone calls when my screen is off. I know of greenify but even that's not good enough

I basically want to turn my android phone into a Nokia 3310 as soon as the screen turns off?

This is not just a question about app suggestion. I'm wondering if it's even possible on android. Google play services would probably not allow this sort of thing.

PS: I have a OnePlus 3 running Nougat.

If you're rooted and using greenify then there's this option of aggressive doze. Once try it and if not greenify then use kernel Adiutor to tweak your processor as per your need.


Camera isn't available - Trusted Face ( Android Lollipop - Nexus 5) Sometimes I've noticed that the Smart Lock - Trusted Face feature doesn't work, no matter what the lighting or the position of my face relative to the phone.

I thought that an "Improve face matching" should do the trick, but when I go to do that, I get this:

Click for full size

Usually a restart fixes things, but this isn't a really good solution. The camera app works normally even when this happens. Has someone found a way to fix this somehow, or should I just wait for the next update from Google?

I believe that this is an issue with the Smart Lock app itself. When I enabled the face unlock I started getting this error. The camera ceases to work after some time, when I notice that the smart lock icon just blinks on the lock screen (which shows a failed attempt to access camera). Then neither the camera app works nor can I access the camera via Smart Lock settings. I started having this issue whenever I enabled face recognition and I stopped having this issue altogether when I disabled the said feature.

It's a shame that despite being an extremely efficient and fast feature, this causes such a problem that it needs to be disabled.


Can't flash ClockwordMod onto Verizon GS4 I just got a warrentied Galaxy S4 (running VRUEMK2) and am trying to install ClockwordMod and CyanogenMod onto it like I had on my previous GS4. I rooted it, installed ROM Manager, and flashed ClockWorkMod Touch 6.0.4.4, and ROM Manager shows that it is in fact installed (top of the app shows current recovery as ClockworkMod 6.0.4.4). Problem is, when I reboot into recovery, I still see the stock Samsung boot loader. I think this is the root cause that is preventing me from being able to install CyanogenMod.

Tried installing it manually as well through here, but didn't do anything.

Any ideas? I've scoured most threads on multiple message boards and still haven't figured out what the issue is.

VRUEMK2 - is not Bootloader unlocked. So no CWM and custom ROMS for this. You only have root via SafeRoot method. There isn't a known bootloader unlock yet for the past 2 or 3 OTA releases.


Restore contacts from nandroid backup I got a nandroid backup of a stock android froyo firmware. The device (GT-I9003, Galaxy SL) is now running cyanogenmod 9. how can i transfer the contacts (and sms/mms optionally) from the backup to the running system?

If you had contact sync enabled and you added the account on this rom too your contacts should appear. If they don't, try Titanium Backup Pro. It's a terrific backup solution and it's pro version allows you to restore individual items from CWM backups.
It costs more than your average app but it's super well worth it.


HTC One model c525c, errors downloading from Play Store (491, 905, 915, and insufficient space) Earlier this month I thought I had a virus so I factory reset my phone, which is rooted. I have been trying to reinstall my games, over 40 of them. Only have 6 of them now and my phone keeps telling me I have insufficient space, with all the apps and games that I can move to my 16 gig SD card, which only has less than one gig used on it.

I used to always get error 491 before factory reset. I have been getting 915 and most recently, 905. And the ones that do download to 100% lockup at 100% and won't open. Plus I can't even update. Please help me fix, especially the 915 latest error.

Try to download SD maid in your device clear your phone cache and reebot you device i think that should work, if works don't forget to download anti virus in your device like avira..


Paid app on computer (via google play store) but installed on phone as 'unknown sources' (not via the play store) I just paid for 2 apps on my computer logging into the play store.
But I installed them on my phone as .APKs so how to have the free versions turn into paid?

Answering this myself.
I downloaded the respective PRO versions. I guess these versions have access to the "play store receipts" and so both apps booted the Pro versions properly.


Quick way to go to downloads from Chrome? Often after downloading a file, I try to open this from the notifications page, only for the wrong app to open it. Since I've clicked on it the link has disappeared. Now I have to go through tonnes of menus to find the file! Is there a quicker way?

