Can the lock screen in CM12 be set to show the keypad immediately on turning the screen on, instead of having to slide the padlock icon? Yesterday I installed Cyanogenmod (NIGHTLY 20150128, Android version 5.0.2) on my Galaxy S5 (SM-G900F), and so far I'm very happy with it, except for one little annoyance. Having to slide the padlock icon to bring up the keypad on the lock screen. Is there a way to get rid of this? I want the keypad available immediately when I turn the screen on.

In CM11 this happens when you tick the "maximize widgets" option in Lockscreen settings. Might be similar in CM12.


Identify Unlocked Device's Carrier I bought an unlocked Samsung Galaxy S3 I9300 a while ago, this phone was imported by an independent store and not any of the local cellular carriers.

And my phone is not getting firmware updates, I suspect the carrier is not releasing the updates but I can't check it because I don't even know what carrier my phone is set to.

How can I tell what carrier my phone "belongs to"?

Galaxy S3 I9300 is international version.

Look at the S3 variants.
S3 belongs to specific carrier has specific model numbers according to Country and Carrier.
Are you sure about it was an unlocked version??


What's the meaning of signal strength colors in battery usage screens? The battery usage screen has an indicator for "Signal strength" that, instead of being blue/black like WiFi, has many colors: green, gray, yellow. What's their meaning?


Android phone cannot press any buttons after boot My Samsung Galaxy S 4G seems to be bricked. I must have done something horribly wrong to get it to be in this state. Sometimes, it hangs on the Samsung screen when booting up. Other times, it is unresponsive after the first five seconds. I think it's the media scanning that's causing this, but I am not sure. Samsung Kies and ADB both do not detect the device. I did a factory reset when this was happening, and it seems to have made it worse. Is my phone un-savingly bricked? How can I fix it?

When the phone was still working, I think I deleted some system files accidentally.
This could be why it's not working properly.

Edit: Now it seems like I can't even get pass the Samsung Screen.

You most likely have damage some critical files that are preventing your device from booting properly, with this in mind, you can try:
One-Click UnBrick
Credits go to AdamOutler at XDA-Developers Forum.

About One-Click UnBrick

Will work on all Samsung devices which use Odin3
Is a single, portable executable
Is the first one-click anything for our devices on Linux
Works on Mac
Works on Windows
Is open source
Is programmed in Java
Deploys and installs Heimdall for your OS
Is super easy to use.... Only one button!

Instructions

Copy OneClick.jar to your Desktop or any other folder on your computer.
It won't work on a network share.

Double click the file to run it.
As long as you have Java installed on your machine you are up and running.
Linux users:
Mark this file as executable:
chmod +x OneClick.jar

All platforms:
Double Click to run, OR, right click and open with Java, OR from command line:
java -jar OneClick.jar

Windows users:
For some versions of Windows as a work around to UAC (User Access Control, the annoying popups), a executable called "OneClickLoader.exe" has been deployed to the same folder as OneClick.jar. It is important that you do not rename OneClick.jar until after running OneClickLoader.exe

right click OneClickLoader.exe and select "Run as Administrator"
Setup should be run-of-the-mill.

Attention:
Have you tried to go back to Download Mode?

If it's still able to go back into Download Mode, you don't need this software.
Just turn your Captivate into the Download Mode and flash back to STOCK Eclair or Froyo using Odin 1 Click or whatever similar.

Links:

Click Here to Download One-Click UnBrick 10July11 from GoogleCode
You will need Java installed on your computer: Do you have java?


Disable annoying full screen call notification So i have a kit-kat 4.4.4 on an xperia z2.

all incoming calls show a full screen notification whether i like it or not, even during an non interruptable full screen activity.

on iphones and windows phones it is possible to change the full screen mode into a notification on the notifications bar, which will also be possible in android 5 from what i have heard.

is it possible to achieve the same in android 4.4? or even if there is any app for that it would be great...

note: i prefer not to root my device if its possible.

thanks alot in advance guys, this thing can really get on my nerves sometimes, you know when you cant answer but cant hung up either? and just have to wait it out till the call ends...

LCALL  or LOLLIPOP CALL or LOLLIPOP CALL FREEwill give lollipop style call notification.


How do I group emails with same subject and sender in the Outlook app on Android? How do I group emails by subject in the Outlook app on Android?

In Gmail, if 100 emails are received from the same address and have the same subject, they are grouped into a single item with a number in parenthesis showing how many emails are inside.

How do I achieve the equivalent in Android Outlook app? Or web app? Otherwise, there are 100 elements that fill up the list of unread in the inbox.

In the settings, turn on "Organize mail by thread" to ensure responses sent back and forth on the same thread are grouped together.

From what I can tell, there is no setting in the Outlook Android app that will group multiple independent emails with the same sender / subject.


Can the on-board ADB Server find the device itself? I know that Android devices have an on-board adb server.  I am able to start the server through the terminal emulator and run adb commands, but the device itself does not show up in the device list.  The ultimate goal is to capture a logcat and store it locally, as I am having crashing issues that don't occur when it's plugged in, so I need to capture the logcat without plugging into USB.

I want to ultimately be able to run $ adb logcat -v time > /sdcard/logcat.txt and have it create the logcat text file that I can retrieve and view the next time the device crashes.

I'm running Jelly Bean 4.1.2

EDIT

I managed to track down a solution to my specific problem:

Locally, adb is not required to gather a logcat.  From within the terminal emulator, you can simply execute logcat > /sdcard/logcat.txt to gather a logcat.  However, I'll leave the question up in case someone figures a way to get adb to recognize itself, as it might be useful in the future.

I don't think you can access the device directly from ADB on the device. but you can access the logcat if you need to in /dev/log/.

Just about anything you would need to access via adb should be accessible directly on the device, one way or another.

For example, adb gets screenshots from reading /dev/graphics/fb0


How do I get the Android Kindle/nook apps to recognize .MOBI/.EPUB files on my SD card? I prefer to manage my ebook files manually, so I'm having trouble getting the Android Kindle and nook apps to locate the .MOBI and .EPUB files that I put on my SD card.

Is there any sort of Browse feature in these apps for locating custom ebook files?

For the moment, I'm getting around this issue by using Calibre/FBReader, but I'd rather use plain drag & drop and the official Kindle/nook apps if possible.

Mirrored on gist.

Custom ebook files can be read on Android devices by employing a collection of software, detailed below.

Both Android and iOS devices can simply use iBooks or Stanza, and connect to Calibre.

A more manual method employes Astro for browsing Android files manually. For any ebook file format, if an appropriate app is installed, Astro will be able to open the ebook. See Wikipedia for a table of ereaders vs ebook file formats supported.

Secondary software will be required to actually get the ebook files onto the mobile device:

SugarSync

Dropbox

Each ereader app looks for books in a different directory. A good compromise is to store all ebooks in /mnt/sdcard/Books, organizing ebooks at will through folder hierarchies, and using Astro to navigate to and open individual ebooks.

FBReader

Autorecognition: /mnt/sdcard/Books
Custom browsing: FBReader library -> File tree

Kindle

Autorecognition: /mnt/sdcard/Kindle

nook

Autorecognition: /mnt/sdcard/Nook/MyDocuments

Adobe Reader

Autorecognition: /mnt/sdcard/Download/Adobe Reader
Custom browsing: Documents -> All PDFs -> Folder View


Nexus 6 failed to update OTA 6.0.1 from MMB29V to MMB20X Urgent help please.
the april 2016 patch was downloaded on the air and I performed update but after restart, The bot screen came with "error" and then the red error message is shown directing me to g.CO/ABH in which flashing is suggested. note after restarting, many applications together with settings app crash. I performed the OTA update again and no chance. Is there any solution except flashing? if the answer is no, so how can I perform a full backup before flashing? My serious aim is no data loss. ftp works through wireless but too slow. the usb mass storage function shows an empty folder on PC. USB debugging is connected but adb shows no device. Also in bootloader mode adb shell failed. The device is not rooted and recovery is locked. Here's the brief last log:

Source: shamu:6.0.1/MMB29V/2554798:user/release-keys
Target: shamu:6.0.1/MMB29X/2704508:user/release-keys
..
performing verification
using existing stash /cache/recovery/.....
deleting recovery /cache/recovery/---/--
..bytes free on /cache (.. bytes needed)
failed to verify blocks (expected ..., read...)
stat "/cache/...." failed: No such file or directory
partition has unexpected contents
failed to read block for diff
failed to execute command [.....]
deleting stash 5a79....
script aborted: system partition has unexpected contents
E:Error in @/cache/recovery/block.map
(Status 7)

Installation aborted

Now tried to update from sdcard (stock rom downloaded for nexus) in recovery mode, got:
E:unknown volume for path [/sdcard]

-- Couldn't mount /sdcard.
Installation aborted

Repeated my try to update from ADB (adb sideload) but this error in the log:
sideload-host file size 1009749527 block size 65536
Finding update package..
I:Update location: /sideload/package.zip
Opening update package...
I: read key e=65537 hash=20
I: 1 key(s) loaded from /res/keys
Verifying update package...
E: footer is wrong
I:verify_file returned 1
E:signature verification failed
sideload_host finished
Installation aborted

I'm not sure even after data wipe the error remains or not, so prefer not to wipe yet, because the phone works!
Should I give up?

First off I'm assuming that the device is already flashing unlocked since you said you tried to flash the update from recovery. You shouldn't need a backup but make one anyways because recovery might be flashed over. Read everything first before you get started.
Download current image (the one you have now, you can try 29X or latest 30D), it's best to restore your system then update for guaranteed results and no misbehavior after reboot (I'm a little adventurous so I'd go for the 30D). unpack the .tgz and cd into the resulting directory.

fastboot flash radio radio.img
fastboot flash bootloader bootloader.img

Note the images aren't radio.img and bootloader.img, just do radio and tab and bootloader and tab.
Unpack the .zip that was extracted from the .tgz. cd into the resulting directory.

fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot flash system system.img
fastboot reboot

This should maintain all your data on the device after you reboot and I'm about 99 percent sure it'll work. So you shouldn't be needing to backup. If you run into problems after reboot you'll need to flash cache as well.
Reboot into bootloader again and use

fastboot flash cache cache.img
fastboot reboot

If it still doesn't work, you'll need to have a backup, reboot to fastboot and use the flash-all.sh that was extracted from the .tgz file. This would delete all your data but you can flash recovery again with fastboot flash recovery <image filename> and restore Data from the backup you did.
PS. If you have to flash cache you might lose some data but only relating to system apps and services.


