Seeing ads on every website no matter where I visit on my android phone I don't know what I've installed to my android phone but something cause my phone to show ads on every page I visit.

It doesn't matter if I use Google Chrome or default android browser.
I try to uninstall every app I got suspicious but it did not helped.

Here is a few screenshots of the problem (Click for full size):

After uninstalling nearly all the apps downloaded from Play Store (except a few like Twitter, Facebook etc.), I still had the issue.

I, then, tried to uninstall Google chrome which seems to be not allowed to do in normal ways (I guess it is one of the default apps of the phone).

Lastly, I found out that there is an update for the Chrome on the Play Store. I updated the app and surprisingly see that the problem is solved.

Have no idea what happened there and still suspicious about the problem but, seems like I succeed.

P.S. I will be grateful if someone explains what happened to my phone, technically. (Does updating Chrome change things for the default web browser? Because, I was having the same issue both in Chrome and default browser)


SD card directory is "split" on new phone I moved from a Samsung Mesmerize (Galaxy S, Android 2.2) to a Motorola Electrify (Android 2.3) and the Electrify is reading my SD card differently. My old data is now stored in /mnt/sdcard-ext instead of /mnt/sdcard/. All my phone's old data (which I want to keep) is in that directory.

Why did my SD card path change and what should I do to "merge" the two?

On the Electrify, the external SD card is mounted at /mnt/sdcard-ext/ while the internal is at /mnt/sdcard/.  The two are logically separate and cannot / should not be merged.

On the Mesmerize, the external SD card is mounted at /mnt/sdcard/external-sd/ as if it were a subfolder of the internal SD storage, which is also mounted at /mnt/sdcard/ like the Electrify.  The two are just as separate as on the Electrify, however, and the subfolder isn't "real".  If you connect your phone to your PC you will see two separate drives for them, and the "external-sd" folder on the internal storage will show up as empty — since it is!

I think what's happening here is that you want your data — downloads, possibly pictures and music, etc. — from your Mesmerize's internal SD, and you thought it was all on the external SD.  (I don't blame you, this system of having two areas both called SD is confusing.)  What I would do is:

Power off both phones
Remove any external SD cards from both phones to avoid confusion
Power on both phones
Connect both phones to your PC and mount the internal storages on both to your PC
Copy the content of the Mesmerise's internal storage over to the Electrify's internal storage
Properly dismount both phones from the PC
Power off both phones
Re-insert your external SD card(s)
Power on the Electrify and go happily on your way


Google Dialer crashes when Contacts are disabled I disabled the Google "10003 Contacts" App in the Apps preferences, and although I have installed CardDav for my contacts that I use via my owncloud, the Dialer crashes when I click on a Contact in the call-history

How Can I Block the default Google Contacts app without loosing the functionality in the dialer?

I installed xPrivacy on my rooted device and disallowed the App "10003 Contacts" all privileges but some:

Contacts->"contacts/contacts"
ContactsProvider2
android.intent.action.VIEW

that seems to be the only needed privileges


How to add wallpapers to Kindle Fire? Where do I add/delete pictures so the Kindle Fire will randomly select it as a wallpaper for the device?

Someone over at the XDA Forums already discovered how to do that. See link to the thread below.

I strongly advise to follow this guide only if you know your way around the procedures mentioned (repacking & zipaligning an APK file, file system operations with root permissions) and wouldn't mind jumping through several hoops to recover your device if the process fails.

XDA Thread - [Guide]Changing Kindle Wallpapers!


I have an atrix Motorola and I tried to load the "rider x" app (memory problem) I have a Motorola Atrix and have most all my apps loaded on the sd card.  Seems like I can not get "Rider X" app to work.  It loads but then won't open.  I uninstalled and reloaded.  Sometime I get the message - The location Google Play Store (process com.android.vending) has stopped unexpectedly.  Please try again.  How can I get more internal memory or whatever it is that I need to do?  Thanks

It is probably too old or too new for your phone. If you did not have enough space it would tell you insufficient storage when installing.


Galaxy s5 upgrade from 5.0 to 5.1.1 How do I manually upgrade my Samsung galaxy S5 from lollipop 5.0 to 5.1.1 as it doesn't want to upgrade by itself. I'm in Namibia and the baseband version is G900HXXU1BOL2.

Personally I always use a site called Sammobile. They host every firmware made by Samsung. The firmwares are 100% stock and won't trigger Knox. You will need to register an account on their website, but it's free.

You can download the firmware for your device here. The firmware can be flashed by using a Windows application called Odin (download link in the guide below).

When the firmware is downloaded, flash it on your phone. Here are the steps:

Extract the firmware
Download Odin 3.11.1.
Extract the Odin zip file.
Open Odin.
Reboot your phone to download mode by holding the home, power and volume down buttons. Release only the power button when at the Samsung logo, and release all of them when you see a green Android robot. Then press volume up to accept the warning and you'll see DOWNLOADING.
Connect the phone to your PC, Odin should now see your device.
Add the firmware file to AP/PDA. (The "not responding" is normal, just wait).
Make sure re-partition is not checked.
Click the start button. The flashing can take some time.

  Note: The firmware will not factory reset your phone, so if your phone is stuck booting, don't worry. Just boot to the recovery mode, do a factory reset and reboot the device. This shouldn't be a problem if you're upgrading your device, only when downgrading.


three sets of headphones not plugging into brand new lg optimus g phone I have 3 sets of headphones, being he exact same size. They all fit and even click into my old phone's head jack, where as with my new phone the lg optimus g they go in midway and the only way for the headphone jack to read the headphones I have to hold it in. There isn't dust in it or anything I don't know what is happening. This is ridiculous

Take it to the shop you bought it and get them to work out what's going wrong. This isn't the sort of problem you can easily fix over the internet: you need an expert there to see what's up with the jack. In addition, if it's a common problem, the people at the shop will already have heard about it from other customers. Maybe the jack is just too tight and needs some more force, or maybe there's some fluff stuck inside where you can't see.


Why is pressing touch tone keypad not transmitted during calls? Recently, my wife's phone started acting weird in that when connected in a phone call, pressing the touch tone keypad is not working.  You can hear the tone being pressed in the speaker, but the other end of the phone call is not getting the tone transmitted.

What might be causing this and how could I go about getting this fixed?  She is running CyanogenMod7 on her HTC Incredible.

I got this to work under CM 11 by opening the Phone app, hitting the dotted line for settings, then un-checking the "Dial pad touch tones" option. I can't hear the touch tones anymore, but at least I can access my voicemail.

I have an international i9300.


Is it possible to change the button combination for recovery/download mode? I had to press power + home + vol up/down, but my home button just stopped working.
Is there any way to change the key combination?

(I can go into recovery by using the reboot menu, but it would be better if it worked.)

Samsung Galaxy S (I-9000), Android 4.4 (CyanogenMod 11)

Try holding down the volume up, then camera, then lock button. If this works then use the up/down volume keys to select what you want to do.


How to backup Samsung 6 edge data with broken USB port My USB port on my mobile is dodgy, intermittent charging slowly reducing to no charging! I took it in to shop and they're happy to send it away to be fixed, however I need to back it up, and i've downloaded Kies, but of course the cable from the phone's USB port isn't working properly so I can't seem to get the phone connected to back up my connects and calendar. Any suggestions?
I've got a google account and synced the contacts (although I couldn't see my calendar), but how do I know this has been synced and how do I recover it?
Is there a way to back up through bluetooth?

You can use the smart switch app to send to a different Samsung phone.

I've noticed that calendar tasks on Samsung doesn't sync with Google or with anything else, only smart switch or kies worked me.


will gaming destroy my phone battery? I think games probably destroyed my Note 2 battery. I often play games for hours straight while charging. Last Sunday it was dead with horrible heat. Then I borrowed friend's mpj backup battery, swapped it, and everything worked perfectly again.
Now I have ordered a new battery online. I am not sure if playing games while charging could destroy the battery, if so, i swear wont do it again.

Charging and playing heavy games damages the battery very quickly. It is caused due to the overheating while charging, short Recharge n discharge cycles while charging n playing games and heat due to the GPU. Heat is the sole enemy of Battery. This is the same scenario in most of the mobile devices.

I recommend you to first fully charge the device n play until the charge drains out. I know it's a bit harsh.


Does the new Nexus 7 (2013) have a GLONASS sensor? According to a colleague who has the new Nexus 7 (2013) model already, there is a GLONASS sensor in addition to the GPS one in the device. Is this true? I was unable to find any reference to this alleged fact in the official documentation and via a casual web search.

Please state your sources in your answer(s).

According to Ifixit's teardown, the Nexus 7 2013 uses the Qualcomm 8064 Snapdragon S4 Pro SoC.  Qualcomm's specs show that SoC uses their IZat Gen8A GNSS chipset, which according to their overview does include GLONASS support, though this doesn't necessarily mean GLONASS support is actually active and available in software.

A simple means to test whether you've got GLONASS is to use GPS Status and Toolbox and see how many satellites it shows for you.  If it shows more than 13 satellites, you're getting both GPS and GLONASS.


What's the difference between an AOSP ROM and a stock ROM? I'd like to know what's the difference between these two.

What are the Advantages or Disadvantages of using a AOSP ROM vs a Stock ROM?

Is it just the Theme/Skin/UI and Bloatware that's different or is there something else?

A stock ROM is the ROM that comes with a device; the device is "stocked" with that ROM by the manufacturer.  Android is generally customized by the manufacturer to some degree; at minimum there needs to be device-specific drivers and so on for Android to work on a particular device.  As Flow notes, customizations may include a custom theme, launcher, and default apps like HTC Sense does.

An AOSP ROM is a ROM based on the Android Open Source Project.  In the purest sense, AOSP refers to unmodified ROMs or code from Google.  The name is often co-opted for custom ROMs that are very close to the original AOSP, since these ROMs still need to be customized; for example, I can't download/compile the Android source code and run it on my Samsung Vibrant without doing a whole lot of customizations.  The name is often abused to refer to ROMs that don't have a custom launcher or many of the other modifications carriers make with Sense, TouchWiz, Motoblur et al., although they may still be themed.  A more accurate name for plain, mostly-unaltered ROMs for non-Google devices is probably "vanilla ROMs".  (This distinction is part of our tagging policy here; see this Meta discussion for more info.)