From the home screen, click the "all apps" button, then there's an app called Downloads. By default, downloads are sorted most-recent-first, so the one you've just downloaded will be at the top.

If even that method is one step too many, you can long-tap on the Downloads icon in the apps menu, then drop it on the home screen to create a shortcut to that app. Now you can open it from the home screen directly.

Additionally, if the wrong app opens a certain kind of file, you can stop that and go back to having a chooser to pick which app to open files with. Open the Settings app, then go to Apps (on some phones it's called Applications manager). Choose the offending app from the list: if it's a built-in app, you'll need to swipe to to the All page. Scroll down and click Clear defaults. Next time you open a file that would open with that app, you'll get the chooser instead (assuming you have another app installed that can open that kind of file).


What is the significance of icons below the name of an app in play store? When i search for snapseed app on play store, I see an icon displaying (3+) inside a square box. And when I search for Google Earth  then it shows ("3 PEGI 3") in the icon. What is the significance of this icon?

PEGI stands for "Pan European Game Information" and is used to advise on the suitability of the app for certain age ratings. There are 5 age categories (sourced from wikipedia):

  3: Suitable for ages 3 and older. May contain very mild violence in an appropriate context for younger children, but neither bad language
  nor frightening content is allowed.
  7: Suitable for ages 7 and older. May contain mild or unrealistic violence (e.g. violence in a cartoon context), or elements that can be
  frightening to younger children.
  12: Suitable for ages 12 and older. May contain violence in either a fantasy context or a sporting action, profanity, mild sexual
  references or innuendo, or gambling.
  16: Suitable for ages 16 and older. May contain explicit or realistic-looking violence, strong language, sexual references or
  content, gambling, or encouragement of drug use.
  18: Unsuitable for persons under 18. May contain extreme or graphic violence, including "violence towards defenceless people" and
  "multiple, motiveless killing", strong language, strong sexual
  content, gambling, drug glamorisation, or discrimination.

The icon shown in the Play Store will indicate which category the app has been rated suitable for.

Other areas of the world have similar rating systems such as ESRB and ACB


Why can't WhatsApp write to bind mounts? I moved all the data of WhatsApp to /mnt/media_rw/6333-6461/WhatsApp, where 6333-6461 is my external SD card. I opened WhatsApp to find that I could not open any previously downloaded data. This is expected.

Now, I executed the following commands in Termux:

$ su
# mount -o bind /mnt/runtime/write/6333-6461/WhatsApp /mnt/runtime/write/emulated/0/WhatsApp

When I opened WhatsApp, I could see all the data that I had previously downloaded. But now I cannot send or receive anything - all sending fails, camera access from WhatsApp fails, and downloading fails.

Evidently WhatsApp is not being able to write onto the bind mount. Any solution to the problem?

My phone, a Samsung Galaxy On7, Android 6.0.1, is rooted with Magisk 20.1 and running stock ROM.

Why can't WhatsApp write to bind mounts?

# mount -o bind /mnt/runtime/write/6333-6461/WhatsApp /mnt/runtime/write/emulated/0/WhatsApp

Apps cannot directly access /mnt/runtime/write/6333-6461 or /mnt/runtime/write/emulated/0/ because /mnt/runtime is only traverse-able by root. Apps access /storage/emulated/0 or /sdcard (symlink to the former) which is bind-mounted to /mnt/runtime/write/emulated/0/ for apps with WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission. External SD card is accessible at /storage/6333-6461 in the same way.

When /mnt/runtime/write/6333-6461/WhatsApp is bind-mounted at /mnt/runtime/write/emulated/0/WhatsApp, WhatsApp will actually try to write to external SD card which is not allowed at least since Android 4.4. This is controlled by using permissions READ|WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE / READ|WRITE_MEDIA_STORAGE, GID everybody (9997) / media_rw (1023) and mount namespaces. See details in How to move files to external SD card?.

  Any solution to the problem?

There are some workarounds to set required permissions using FUSE or sdcardfs when bind mounting external directories. For details see How to bind mount a folder inside /sdcard with correct permissions?