Watch Coursera's videos with the video app on Jelly Bean Coursera has a html5 based video viewer that works on the android browser on Jelly Bean, but I would like instead to use the video app, in order to have full screen and better controls.
On my Kindle Fire (first version) the Silk browser automatically opens the video with the video app and then returns to the html5 player when the video ends.
Is there a way to achieve this on Jelly Bean?

I am using a galaxy nexus S but shouldn't matter.
Thanks!

I just download the videos upfront and watch them with MX Player.


How to run "parted" command in terminal emulator on my android smartphone Updated question (2018/2/20)

Thanks to grawity's answer and comment, my question can be updated.

My final goal is to acquire detailed partitioning information (including the start and end address of each partition on my android phone), either using fdisk or parted.

How to "install" the parted command into my android smartphone?
Can I use fdisk on a Linux system or on Cygwin on a windows system? Knowing that fdisk brought by BusyBox can't handle GPT.
(If so, maybe I could post another question.)

The original question (2018/2/19)

I have installed Busybox on my smartphone, and I want to acquire detailed partitioning information, including the start and end address of each partition on my android phone.

I can use fdisk command, but maybe because my phone's disk is GPT instead of MBR, command "fdisk -l" shows no output.

So I want to use the command "parted". But I don't have it on my smartphone. How can I get it?

I've traveled to GNU website of "parted". But what I can download is only source code. Do I need to compile that? If so, how do I compile that? Can I compile the source code with MinGW on a PC with Windows system?

If I get the "parted" file, where should I put it to make it work? Is it under /system/bin?

I haven't found a usable "parted" file yet. Is it because of my bad google skill or the file has to be compiled differently for different devices?

I hope to find an official version of the "parted" file.

EDIT (2018/2/19)

I do know my storage is GPT because fdisk -l /dev/block/mmcblk0 tells me.
And I've read on the net that fdisk can't handle GPT, while parted can. I'm just not sure why fdisk -l is showing nothing.

fdisk -l /dev/block/mmcblk0

Disk /dev/block/mmcblk0: 15 GB, 15634268160 bytes, 30535680 sectors
1908480 cylinders, 1 heads, 16 sectors/track
Units: cylinders of 16 * 512 = 8192 bytes

Device             Boot StartCHS    EndCHS        StartLBA     EndLBA    Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/block/mmcblk0p1    0,0,0       0,0,0                1   30535679   30535679 14.5G ee EFI GPT
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary

Note: This is applicable to Qualcomm SoC with eMMC (block device accessible through FTL). Not tested on MTK or other chipsets (paths may differ) or the devices with raw NAND/MTD memory.

PARTED

  How to "install" the parted command into my android smartphone?

There is no official way, so parted isn't part of AOSP. Android doesn't want you play with its partition table. Using a static binary is the best option to avoid complications of dynamic linker/loader, libc etc.

You may get parted static binary for aarch64 (ARM-v8) and armel (ARM-v5) architecture from this link. I have compiled these on ArchLinuxARM (running on my Redmi Note 4) and on Ubuntu (PC) using gcc (cross-)compiler with glibc and they work great. Building with Bionic libc on NDK (to make it fully Android-ish) needs a lot of changes in source code because function calls (libc) and also some syscalls (kernel) differ on Android and Linux. devmapper and NLS are disabled since former isn't directly used, latter isn't supported on Android.

FDISK / GDISK

  Can I use fdisk on a linux system or on Cynwin on a windows system? Knowing that fdisk brought by BusyBox can't handle GPT. (If so, maybe I could post another question.)

You may use fdisk on Android too, but fdisk is traditional tool to manipulate MBR partition tables, though newer versions also support GPT. fdisk shows somewhat info about GPT as well because GPT contains protective MBR (first sector of disk or eMMC) which contains information about partitions. Also, first partition (modem) on most of the Android devices which contains firmware for baseband processor (BP) is FAT16, more compatible with fdisk. For other partitions fdisk may behave weird or may crash.

Busybox fdisk is very minimal like other applets, and I think it hasn't been updated for a while now. Instead, GPT fdisk (gdisk) is a great tool for GUID Partition Tables and from certain aspects is better than parted.

gdisk , fdisk and mkfs.ext4 (mke2fs) static binaries are also available on above mentioned link. You may put these anywhere in your PATH; /system/bin, /system/xbin, /vendor/bin,/sbin (volatile) or even somewhere on /data or sdcard.

Now just execute:

~# parted /dev/block/mmcblk0
(parted) p free

~# gdisk -l /dev/block/mmcblk0

Please note that fdisk -l and parted -l won't show complete information (or not at all) about Android GPT because Linux kernel populates block devices directly under /dev while Android uses /dev/block path. We need to change code before compiling to make them work perfectly. fdisk -l shows loop devices because they share same nomenclature. blkid also shows partition info because it reads from /proc/partitions and /sys/dev/block/.

Finally!!!

With power comes responsibility and Linux tools are powerful. Really. A displacement of even a single byte in partition boundaries may put you in serious trouble, the worst being inability to use Factory Firmware Flashers. So, be careful!

Further reading:

ArchLinux Partitioning
Android Partitions


How do I get return key back instead of emoji (Oreo) I am trying to use messenger with the default Google keyboard on my stock Pixel1 using messenger. Somehow it got hosed and now instead of enter on the keyboard it shows an Emoji (in blue). If I hold down on the emoji I see the enter button but this isn't what I want. I want the enter button to be the default. I tried switching the keyboard to Dvorak and switching back. I have tried everything I can find.

How do I switch a stock Oreo device from having the emoji button to the enter button?

Hold down the comma button
Select GBoard
Select Preferences
Make sure Show Emoji Switch Key is on.

Although this solves this issue I am not 100% convinced this was how I got to this problem. Is there a gesture or something that caused this to switch?

source


How to export and import chrome://flags I do not want to export the bookmarks and I do not want to export the passwords. I only want to export whatever is shown in chrome://flags.

Specifically I want to export from an Android 4.4.4 device with Chrome 62.0.3202.84 and I want to import that to an Android 5.1.1 device with Chrome 62.0.3202.84.

Manually scrolling through and comparing the whole list is not an acceptable solution.

Even better would be a way to find out which flags differ from the default value, just like Firefox does in about:config.

You can do this manually by examining and copy/pasting the raw content where Chrome stores the flags, but you need root access.

The file that stores the flags is located on:

/data/user/0/com.android.chrome/app_chrome/Local State (according to Chromium's Official Documentation)
/data/data/com.android.chrome/app_chrome/Local State (based on testing and experience, possibly for single-account user)

The file Local State (without extension) is in a JSON format, which is actually a normal text-file and can be opened with any text editor with root access (Root Explorer includes text editor, but it's not free).

Thanks to Synetech's answer on Super User, the flags are stored under enabled_labs_experiment JSON array in browser JSON object node.

Example (taken from the answer)

{
  …
  "browser": {
    "enabled_labs_experiments": [ "disable-gpu-vsync", "extension-apis", … ],
    …
  }
  …
}


Control bluetooth volume on phone? Seems like the volume control button on my bluetooth headset is broken, is there any way to change the bluetooth volume directly on the phone? I am on Android 4.1.2, just in case it's relevant. I found settings to change the normal front speaker volume, but nothing for the bluetooth volume.

See if this helps. I am not sure though:

  Settings >> Sound >> Volumes

If this doesn't help try this Bluetooth Volume app. This should do it.

And you are on Android 4.2?! WHAT??! AFAIK as of now 4.1 Jelly Bean is the latest... And 4.2 was supposed to launch in tomorrow's Google event. (The event is apparently cancelled) How come you are already on 4.2?


A lot of storage space used by 'system files' I have a problem of huge storage space missing in my newly bought Galaxy Tab 2 tablet.

It is the 16 GB version, but even after resetting twice to factory settings, the available storage space remains at about 5 GB, with the remaining 11 GB inaccessible, because it is "used for Android system files".

I suspect that there may be back-up or batch files from the previous installations that Android does not remove when I restore to factory settings.

Does anybody know in which directories I should look, and how I can delete the relevant folders to free the expected 6-7 GB of remaining storage space that I need for my applications?

Samsung devices are 'known' for their excessive use of internal memory for Android system files and Samsung's own programs (bloatware?). To free this space you'll need to root the device and put a slimmer ROM on it.

Rooting is a practice which requires some knowledge what you're doing and it will void your warranty. If you have no idea what rooting is, I would recommend you to stay away from this practice since it can not only void your warranty, but also render you device useless (so-called 'brick' it). If you do know what rooting is, then you'll also know which sites to use for this, so I won't tell them here.  Hope you'll understand I'm trying to avoid inexperienced readers from doing things to their devices which they regret. Good luck! :)


Red notification light on Nexus 4, won't power on, device unresponsive This morning my Nexus 4 wouldn't turn on, so I plugged it in, but the white battery recharging icon doesn't show up when I press Power, and holding Power doesn't turn on the phone. Instead the notification light blinks a deep red. The screen was totally unresponsive.

Lots of websites have plenty of doom and gloom hinting that red light = device is bricked, but I see no official source for this. What does this light mean?

This does not necessarily mean your phone is dead. Your phone will flash the red LED light briefly when the battery is completely drained. When I got this I left the phone in the charger for a while, and eventually the white "charging battery" icon appeared again. Upon turning on the device it had 0% battery. It was in fact so drained that it died while on the charger (at 0%), so I left it to charge for longer. After it regained 30% of it's battery I took it to work and it seems to be draining, charging and working normally.