Techncially, stock ROMs are all AOSP ROMs apart from the versions of Android that haven't been released.  Honeycomb ROMs aren't AOSP, but (for example) Gingerbread ROMs are AOSP since the 2.3 source code is available at http://source.android.com/.  (That assumes Google hasn't hidden parts of the code and given it to manufacturers secretly.)

To further add to the confusion, a "custom ROM" does not refer to customized ROMs in general.  That term specifically refers to ROMs that have been customized by third parties (i.e., not the manufacturers or carriers).  For example, I'm running a custom ROM that is just a re-themed and tweaked stock ROM.  CyanogenMod is another example, and it has many features built from the ground up rather than mere tweaks.  Most AOSP ROMs you'll find for a specific device are stock ROMs that have been customized to remove some of the manufacturer/carrier tweaks and make them closer to the pure AOSP experience.


Problems with ASUS Memopad 7 So my mom has been using an ASUS Memopad 7 for a while now, and she's been having some trouble with it lately. Namely, many of the apps are now basically unusable and almost always crash with "Unfortunately, [app] has stopped". I've tried checking it before but couldn't find any obvious problems (like lack of disk space, etc). I also tried installing an app to check the system logs (I believe it was named CatLog) but couldn't find anything relevant.

During the past couple of days, the problem became significantly worse. The tablet would always pop an alert "Unfortunately, Contacts has stopped", and after you dismiss it with [OK], the alert pops up again, repeat ad infinitum. The tablet is practically unusable now.

Complicating things is that it's difficult to get the thing to even boot. If I restart it, it loads into a black screen with the Asus logo and a spinning loading icon and stays there forever. Image for reference: http://i.imgur.com/NBhvZ2T.jpg . My mom says she can get it to boot sometimes but only after restarting several times (I don't have the patience for it, I've never gotten it to boot)

I've already managed to back up her relevant data, so I suggested that I do a factory reset. So I hold Power and Volume Up during startup and boot into the following menu: http://i.imgur.com/Anb5Kjl.jpg  There's an error message there, IDK if it's relevant.

From the Droidboot Menu, I choose "Recovery" and it reboots again. This time it boots into a screen with a dead Android mascot and the text "No command". Here's a shitty cameraphone image for reference: http://i.imgur.com/QgOvHkm.jpg  At this point, I'm not sure how to proceed. The Volume buttons are unresponsive. Tapping Power does nothing. If I leave it in this state for a while, it proceeds to try to boot and gets stuck again at the loading icon I showed in the first image.

Any advice as to how I can get this tablet back into a usable state?

You might need to replace the system. Using adb, type in adb sideload ____.zip (after installing a zip for the device) because ASUS devices are built with Android, just with a different launcher and features. NOTICE: Before you sideload, make sure to enter recovery mode and choose apply update from ADB. If the launcher is replaced, you should install ZenUI Launcher.


How to sync all emails for all labels without individually going to each label and selecting sync all? I switched from the native email app to the Gmail app because I could finally have separate views for my Starred folder. But now I'm faced with another issue: I can't seem to find a way to sync all emails for all labels without individually going to each label and selecting sync all? Is this possible?

That shouldn't be a problem at all!
Go to settings>accounts>Google>tap on Gmail (to untick the sync), and tap on it again to sync right away.
Alternatively, you can also tap on 'Sync Now' option, which will sync all your Google apps.

Note: make sure you don't have sync only on WiFi option enabled, if you do, either be on a WiFi network, or disable the WiFi only option! :)


Create a custom keyboard dictionary Is it possible to use custom dictionary with the default Android keyboard? I guess the words are stored in some file, so I would like to edit it.

The goal is to create Macedonian auto-completion because there is no other way to achieve this.

Not 100% sure, but Smartkeyboard Pro (2-3 Euro) and MultiLingual keyboard both have Macddonian layouts and remember new words. You can teach them while typing, if this is any good for you.
The market shows a few Macedonian specific keyboards, but I assume you have tried this already.


What does the message: 550 Invalid name or chroot violation mean? I am trying to establih an Ftp connection between my Archos tablet and my Galaxy phone.

I am using the swiFTP server program on my Archos.

I am able to connect to the Archos from the phone using an TPP client but when I try to copy any file Ireceive the message  '550 Invaid name or chroot violation'.

Can anyone explain what this means?

Looks like this is a pretty common problem.

One of the comments in the second link says that you need to change /sdcard to /mnt/sdcard.  Apparently Android 2.2 changed the way the SDCard is mounted and the error you're receiving comes from /sdcard being a symbolic link in 2.2 rather than an absolute path.

http://code.google.com/p/swiftp/issues/detail?id=86
http://code.google.com/p/swiftp/updates/list


Mi max not able to boot up after flashing I successfully flashed my Mi Max prime 3/64GB to helium_global_images_V9.1.2.0.NBDMIEI_20171109.0000.00_7 ROM using mi flash in edl mode. Now the problem is the phone doesn't start up. It shows mi logo and android logo down the screen, its loading dots go for a few seconds, it vibrates and button lights gets on, and then it switches off completely.

I also tried going to recovery mode and wiped all data after flash. but it seems nothing works.

my device is not unlocked that's why I flashed it in EDL, and I prefer it to stay this way if possible.

any suggestions?

It turns out the problem is with the battery. the connector that connects the battery to the main board was damaged. so I guess it didn't provide enough output for the main board to boot the operatinng system up.


List of apps I can delete/uninstall on my S4 Can someone please give me a list of apps that are safe to uninstall or disable on my Galaxy S4?  Thanks!

As stated it may not be possible to build a complete list, due to carrier bloatware. You may need some of these for functioinality you need also. There is also variants of the S4, to confuse matters further. This is not a complete list, but trying to keep one exactly up to date is like trying to build your house beside a boat, before you get the foundation poured the boat has moved on down the river.

 XDA Bloatware List I must again emphasise that there can be roll on effects and you can lose functionality you MAY need on your device.

E.g.:  AllSharePlay15.apk Removing will impact Wifi-Direct function.  You CAN remove it, but you will lose WiDi and so on.

The alternative option is to find a Slim or Ultra-Slim ROM for your device. An example of this would be Echoe Illusion ROM for the S4 which has a SLIM and ULTRA SLIM variant of some of their ROMS. There is also the Google Edition 'Stock' ROM that you can use, which is 450 Mb approx, while Touchwiz Variant is about 1.6 Gb.  There is also the Echoe Debloater which can remove bloatware from recovery, but the caveat of losing functionality still applies. There are many other ROMs out there too so shop around if this option appeals.

 XDA Forum for S4

Note: Any mods/themes/firmeware must be for the EXACT variant of your device, such as GT-I9505, GT-I9505G, GT-I9500, GT-I9506 etc. Using the wrong ones can and most likely will brick your device.


What occurs in the background when an application such as Skype is installed e.g. logs, synchronization, etc? When I install an application, what happens in the background, where is the application installed, where are its preferences stored, where is information such as usernames and passwords stored, etc?

where is the application installed

The .apk file is put into /data/app (see: Where in the file system are applications installed?)

  where are its preferences stored

This depends on the application. If it uses the SharedPreferences classes then they go in /data/data/<app's package name>/shared_prefs, but they could feasibly be stored anywhere the app can write data to (i.e. all of /data/data/<app's package name>, the SD card, etc).

  where is information such as usernames and passwords stored

This also depends on the app. Most often, probably somewhere in /data/data/<app's package name>. They could also use AccountManager APIs (the app must request this permission) which I believe will use the /data/system/accounts.db database.


Use GCC compiler in Termux? I don't like the default C compiler clang provided by Termux. Is there a way I can get GNU GCC in my Termux environment?

Another way to get gcc would be to add the community repo hosted by its-pointless at https://github.com/its-pointless/its-pointless.github.io. Sources are (more or less) available at https://github.com/its-pointless/gcc_termux.

Other popular packages available includes numpy and scipy.

More information about this and other community repositories can be found in the termux wiki.

To add this particular repository to your termux environment, run:

# Get some needed tools. coreutils for mkdir command, gnugp for the signing key, and apt-transport-https to actually connect to the repo
apt-get update
apt-get  --assume-yes upgrade
apt-get  --assume-yes install coreutils gnupg2 apt-transport-https wget
# Make the sources.list.d directory
mkdir $PREFIX/etc/apt/sources.list.d
# Write the needed source file - Added Missing "> character on line below
echo "deb [trusted=yes] https://its-pointless.github.io/files/ termux extras" > $PREFIX/etc/apt/sources.list.d/pointless.list
# Download signing key from https://its-pointless.github.io/pointless.gpg
wget https://its-pointless.github.io/pointless.gpg
apt-key add pointless.gpg
# Update apt
apt update

(instructions taken from https://github.com/its-pointless/its-pointless.github.io/blob/master/setup-pointless-repo.sh)


Can APK expansion files be moved to the SD card without root on the Moto G (Android 5.0)? It seems as if Motorola has reimplemented the ability to move apps to the external SD card on their recent devices.

Does this only apply to an app's .apk file, or will Motorola's implementation also move the (usually much larger) APK expansion files a.k.a. OBBs to the SD card when moving an app?

I understand that the app's data and cache files will not be moved unless the developer specifically implements SD card support.

.OBB files are usually large and they will be/can be moved to SD card along with app data. Sometimes only .OBB files will be placed on SD card and app data is kept in internal memory for faster startup.


How can I share a post from Facebook on Android with other apps? Facebook for Android doesn't seem to have any ability to provide a permalink for a post, or a share possibility for other apps. It only allows to send via Facebook Messenger, which obviously is useless. Also Facebook's save feature is useless if I want to use for example Pocket.

Did I miss something? Is there any hack? Alternative application?

Have you tried sending it to yourself via messenger? since the facebook can actually make you send yourself a msg... try doing that, that might be the answer.

P.S. I can't comment cause I still don't have 50 reps.. hate that kind of thing here...


Samsung Galaxy S stuck at bootloop I've bricked my old Galaxy S (GT-I9000) into a bootloop.

Trying to fix that, I've uploaded Semaphore's ClockworkMod Recovery to my device successfully via Linux.

However, when I press VUP+POWER+HOME, I get to the boot screen and it keeps flashing without booting into recovery mode.