Setting Android 10 Dark theme on and off with adb shell - how to do it without reboot? To Enable Dark Mode:

adb shell settings put secure ui_night_mode 2

To Disable Dark Mode:

adb shell settings put secure ui_night_mode 1

For Auto Dark Mode:

adb shell settings put secure ui_night_mode 0

and then

adb reboot

My question is how to change Dark mode without abd reboot ?

On root devices
To Enable Dark Mode:
adb shell "su 0 cmd uimode night yes"

To Disable Dark Mode:
adb shell "su 0 cmd uimode night no"

For Auto Dark Mode:
adb shell "su 0 cmd uimode night auto"


How to stop uploading pictures on Google Photos on Pixel 2? I've been using Android for 7+ years and now got a Google phone. There are several things I like but one I didn't is that any picture I take on my phone, it is uploaded to my Google Photos account. In the past, I used to create Picasa web albums to share with family.

It is a nice feature in some ways but I've set up albums in Google Photos in the past and now every random picture I take with my phone is uploaded there. I also get a lot of pictures from WhatsApp etc. which I don't want to be merged with Google Photos.

How can I separate phone pictures/albums from Google Photos?

Google Photos shows you a prompt when you first open the app. If you press confirm, it will automatically start uploading your photos to the cloud.

You can manage the setting in your Google Photos app.
Open the app and go to Settings > Back up & sync and turn it off.


Is it safe and stable to use titanium backup and restore at two different android versions? I want to upgrade an android phone from 2.2 to 2.3.

If I backup apps with titanium backup, will they be restored at 2.3, or will they be conflict because of different android version between backup and restore?

If it doesn't work with titanium backup, then is any other safer way?

It is usually safe to restore non-system apps and their data across different Android versions with Titanium Backup.  I wouldn't try to restore a Honeycomb-specific app on a previous OS version though, as the app itself may be incompatible due to radical changes between 3.x and earlier OS versions.

Restoring system apps and data is very unsafe.  You can introduce instabilities to your device, due to changes in the way system data is handled between major OS versions of Android.

If you are using Titanium, I assume your device is rooted, since otherwise you wouldn't be able to backup app data.  If you also have a custom recovery installed (e.g. ClockworkMod) I would highly recommend doing a full backup of the device, in case something goes wrong.


Does dual core help transfer speeds? I read a review of a dual core mobile recently and the reviewer was of the opinion that dual core processor helped the usb transfer speeds.

This doesn't seem to make much sense to me. When the phone is plugged in then it is usually not busy. That is if the processor is even involved in the transfer at all.

Can anyone post any experience with usb transfers on dual core devices?

That definitely doesn't make sense.  Unless they somehow turned off one core (probably impossible without serious development effort) and compared the transfer rate to when both cores were on, you can't draw that conclusion.  One phone might have a different transfer rate that another, but it has nothing to do with whether one phone has a dual-core processor or not.  The speed of the internal memory or SD card and the filesystem are the most important factors, and possibly the efficiency of the storage-handling code. All three can vary between devices.


Dragging home button opens Google Search - How do I remove this? Ever since I bought my tablet, this has been the default action whenever I drag the home button up (this is a soft button: on screen). I do not want this functionality because I frequently drag it by accident whenever I play games. This will bring up Google Search and interrupt my game.

Screenshots:

When dragging homescreen, a half-circle with Google on top appears / Google Search brought up (click images for larger variants)

Again, how do I disable this behavior?

If it helps, I am using a Pipo U1 Pro tablet with the default OS (not rooted).

Try Google Now Swipe Disabler.

  Google Now Swipe Disabler repurposes that annoying swipe up from the
  bottom of your phone. If you're tired of having to press back twice
  when your scroll gets taken over by Google Now, then have Google Now
  Swipe Disabler do nothing! If you like the new voice search, but it
  takes too long to swipe up and press the mic icon, then tell it to go
  straight to voice search! You can have super quick access to your
  camera, or maybe you're always needing to do complicated mental math,
  now your calculator is just a convenient swipe away!


Get the default contact phone number When we dial a selected contact, the first phone number is always picked (unless another number has a default flag set in DB). How can someone get that first phone number? How are those numbers ordered?