I'm not sure why lots of sites claim this means your phone is dead, lots of them just say "what else would a blinking red light mean", but definitely leave your phone plugged in for a while and attempt to turn it on again before you attempt to get your phone repaired.

Also if a normal microUSB doesn't seem to be working, try the original charger + wall wart that came with your Nexus 4. My dad had this issue with the N4 and other chargers didn't seem to work. Not sure if the volt/amp/something just isn't enough from other cables or what, but Google recommended it and it seemed to work.


Unswipable notifications On my moto G 2, in the notification area there appears to be a couple of notifications that whatever i do i can't figure out how to get rid of. One of them is an outdated voicemail reminder received weeks ago,  and it's there despite the fact that my inbox is clear.  The other is exceeded data limit. Is there any way to force the OS to clear these notifications? I have android 5.0.2

Screenshot (click to enlarge)

Try opening the application by touching on the notification. If this doesn't help, touch and hold on the notification, this would pop up app info tab open app info and clear cache memory and  force stop the application also if you can clear the memory of the app that should definitely solve the problem (this step particularly can clear all of the data from the memory)


always on wifi & data connection whenever it turned off it's automatically turn on In Micromax A104 phone have always turned on WiFi & data connection whenever It turn off it's turned on automatically..pls solve the problem.

Could you be more specific about when the auto-trigger happens?(Like,right after pressing or when using any app)
Nevertheless,there are certain possibilities:

Virus attack-(I recommend a hard reset or flashing a stock ROM)
An app might be auto-triggering the switch-(Find the app causing the issue)
The faulty Hardware or the drivers itself(Go for a fix or replacement from the company if you have it under warranty)


Virus smartphone not going away This keeps coming up on my phone and I have done factory resets thrice already.
My phone is only 3 months old, please help me get rid of this and it seems to infect other phones as well.

I think it was this URL:

http://androidmax.mobi/service.customermarket.5206/hwo3ng/back.php?brd=HTC&mod=One%20M9&brw=Chrome%20Mobile&ts=tfx03&var1=68cd67c2-563d-4b02&var2=55b77b9d2a2c4a382546679e&var3=&cs=zno1&voluumdata=vid..00000003-fee6-4323-8000-000000000000__vpid..7b2dc800-430a-11e5-8cee-c3f8afba77aa__caid..d27753a5-480e-4bf9-8fef-29072ffa67a5__rt..R__lid..6056fb29-a6f1-4b3b-82ff-56f1f82adadc__oid1..e43f1ba3-2cda-4f7b-94f8-176b5506c3a3__oid2..10897965-279f-4048-b4e9-d5cec6dc0941__oid3..85de288c-6197-4636-bea1-0dc212cab827__var1..68cd67c2-563d-4b02__var2..55b77b9d2a2c4a382546679e__var8..55599084af7e637526681985__var9..3510__var10..nativeButton__rd..&imp_id=68cd67c2-563d-4b02&app_id=55b77b9d2a2c4a382546679e&idfa=&mac_address=&android_id=&mobile_id=&campaign_id=55599084af7e637526681985&bid=3510&creative_size=nativeButton

It is a Spam and it has nothing to do with your Mobile phone.

There are many websites out there that use these tactics to persuade users to click on malicious link.

Please do not click on "Remove risks now"
Avoid visiting such links as much as possible
Also, install Adblock plus

As of the website, Scamadviser (it reports on the safety of web sites by crawling the web and testing the sites it finds for malware and spam) mentions here,

It is 58 days old (as of September 14, 2015) and has a life expectancy of less than a year, which probably means it is a scam website changing its domain every now.
The owner of the website is using a service to hide their identity.
(Some owners do not wish to receive any spam, so they conceal their identity but many scam sites use this as a method to hide their identify)


Auto spacing in Firefox search bar does not work As the title says, the auto spacing feature does not work in Firefox search bar.
This issue seems to be related only with that bar, because auto spacing works fine
in forms or text fields in web pages and it works in the other apps too.
My Android version: 4.4.2
I hope somebody else has already experienced this problem.

This is a known bug.  It seems like it was introduced with 4.2.2.  Downgrading to before that is not a good option, but might be available to you.

It affects multiple browsers with multiple keyboards, so I assume the issue must be with the specific type of text field used for their address bars.  I used to encounter this with Chrome but haven't lately, so you could also try that browser instead of Firefox.  In the thread above, someone also mentioned that the stock Google keyboard did not cause the issue for them.


Will copying everything from /data/app and /data/data be enough for app's backup? I've got an android device (Xiaomi MiPad-I, Stable ROM) which is not quite amenable to rooting, so I can't install Titanium backup on that. However, I can boot the device using the CWM recovery and mount the /system and /data partitions in RW mode during boot time.

In this mode, I can copy anything I want by connecting to a PC and using adb commands. However, I want to know whether copying the contents of /data/app and /data/data to my PC be enough for the backup of all apps? Or is there anything else that Titanium backup does? I only need the user apps, system apps are already available by either a factory-reset or flashing a stock ROM.

To do a backup like you want, you can just copy everything from /data/data except the lib directories/symlinks (they will fail when you want to restore/push them).

A very easy thing to do is adb pull /data/data and then delete all the lib files (as symlinks are only files but those refer to directories).

Upon restore you can install each app, using adb install for example, and restore the data manually, ie. just push it back and fix permissions.
Make sure the apps in question are not running.

To fix permissions you can either do it manually/with a quick shell script. Read the owner of each app's data directory and recursively set that owner (and group) to that owner and group (using chown user:group -R /data/data/<package name>). Users and groups are in the format u0_a000, the symlink to lib is owned by install.


Disable WhatsApp notifications in status bar and notification menu I have a Samsung Galaxy Ace Duos. I want to stop displaying my WhatsApp message notifications in the status bar and the notification menu.

I found the answer for Galaxy S4 that suggests:

Go to Settings
Choose the More tab
Choose Application Manager
Choose WhatsApp
Turn off Show notifications

But in my device I am not able to find a More tab in the settings menu. Is there any other solution for this?

You can disable WhatsApp notifications in status bar and notification menu by doing the followings.

Open Whatsapp.
Goto Settings => Notifications
Under Notifications, choose

Notification Tone: Silent
Vibrate: Off
Popup Notification: No Popup
Light: None


How can I record mobile network traffic? I need to record edge/3g mobile traffic in pcap file. I can't find any working app for this. How can I do this?

Samsung Galaxy s3, root, cyanogenmod11.

There is a free app that can record the usage of network traffic in your android device. You can monitor network traffic usage using the tPacketCapture app and it saves as PCAP file format. As in the description provided in the playstore link tPacketCapture works even on non-rooted devices and recorded data is stored as PCAP file,

tPacketCapture does packet capturing without using any root permissions.

tPacketCapture uses VpnService provided by Android OS.

Captured data are saved as a PCAP file format in the external storage.


Flashing ROM on a used Samsung Note 4 I have a used note 4 and want to make sure there is no spyware or malware on it. I know some can survive a factory reset. Somebody told me to flash a rom and recovery image but not how to do this. I searched and came across a video of a person using a program called odin to do this, however after he was finished all his apps were still there. If this completely cleans the phone why are his apps still there?

What would be the best way for me to actually wipe everything on the phone?

It's better to link the video so we know what you are exactly talking about.
My guess is you watched a video about rooting using ODIN. Yes, that won't wipe your device clean. However you can also use ODIN to flash entire firmware which cleans up everything on your device.

Here's a guide to use ODIN to flash stock firmware.


Rooted Nexus 4 wants to update I got the problem that my Nexus sometimes wants to update to 4.2.1 although the system update menu says the newest version is installed (4.2).

When I let the update do what it wants and it reboots, it fails at the recovery system with "apply patch check something".

Only thing I've done to my Nexus so far is rooting it.

I don't think a rooted Nexus 4 will be able to update automatically. So you might have to turn auto update off. Rooting will void its warranty.

But not to worry, rooting is good. Some how you can flash an updated version of stock ROM manually to your device.


Getting Trace Keyboard back after Android 4.1.1 update on HTC Desire X I have a HTC Desire X. It was running 4.0.4. Yesterday I updated OS to 4.1.1.
This took away the Trace keyboard - is there a way to get Trace keyboard back after the 4.1.1. update. If not, can I revert back to 4.0.4? I am not rooted?

I installed next 2 OTA updates & got my trace keyboard back. The first one was a small 10MB OS Update which was still Android 4.1.1 but Software Number as 2.22.720.7. This required booting after upgrade. The next was a HTC Sense Update which required no booting and got me my Trace keyboard back. The stupid Power saver notification which came with the Jelly Bean update is still not gone but Trace keyboard back is good enough. Never going to update the OS again on this phone!!!


Disabled Background Data notification I have disabled my background mobile data. I want the setting this way, but as a result of doing so there is an annoying warning that I have background data disabled on the system tray that prompts me to press and enable background data.

How do I remove the warning?

Running ICS on two device that show the warning.

Touch the notification and it will go away. Of course, this will re-enable background data.

The thing here is, it's meant to be annoying. Many of your apps use background data in order to sync themselves or receive updates, notifications or whatever from the network, and without it, they can't do that.

If apps do background data correctly then this can actually save you battery, as well as make the apps appear more responsive when you actually do open them up to see what they have to tell you. Unfortunately some apps don't, which is probably why you decided you wanted it disabled in the first place.

You have a few options. In order from easiest to hardest:

You can live with the notification.
You can remove the offending apps and replace them with less offensive apps.
You can hack the Android source code to do what you want.