Download mode works fine.

What can I do to restore the functionality of my device?

You should try flashing a stock rom on your Galaxy S with Odin.


How to stop com.seven.Z7.Social Hub from keeping my phone awake? com.seven.Z7.Social Hub is regularly keeping my phone awake for hours and hours. How do I stop it from doing so?

Thank you

I eventually just stopped using the app. Not worth my headache. Thanks for the help.


Samsung galaxy s3 being slow and getting hot I have a samsung galaxy s3 running Android 4.3, and it's always really slow and gets very hot sometimes. Does anyone elses phone do this? If so, have you found anything that helps?

It all depends the way you use your phone(more no of dents rough and tough use), The no of years of service of your battery.(the last time you changed your battery as recommended). Just follow these steps

Just try to avoid pro-longed usage of the device for gaming or
streaming videos or doing multi-tasking(streaming high definition
videos, parallel texting and downloading content all at once)
As this tends the battery to get heated up. Normally it should not
get the heat for just 1-1.5 hours of gaming
If your usage is more then you need to reduce it or else just
take your cell phone to any authorised Service Centre and get you
phone checked for the problems of heat and battery


How to make "Navigator" my default mapping app? Right now if I click a maps link my phone asks if I want to open in

Dolphin
Google Maps (Standard/classic interface)
Web

I prefer using the Google "Navigation" application for its features, such as  voice guidance and input.

How do I get "Navigation" to appear in the list of available apps, or even better make it the default for any map link I click?

Select Google Maps as default and then you only need to select Navigation to open Google Navigation.


Can an app enable/disable the wifi-hotspot without root? I want to setup my Verizon Samsung Galaxy S6 (stock/not rooted Android 5.1.1)  so that the wifi-hotspot can be automatically enabled and disabled.  I was able to set things up nicely with the Trigger app, except that the wifi-hotspot isn't actually enabled and disabled.  I tried a few other apps that were unsuccessful as well.

Manually enabling works fine with the stock Mobile Hotspot button.  Is there a way that an app can automatically enable/disable the wifi-hotspot with the default settings on this phone or does Android 5.1.1 or the Verizon modifications block this?

Update: This is the log of the WiFi Tether action of Tasker:

21.16.19/E current state: 1
21.16.19/E WiFi Tether: cur: false new: true
21.16.19/M lastWifiDisableAgoMS: 1452568579452
21.16.19/E check AP state
21.16.19/E AP state: 1
21.16.19/M lastWifiDisableAgoMS: 1452568579452
21.16.19/E current state: 1
21.16.19/E curval: 1
21.16.19/E WiFi: cur: false new: false
21.16.19/E wait for 200ms
21.16.19/E wait finished
21.16.19/E WiFi Tether: setWifiEnabled()
21.16.19/Mirror setWifiApEnabled: InvocationTarget: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException, java.lang.SecurityException: ConnectivityService: Neither user 10278 nor current process has android.permission.CONNECTIVITY_INTERNAL.
21.16.19/E WiFi Tether: enable failed
21.16.19/E Action WiFi Tether failed.

I don't like this solution for my needs. It's documented in case someone else has a use for it.

Create a task in Tasker with the following actions:

Secure Settings plugin with the "Actions" -> "Launch Activity" configuration

Select "Settings" as the app.
Choose "[Mobile Hostspot] .wifi.mibileap.WifiApSettings" for the activity to launch.

This action opens the Mobile Hotspot setting screen where the hotspot can be turned on and off.
AutoInput plugin use the "Action" configuration to record the click on the switch.

This solution has the following drawbacks:

Screen needs to be unlocked.  (It may be possible to add steps to check if screen is locked and unlock the screen if it is.)
The "AutoInput" service needs to be enabled under the Android Accessibility setting.  This allows the AutoInput app to interact with the gui.
It's a hotchpot of paid apps, fragile setup, and weakens the security of the device.


How can I automatically clear my chrome browsing data with tasker i followed these instructions,

How can I automatically clear my browsing data when I exit Chrome?

and works very well on android 6.0.1

I tried on other android 4.1.2 devices, but tasker give me a 255 error?

Are there limitations on android 4.1.2??

Have you any idea??

Thanks in advance

I have tested the scripts and they work pretty well on android 4.3.

However to diagnose your problem I made 2 tests:

Ran the script in Tasker without root - the result was indeed a 255 error see below:

Disabled root and enabled Tasker's acessibilty service - the script is executed normally.

So in conclusion, you need to Enable accessibility service for Tasker or tick use root, however root is not a necessity as long you've enabled the accessibilty of Tasker.

So you just need to follow the Instructions for Tasker and perform the script mentioned by Firelord ,  (credit  to Firelord):


Wake up android device by microphone or camera I would like to install a Android tablet on a wall.
So I would wake it up by looking in to the camera(distance ~0.5 - 2 meters), by clapping my hands or something similar.
Now I'm searching for an app or a service who can handle this.
Something like ISeeYou, but working...
I will only awake my device, not unlock it.

Voice control apps are plentiful, and a few will work with screen off.  Keeping the camera on all the time would chew up resources too fast so I doubt you'll find a solution there.

This kid has an app that will let Google Now listen with the screen off and then another app that will let you add additional commands.  http://rsenapps.com/


extSDCard as internal Storage - how does Androied manage app & data location Since Android 6.0 is it possible to use the external SD card as internal storage. If you do so all data on it will be erased and the card will be repartitioned.
I'm quite new to Android > 5.0 but I installed Resurrection Remix OS 3 weeks ago but running again into the storage limitation of my SII (I9100), I used the 1GB/2GB PIT (see Increase system partition size or Lanchon REPIT on xda).

Anyway as far as I understand, depending on your Android version, you can either use any of the apps such as AppMgr Pro III, Link2SD or App2SD what are able to partition and mount your extSD as internal storage, there is a tutorial on classroom.synonym.com (How to Partition Your SD Card in a Droid for APP2SD). I read all in forums.androidcentral.com ([TUTORIAL] Everything you wanted to know about app2sd, ext3, ext4 partitions!!) but they didn't answer all questions.
Besides, the >Android 6.0 in-build feature is a IMHO more handy.

Anyway, can someone answer the question how Android manage the internal /Data and /media_rw partition combined with the external partition before running again in any limitation.
Will I be able to utilise almost all 32 GB or 64 GB of the extSD for apps and their data. I don't take that many pictures with my I9100 due to the poor cam.  I found 2 well explained tutorials (#1 & #2) but both missing this detail.

The adopted SD card is actually mounted at /mnt/expand/$UUID

Instead of forcing the user to pick for EVERY file whether they want it stored in the device's internal storage or the adopted storage, they simply made the internal memory unavailable for storage. That is, /storage/emulated is mounted to point to your adopted SD card and your previous internal storage data that actually lived in /data/media is moved over to its new home on the SD card. This gives the added benefit that there is NO ambiguity where apps are storing user data. It always goes to the adopted SD card.

Go here for more info
reddit: Let's clear up the confusion regarding storage in Android once and for all, including adoptable storage in Marshmallow.


No arrow keys on Swype keyboard after updating to 4.4.2 I updated and am now running 4.4.2, and was surprised by the update:

The arrow keys I had now don't exist. I need them.
Also, when it gets a word wrong, I cannot back-delete characters, it just deletes the entire word.

Is there any way out of this?

The arrow keys I had now don't exist.

It's probably because the update also updated the keyboard app which no longer now has arrow keys implemented. There is a way though, you can always use third-party keyboard apps from Play Store. Many do have arrow keys: Hacker's Keyboard is an example, and SwiftKey is another example.

  Also, when it gets a word wrong, I cannot back-delete characters, it
  just deletes the entire word.

This is because of autocorrect. You can disable it in keyboard settings by going to Settings -> Language and Input and check your keyboard's settings.


How to downgrade from Marshmallow to Lollipop? Please help So I've tried everything and it's not working, I cannot uninstall Marshmallow from my settings. I don't know what to do. Btw i have Lenovo A70000.

The official status is that you can not downgrade.

But if you take the risk you can do the downgrade via SP Flash Tool, just follow this steps:

Preparing

download an official stock ROM (MM stock ROM, LP stock ROM)
download and install phone drivers
unpack downloaded stock ROM on your PC
enable USB debugging option on your phone: like this

Go to Settings > About > Build number > tap it 7 times to unlock Developer options > then return to Settings > Developer options > tick the USB Debugging option

Flashing via SP Flash Tool

Charge your phone up to 80% and disable all those firewalls or antivirus on your PC.
Run as Administrator the flash_tool.exe, that you will find in the stock rom package.
Click on Scatter-loading and browse the scatter file MT6752_Android_scatter.txt
In the menu Option tab, go to Download, and put ticks in the DA DL All with Checksum both USB and Storage Checksum.
Now choose the Download only option
Now hit the green Download button
Now turn off the phone and remove the battery for at least 5 seconds, then put the battery back.
Connect your Phone to PC via USB, this will start the flashing process.
Once the process has completed, we will see a huge green check box.
Now we can disconnect the phone from the cable.
Now switch on your phone, it will take 6-10 minutes for first boot.
You have successfully installed the stock ROM or Official ROM on Lenovo A7000 ROW version

Source


How do I protect my phone from malicious apps once it is rooted? I rooted my phone.

Now if I use a Terminal Emulator such as Android Terminal Emulator, I noticed that I can can easily obtain root access without a password:

$ id
uid=10059(app_59) gid=10059(app_59) groups=1015(sdcard_rw),3003(inet)
$ su
# id
uid=0(root) guid=0(root) groups=0(root)

In the Unix server and desktop world, a superuser account with no password is considered dangerous because the superuser account has access to all resources on the machine.

Is this similarly dangerous on an Android phone? If so, how can I protect my phone from malicious apps which try to gain root? Can I manage which apps have access to the superuser account on this phone?

There's a similar question which covers some of this: Security risks of rooting your android smartphone. However, since it doesn't really explain how you manage access to the root user, I'll expand on that here.