You can define the default number yourself:

open the "contacts" / "people" app
tap the contact to view it
long-tap (i.e. tap-and-hold) the number you want to make the default, a pop-up will open
select "make default"


What program can I use to compress (zip,rar...) and password protect files on my Android Froyo I was just sending a backup via mail to my Google account.

This backup contained readable information (csv format) from sensitive data.

Does anyone knows of a program to compress files (in .zip format, or .rar if necessary) on my Android phone (running Froyo), with a password protection used while compressing.

That way I can compress/protect my data before sending it via email.

Thanks.


Is it possible to get Android 6.0 if you have any Android 5.0 device? As you may know, Google came out with the new Android 6.0 but it is not available in my country right now. I was wondering if I bought an Android 5.0 device from the store, would I be able to upgrade to Android 6.0 manually in the future?

You need to choose carefully, since many vendors and carriers will abandon devices quickly as they release new ones. So no, you cannot guarantee that ANY device running 5.0 will be able to upgrade to 6.0.  However, here are some suggestions to improve your chances:

Get a recent Google Nexus device. These are always the first to get new releases because they are Google's Android showcase devices. Check this page for devices that have 6.0 firmware available.
Get a device that is on this list. CynaogenMod (CM) is a very good alternative firmware that has breathed life into many, many old
devices that have been long-forgotten by the vendors. CM13 is the
version based on Android 6.0 and they are working hard to expand the
number of devices supported.
Take a look at XDA-Developers device
forums and look for devices that have unofficial Marshmallow
builds. Keep in mind that many of the ROMs posted there are
experimental and possible unstable, and this may be especially true of a new 6.0-based ROM.
Get a device that has an upgrade guarantee or a device that the manufacturer has stated will be getting 6.0. This article is a nice recent list that will get you started, and there is also a Community Wiki on this site tracking status.  However, keep in mind that even if you have a device from this list, the carrier may take longer to (or never) push out the update. As an example, I once had a phone where HTC had released an update but my carrier took almost a year to push their branded version to my phone.  If you can't root your device, you may be at the whim of your carrier.


application cannot be installed in the default install location? I have an Android Galaxy S1, and have been getting the error "application cannot be installed in the default install location". I am aware that this is a common issue. So I Googled it, and almost everyone is saying to move your apps to the SD card or delete unused games.

There's only one problem. My phone won't let me move apps into the SD card, and I have 1.3GB of free app space. While I can download some apps, the more important ones won't download.

Anyone have any fixes to this?

I don't think this really has anything to do with any settings.

I encountered this yesterday. All I did was restart my phone and the app installed fine afterwards.


Can there be malicious apps on Google Play? Do I need to worry about malicious apps on Google Play, or can I trust everything I install, so long as I install it from Google Play?

And if I need to worry, what red flags should I look for - number of downloads, ratings, how old the app is, what permissions it requires?

On a practical level, would you say that it is as safe as Apple's App Store?

We don't compare apples with peaches. But it's always a good idea to be careful what you install. True, Google Play is to be considered one of the safest sources for Android apps. Still, some malware sneaks in every now and then. So you should use some common sense before hitting the "Install" button.

Things to look at include (but might not be restricted to):

What permissions are required?
Though not always easy to decide, there are some things which can count as indicators – e.g. taking a simple calculator app, it certainly doesn't need access to your contacts, calendars, system settings, etc.
How is it rated?
I'm not talking about "naked numbers", but check the comments. They might give you useful hints on whether it's safe to install. Also, an app installed several thousands of times with no traces of maliciousness in the comments should be considerably safer than an app with almost no installs and no comments.
Should it be a very popular app, but only has few installs?
That's in most cases a clear indicator for malware, hiding behind a popular name. Better keep your hands off those.

Aside of that: In case you're still unsure, pick a good forum and ask. Another good idea is to check other apps from the same developer (just follow the link on his name), and use above criteria on them.


Force GPU rendering in ICS. How does this affect system performance? I thankfully discovered the option to force GPU rendering of apps in the system settings of ICS.

So far, I did only notice a difference with one app: Twitter for Android was very annoying to use before, since the fps were very low. Now it's almost perfectly smooth.

I've heard that the RAM usage is higher with GPU rendering activated.