BlueStacks 4 Hyper-V does not finish booting while Hyper-V is enabled I am using Windows 10 20H2, 64-bit, with CPU virtualization enabled.
I have enabled Virtual Machine Platform because I use Windows Subsystem for Linux. But I had not enabled Hyper-V when I installed BlueStacks.
I installed BlueStacks 4.0 via this executable: BlueStacksInstaller_4.260.0.1032_native_4176a437bc759281d8303dbcf40bdb72.exe,it automatically detects the settings of my computer and downloads the appropriate edition of BlueStacks.
After installation I started BlueStacks, and it starts fairly fast.
But I found the edition of BlueStacks I have installed is BlueStacks (Hyper-V), however I had not enabled it.
So I enabled Hyper-V in OptionalFeatures.exe, and restarted, and then I found out that it just won't finish starting up, it just stuck at displaying Starting BlueStacks Hyper-V, please wait.
The progress bar is very close to finish point, but it just refuses to go any further, like this:

Finally it said: Could not start the Engine.

I restarted the Engine multiple times and always succeeded in recreating the problem.
I then disabled Hyper-V and rebooted my computer, and I can use BlueStacks again.
However I also want to use Oracle VirtualBox, which requires Hyper-V.
So I uninstalled BlueStacks and downloaded the non-Hyper-V edition, tried to install it while Hyper-V is disabled, and it failed with error:

But Hyper-V is disabled:
PS C:\Windows\System32> Get-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online | where {$_.FeatureName -match "Hyper-V"}

FeatureName : Microsoft-Hyper-V-All
State       : Disabled

FeatureName : Microsoft-Hyper-V
State       : Disabled

FeatureName : Microsoft-Hyper-V-Tools-All
State       : Disabled

FeatureName : Microsoft-Hyper-V-Management-PowerShell
State       : Disabled

FeatureName : Microsoft-Hyper-V-Hypervisor
State       : Disabled

FeatureName : Microsoft-Hyper-V-Services
State       : Disabled

FeatureName : Microsoft-Hyper-V-Management-Clients
State       : Disabled

I have disabled Windows Defender and I am not using any anti-virus software, my computer has 12 GiB RAM and its CPU is Intel Core i5 4430 @ 3.00GHz;
How can I use BlueStacks with Hyper-V enabled?

Yes, this is because I have enabled Virtual Machine Platform and it implicitly enables Hyper-V, because Hyper-V is a native hypervisor, as long as it is enabled Windows boots as a virtual machine and can only access the emulated CPU and can't access the physical CPU, the emulated CPU doesn't support VT-x, so as long as Hyper-V is enabled performance of hosted hypervisors will decrease.
And I found out that Windows Defender Device Guard is also enabled and it also implicitly enables Hyper-V.
So I used these commands in elevated cmd to truly disable Hyper-V:
bcdedit.exe /set hypervisorlaunchtype off
dism /online /disable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform
reg add HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceGuard /v EnableVirtualizationBasedSecurity /t REG_DWORD /d 0
shutdown /r /t 0

After that I can't open BlueStacks (Hyper-V), so I uninstalled it and installed the version without Hyper-V, which is faster because of VT-x.


How do I simulate menu button on Android 8? So far I've used the Assistant Menu on my Galaxy S7 as recommended in this question, but after a recent update the assistant menu no longer contains the old menu button.

The "long press" suggestions in the answers doesn't work for me either.

Same problem here.  Found an app called "Menu Button" in the play store which has solved my issue with an old app (Loot personal finance).  I have no association with this app.


How to know if a side-loaded app is safe? How can we be assured that the APK of an app that we are downloading from a website is safe to install on our Android phone?

Is there a way to know that the downloaded file is safe? Is there an app or service that scans the APK file and says This file is safe to install.

It is difficult to know whether an APK is safe or not. Your best bet is to download from trusted or reputable sources (like Google Play, Amazon, etc).

Some (trusted) developers also provide an MD5 (or other message-digest algorithm) hash of their APKs. After your download the APK, you verify if the APK has the same hash. If it does, then it's safe to say it hasn't been tampered with.

You can also check the permissions required by the APK / app, and use common sense (or your own judgement / instinct) to tell if it's safe to install or not.

BOTTOMLINE: Always install from trusted sources. Stay away from pirated APKs; it's possible they may have malware.


RCS Messaging Encryption With the launch of Google's RCS messaging protocol, is there any reason as to why it doesn't support end-to-end encryption, or is it a feature that they intend to implement at a later time?

is there any reason as to why it doesn't support end to end encryption, or is it a feature that they intend to implement at a later time?

RCS improves the old SMS by bringing modern features. It provides client to server side encryption but not provide end to end encryption.
According to What is RCS messaging? Everything you need to know about the SMS successor:

  But Chat is missing one critical element: While the original RCS protocol allowed the implementation of client-to-server encryption, Chat does not offer end-to-end encryption like iMessage or Signal. Rather, it retains the same legal intercept standards as its SMS predecessor.

Asked about the privacy issues related to RCS, Google's product management director for Android Messages replied:

  We fundamentally believe that communication, especially messaging, is highly personal and users have a right to privacy for their communications. And we’re fully committed to finding a solution for our users.

Google is working on it but no indication is given as to when end to end encryption will become a feature. In the meantime, when sending a message,

  It's encrypted in transit, but it’s not fully end-to-end encrypted, so your RCS provider can potentially see the contents of your messages, and turn them over to the government if properly asked. Google says it will delete them from its servers as soon as they’re delivered to your phone

Like for SMSes, the providers will be able to read your messages until Google decides to implement end to end encryption.


Data stored on external SD card is factored into "internal storage" calculation I have an HTC One M8S, running Android 6.0.1, HTC Sense 7.0. Internal storage on this phone is 16 GB. I have installed a 64 GB SD card.

My issue is that "Play Store" keeps telling me there is not enough space to install new apps. If I open the "Storage" menu, the phone says there's 15.8 GB saved internally, while there's 3.7 GB saved on the SD card. I have configured all apps that need to save larger files (Spotify, Podcast Addict etc.) so that they store data to the SD card, yet it seems that this space is factored in when calculating available internal storage space.

I can confirm this when opening the "increase available space" dialog; under apps, the dialog shows that e.g., Spotify uses 3.4 GB of space.

Any way to overcome this, ideally without rooting my phone?

Edit: OK, so now I went ahead and deleted all those extra files (downloaded Spotify content, Podcasts etc.) from my SD card, and reformatted the SD card to convert it to an "internal storage" SD card. I thought this would maybe make the errors go away - by forming a single storage space for all types of files; but the problems/messages still pop up. Would be really good to know any documentation/guide on how to do this properly.

I thought I had this same problem but it appears to be virtual. My internal memory is showing 10gb of 11 GB used but apps are at 12gb on their own because of 3gb data on pocketcasts SD and similar amount of photos on SD. So r system knows it's there but in SD. Hope this makes sense.


"Failed to delete" message when deleting files from SD card I use smartphone with Android version 5.1.1 Whenever I try to delete files (videos, images, ebooks, etc) from my SD card I get the "Failed to delete" message. I looked for the solution to the problem online but didn't find the matching. What I tried was I unmounted my SD card and mounted it to my PC. Then I ran cmd as administrator and tried these commands in order:

diskpart
list disk
select disk 1 (which pointed to my SD card)
attribut disk clear readonly

It didn't work out.

What do you suggest to do?

It's a very common problem for less reputed SD cards. It can be fixed by doing a full format on the SD card. (Not a quick format because it doesn't check for bad sectors or data redundancy errors). Don't forget to keep a backup before formatting.


Handcent profile picture for texting Device: Samsung Galaxy S2

How do I set my contact picture for text messaging, so everyone sees what I have set as my profile pic on Handcent?

Like most SMS, Contacts, or Dialer apps, the contact photos either come from:

Facebook
Google
Other apps
Manually set by User (owner of phone)

In the last case, only YOU can see it. It's not possible to share / broadcast this image since it is your photo that you added to your own local contact.

For Facebook contacts or Google contacts, the photos come from the profile picture of your social media account. This is what is visible to other users, ONLY IF they have shown Facebook / Google contacts, instead of just phone contacts. Otherwise, they still won't see your photo.


huawei y6 pro in bootloop:( Today, after installing custom firmware into my Huawei Y6PRO it shows only boot (bootloop), and I went to fastboot mode, and by mistake turn on lock on bootloader :( so now I can't go into recovery mode, nothing happens when I click pawer + volume up / volume down or both:( any advise how to fix it?:(

I've just read the specs and it appears that this phone model is powered by a Mediatek chip (MT6735P), so the SD card method won't work. We'll need a computer for that.

Assuming you have a Windows or Linux computer:

Download the firmware from this site
Download SP Flashtool here
Only required by Windows: Download MTK CDC, VCOM drivers here (Needed for the device to be detected by the computer as android preloader)

To start, unzip the firmware, SP Flashtool and (on Windows) install the drivers.

Now open Flashtool then click on Scatter-download. Browse to the firmware folder that you unzipped. Select a text file (MTxxxx_Android_scatter). Some files should load into SP Flashtool.

Important: Unselect the Preloader (Flashing the Preloader may permanently kill your phone).

Now click on Download (green arrow) then power off the phone (leave battery inside), connect the USB cable (Windows should install drivers).

Once USB cable is connected, the flashing process should start automatically. Wait till the end.

A big green check mark should pop. You're done.

Edit:
Another download link: http://consumer.huawei.com/np/support/products/downloads/detail/y6-pro-np.htm?id=87066

Edit 2:
Contrary to what I said before, the SD card method can be used on this model too. Follow this link get the files and a step by step guide. This site seems to have many ads, be careful and download only flashing files.

Update 3 SD Card method:

Unzip the firmware file
You'll find a folder labeled dload which contains UPDATE.APP
Plug the SD Card into the computer (use an adapter)
Copy that folder into the root of the SD card put back in the phone
Now hold volume up + volume down and briefly touch the power button.
The flashing process should start automatically


How do I get play store to stop asking me to auto-update on wifi? I have an Acer Iconia A200 running Android 4.0.3. Lately whenever I update an app, the Play Store asks me (via a pop-up dialog) if I want to automatically update apps on Wi-Fi. The only answers I can give are 'yes' and 'not now'.