When you root your device, you basically always (technically I suppose you don't have to, but you should) install the Superuser application along with the su binary. Superuser's sole purpose is to manage which applications are permitted to elevate to root and which are not. The default behavior is that Superuser will prompt you whenever a new app tries to execute a call to su, and you can then allow or deny it using the prompt. It can save your decisions so that you won't get prompted more than once for the same app, but you can erase this saved data from the Superuser settings page. It also provides a log viewer which keeps track of when su is accessed and by which applications.

Now, the tricky part is that many of the newer malicious apps will actually perform an exploit to gain root access rather than simply trying to make a call to su. There's really not much you can do about these aside from being careful about what you install and where you install apps from since they aren't even using su to begin with. However - to directly answer your question - apps which require legitimate root access can be easily managed by Superuser as explained above.

If you are rooted but don't already have Superuser then you should be able to simply install it from the Market, I believe.


Export telegram and whatsapp contacts to vcf? I have lost most of my contacts on the phone account, but they still exist in my telegram account. How can i move them to phone or export them?

It's very easy to transfer contacts from telegram account to your android smart phone:
Just install a contact backup software from google store like "+contact backup" and after that make a back up from your contacts; it automatically collect all of your contacts from every account that you have on your phone: telegram,google,phone etc.
after completing your back up you can import the created file to your phone or google account.
it's finished


How to drive Philips Hue lighting with NFC tags Recently I came to use my NFC tags again.
Wondering how I can use my NFC tags to automatize chores like:

Turn the light on at noon (Alexa/Philips Hue)
Turn the light off at midnight

In essence I intent to use NFC tags as replacement for conventional light switches!
I could not find any way to do this using the standard apps (NFC Tools / Trigger). I am not bound to a specific app solution.
I tried to use text-to-speech to verbalize Alexa commands with NFC Tools, but this failed since it seems a synthetic voice is not recognized.

I think you're misunderstanding what an NFC tag is.  The tag has an ID number.  All it signals to the phone is "You just identified this tag as me".  Some app has to be looking for that tag ID, and have code to do something when the phone sees it.
You can use one tag to turn the light on, and another to turn the light off - but you don't use a tag to "turn the light on at noon", you just develop an app (or find one in Play) to turn the particular device on at noon (and the same thing for turning it off at midnight).
Google Assistant might even work - tell it to turn the light on every day at noon and turn it off every day at midnight.


Access Android SD from Windows 7 via card reader I want to backup my sd-card, before using it in my new phone. So I used a card reader to connect it to my Windows 7 notebook. Sadly the partition is not mounted to a drive letter, altough I can see it to be free of errors in the disk management.

I suspect android uses an unsupported file system. But which and how can I read it from Windows?

EDIT: My phone is a Moto G3. The device is not rooted. The SD was formatted and mounted by the default Android-dialog for new SDs. I did no customization. I'm using a part of the SD card as internal storage.

Thanks for your support,
nils-o-mat

The fact of using your SD card as internal storage explains your problem: partitions for adoptable storage are encrypted, so on your computer you can only see the partition but not actually read its contents, as you lack the encryption key (for details, see: How to decrypt Adopted Storage?).

As you wrote you did no customization I'm wondering why there are 2 partitions on the card – and according to the screenshot, none of them reveals the file system used. By that fact (not showing the file system) I'd assume the second partition is encrypted as well.

As for the file system: Android normally uses some FAT style file system on SD cards. But if adopted, it's rather a Unix file system, most likely ExtFS (ext3 or ext4). Again something Windows cannot deal with unless you install specific software. If you want to know, use a terminal app or adb shell, and run the command mount. Watch out for the entries of your SD card there, then look at the file system column.


How Do I Launch The SDK Emulator? How do I use the Android emulator? I made an AVD device in Eclipse, now im trying to launch it via command prompt. Android is the AVD name. I have also installed all the files for Android 4.2.2 in SDK manager. This is what I type into cmd: emulator -avd <android> -gpu on. It spits out, system cannot find the file specified.

It sounds like the directory that emulator resides in isn't in your PATH. The path isn't updated by the installation of the SDK.


Upgrade to Lineage Os 14 I have a Samsung GT9500 (Intl) which has CM 12. I see that L14.1 is available for my device. Is it possible to simply just upgrade to L14 without bricking my phone. I don't care about losing my data. What steps should I take?

The Exynos variant of S4 doesn't have official LOS yet. Assuming you're talking about the unofficial one here.

Update to the latest recovery possible, e.g. TWRP here, or this one as suggested in the XDA thread.

Do a nandroid backup of what you have now for falling back when needed.

Factory reset - don't think about dirty flashing between major Android versions.

Flash the ROM of choice.


How to connect wired xbox 360 controller to a tablet? (TF Prime) I have read on certain blogs that it is super easy to connect a wired xbox controller to an android tablet. It should basically work right away.

I have tried to connect multiple xbox controller to my TF prime, but the apps that are supposed to support them, seem to do nothing.
Also, the controller does not show up in the droids "input and language" settings. (allthough I'm not sure wether it is supposed to)

Has anyone got this to work? Or have a clue as to what I might be doing wrong?

You should be able to just plug the controller in to your tablet with a OTG usb cable and then  an app like USB/BT Joystick Center 6 will map the controller inputs to something your device can recognise.


Is kernel mode of operating system and root permissions in android same thing? As written in book of Peter Baer Galvin's Operating System Concepts , there are two modes of operation -

  1.user mode
  2.kernel mode

So, my question is when we root our android do we alter the linux kernel to get permissions of kernel mode ?

Root permissions and kernel mode are not the same thing. Programs with root access can access part of the kernel, but root is not the kernel itself.

The Android (and Linux) user model has a set of users, each part of a set of groups. These groups are used to manage which users are allowed access to what. For example, in Linux you could set up all printer devices to be owned by the printing group, so only users that are part of the printing group can access printers.

In Android every app gets its own user account to prevent apps from accessing each others data.

Amongst all of these users, there's one special user: root. This is the user with the highest set of permissions, also called the "super user". Basically, all permission checks are disabled for this user. Root can do things like change ownership of files, add users to groups, manage system components and more.

Kernel mode is slightly different. When a Linux-based system boots, the kernel is the first thing loaded by the bootloader. The kernel takes care of processing system commands ("write byte x to file y", "list all devices attached to the USB bus"). It's also where many drivers reside, which help the system understand how to communicate to a device.

After initializing the kernel starts a program in user mode. Programs running in this mode are not allowed direct memory access to devices, they can't modify page tables, basically they can't do anything the kernel is supposed to do. The only way to execute a system command is to go though the kernel, and the kernel decides whether or not a program is allowed to do so.

In Android, the kernel starts an initialization program that in turn starts some background processes and the Android system you can interact with.

The kernel decides what user is allowed to execute certain system functions. Many system functions, such as mounting a partition to make it writable, are only accessible to programs running as root. Root can contact and control the kernel, but in the end the kernel decides what root can and can not do.

So: generally kernel mode refers to code running inside the kernel, while root refers to the permissions a program has.

For the sake of clarity I'm ignoring tools like SELinux which is designed to limit the files programs running as root can access. This is a security measure so that even if a system program running as root gets exploited and starts executing code from hackers, it can't compromise the system. This is done using a special module in the kernel.


Why Galaxy SII reports on not enough memory for new apps when I have several GBs available on flash storage? I have 5GB free out of total 11.5GB internal flash storage on my SGS2.

However, it doesn't allow to install new apps saying there's not enough memory. Also Settings > Applications Manager > All reports 1.7GB used, 281MB free (even immediately after reboot).

Why I can't use all 11.5GB of internal storage for my apps, but only 2GB? How can I make more storage available for applications?

Samsung Galaxy SII, stock firmware auto-updated to 4.1.2 I9100 XWLSE.

The Samsung Galaxy SII is an older device which doesn't use the MTP protocol and so, applications' storage and internal storage is separated. Newer devices share the full internal storage seemingly.

If you in need of storage space for apps, you may look at some root options such as:

app2sd applications that enable you to transfer your applications to the internal storage
app2ext that enable you to extend your applications' partition
a ROM for your phone that change the partitions' size


Change MAC address Android using ip link? I am trying to change the MAC address on a device running Android. It has been rooted and a command line installed ("ConnectBot"); I was looking around Google for methods of changing the MAC address on it and I found something called ip and ip link. Initially I thought I would use ifconfig but I haven't found the name of the network interface to change.

How would this be done on an Android device?

As superuser run:

# netcfg

A list with the interfaces will appear. For example my interface was eth0

# ifconfig eth0 down
# ifconfig eth0 hw ether your:new:mac
# ifconfig eth0 up

Note that not all drivers support this operation, and the Android ifconfig do not support these commands. You will need another ifconfig executable, perhaps that from busybox will be suitable.

After the reboot these changes are lost.


Google Voice SMS not showing notifications in Hangouts? I have my Google Voice account setup through the Hangouts app for Android, on my un-rooted Galaxy S5 (with the Lollipop OTA).

When I have the application open on my device, and I receive an SMS to my GV number, it appears on screen.

If I don't have the application open, the phone still receives the message, but it does not give me a notification. I know background data is turned on, and it has received the message, because I can turn on airplane mode, then open the app, and see the message is there unread.

SMS messages sent to my carrier number as well as Actual Hangouts messages notify correctly whether the app is open on-screen or not.

Has anyone ever seen this before?

It looks like there is an issue with Hangouts app that causes notifications for new conversations with a given contact to be disabled by default, with no way to override this setting.  On the Conversations tab, these are denoted by a bell with a strike-through:

(click for larger image)

Once you open such a conversation you will see a message in red saying "Notifications off - You won't be notified of new messages" with an option to enable them:

(click for larger image)

Existing conversations for which you've enabled this setting will receive notifications normally.  If you delete the conversation, the setting will revert to "off".  Archiving the conversation keeps it enabled.

The details that are described in this thread (I suggest starring it to show Google that there is interest in this issue) match exactly what you are experiencing.  It has been brought up before, and was escalated to the Hangouts development team, who are already aware of the issue.  We can only guess when (or if) Google will fix this.


What does it mean if a "device administrator" can "change the screen lock"? If a corporate policy requires a mobile device management app (like Microsoft Intune), what does it mean in Settings-> Security-> Device Administrators when "Change the screen lock" is listed?  Is that just changing the style of lock (passcode, fingerprint), or does that allow the administrator to disable the lock altogether (e.g. to unlock the phone to inspect the data or reset the passcode).