How much is the difference?
What other effects does GPU rendering have on the performance of ICS?

This post will explain everything. It details how GPU rendering works in ICS.

https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/2FXDCz8x93s

Though, if you want a short answer:

GPU rendering essentially forces the drawing of windows and UI elements in apps to be calculated and done using the GPU of your phone instead of the CPU. This frees up clock cycles for the CPU to do other tasks enabling your phone to be generally smoother and faster. However, this means that everything being done by the GPU eats more RAM (as its using OpenGL to do it which requires more overhead). Android has always done some aspects with the GPU using hardware acceleration. What I have described is a MAJOR OVERSIMPLIFICATION. Its not so cut and dry. Please read the link above in its entirety for a full understanding of the concept.


App says its uninstalled but I can't reinstall it I downloaded minecraft from the Amazon appstore and installed it to my sd card. My brother removed my sd card, formatted it, and put it back in as a prank. Minecraft said it was still installed, so I uninstalled it. I tried to reinstall it through the Amazon appstore, but the only option was to open the app, which didn't exist. I waited for an update to roll out and clicked the update button. Every time I do this, as soon as i click update the Amazon app crashes. I've checked in the apps section in settings, I've uninstalled and reinstalled Amazon appstore, and I've even tried clearing the data of the app. None of this works.

Try through cmd line

adb install -r yourapp.apk


Multilanguage Keyboard with Android Sometimes I type in German and sometimes in English.

I seem to be only able to switch on autocompletion for one language and have to add the words of the other language one by one to the dictionary.

Is there a better way for those people who are multilingual?

Yes, you can do this. Here's how:

Note: I'm on Froyo (Android 2.2), so if you're on a different version it may be slightly different.

Go To your home screen.
Choose Settings from the Menu
Choose Language & Keyboard
Choose Android Keyboard
Choose Input Languages
Select the English and German Languages
Exit out by pressing the Home Key

You're now set up for German and English.

Here's how to test it:

Open the browser
Tap the address bar to bring up the keyboard
LONG PRESS the address bar (or text field, whatever you want to call it)
Look at the the space bar: it will have the following: < English >
Now SWIPE/SLIDE your finger over the space bar, you'll see it change to < German >

Once < German > is selected, you're now using the German keyboard.
Swipe again to return to English.

Enjoy.


Android 7.0 call block feature I have honor 8 lite with android 7.0
I block a number from default dialer app, It should be blocked now but instead when someone calls me from that number he hears 1 or 2 seconds of my phone ringing, then the call hangs. So that the other party can easily understand that his/her call has been blocked.
I want that the call must be blocked silently, without the calling party knowing anything about it.
The caller must get message such as -- Not reachable or phone is switched off.
I know that this feature may be network dependent but my old feature phone was doing it very smartly but my smart phone fails to do so.
Any suggestions on how to block calls with android 7.0 stealthily.
Thank you.

I do something very similar on my device running Marshmallow to prevent tele callers and quite successfully so :)

automation is the preferred option. Many apps are available. I prefer using MacroDroid , since it is free (upto 5 macros) and easy to learn.

Since I don't have Nougat can't test, but should run fine

In the first macro, it is configured here for non contacts. You can select individually the numbers in your case

The SMS portion of first macro is expanded below - you can configure it to your liking

Note: Two macros are strictly not required. You can add action of second macro in first itself - I needed two macros for customisation which is not shown here


What's the best way to switch from Stock Android OS to Cyanogenmod on Galaxy S3? I would like to switch my Stock Android OS to Cyanogenmod with the least trouble possible on my Samsung Galaxy S3.

So basically I would like to keep:

My data (files, contacts, sms)
My apps
My apps data (progress of games)

Is this even possible?

What is the best approach to do this?

If your device is not yet rooted, an alternative to Alex's suggestion of Titanium Backup (which I'd second otherwise) would be to use adb backup (creating a backup file for each app separately is important here, as adb restore just works per backup file, not per app), or one of its frontends. There's also the possibility to do that directly on the device, using e.g. Helium Backup.

Please also take a look at the backup tag-wiki for more information.


Using sponge to act as a stylus pen for Android phone and tablet? I am amazed that one can create a DIY stylus pen for Android phones and tablets using the sponge as shown in this video.