What I really want is 'No, and don't ask again', because I happen to like being involved in updates.

In Play Store->settings->auto update, automatic update is turned off, and has no setting for 'Wi-Fi only'.

Is there any way to turn this annoying message off? I'm very afraid I'm going accidentally answer yes one day and thus lose control of my updates.

Updated: Play store says build 4.0.27 in it's 'Build Version' in the play store settings.

Updated again: It's back. The exact message is 'Update Apps automatically when on Wi-Fi?' and the two options to the dialog are 'Not now' and 'OK'. Interestingly this happened when I updated 'GOdroid' directly from the page, but did NOT happen when I updated 5 other apps at once later that day. I'm wondering if it's only asking once per app or something?

I have since been updated to 4.0.27 and although I got prompted after my first app update as to whether I want to auto-update next time (no mention of Wi-Fi though, although I suspect this is dependent on your settings) to which I responded "Not Now", I have not been prompted since in subsequent updates for other apps.

  In Play Store->settings->auto update, automatic update is turned off, and has no setting for 'wi-fi only'.

In version 4.0.27 there should still be a 'Wi-Fi only' setting, although it is now (hidden) under the "Auto-update apps" sub menu. In Settings, tap the "Auto-update apps" option:

Update 2013-05-11: I've had quite a few updates for various apps over the past week and not been re-prompted to auto-update next time - that is, until today. Today I got prompted, to which I tapped "Not Now" again. I have not been re-prompted since. Perhaps it prompts once a week or every so many updates?


Android 5 disable install button of apk files on nexus 4 After updating my nexus 4 to new android 5 (lollipop) when i open an apk file, the install button not working!!
Also i checked unknown source in my device settings.

What the problem? please help :(

I have used lux lite application, this application set display brighness for reading in night mode. my problem solved when i unistall this app.


S-voice on Samsung Galaxy S4 "No response from server..." I saw similar post about this problem from 5 days ago (8/15/13). That is also when S-voice stopped working on my Samsung Galaxy S4, even though it was working perfectly for the past 3 weeks. My internet connection is working.

I spent 1 1/2 hours with AT&T Tech Support and Samsung Tech Support on 8/17/13 and they could find no problems with my phone settings or internet connection.  However, Samsung tech suggested doing a master reset on my phone. I did not do this yet because I do not believe it is a problem with the phone, especially since I now see another posting for the problem occurring on the same day.

Is this a problem with an AT&T Server or is it Samsung?  How can we get someone to check this out?

UPDATE 8/22/13: I spent another 2 hours on phone 8/20/13 with new Samsung tech.  He was convinced that it was not my phone after he also checked all the postings about this problem online, so he "elevated" the "ticket" to a "system" problem.  Yesterday evening, I found that my S-voice just started working again!

I was having the same issue with S-Voice on my Samsung Galaxy S4 all of a sudden. A Samsung support tech helped me figure it out by telling me to start the phone in Safe Mode to see if S-Voice worked that way.  He said if it did, it was most likely a 3rd party app.  Turns out he was right.  I deleted Music Download Paradise Pro, which was the most recent app I had downloaded and S-Voice has worked since then.


Galaxy Star fails Custom recovery flashing I've tried to flash my Galaxy Star Advance (SM-G350E) with ClockWorkMod recovery 6.0.2.9 using Odin and it has said "Success". But the stock recovery still exists and nothing has been flashed!
How to flash the recovery? USB debbugging is ON and Samsung USB drivers are installed

This happens because when you flash custom recovery from Odin and allow it to reboot on its own, Samsung's Recovery checking script checks if a custom recovery is present and overrides it with system recovery<3e>.

To bypass that check you need to take your battery out as soon as the recovery is flashed by Odin (and before the phone reboots).

As soon as the Odin says PASS(or SUCCESS) you should be ready to take out the battery which will stop it from rebooting,
Put back the battery and enter recovery mode directly by pressing and holding Volume Up, Home and Power keys at the same time.
Release all three buttons when Samsung boot screen flickers and the main screen of Recovery mode appears.
This will avoid script checking and will let you to custom recovery directly


How to sync deleted photos with google photos/drive? Have in mind that when I take photos I might take 2 shots of same instance. I arrive home, start wi-fi. All photos are synced with photos.
Now - looking into gallery I delete some of them - they were bad photos.
How can I make sure that when I delete an image it is also removed from photos application?

Do not use Gallery to manage your photos. Use the Google Photos app to manage your photos on your device, when you delete a photo in the Photo app it is deleted from all attached devices as well, including locally and the Google Photo storage.


ADB does not see connected Samsung S4 I'm on Windows 7 and have developer options including USB Debugging enabled. I have opened Kies and it recognizes the S4. However when I try adb devices, nothing to be found. It works perfectly fine with my Nexus 10.

I've also tried adb kill-server, adb start-server and then adb devices to no avail.

Anyone else have this issue?

Re-install these official Samsung drivers.

Uninstall current drivers by going into Device Manager. Make sure to check off the delete drivers option if given.
Reboot.
Reinstall the given drivers above without connecting the Galaxy S4
Reboot.
Go ahead and connect phone and verify that in device manager Samsung ADB Device or equivalent is shown.
If it shows an exclamation mark on it or other problem, then in device manager right click on the driver, update, let me choose from a list and choose the correct android adb driver.


What is this CJK app and why is it on my phone? I was going through my apps and discovered this:

Um, what? Unfortunately, I'm not fluent in the language that the app is titled with (Chinese, I'm guessing?), so I have no idea what it is or where it came from. Any ideas? I tend to be careful with what I download (no third-party markets) so I would be surprised if it was malware, but that being said it still looks mighty suspicious to me.

It's a Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.3 if that's relevant.

It looks like it's Google's Pinyin IME. The icon has since changed to use squares instead of circles, but you can still see that it is generally the same, and you can find examples of the old round icon on the Internet still. It's still on the page for Google's Windows variant, in fact:

Google must evidently ship this in their vanilla Android builds for Nexus devices, which would explain why it cannot be uninstalled. This seems to be verified by various sites around the web (one, two, three).


How can I turn OFF encryption on a Honeycomb tablet? I used the "Encrypt tablet" option on the "Location & security" page of my settings to fully encrypt my up-to-date Asus Transformer. Honeycomb encryption seems a bit flaky so I want to un-encrypt my tablet again. How can I do this? (the option on the settings page still says "Encrypt tablet" and underneath it says "Encrypted", but tapping it does nothing, and I can't find any way to decrypt the tablet again)

Owen

Did some research on this myself before I turned on encryption on my Iconia... the only way to decrypt the tablet is to do a factory data wipe. The UI should have gave you this warning when you chose "Encrypt tablet" (the Iconia sure did). If you back your stuff up, wipe, and restore your backup, you should be fine. (That's where root + Titanium Backup + ClockWorkMod + Nandroid comes in handy)

This Engadget post shows the UI and it's warning about the inability to decrypt.


Cannot exit Google Device Manager Installer For reasons unexplained, I loaded Google Device Manager.  Near the end of the installation, when I got to the screen where it lists all of the things that the IT team can do, and that the camera was going to be disabled, I tapped Cancel.

That took me back one screen.  I tapped the X in the upper right and exited the installer.  However, now I have a continual triangle notification in the upper left of the screen,  When I view it, it says "Account Action Required" and my e-mail address.  When I tap it, it takes me right back to the screen after had tapped Cancel (above).

If I uninstall from Google Play, it comes back after I reboot.

How do I kill this installer for good?

I assume you installed Google Apps Device Policy. Then you need to follow these steps from the official Google support site to uninstall and unregister yourself.

  Open Google Apps Device Policy on your Android device.
  On the Status screen, touch Unregister for each account you have registered with the device.
  Depending on your device, go to one of the following:

  Settings > Applications > Manage Applications
  Settings > Apps.

  Select Google Apps Device Policy.
  Touch Uninstall or Disable and then OK to remove it.

  Alternatively, you can deactivate the Google Apps Device Policy app and then uninstall or disable it:

  On your Android device, go to Settings > Security.
  Touch one of the following:

  Select device administrators
  Device administrators

  Uncheck Google Apps Device Policy.
  Touch Deactivate.
  Touch OK.
  Depending on your device, go to one of the following:

  Settings > Applications > Manage Applications
  Settings > Apps.

  Touch Google Apps Device Policy.
  Touch Uninstall or Disable and then OK to remove it.


How can I make Google Now ignore some calendars for appointment reminders? How can I make Google Now ignore some calendars?

My wife's calendar is shared to my calendar and then synced to my phone through my account and I currently get reminder cards for her events in Google Now.  I would like to only get cards for certain calendars.

Apparently, Google Now uses the "My Calendars" section of Google Calendars.

When my wife's calendar was shared with me, I was granted "Make changes AND manage sharing" rights.   This puts the calendar into "My Calendars" for both users' calendars. When I changed it to "Make Changes to events" on my wife's sharing tab, the calendar moves from "My Calendars" to "Other Calendars" for my account and I no longer get notifications in Google Now for that calendar.


Chirping sound when USB is connected or disconnected I have a Motorola Moto E 2nd Edition running Android 6.0.1 (Marshmallow) and CyanogenMod 13.0. I get a chirping sound whenever I plug or unplug the USB connector. This behavior started recently, when I was having some problems with my SD card.  What setting controls this behavior?  If the chirping is warning me about something, what is it warning me about?  I can't find anything in the settings either for Notifications or for Sounds. It seems that on some phones, "Sounds and Notifications" is a single set of settings -- but not on mine.

It seems that the chirping is activated by the setting "Charging Sounds / Enable", and plugging/unplugging the USB cable activates/deactivates charging through the cable. Disabling that setting turns off the chirping.

So apparently the chirping has nothing to do with the SD card.The chirping sound itself seems be hardwired and not able to be changed, although it might just be that no one here has discovered the way to change it. To confuse matters further, if I turn on the charging sounds and plug in a pure USB power cable (the kind that connects to a wall socket via a transformer), there's no sound.