It enables the app to change the lock code and lock you out of the device. In general trustworthy apps wpuldn't abuse this unless you request it. Like android device manager changing the code when you request it because of lost and stolen. Be careful with such a permission.


Is it possible to to set a fixed NFC P2P RF speed for the Initiator? In NFC P2P communication, the RF speed of the LLCP connection is set by the Initiator. The possible speeds are 106kbit/s, 212kbit/s, 424kbit/s.

Android always choses the fastest possible speed.
For example I would like to set the speed to 212kbit/s.

Is it possible to set a fixed RF speed rate on Android side?

From a user perspective: No, that's not possible.

From a developer perspective: Maybe. Android does not directly provide an API that lets you choose a particular communication scheme/speed (the idea behind peer-to-peer mode is that the two devices automatically choose the best scheme that's suitable for both of them). Consequently, there is no way to do this without somehow modifying the operating system.

You could, for instance, create your customized OS and adapt the Android NFC stack to only use certain modes (for NXP's NFC stack, see the NFCIP-1 speeds enum in phNfcTypes.h:955 and the methods setP2pModes() (in NfcService.java:1083) setP2pInitiatorModes() (in NativeNfcManager.java:352) and setP2pTargetModes() (in NativeNfcManager.java:358).

On a rooted device, there could be an even easier approach (i.e. one that does not require building the complete OS): While there is no public API for setting P2P modes, there is a hidden method setP2pModes() in NfcAdapter (in NfcAdapter.java:1373). However, in order to call that method, your app needs to have the WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS permission (which is only granted to system apps).


Truncated text from NFC tag The NTAG216 can hold 800+ bytes of information.  But when I scan it with my Samsung S4, it will only show 5 lines of text followed by an ellipses (...) which is at most about 270 bytes.  I've tried it with 2 other Samsungs and an LG with the same result, so I think it's an Android issue. Even if you only put one character per line, it will only show five lines of text.  If I use an app it shows the full content of the tag, so I know all the content is on the tag and the hardware is reading it, Android just chooses to only show 5 lines.

I need the phone (any NFC phone) to show the entire contents of the tag, and I need it to work without using an app.  Any suggestions?

This is a limitation of the Tags app that is included in Android by default. The Tags app will display at most 5 lines of text for any text-type NDEF record. You can't get around this limit as it is hard-coded into the Tags app. Consequently, you won't get around using a customized app for that purpose.


how to take a backup of my calender events in galaxy ace duos is there any way to take a backup of my calender events in galaxy ace duos.
am searching for the third party software but couldn't find one.

One way is to sync up your calendar with your Google Account: Go to Settings > Select "Google" under Accounts > Click on your Google Account and now select Calendar.
Check if the discussion under this question helps.


How to calculate/verify SHA-256-Digest from META-INF/*.SF file? I'm trying to manually verify an APK file in the way Android would do when such file is installed in some old system (<7). I have one problem I can't really solve.

They say the following:

  As you can see, the signature file contains digest entries for the
  archive's files that look similar to the digest-value entries in the
  manifest. However, while the digest values in the manifest are
  computed from the files themselves, the digest values in the signature
  file are computed from the corresponding entries in the manifest.

So in this case, we have an example entry from the META-INF/MANIFEST.MF file, which is the following one:

Name: FingerprintProtocol.proto
SHA-256-Digest: WQ9R/MGV5m9Dye4Jtl3MiLRmX2RPoEPeinb3me7wnAU=

Now we take the corresponding entry from the META-INF/*.SF file, which looks like this:

Name: FingerprintProtocol.proto
SHA-256-Digest: fWL5eppUj0x6UVdPqHusFkpDbXpq7P0sqchfublqEnA=

The question is: How was fWL5eppUj0x6UVdPqHusFkpDbXpq7P0sqchfublqEnA calculated?

You are trying to verify the APK using the old and outdated JAR signature (aka APK signature scheme v1). This type of signature is outdated for Android as there are some attack scenarios in which a file exists multiple times inside the APK/ZIP file.

Therefore when verifying a APK files you should better rely on the APK signature scheme v2/v3 if present in the APK file.
The current verification process is documented here: APK signature verification process

The Android SDK comes with a tool called apksigner.jar (can also be used as library in own Java programs) that allows to to verify an APK files using the most recent available method.

For more details on apksigner and how to use it see this answer:
https://android.stackexchange.com/a/218161/2241


Repeated "Tabs" when editing contacts I am using Android 6 on a Samsung J7.

When I edit a contact there are several "Tabs" that can hold information, e.g., DEVICE, VIBER, WHATSAPP, etc.

For some contacts, I see two or three DEVICE Tabs (which seems puzzling to me), and two WHATSAPP Tabs (equally puzzling).

Why is this, and how can I get rid of repeated Tabs? (I suspect I would like to do this, but I am not sure)

Morevoer, for one contact (say, George T.), one of the WHATSAPP Tabs holds a phone number that is not shown as George T. in Whatsapp itself. On the contrary, this phone number shows both in Contacts - DEVICE Tab, and in Whatsapp, as belonging to John W. (the number belonged to George before, but not anymore).

WHy is this, and how can I fix it?

You haven't mentioned wether there are two numbers saved under the same name, or not

If you have two numbers saved under the same name, all you have to do is unlink them.

In the above screenshot you'll see that i saved two numbers on my phone and then i linked them together and in that case when editing this contact I'll have two tabs for Google contact and two tabs for WhatsApp. This also explains why gorge is in the wrong place - because you have him saved twice.

To un-link them, simply press the "link" icon which appears under the orange envelope. And press on the minus.


How do I restore my Android tablet from Google servers? I sent my Android tablet for repair and it came back from the manufacturer with the data and applications missing.  How do I restore the tablet from the Settings -> Backup Google servers?

It's either restored when you first configure your Android account on the device and accept the Cloud Backup, or not at all. There's no way to trigger it manually except for factory-resetting and re-configuring the account (sometimes it even requires to use a different SIM to trigger a complete restore, as one user reported; I just cannot find the reference at the moment).

You'll find a lot of details in the answers to Google Backup: Multiple devices using the same account - what happens on Restore?.


Opening CMD app on Android I have got a software that I use on my pc, it is some kind of console that runs on CMD. Can I port or open the software in my phone? The file extension in the software is .exe but once I open it it opens Command Prompt, so I believe its a CMD app. Can Terminal Emulator open it? If so how do I do it?

exe files are Windows executable files. They can be executed only on Windows OS. You can't run exe even on a Windows phone.

Only apk (Android Package) files can be installed in Android phones.

If you want to run a terminal (Command Prompt) on Android, install Terminal Emulator for Android

Even then, only Linux commands can be executed on the Terminal Emulator. You can't execute Windows Commands.


Play Songs from Laptop to Phone This is since a big issue that I wanna play songs from my laptop to my phone via bluetooth.

But the only solution I find that is play songs from mobile to laptop speakers.. but I want the opposite process to work on..

Because while I work on my laptop I want to listen the songs and control them from my laptop as well, but the speakers are pretty much away from my bed, so I wanna plug in the jack with my mobile and wanna play the track on my Laptop which will be listen to my phone via my laptop and phone bluetooth.

My Laptop is HP430 Notebook

And Phone is Xperia X8 (Android 2.1)

Please give me a solution, Thank you..

I have solved this problem by buying  Belkin Bluetooth Music Receiver and then plug that in with my speakers port. Now my speakers are playing music over bluetooth connection.

You can find this device in here:
http://www.cnet.com/products/belkin-bluetooth-music-receiver-bluetooth-wireless-audio-receiver-series/

I use SoundIt, it's a Google Chrome browser extension, go here: SoundIt Chrome Browser Extension

I use it when I watch online movies on my laptop, but want to listen to the movie on my Android cell phone with ear buds. You can also listen to music from your laptop as well, basicaly any audio thats coming from your computer, you can listen to on your cell phone.

On Computer: You need to use SoundIt on Google Chrome browser (to watch movies).

On Cell Phone: Any Android with an up - to - date Internet browser, I use Chrome.

It's using your wifi in your home to send the audio from the computer to the android cell phone. In my situation my laptop is not connected via wifi, but it's connected by ethernet, but thats no problem, because it's not using the computer to re-send the audio signal - it's using your wifi router ;)

Just follow the directions when you first run the SoundIt chrome extension, at some point it will tell you that you have to adjust windows firewall using the (SoundIt Enabler.exe) or you can do it manually via command prompt and some code they give you.

I suggest doing it manually, because I scanned the "Enabler.exe" and on some scanners it came us as 2 different malwares (supposidly). One that I can remember was an Adware and one other.

Why execute a .exe when you can just do it manually and know exactly what you're doing.

The above is so that SoundIt has permission send the audio signal from computer to your mobile device (android cell phone). In other words: It lets it be visible on the local network so other devices can connect to the computers sound output:)

It's very easy, at the end of configuration, it will give you a ip address like 192.168.1.9:7576 to then enter into the browser on your android cell phone.


A problem with finding apps in the market on the Phone I want to install the app Where. But when I did the same search in the Android Market app on my phone, I couldn't find this app. Since my phone does not have service, I cannot install this app through the Android Market website. Does anybody know why this app does not show up on the phone? How can I install this app in this case? I couldn't find its apk file either. Thank you.

Some apps have certain hardware requirements that your phone might not support (e.g. screen resolution.) The Market has the ability to filter out such apps from search results.


How do I make my phone stop starting in charge only mode when I plug it in? I did something with developer mode and now whenever I plug my phone in it wont let me access the files until I pull down the task bar and tap on "Charging via USB" which brings up a window where i can change it to "Transfer files". But I have to do this every time and it's so annoying that I basically don't transfer files to/from my phone any more.

In settings > system > developer options I disabled USB debugging, but it didn't seem to change anything.

At least on my device, it is a default behavior and cannot be altered. It was brought in with Android 8 and is same on 9 and 10.
The default USB connection mode is always charging. You need to manually enable the file transfer mode when needed.


Can't do factory reset on Galaxy Tab 2 I can't reset my Galaxy Tab 2 to factory settings. I know that you can when turning it on but the problem is that I installed a sort of ios onto the device and have forgotten the password and it won't let me turn it off without being logged in, but I can't unlock it.
Please help

According to Verizon, if you cannot perform a factory reset from the Settings app, you can perform one by following these steps:

  Power the device off.