Is it true or it is simply just a fake video?

It is true. But not all touch screen phones work well with this.

The capacitive touch screens that we find in most android phones these days work by detecting electrical disturbances from our body. The 'sponge' used in these DIYs are electrically conducting foam and they transfer the charge of our body through it, thus registering touches.

On the other hand, these sponge tipped styluses obviously won't work well with resistive touch screens unless you apply some amount of pressure.


What are all the "DiskCacheIndex*.tmp" files on my phone? I have about a dozen files named DiskCacheIndexnnnnnn.tmp in my /mnt/sdcard, where nnnnnnn is some number.  All of these are emtpy:

What are they for?

Who created them?

Is it safe to remove them?

Its the cache files for the sd card itself, its safe to delete.It is produced by apps which store data into sd card.You could tell the apps not to store it on SD if you like, if the app supports it.


How to natively automate an app with usb debugging disabled? I am an avid sports bettor and everyday I place bets using a mobile app from a local sportsbook. The sportsbook offers a mobile app, only, and no desktop version. Which is too bad because I know how to automate desktop applications and desktop browsers using Selenium.

The placing of bets is a mindless operation that I have to perform manually. I get an email with which teams to bet from a professional service, I then open the mobile app from the sportsbook, and use my fingers to click through the various bets, submitting them as I go. I want to automate this to give me back time in my life.

I thought that I could use something like Android Studio, jUnit, and uiautomatorviewer (Android SDK tool) and automate the phone via my desktop through a USB connection on the phone. Of course this solution requires enabling USB Debugging on the Android phone. Thinking this solution would be a slam dunk, I started implementing it and I ran in to a major snag: the sportsbook mobile app disables itself when USB debugging is turned on! Which stops this solution from working. And that is why I am looking for a native solution: one that does not require a USB connection. (note: I did call them and ask why this is - they said that they triangulate my phone using its LTE connection to ensure I'm in a legal place to gamble in - and that if the USB connection could be enabled then theoretically someone could setup a server farm, hook phones to it, and remote in from any where in the world to place bets, violating the law - well I'm not breaking the law with what I want to do, but I see their point as to why it disables)

Before I go down the rabbit hole of discovering a native solution - which I freely admit I know nothing about - I'd like to ask the community here how it might be done.

Some thoughts that I had...

Could I write an android app that controls another android app?

Could I use Selendroid (natively) to control the mobile sports app?

Both seem like major undertakings.

The Settings-App uses a persistent system property to enable/disable
adb.

The property_service inside  the system controls which "process-id"
is allowed to set the different properties. Any Property starting
with
"persistent.service.*" can only be set by AID_SYSTEM.

So you app must be a system app to be able to set this kind
of properties and for this you have to sign it with the platform key
of the particular device.


Two years of operating system upgrades (Android - one) - how is it implemented? "Android One phones will receive at least two years of OS upgrades," according to Google.

I interpret this statement as follows.

  An Android One phone will receive at least two major version upgrades for Android within two years of the device's launch date. For example, an Android One device that launched with Android 8.0 will eventually receive upgrades for versions 9.0 and 10.0.

Is this interpretation correct? Am I missing details?

To clarify, Android 8.0 was a major release; Android 8.1 was a minor maintenance release.

android-one phones are produced by multiple OEMs, so they are not governed by a fixed date of release. But they are mandated to provide two years of OS upgrades and three years of security updates. To remove the confusion of start date and end date, which is your question, see the fine print at the bottom of page you linked which says, OEMs should

  "Confirm exact duration of support for phones in your territory with smartphone manufacturer"

This applies both to OS and monthly updates as you can s from Android One Wikipedia

So, you need to check the OEM support for the region to be sure. However, since they are monitored by Google, you can be sure you will get updates as promised.

The general trend is that they release devices into the market before/after the next major update, for example, if Android 8 is to be released in a few months, the phones out of the box come with Android 7 and are supported till update to Android 9. That said, how soon they release the next version is a big variable. Your best bet, would be to follow Counterpoint comparison or technical reviews /XDA

Edit: Post your edit to your question, yes, your interpretation is correct.