Can't install previously installed apps from Google Play My Samsung Galaxy S2(I-9100) was upgraded to 2.3.6 by the technician at a Samsung Service Station. This resulted in a wiped-off of all the apps that I had installed along with some other data(like contacts,sms etc).

I had to go through the entire procedure of registering your phone with my gmail account.

I cannot install some of the apps that I had previously installed (from the web store) because I cannot choose the device and I get the message "Your device already has this app installed".

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

The issue here is that the uninstall process wasn't registered at Google Play Store.
Without the uninstall process registered, Google Play Store still reports the app as installed on the device that's associated with your Google account.
To overcome this, you need to manually trigger the uninstall from the Google Play Store, within the "MY ANDROID APPS" list:

Step by Step
I have a couple of apps that I've uninstalled from my device and the uninstall process wasn't registered at Google Play Store. I'll use one as a guide:

Access "MY ANDROID APPS" list, search for the desired app and click the recycle bin icon to trigger the uninstall:

After confirming, the app will get marked as "removed":

Now you can access the application at Google Play Store, and install it like you mentioned that you prefer to do:


How do i stop apps i dont want or use from redownloading? Apps like Google Books and Flipaclip I dont use them so I Uninstal them but the moment I turn my Samsung Galaxy back on they redownload taking up space for app I do want/use in the future so how can I stop this if it is even possible D: please help?! TT^TT

If they are system apps, then you're probably not uninstalling them, you're just uninstalling the previous updates. And probably your automatic update is turned on in Play store , and hence why whenever you boot up your phone and it gets internet access, it starts to download the available updates (which includes the apps you don't use/want). So go over to play store and disable automatic updates, or you can find the app (that you don't want to receive updates for), and disable automatic update by unchecking the option in your top-right corner. But if you want to get rid of those apps completely then you'll have to root your phone (only if those are system apps), and remove them afterwards, or you can just disable those apps (which don't require rooting) in settings if there is an option....


Contacts from iCloud to Android I have a Samsung Galaxy S III Android phone and need to transfer my iCloud contacts to that phone. How do I accomplish this? Can you recommend a FREE app for this or some other method, please?

According to an article at Maggo (German; Google-Translate variant) you can use CardDav-Sync for this:

start the app
select "Create new account"
fill in the settings:

Servername: contacts.icloud.com
use SSL
Username: your iCloud user
Password: your iCloud password

hit "Next". The app now checks the entered data
on the next screen, you don't need to change the Account name. Check "Sync from server to phone"
tap "Finish", and your contacts should be transfered from iCloud to your Android device.

CardDav-Sync setup: Step 3 and step 5 (source: Google Play; click images for larger variant)


How To Install/Root Vegan-Tab GingerEdition on Viewsonic gTablet I recently purchased a Viewsonic gTabet and want to root the device with the Vegan-Tab Ginger Edition.  I'm an absolute newbie when it comes to Android, I've been a Windows guy my whole life.

I'm looking for some instructions for "dummies" on how to get this OS installed on the tablet.  I found this site here, but I'm not sure if this is enough detail.  It looks like some of these steps assume prior knowledge of Android.

Does anyone have any detailed, step by step instructions on how to do this?
Thanks for the help, looking forward to exploring this new world.

Slight disclaimer: I don't own a gTab, so I'm not particularly familiar with it. That being said, rooting devices and installing custom ROMs is at least somewhat similar across devices.

I would start by taking a look at this thread over on XDA. It has links to a bunch of other threads with instructions on how to get a custom recovery (ClockworkMod) on your device, how to flash a ROM, and a bunch of other useful things. In particular, there is a pretty good guide for installing ClockworkMod v08, which would essentially get you to a point where you could follow the Vegan-Tab installation instructions.

Be advised that doing this will wipe all of the data on your device, so make a copy of anything you don't want to lose.


MOTO E not turning on after upgrade Run the update on my moto e yesterday, and after installation, it shut itself off an couldnt turn it on again.
I got 1 or 2 blink led while pressing power for 10 seconds (this only if it is plugged), it doesnt do anything if unplugged.
Tried 2 min hold power down, power and volume down, and several other options.
Tried several charger, LG, Samsung, RPI2 (5v 2a), pc/notebook usb, and of course the original charger. eft it all night, and several hours during the day.
Nothing seems to work, battery still cold afetrr so much time charging.

A few minutes ago, i removed the battery and plug it to a charger and it seems it wants to boot, see several blinks but the screen never turns on so the phone, after a few seconds it stop blinking.
After that i connected again to the notebook, and the notebook seems to detected but throws an error and disconnects usb.

What is going on????
Any help would be helpfull

Voltage is not a good indicator normally of State of Charge (SoC) for Li Ion batteries, since the battery can show higher Voltage but not hold charge. Graph 2 highlights the relatively flat Voltage curve, compared to SoC drop
Voltage of a fully charged battery should be 4.2V (see table 2).

Seeing your comment on battery voltage being less, after 2 days of charging (less than 3V), surely you have a problem, since the Battery is considered "dead" at these levels

Possible fixes

I would suggest you to borrow a battery and see if it works fine. If it does, the solution is obvious- of changing the battery. If it doesn't help, it points to a  possible hardware issue in the charging circuitry, best rectified by qualified folks
Since the problem occurred after an update, it is possible that battery charging related drivers were not properly installed/ corrupted. This can be checked by reverting to earlier build or re flashing the update , which is difficult given that you can't power on your device, and would again need service center help

I am more inclined to believe that  it's on account of botched updation, since Li Ion batteries don't "suddenly" die


Combatible firmware for old S7 I got an old s7. Looking through the settings it says:

Model Number: SM-G930FD
Build Number MMB29K.G930FXXU1BPIF
Baseband Verion:G930FXXU1DQE8

I am trying to find a compatible firmware to manually install, since when I told the phone to search for updates it does not find anything. The device has Android 6.0.1 with September 2016 security update which looks very insecure to use.

I am trying to find a compatible update, preferably based on android 8 and released during the last two months. However I am not sure about what to use.

Another strange thing is that when I try to find the existing firmware on the device I cannot find it when searching for SM-G930FD. However I do find this entry for SM-G930F with PDA G930FXXU1BPIF. Also if I enter download mode the phone shows:
PRODUCT NAME: SM-G930F
!!

I am not sure what to make of this. Is the phone a G930F or a G930FD? And what should match when I try to find an official firmware that should match this phone's hardware?

SM-G930FD and SM-G930FD are all models of the Samsung Galaxy S7. See Samsung Galaxy S7 Specifications.

  Versions: G930F (Global); G930FD (Global; Southeast Asia); G930W8 (Canada)

On the Misc section of the above link:

  Models:   SM-G930F, SM-G930A, SM-G930P, SM-G930V, SM-G930T, SM-G930R, SM-G930F, SM-G930FD, SM-G930W8, SM-G930S, SM-G930L, SM-G930K, SM-G9300

For firmwares, you can verify here for G930FD and here for G930F. Check if your country is among those with new firmwares.


Android apps not updating automatically I have published an application and it went live after sometime. Now I have enabled automatic updates in the play store settings. I can see my app there and it's showing me update button. But why it is not automatically updated? Also i haven't got any notification about new update available?

Can anyone please tell how automatic updates work? App starts downloading update the time it is available or play store check updates after some interval?

When an update to an application is published in the Play Store, updates start rolling out. Not all users will see the update immediately; I think the figure is a few hours for the update to be available throughout the country or world.

The Play Store app checks for updates periodically, I think a few times daily. You can configure toggles to:

Notify when updates are available
Automatically install updates
Notify when automatic updates have occurred

A user will only be alerted for an update if the application is installed from the Play Store. As a developer, you may have installed from adb, in which case the application will not update from the Play Store. You can always reinstall the Play Store version, which will be updated.


Is it possible for my mobile carrier to track my wifi usage and bill me accordingly? I watch a lot of inspiration videos from TED (www.ted.com.au) on my new Galaxy S2 phone. However, I only do this when I am at home and can access my home wifi network.

My home wifi and the phone's 3G networks are with different providers. Obviously, my phone switches to the home wifi network automatically when I am at home.

My question: Is it possible for my 3G network provider to see/track my wifi usage and bill me accordingly (as if I am using the 3G network) because everything goes through the phone that is on their network?

I am new to smart phones so please bear with me. My monthly 3G data download allowance is only 150 MB but my home wifi came with 5 GB.

Of course not. Your WiFi will go through your WiFi chip to AP and to some other ISP. There is no connection with 3G just like you can use WiFi even without SIM.

But your carrier can(though highly unlikely) use some tracking program to track you and find what you are doing. Even if they do, the WiFi usage won't be counted as 3G.

One advice I'd like to give you is sometimes you think you're on WiFi but due to many reasons you might not be connected to WiFi and you might be browsing over 3G. So just keep an eye for that.


Android Virtual Calls Assistant? I want to know if it is possible to do the following:

1. When "Unknown" calls, after a few seconds audio recording starts and asks caller to recall but with identified number this time. Otherwise there is no other way to reach recipient.

2. When not answering for a long time, audio recording starts and tells that recipient is busy.

I want to hire 2 professional voiceovers to voiceover all the above on 2 different languages.

Is this all possible?

Thanks!

You can very nearly do this with totally standard built-in features, most of which actually rely on support from the phone network rather than anything special on your phone. In fact I can't think of a real way to do absolutely everything you're asking without implementing it at the phone network, rather than on the phone.

You can block "Unknown" numbers very easily, but I don't think there's a standard way to play a message saying that the call has been blocked and why. After all your phone would have to answer the call itself in order to play the message, only the phone network can talk to callers without answering the call!

To block unknown callers: on your phone, go into Settings, then into Call Settings, select All Calls, select Auto reject, tick the box to Enable auto reject, select Auto reject list and tick Unknown.