  Press and hold the Power key.
  Select Power off.
  Select OK.   Note: If the screen doesn't respond to input, press and hold the Power button for 10-15 seconds.

  Press and hold the Volume up key then press and hold the Power key.   Note: USB cable must be disconnected.
  When the Samsung logo appears, release the Volume up key and Power key.
  From the Android system recovery screen, press the Volume keys to select wipe data / factory reset then press the Power key.
  Press the Volume keys to select Yes -- delete all user data then press the Power key.
  Press the Volume keys to select reboot system now then press the Power key.
  Perform Initial Activation and Setup.

You can read more at the Verizon website (Tab 2 Troubleshooting: Hard Reset).


Disable (in software) Nexus S Power Button My Nexus S has a broken power button that some days works fine, some days doesn't work at all, but most days just acts up and will randomly turn my phone on, even when it's sitting on the table.

I'm running a CyanogenMod 10.1 nightly on it. Through ButtonRemapper, I've mapped the soft search button to act as a power button, and enabled the volume buttons to turn the phone on. Thus, I have no need to use the power button anymore, and it is just annoying.

Is there a way I can disable (without hardware modifications) the power button? ButtonRemapper doesn't have in its options the ability to change it, and I've had no luck trying to modify the keymap files.

Any help is appreciated!

Xposed Additions Method

For this, you will require root:

Install the latest version of BusyBox. If you are having trouble with that installer, you can use an alternate BusyBox installer like BusyBox Installer.
Install the latest version of Xposed Installer.
Install the Xposed Additions module (Play Store)
Activate the module via Xposed Installer > Modules > [tick the box next to Xposed Additions].
Install the framework via Xposed Installer > Framework > Install/Update.
Reboot. A soft reboot is sufficient, but if it doesn't work, try a full reboot.
Xposed Additions > Buttons > Add New Button > (press the hardware button(s) you want to reconfigure, then tap OK].
Now, under Xposed Additions > Buttons, the buttons you have added will be there. Tap on the Power entry in the list. From here, you can configure the button to have no action on both screen on, screen off, and lock screen (if necessary). You can change each Click and Long Press action to do nothing.

Note: This will only prevent the power button's action while Android is running. This will not affect your button configuration while your device is (a) powered off, (b) in bootloader/download mode, or (c) recovery mode.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you have an alternate power button configured, or you may have no way to turn your screen on without a reboot! If this happens, reboot the phone, then add an alternate button to power on your device.


Got mail with URL pointing to an APK called com.android.fixed.update, what is this? One of my relatives sent me an email pointing to this URL:
http://www.flugversuch.at/cnu/kbdjobbwclikw/nbopigxdb/pxcbaolinizdg/qfktoohwzplsjsp

When I got there, it automatically downloaded an APK called com.android.fixed.update. What could this be and should I install it?

Are you sure it really was one of your relatives sending this mail -- and not just a spammer using their address as sender (as the URL suggests)? I would for sure NOT install that, to me it looks like malware. Ask that relative first if and why and what he sent.

A Google Search revealed some related information:

on XDA one encountered something similar, and they assume it's rather malware
BestAppMarket informs this app was removed from Google Play (hm, guess why). Same information is found at AndroidInformer
and here it comes: VirusTotal clearly lists it as malware, being detected as such by several malware scanners.

Conclusion: Keep your fingers OFF! Do NOT install!


What does the 'Mark as default' option do in my 'Edit' option of a contact What does the 'Mark as default' option do you can choose in the menu when you select a contact which is present in the phone memory ?

I am seeing this on a Samsung Galaxy S phone ( if this should make a difference ).

-- background information (for those interested) --

I am still trying to copy phone numbers one at a time from SIM to the phone memory ( see my other question ).

At the moment the easiest way to accomplish this is to send the contact information using the Send via + Gmail to my own Gmail account, press Download in the received email and choose Contacts ).

Having done this for the few numbers I wanted to transfer ( it's main reason being that I now can attach a picture and a ring tone to the important phone numbers, while still retaining these numbers on my SIM card should my phone suddenly die ), I now noticed the 'Mark as default' option in the menu of a phone number saved to the phone memory.

Before selecting this option, I wanted to ask what the option will actually accomplish.

I'm looking for documentation to back this up, but in my experimentation the "default" phone number for a contact is what's used with voice commands if you don't define a phone "type".

So, if I have three phone numbers for John Smith, if I just use the command Call John Smith the default phone number will be used. Otherwise, I need to use Call John Smith home or Call John Smith mobile.

It's also used if, when looking at a list of contacts, you tap the phone icon next to the contact's name. It will use the default phone number (if defined).


Why GPS tags are lost after saving images to PC with KIES? I'm using Samsung Galaxy S and latest Kies downloaded from samsung site. When I save images to PC all GPS tags are elliminated. How to keep them intact?

Copy the files directly by mounting your device storage to the PC, don't use Kies.  See GAThrawn's comment for details (thanks!).


How do I upload photos from Android phone to Google Plus without sharing? I would like to upload photos from my SGS4 to my Google+ without sharing to anyone. How do I do that?

If you turn on the "Auto Backup" feature of Google+, your photos will automatically be uploaded and will only be viewable by you (until you share them, of course).

If you want to do it manually, simply share with G+ and choose yourself as the only person you share with. I like to keep a Circle around with no one in it that I can share things to and so I'm the only one who can see them (kind of a "read it later" thing). You might prefer to do that, since it's quicker to choose a Circle to share to than a person.


Restore HTC One X to original ROM My HTC One X came with ICS pre-installed, but then I upgraded it to Android 4.2.2 using CyanogenMod. Now I want to reset my phone to its original ROM, but couldn't find a way to do it.

Someone suggested that I download and run:

  RUU_ENDEAVOR_U_ICS_40_Vodafone_UK_1.26.161.2_Radio_1.1204.90.13_release_251227_signed

but it didn't work. When I run the .exe I get the error:

 Error[155]: UKNOWN ERROR

My bootloader shows its version as:

version-main: 3.14.161.27
(bootloader) DEBUG: cid: VODAP001
ENDEAVORU PUT SHIP S-ON RL
*** UNLOCKED ***

How can I get the stock ROM reinstalled?

This is a protection that HTC uses to ensure quality in their devices. To re-install their custom stock, you must re-lock your phone. To do this, place your phone into fast-boot mode and plugin in via USB:

At the command line (or wherever you may have the fastboot binary), execute these commands:

  fastboot devices
  fastboot oem lock

This will lock your bootloader and allow you to run the RUU. Your device should now report "LOCKED". After your device is locked, proceed with running your *.exe on Windows.

(Make sure you're installing the right one first!)
List of RUU's: http://androidfiles.org/ruu/?developer=Endeavor

Full Tutorial: http://androidforums.com/one-s-all-things-root/691874-guide-how-run-ruu-your-htc-one-s.html


how to freeze/hibernate system apps in non-root android mobilephones is there any methods to freeze/hibernate bloatwares on android phones?
using samsung galaxy note 3

It should be possible to simply go into Settings -> Apps -> All apps, select the pre-installed app and choose the "disable" option. Hit "OK", and the app will no longer exist on the home screen, will no longer run, and will essentially cease to exist on your device.

Take a look at this question for more info.


Installing stock JellyBean in Galaxy S2 [Argentina] The system that came with my Galaxy S2 is heavily bloated. I want to install a bare, stock Jelly Bean ROM. I've searched and searched, but keep running into walls.

System version

I don't know how to get the version string, or if I do, I can't find appropriate ROMs. Nothing I can come up with reading the system info comes up in the lists.

Model: GT-I9100
Baseband version: I9100UHMS1
Kernel version: 3.0.31-914166 se.infra@SEP-122 #3 SMP PREEMPT (date) KST 2013
PDA: I9100UHMS8
CSC I9100PSNMS4

Where can I get the correct stock Jelly Bean ROM?

Download mode

When I reboot the phone holding vol+home+power, I don't see the screen everyone says I should see. Instead, I see a menu, in which the most appropriate option seems to be apply update from adb, but ODIN doesn't see my phone at this point (it does show up when it's normally functioning).

Why does ODIN see the phone when it's ON, but fails to see it when it's in dowload mode?

To root or not to root

Do I have to root the phone before attempting to install a ROM? The rooting process, according to the guides I've seen, involves installing a ROM too. This takes me back to square zero and the problems above.

Please help!

You can get an almost stock Jellybean experience using SuperNexus - I9100. It is based off AOSP and only has "improvements and optimizations", but states it is still very near to stock. Another option, while differentiating itself from AOSP, is CyanogenMod. This is based on AOSP, but includes a LOT of extra features and improvements of AOSP, while keeping the bloat to a minimum.

As for instructions on getting it ready for a custom ROM, the instructions on the CyanogenMod wiki tend to be fairly accurate and may give you the needed information to get you started. Install CM for i9100 If you don't want CyanogenMod on your phone, replace step #2 in the last section with whatever ROM you want to try (like the one above). Make sure you get the right gapps (basic Google apps including the Play Store) unless your ROM includes it (most don't).


Google account on HTC desire & galaxy tab just got my new shiny galaxy tab out of the box and am attempting to add the same google account i have setup on my HTC desire. after entering my username and pass, i am given the worded picture that i have to type in(you know the bot check)
After i put it in, it says please wait for 2 seconds, and gives me another worded picutre. I've done this 100 times at least, so i couldn't have got it wrong everytime.

is there a reason for why i cannot get past this step? I'm going crazy here!

Try changing adding either of the following to your user name and try the CAPTCHA again.

@googlemail.com
@gmail.com


After updating to 5.1, phone wont get past black "Google" screen Last night I upgraded to 5.1 via the built-in update functionality. This phone is not rooted.

Well, now my phone won't get past the black screen with the white "Google" logo when I try and boot it up. I can get into fastboot mode though.

However, fastboot is not showing the phone as a device in windows, so I can't just re-flash the stock 5.1 android rom.

Also, when I try and go into recovery mode I get an android icon with a red exclamation point in a triangle that says "No command."

Is my phone screwed?