Playing a message to callers after the phone hasn't been answered for a specific time is exactly what normal Voicemail does. Most voicemail kicks in after a small number of rings, but if you want to extend that most networks will allow you to set a longer time before the vooicemail divert happens, but you will probably need to call your network to arrange this. I have had to set this up for phones on two different networks in the past, for one I had to type a complicated *# dialler code into the phone to request the longer delay, on the other the phone company's helpline could arrange this over the phone.


How to replace the generic Google TTS service? I kind of hate the voice used for navigation, alarm clock. Seems everything is using that same voice. Too robotic for my liking. I found IVONA Text-to-Speech Voices | TTS Voices | Text To Voice

Not sure how good it is. Is there a better app than Ivona?

Ivona voice sounds the best hands down (especially Amy and the new not yet on Android Salli voice). Works great on all apps for me. Sadly, whenever I reboot phone, Ivona no longer works. Only fix is to reinstall the whole thing which is a total PITA. I still do it though cause it sounds so much better then any of the other choices.


How can I secure-wipe free space? Any way that I can securely wipe free internal storage on Android? I am not talking about secure deleting, but just wiping whatever is possible to recover.

The most reliable method is to manually copy large non-sensitive files (such as Linux images or the LibreOffice Installer Setup File) to the partition that you wish to erase the free space from, delete and repeat it around THREE to FIVE times. Ensure the files you copy fill up the drive as much as possible, i.e. start copying small files when the large ones are too big to fit in the last remaining MB / KB of free space.

If you don't want to mess around finding files to write, you can use a utility called Dummy File Creator: http://www.mynikko.com/dummy/

This will allow you to create files of a specific size containing random data (ensure the Random File Content option is selected).


bind mount / symlink - keep destination "tree" on removal of source? I'm trying to accomplish something fairly odd, so bear with me.

I've added an external SD card to my old Droid Mini (basically just for an experiment to see whether or not I could expand the storage capability). It's currently running Lineage OS 13.

The issue is that the external SD adapter is very power hungry, and the kernel on this version (3.4.42) doesn't properly support autosuspend.

I can force the device into low power mode by unbinding the SCSI device from the USB device, but obviously it disappears if I do that.

I read that bind mounts can preserve the directory structure of the source folder even if it is removed, but I can't seem to get that to work (see here - "It is possible to unmount /some/where, in which case /else/where remains mounted.")

The idea is to wait until the USB device goes idle, then manually suspend it by unbinding it until it is needed again. However, if I unbind the device, the "stat" file I'm using to monitor idleness ALSO disappears, do I can't use that to check if activity is requested.

So my (maybe silly) idea was to make bind mount of the external card to a "virtual" USB device which doesn't disappear when the source is removed, and re-attaches it when it's needed.

Baby steps though, any ideas how I might go about preserving a "fake" drive for the system to operate through? Bind-mounts don't seem to do quite the right thing here.

Thanks,
R

That sounds really crazy...

At first glance, I have a guess that while you can unmount the source directory of a bind mount, you must keep the underlying device attached for a bind mount to work.

I confirmed my guess in experiments on my OnePlus 6 (Android Linux 4.9.65) and my Ubuntu 18.04 (real Linux 4.15.0) and the result is same.

On Ubuntu, I inserted a USB flash drive (ext4 filesystem) and mounted it to /mnt/usb, and I bind mounted /mnt/usb/data to /mnt/bind

I unmounted /mnt/usb while keeping the flash drive attached, and I can access /mnt/bind with no error. All changes to /mnt/bind reflected to <drive root>/data (verified later).
Then I detached the flash drive and attempted to access /mnt/bind, and got this message:

ls: reading directory '/mnt/bind': Input/output error

On my OnePlus 6, I inserted a USB flash drive via OTG (exFAT filesystem). I mounted the device /dev/block/vold/public:8:97 to /data/dev, and bind-mounted /data/dev/Android to /data/bind.

I unmounted /data/dev while keeping the OTG attached, and all the data remains in /data/bind and is accessible without errors.
Then I turned off "OTG function" in the Settings app, the Android mount point /mnt/media_rw/xxxx-xxxx disappeared, but I can still access my bind mount.
Next I detached the OTG drive and attempted to access /data/bind and got this:

ls: reading directory `/data/bind`: I/O error

A side note is, unlike Ubuntu, access to /data/bind remained available for around half a minute, but directories that I didn't previously visited weren't accessible anymore, only the directories that I visited before detaching the drive was still accessible.

That's it. The conclusion is in the top paragraph.


SHARE saved Google images list from Android Using my Android Acer mobile phone, I created and titled a list of Google Images under my Chrome account. How can I share this with others?

You can share photos, videos, albums, and movies, with anyone, even if they don't use the Google Photos app.

  Share to your contacts

  On your Android phone or tablet,  open the Google Photos app
  Sign in to your Google Account.
  At the bottom, tap Sharing.
  At the top, tap Create Create.
  Choose photos to share, then tap Next.
  At the top, tap Type a name, phone number, or email.
  Select people to share with. If you're part of a family on Google with at least 2 other people, select Family group to share with your
  family members.
  Tap Done. You can add a title or message, then tap Send.

  Send a link or share to other apps

  On your Android phone or tablet, open the Google Photos app Photos.
  Tap the photo, album, or movie to share.
  Tap Share Share.
  Select another app to share or send someone a link. You can also enter or select a name, phone number, or email address.

Source: Google Photos Help


I have a phone that is completely locked and usb debugging is off. How can i make the phone usable again? this phone is a lg stlyo 2 model : LGL82VL

The phone was pattern locked, and a gmail was set up. The phone was factory data reset. yet its asking for the gmail and password to finish the process. I do not have the gmail. Usb debugging is off. If i attempt to use adb is just replies with error: device '(null)' not found

How can i erase the phones rom and write a new one to make this phone usable again?

And I have already tried most if not all of the tricks on youtube of tricking the phone to let me into google and copy and paste a new gmail. That did not work. Also i cannot use the keys to bring me into any other menu to get into the file system.

At this point I would be completely okay with erasing the phones rom entirely and starting from scratch. I just need to know if its do-able and how to do it.

Thank you in advance.

Does it have twrp? If it does perhaps there is another way around that helps to reset forgotten pattern lock / security PIN / password from your Android device without having to lose your precious data.
 folder, thus resetting Android’s security.
Ketan from XDA Developers forum has developed an intelligent hack file, that needs to be flashed on your Android device through custom recovery and bingoo!! your phone’s security code / pattern lock and password will be removed. This hack basically instructs your phone to remove the files which tell android that the phone is locked to show the lock ui. If the device is protected with a pin or password it will skip it. If it's protected with pattern then it will not skip it but don't worry you can input any pattern to unlock it. Downloads: http://forum.xda-developers.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2245081&d=1378720290 I hope it helps if it doesn't tell me there's another way to do it!!


Play songs randomly and endlessly I made a profile in Tasker (it runs on boot) for my (rooted) Android box. The tasks are:

screen always ON
play randomly all the songs from a dedicated folder.

It works. But I need to play endlessly the songs in the folder when Tasker ends playing the last song.

What I'm looking for is to loop the action "play songs from folder" when it's ended but I don't know how.

I tried a "Goto" but Tasker runs the task even if the playback runs. My Android box starts to slow down very fast because I think Tasker repeats the task endlessly and plays the first song repeatedly at the same time.

This is how it looks like at the moment (very simple) :

Profile : "On start up" -> Task "Music"

"Music":

Event action : "Stay awake"
Media action : Play media from folder / random

only tested :
Task action : Go to "2"

How do I achieve the goal?

It appears that the action Media → Music Play Dir cannot play files for infinite times. I tried with multiple Maximum Tracks value (with(out) Random enabled) and reached the conclusion that the maximum number of time Tasker would play a media would not be more than the number of playable files in the working directory.

Enough about failure. Let's come to business. I came up with this following simple approach of mine:

We're going to list all the files in your working directory (the same directory where your media files are kept) and store it in a variable. We will randomly select a file from the previous output, get the duration of the file, play it, set Tasker to wait for that much duration, then loop back to where the random selection of a media file occurs.

Actions

Files → List Files:

Dir: working directory where media files are kept
Match: *.mp3/*.wma/*.3gp
Variable: %tracks

This step list all the files with MP3, WMA and 3GP extension available in the working directory, creates an array %tracks and fill the path name of each file as a value in that array.

I learned this step from this post of UncleMike.
Variables → Variable Set :

Name: %max_tracks
To: %tracks(#)

We're creating a variable named %max_tracks and assigning the size of %tracks array as its value. This variable would be used only in next step.
Variables → Variable Randomize:

Name: %rand
Min: 1
Max: %max_tracks

This step randomly selects a value in the range 1-%max_tracks and assigns the randomly chosen value to %rand.
Media → Test Media:

Type: Music File Duration Tag
Data: %tracks(%rand)
Store Result in: %duration

This step finds the duration of randomly chosen (%tracks(%rand)) media file and assign the duration as a value to %duration.
Variables → Variable Split

Name: %duration
Splitter: :

It is my assumption here that all of your media files are less than 59 minutes 59 seconds in duration. The duration received in last action is in the format MINUTES:SECONDS. In this action, we're splitting variable %duration at :. This would store MINUTES in %duration1 and SECONDS in %duration2.
Media → Music Play:

File: %tracks(%rand)
Stream: Media

This step plays the randomly chosen media file.
Task → Wait:

Seconds: %duration2
Minutes: %duration1

This step makes the Tasker wait for the amount equivalent to the duration the randomly chosen would be played for.
Task → Goto

Type: Action Number
Number: 3

This step repeats the cycle from action 3 for the purpose of playing another randomly chosen media file.

Note: The Variable Randomize action of Tasker could bug you if the files are very short in numbers. That's something I can't help with.


Android - Call log/ history : Retrieve a dialed number when there was no network coverage I dialed a number when I had no network support but it does not appear in the call history of my android phone.

Is there any way to get it ? (system logs or whatever)

THanks a lot in advance,
Jack

Your phone deals with three types of calls: incoming, outgoing or missed. As you can see from the API documentation.