Looks like I'm forced to do a factory reset, and I am using the guide on this page:

https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4596836?hl=en-CA


Can I sync my Kindle books with my Android phone? I have just bought a Kindle and the cool thing about it is you have an email address @kindle.com where you can send your books and it automatically converts it to a .azw and syncs it with your Kindle. I was under the impression it would also sync the books with all your devices, including the Kindle app on my Android phone (Isn't this the whispersync thing?). However, it doesn't seem to do this. Is there way to also sync all my books to my phone as well as my Kindle automatically?

It currently doesn't sync outside content with your phone, no pdfs, txts, emails... only kindle books you get from amazon.  I have tried to manually load pdfs with no luck. I believe the functionality is planned but not yet implemented.


"Insuficient Storage" when there is space available in the SD card I have recently installed a 32 GB SD card on my Android phone. I moved all my apps to it, and they only fill 600 MB of it. I have 152MB available on my Internal storage.

With all this space available, every time I try to install a new app (even if it is really small) I get an error saying that I have to remove unused apps, along with a list of apps suggested for removal. I have already tried to clean the cache, and it didn't help.

Any suggestions?

You need at least 500MB of free space in internal storage to install apps.


Adopted Internal SD Card is mounted twice I've adopted my external SD card as internal storage with the new feature of Android 6.0 (Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini with CyanogenMod 13). Since I've done this I've recognized that my stock image galery app and music player (stock and every other I've tried) lists every media file on the external SD card twice.

I know that these media files (pictures, music,...) aren't really duplicates because if I remove one file, the "copy" is deleted too. If I add new files it gets "duplicated" as well.

So I've tried to figure out the problem. I've noticed that the content of my external SD card is mounted under /sdcard/ with a symbolic link:

$ ls -la | grep "\->"
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root   root       21 2016-07-11 10:07 sdcard -> /storage/self/primary

And under /storage/emulated/0/ (I can't execute the ls command in /storage/emulated/) which has exactly the same files and folders.

So is there any way to remove one of these mount points safely (I don't know which App uses which of these folders...)? Or is there any other way to tell the media library to only scan one of these directories?

Edit: I FOUND A SOLUTION. Using Solid explorer navigate to /storage/emulated and then open up the properties for the folder titled 0. Three dots in the top right corner and select "hide media" if it gives you a toast message saying there was an error, just do it again. So far Solid explorer is the only application I've found to give the solution. I'm not 100% sure what it's doing to the folder but it's working.

Any luck with this? I found found the same issue. If you could find a way to blacklist the mount point from the media cache it should work


install certificates I received a .crt certificate to install on my new galaxy tab 10.1.
How do I install it?

I see that I can "install from USB storage" but couldn't figure out where this storage is.

From http://sknetlog.blogspot.com/2011/03/digital-certificate-installation-on.html

Save your .p12 or .cer certificate to external SD card in root
directoy.
Navigate "Home" --> "Applications" --> "Settings"
Select "Location and Security"
Under "Credential storage" have the first
item "Use secure credentials" selected / checked
Select "Install encrypted certificates from SD card" and it would pop up the name of
the certificate file found in the SD card
6 . Provide the certificate import password if any.


Where are WhatsApp messages stored? Where are WhatsApp messages stored when they arrive? They are stored in backup at 4 AM but before that, where are our latest messages stored? How can we access this location?


Transferring Nandroid Backup between two devices I did a Nandroid backup via ClockworkMod Recovery on my NVIDIA Shield, and want to restore it onto another NVIDIA Shield (due to the recent recall). Is it safe to restore the Nandroid backup onto another device of the same type? If not, is there any way to modify the backup to allow me to do this?

Restore only /data, /system, /boot (and optionally, /cache). Advanced Restore option in CWM recovery should allow you which partitions to  restore. Otherwise, Philz Touch Recovery (fork of CWM) has this option.

I'm choosing only selected partitions because if your device has concept of EFS then you may end up with IMEI trouble.

Note that while restoring make sure that the rest of firmware on both the identical models is same (modem, uboot and more). It should be same if they are running the same Android build. Otherwise, it is very likely that you may end up with a soft-bricked device at the least.

Also, make sure that the both  the devices are fully  backed up so that you don't end up with data loss at least.


How can I send large files from my device to my computer, without using a cable? I have a Galaxy S3 (GT-I9300) with 500MB worth of videos on it (2 in total).

I want to transfer those files to my computer. The catch, I have no cable.

How can I transfer those files as quickly and as reliably as possible? Bluetooth isn't an option (it would take hours), can it be done over WiFi? I've tried WiFi direct, it doesn't recognize my PC.

If your remote pc has Linux, you could do it through scp command.

See here an explication of the command. You could run this command from a terminal emulator like this one.

Short example:
scp -r path/to/folder user@remote-PC:/path/to/where/to/save/the/filesscp path/to/file user@remote-PC:/path/to/remote/location/where/to/save/file* -r option means recursively copy entire folder.

If your remote pc has windows, take a look at pscp.

Another way is to install ES File Explorer File Manager. * Select the local files you wish to transfer (actions -> copy) * In LAN section access a folder from your remote PC and paste (actions -> paste) the selected files.* The folder from remote pc has to be shared with write permission.


How can I hide some contacts from dialer? I am playing around with my brand new Motorola Defy and trying to find a way to manage my contacts.
Of course it synced every contact in my Google account... I want to hide some of them, you know, those people you don't contact often but whose coordinates you want to keep in case you ever need to. I haven't had any luck so far.

I have 3 apps on my phone that deal with contacts :

one called Contacts that is just for managing contacts (no tabs like dial or favorites) -- you can call someone after selecting them, then selecting the phone number, then call -- in there I can select groups I want to hide but too many clicks to call someone
the dialer (my phone is in French so it's called "Appeler" = Call) with tabs : call, recent, contacts, favorites -- works as I'd want to but display all contacts with a phone number, and I haven't find a way to hide some groups (and it does display "visibility: hidden" when you select the contact)
Go contacts, that I installed in hope it would be everything I wanted, but I can't hide groups, as when I try remove a group from the app it deletes it from Google

I don't know if the 2 apps that came bundled with my phone (contacts and dialer) are stock Android or Motorola. BTW, I skipped the configuration of Motoblur so no Motoblur account or anything like that. And it's running Froyo (already installed when I got it).

Does anyone have a solution for me ?

I can't speak specifically to the Defy, but if you've got the stock Android Contacts app and you're syncing to Google, you can tell the phone which groups to display.

From the Contacts app Menu | Display options | {account}. Then check the groups you want to see, and the uncheck the ones you don't. "My Contacts" is going to be pretty much everything under your account. If memory serves, this is only for display; the contact info is still on the phone.

Please note that in Android versions 5.x and up this may be no longer valid due to a bug.


4Gb Storage: Why can it only use 1.6GB? Why do Android phones say they have 4GB storage but then cazn only use 1.6GB of it? Why is this? Is it possible to access all that other space?

If you see below it confirms how much space this phone has and how little (except for Apps) it really is using. Any advice how I can make the phone use all the available space?

Edit Its a Huawei Ascend

You are only able to use 1.6 gig because 2.4 are required by the android system. This includes all 'the code' and default apps, ringtones/sounds, backgrounds etc. You can free some of this by rooting your phone and using tools but to expand beyond this you will need to add a micros SD card.
I sympathise with you, this is a very annoying niggle all android providers do. can confuse many people. (with a 16gb s5 you get about 10 gig of space)


Flashed wrong recovery on a QTAB with no bootloader or fastboot. What can I do? Hey guys I was just tinkering, and it was stupid of me not to take a backup of any kind. Anyway, QTAB doesn't have a bootloader or fastboot menu. When I try adb reboot bootloader or fastboot, it goes to back to recovery. Now the problem with recovery is I cant use it. Home button makes selection go up and power key does nothing.. and cwm is not touch supported.

I have the stock system.img but no stock recovery. I could try another twrp recovery. But that's what i want to know how to do it.

I've googled and tried various stuff. no luck

Without knowing the exact device model you have I can only tell you to go to the website and download the appropriate firmware. Get the right file depending on your model number and read the instructions for flashing the stock firmware. This will give you a complete stock tablet back (system.img / recovery.img / boot.img etc).

The instructions seem pretty straight forward even though the procedure is a little bit weird...anyway:

Software needed: PhoenixSuit

  Step 1 :Open PhoenixSuit application

  Step 2: Choose firmware tab

  Step 3: Select the image file from your computer

  Step 4:Unplug the qtab + Click upgrade

  You  will see this message : "Upgrade Firmware to Device?" Press Yes

  Then you will see this message "No Device attached!" - Press Ok

  And press ok for the third message also

  Now long press your power button for atleast 10 seconds
  Press one hardware key except the power button and do not release
  Connect the device to the computer
  Click power key for about 10 times
  Release all keys and the device will upgrade

  If it didn't work, repeat these 5 steps
  Instructions taken from here.


What does the pressure sensor measure? What kind of pressure does it measure? Air pressure? Finger pressure on the touchscreen?

Some devices, like the Motorola Xoom, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active and the Galaxy Nexus, have an air pressure sensor built into them that measures the barometric air pressure. I have the Barometer HD app installed on my Xoom which seems to give roughly the same reading as my Suunto electronic barometer.

Support for a barometer pressure (and other environmental) sensor was added in Android 2.3 To follow the trend of linking to the related developer resource, I believe this is a TYPE_PRESSURE sensor.

See also this related StackOverflow question Android devices with pressure sensor, and this Gizmodo article for some of the possible uses for the barometer, which includes helping the device  to calculate your altitude in GPS apps.

Android Engineer Dan Morrill made a post to Google+ explaining why the Galaxy Nexus had a barometer internally:

  I've seen a lot of hay made about the barometer in Galaxy Nexus.
  Here's the skinny; it's not really as dramatic or weird as people
  think.

  The primary purpose of the barometer is (at least, I've been told) to
  make GPS lockons faster. Locking on to a GPS involves numerically
  solving a 4-dimensional set of linear equations -- 3 dimensions in
  space, and time. (Yes, you get accurate time for free if you lock on
  to GPS.) Because of the way GPS works, this can take a few minutes.

  This goes much faster if you already have an estimate of your
  location. This is why "aGPS" (assisted GPS) services are so popular:
  by starting with a rough city-level coordinate fix through something
  like cell-tower network location, you can reduce the amount of math
  you have to do to lock on. This is where the barometer comes in.

  The 3 dimensions in space are latitude, longitude... and altitude. The
  barometer gives you a reasonable first-cut estimate for altitude. This
  gives you a bit of a leg up on one of the dimensions -- especially
  combined with "2D" aGPS -- which can help speed up lock-on in general.

  Now of course, the barometer can also be used for things like, well,
  determining atmospheric pressure (although I'm not sure it's really
  weather grade.) But the main reason it's in your phone is to help with
  GPS.


Auto forward sms to Telegram messenger Group I'm a volunteer firefighter and I receive emergency calls and at the same time an "emergency SMS". I'd like to forward those incoming SMS to a group in Telegram/WhatsApp, so my family and friends know I went to an incident.

I know there's the "Share" option in Android's SMS App. (Not using Hangouts for SMS)

But is it possible to forward all SMS from one contact automatically to a WhatsApp/Telegram group?

Searching the Google Play Store I found "Autoshare" (com.joaomgcd.autoshare) but I'm not quite sure if this
would do the trick and after the watching the video I was even unsteadier...

IFTTT to the rescue!

You can set IFTTT to forward an SMS from specific number to specific chat.

Steps:

Create you IFTTT account if not already exists.
Start the @IFTTT Telegram bot and authorize your IFTTT account.
Add the @IFTTT bot to you Telegram group as admin.
Choose /connect_group from the bot commands, and follow instructions.

If your group isn't public, you can give it a public (meaningful) name just for the connection to IFTTT and then change it back to private. You'll see the group public name and group title in IFTTT, so before connecting check that the name is understandable.

Go to My Applets and choose New Applet
For the +this - choose Android SMS and then New SMS received from phone number
Enter the phone number from which you recieve the relevant texts.
For the +that - choose Telegram and then Send message.
Configure the Telegram message to be sent, you'll have some options there (Target chat, message text, web preview).

The message text supports basic HTML and have some parameters from the SMS connection (such as sender, text, time etc.).

I'm using it to automatically forward my post office message to my Telegram.

Important note: You said you're a firefighter, so I believe the messages are urgent. You should do some tests and check in IFTTT F.A.Q or docs about whether it's immediate or has some delay, or what they guarantee. I just tried and it around half a minute, and so it was in previous times.


How do I run an Android app on an iPhone? Based on my 30-60 minutes doing research on Google it seems there is no general solution for my question, but I wanted to double check on my favorite Q&A forum network, SE.

So, how can I run an Android app on an iPhone?

Generally, you cannot run Android apps on an iPhone.

Based on my 30-60 minutes doing research on Google it seems there is no general solution.

This Android.SE post
This Quora question

However, some apps can be emulated on an iOS environment.

Cydia is an emulator option for jailbroken iPhones, as mentioned in the Quora post cited above
iOSEmus is an emulator option without the need of jailbreaking iPhones. By the way, I recommend these installation instructions.

I welcome anyone who has more general solutions.


How do I know which GPS my Android Auto is using Apparently Android Auto can either use the GPS in the connected head unit or the GPS in the mobile device itself. As I understand, Android Auto will always prefer to use the GPS in the connected head unit. (which makes sense: typically has better antenna reception, doesn't drain the mobile unit's battery, etc).

How can I tell which one is being used ?

When the phone is in the car, I put it in "The Grotto" below the climate control and connect it via USB. I call it "The Grotto" because it is really deep and I'm thinking there's no way a GPS can reach in there. Yet my Android Auto works fine and never loses GPS signal. So something else must be going on.

According to this forum post it uses the phone's GPS. Can you see if the GPS indicator shows up on the notification bar? Also if it were the car's GPS, revoking location access to the app shouldn't cripple it. You could try this if you wanted to truly confirm.

(I have not used Android Auto before)


Is it possible to set a customizable mode of "Do not disturb" for Outlook? In this article, it is described how to set Outlook to e.g. do not disturb during weekends.

In addition to this, I would like to add the criteria to not disturb after work hours (i.e. 5 PM to 8 AM).

From my understanding, this is not possible? Could we persuade Microsoft to add this feature somehow?

EDIT: I found that several others also want this feture.

The latest versions of the Outlook app actually already have this new DND option "During evenings" wherein you can configure your after-work routine. By default, it is set to 5PM to 8AM schedule as you want in your question. But it can also be modified to fit a different routine. Here's the screenshot:


Internal storage space on a Motorola android phone I only have 6 games downloaded and moved to my SD card but my internal storage is running how can I find out why that is? And how can I fix the problem?

Firstly, what's the size of your device's internal storage, and what are these games you've downloaded? Because if you have 4GB of storage and downloaded something like Dead Trigger it would be obvious that you would run out of storage space.

If it's still unclear why you ran out of storage, I would recommend two steps for you:

Download file manager from play store (I personally use FX Explorer) and search for large files you've in downloads folder (or any other folders you could possibly junk).
Download  SD Maid and let it optimize storage for you.

That should help in most cases, if not, let me know ;)


How do I add to the favorites in Samsung S3 contacts? I have some favorites in my contacts list, but I don't know how they got there. How do I add more, and how do I remove ones I no longer want?

To favorite a contact:

Open Contacts app
Search for contact to favorite
Long-press on contact
Select Add to Favorites

To remove from favorites, select Remove from Favorites for a favorite contact (has a star).


How to change wifi device name on Android 7? How can I change the device name of an unrooted Android 7.0-based Gigaset GS170 smartphone so it appears with a meaningful/readable name e.g. in a router's list of connected wifi devices?

Various resources (e.g. this or this) suggest I should find a line saying Device Name in the About Phone section of the phone settings. However, I can see no such line there (images before and after scrolling down):

As the device is set to German, here are the translations of the items in their order of appearance:

System Updates
Status (Phone number, signal, etc.)
Legal notes
Model type number
Android version
State of security updates
Baseband version
Kernel version
Build number
Adapt creation version

Is there somewhere else I could look for that option, or is it something only supported by specific devices?

There are a few questions about this on this site (e.g. this and this), but those were posted several years ago, when early versions of Android with some "childhood diseases" (read: lack of basic features) were still the state of the art.

AFAIK it's possible that a phone manufacturer hide that option from UI on their products, and I guess your phone it's one of them. My phone OnePlus 5, however, does allow changing it from Settings app.

So, if root access is available, try this in a rooted terminal environment:

setprop net.hostname "Whatever You Like"

Mount /system partition as R/W, head for /system/build.prop. Find this line and if it exists, change it (this line may not be present on Android 5 or lower):

ro.display.series=Same As Above

Reboot is required. After that the new name should have effect. Before modifying build.prop consider making a backup of it (and have a means of restore, e.g. via recovery-mode): if the file is "broken", your device won't boot up properly.


What determines power management policies in Android? I am just approaching to the Smart Phone and Android world and have a couple of doubts:

  Which modules (and SW or FW?) decide the policies with which power is
  given to any component of the Smart Phone that requires it?

furthermore

  Are power management modules on Smart Phones implemented in the
  Android OS or in some special dedicated firmware?

Obviously power management must work also if the OS is not yet loaded, but who is responsible of it?

And to what extent can I modify the power management with an application running inside of the OS?

(I hope these questions are not Off-Topic, in case can you please direct me to the correct Stack-Exchange site?)

Power management is determined by governors which set the CPU clock speed according to use. Each clock speed operates at a certain voltage and a lower voltage means less power. If you have root access you can change the governor and the allowed CPU clock speeds. Also there is sleep state into which the CPU will enter when the screen is off and nothing is working in the background. There are probably battery-charging functions that can't be messed with, but everything else can be changed even the cpu and dsp voltages.


How do I upgrade my rooted Nexus One using OTA updates? I have a Nexus One that I rooted years ago. It's running "stock" Froyo. I get offered OTA updates to Gingerbread, and I'd like to do the update.

When I choose the update, it reboots the phone, which brings me to the ClockworkMod bootloader. Now what?

Can I make this work somehow?

OTA updates can only be applied to a completely stock, non-rooted phones, using the stock recovery.

If you really want a completely stock Gingerbread, you will need to un-root your Nexus One and revert to Froyo's stock recovery.  See instructions here.

Alternatively, you can flash one of the custom Gingerbread ROMs.  Some are very close to "stock" (only pre-rooted) while others like CyanogenMod offer other tweaks on top of the original.


How to disable Data Usage Cycle's autoreset I'm using a prepaid card and there's no billing cycle.

How can I disable the data usage tracker from auto-resetting?

As of Android Oreo you cannot disable the billing cycle from the Settings. However, there is an application, which monitors all the data you use, but unfortunately, recently it became Samsung exclusive. I'm talking about Samsung Max (previously known as Opera Max). I've tried other apps for mobile data monitoring, but only this one could show a custom cycle. If you don't own a Samsung you can try the Play Store for apps, which also offer the monitoring you're looking for, and share your results here :)


Twitter client tends to redirect to web browser When clicking a Twitter's link on GMail client, Twitter client is included in the list of possible applications to process. So I click Twitter but then the list window pops up again but this time without Twitter in it. I really like to open a link to Twitter with Twitter client. How can I do that? Thank you!

A sample of those Twitter links looks like this:
https://twitter.com/i/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FRescue_moco%3Frefsrc%3Demail&sig=d4724ad41f731911a0eeacd4eb0764b30186d3af&uid=37758565&iid=am-1618412813699712373452051&nid=23+1100&t=1

Nexus 10, Jelly Bean, Twitter client 4.1.0

The Twitter app registers an intent filter for http and https URLs to twitter.com, to tell Android it can open those URLs itself. That's why you get the first chooser (the list of possible apps).

However, it seems that the Twitter app can't actually understand those "redirect" links, so it asks for a web browser to handle the URL. That's why you get the second chooser, with only web browsers.

Since the page does in fact redirect to a Twitter user (which the app can handle), after you've opened the URL in a browser you should get a third chooser, which does include Twitter, allowing you to open the user in the Twitter app. However, Firefox currently has a bug that means it won't offer a chooser in this case. If you pick Chrome in the second chooser, it should give you the third chooser.

I'd call this a bug in the Twitter app. You should complain to Twitter and ask them to fix it.