Technically speaking, you've typed some digits, but since you had no network coverage, you didn't actually place any call. So, there was no reason to log anything, or even a way to classify those digits as a valid outgoing call.

Android has a database to store all the calls made, but they must match one of the above three types, and as you can see here the existent fields on the database don't contemplate the possibility of  rows for every collection of digits typed that doesn't fit the parameters of a call (duration, type, etc..).


Contacts have been randomly renamed and/or merged I have a Moto X 2nd Gen running Android 5.0.  All of sudden, my contacts have become very screwed up.  Here are the symptoms I'm seeing

names of my contacts seem to have been randomly swapped.  Person A and Person B swapped names so the contact details don't match
in addition to swapping names, I have a contact which contains information from 3 ppl (!!!) and none of them belong to the name.

I signed out of my Google account and back in and it seemed to have fixed it for some contacts, but the rest are still screwed up.  On contacts.google.com, my contacts still look fine.  What's wrong and how can I fix this?

The same thing happened to me over a year ago. My contacts are still messed up because I noticed the problem only over a month after it had happened and I had also done enough changes on both my phone and Google web that I didn't dare trying a roll back to a backup that I had taken myself. So, I've just lived with it and cleaned up the contacts as I've run into messy ones sometimes manually looking at my manual Google Contacts exports.

I would suggest to simply wipe out your phone contacts and have pull the contacts from Google online since you are saying that they look fine there. You can wipe out your phone/device contacts e.g. via Android Settings → Application Manager.

Then it depends a bit on your Android version but on my phone (Galaxy S5) I need to go over to All (applications) tab and then find Contacts, Contacts Storage and Google Contacts Sync and if I wanted to clear my contacts I would clear both data (by tapping Clear data) and cache (by tapping Clear cache) of all of the above-noted three applications.

As said, the apps that store your contacts data and information about sync status depend on your device so just clear all contacts related data and then re-sync the Google account in question via Settings → Accounts.

Now, even if the changes have been pushed over to Google by now you can roll back your online contacts with the rather powerful rollback feature of Google Contacts. It should be noted that the rollback is available for any moment in time within the past 30 days (and no longer!). So, if you spot the issue within a month of when it happened you can roll back easily.

You can find / do this through https://contacts.google.com/ → Left side menu bar → Undo changes

If you need to roll back what I would do is first disable the contacts sync from Android Settings → Accounts (for the Google account in question). Then roll back the Google online contacts and then re-enable the account causing the sync to happen.


Do I need ARM or ARM64 Gapps for an asus zenfone 2 laser ZE500KL? I was wondering if there is significant difference regarding compatibility and readiness when it comes to ARM or ARM64 Gapps?

According to the qualcomm website, the chipset I have supports both 32 and 64bit. I was wondering which one to choose for more stability.

UPDATE: http://www.devicespecifications.com/en/model/d8d3356c <----it looks like it is ARM, but on the website of the chipset it say ARM64. Confusing.

Rather than wasting time checking your SoC architecture, why not check your ROM's build architecture instead? The following methods are available for you.

The existence of /system/bin/linker64 indicates that your ROM is built for ARM64 (or more formally, AArch64), as well as these things

File: /system/bin/linker64
      /system/bin/app_process64
Directory: /system/lib64/
           /system/vendor/lib64

If these things don't exist, it means that you're running a ARM 32-bit ROM.

Open /system/build.prop in any text editor and look for ro.product.cpu.abi. If its value is arm64-v8a then your ROM is ARM64. If its value is 'armeabi-v7a' or something else, safely believe it's an ARM ROM.

I suggest checking your ROM architecture instead of CPU architecture, as it sometimes occurs that an ARM ROM is installed on an ARM64 device.

FYI, your SoC, Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 is in fact ARM64 as its core architecture is ARM Cortex-A53, the very first 64-bit core architecture from ARM.


How to prevent someone from powering off an android device? I have a Nexus 5. Even if I enable security passcode or pattern, someone can still switch off my mobile using the power button. How can I prevent it?

You cannot (barring any hardware tweaks.)

If you root your phone and install a custom ROM, you may be able to remove the "Turn off" and "Reboot" options from the Power menu. However, Nexus 5 (as do most modern phones) has a hard-wired feature, where holding the power button for 10 seconds shuts the phone off.  This is done so that you can restart the phone if it freezes up.  Since Nexus 5 doesn't have a removable battery, this hard reset would be the only way to shut it off without having to wait for the battery to drain.

If you are technically inclined, you can always make hardware modifications to the phone which would prevent the Power button from functioning normally.  However, such mods are not for the novices, and will certainly void your warranty.


Save file as PDF using Microsoft Word's app I have a .docx file that would like to save as .pdf.

If I click in the three dots in the upper right

And clicking the Save As doesn't allow to change from .docx to .pdf

The way I managed to do up to this was to click Share As PDF and send to my email. Then, from there, download it. But surely there must have an easier option. Also this method didn't work all the time.

Instead of clicking Save As, click Print. Then, in the top there's a dropdown from where it's possible to select Save As PDF.

Then click in the yellow circle with the download icon and the text PDF and select where you want the file to be saved. That's it.


How to Recover Data from internal storage of dead phone? I'm Using a Intex Aqua Power HD phone with Android 4.4. Its broken and cannot be switched it on... Whatever be the problem with the phone, what I really want is the data in that phone... The data in the phone is important... Is there any way to recover Data from Internal Storage of my Phone When I cannot turn it on ?

The only way to access the internal storage from a dead phone that I know of would be to open it and use specialized tools to connect directly to the flash memory chip, which is a complicated process. If your phone does boot but the screen stays black, then you might have a chance to connect it and access internal files using  ADB


Where are attachments stored when sending text messages Where are the attached images to text messages stored on Froyo 2.2.1 ( Samsung Galaxy S , if that should make a difference ) ?

I am asking following problems I have now when sending texts with images attached : I can't send a picture attachment together with a text message.

--- UPDATE ---

I have found the solution to the problem mentioned. Please look at the answer of my other question if you have the same problem.

Seems that no special folder is used to store attachments - strange since I am definitely saw the message 'picture too large - compressing' when trying to send an image via MMS.

I would have expected this to be saved somewhere.

I will accept my own answer here, unless someone else can give some valuable information.


Turning off cell broadcast messages in HTC One X Plus I have been receiving about 50 flash sms a day, with my service provider name TIM RS 51, from the number 50. As I read here, it might be a issue with activating and deactivating cell broadcast on the phone. However, I could not find the path suggested for the deactivation (Setting/Call/Other Call Settings). The option does not exist on this path. Any help?

I show the setting under

Settings | Wireless & networks | More... | Cell broadcasts

with three options to choose from:

Show extreme threats
Show severe threats
Show AMBER alerts

(Android 4.1.1 / Galaxy Nexus)


Built-in alarm, calendar suddenly talking to me. How can I shut them up? I use the native Clock app, and my alarm used to just have a normal ringtone. I assume there was some automatic update recently because this morning, in addition to the normal ringtone, there was a robotic voice saying "It is 7:25 AM." Then later I got a notification from the native Calendar app, and in addition to my normal ringtone, the robotic voice announced the text of the notification.

How do I shut this off? It's really annoying and I don't see an option in Settings.

Per a coworker's recommendation, I just went into S-Voice and said "driving mode off". Fixed the issue.


Cant move apps to my sd card. Please help me with this as i have 29 gb available and i cannot shift I have a tablet with less space. I have an sd card with 29 gb available but I can't move all apps to sd. I downloaded phone2sd but it said no movable objects. If root is the only way please tell me how to root myself. Thank u

Typically this will require root to accomplish. However depending on your tablet, on the newer version of android there is a capability to format the sd to the type for your tablet and will combine it with your internal memory.


Something fishy with sms I am frequently getting a message at the bottom of my coolpad note 3 lite screen. It says "send sms". See the attached pic:

I don't know what it is and whether it is sending something.
Pls help.

That is a 'toast' message which is executing from one of the apps that is currently running in your device.
Since this kind of errors are hard to exist in system apps, the app must be a non-system app.

Therefore go through the currently running apps in your device and remove non-system apps one by one until the message displaying stops (take precautions to save whatever the unsaved-changes in those apps before removing). That way you can find the causing app. You can disable it for the moment and report to the developers of it.

Thanks.


Error on Samsung S4: "UNFORTUNATELLY the process . com.google.process.gapps has stopped." I am getting an error message on my new S4. It is  "UNFORTUNATELLY the process . com.google.process.gapps has stopped."

How do I solve this problem?

2 Things to try:

Go to Settings->Apps->All->Find 'Download Manager' and open it. Make sure it's enabled.
Go to Settings->Apps->All->Find Google Play Store and open it. Clear the data and the cache.

Try again.


No internet access using USB tethering on Android phone I used to access the internet on my notebook by tethering it to my android mobile phone. However recently this stopped working. Even though the notebook was tethered to the phone there was no internet access. Changing phone settings did not help.

On googling I found that my mobile service provider recently disabled internet access over tethering. This can be fixed by the following the steps described here.

Enable USB debugging on your android phone (Settings > Developer options > Enable USB debugging).
Download adb.exe from here and follow the steps here.
Connect the phone to your computer using USB cable.
Open command window in the folder containing adb.exe.
Type: adb devices -l (this will list your device model).
Type: adb shell (to enter in your mobile's shell).
Type: settings put global tether_dun_required 0.
Reboot your phone and you're done!


How can I update my Nexus S manually? I just bought a Nexus S from the USA and it works fine here (Spain). Just realised its version of Gingerbread is 2.3.1 though. While it's no surprise it finds no OTA updates with the local carriers, I wonder how could I get the phone up-to-date, offline style.

Suppose I don't have to root and tinker with it right?

With most OTA updates someone inevitably pulls the raw .zip file off some server and posts it online for others to use before they get the official OTA notice on their phones.

If your phone is currently on build number GRH78 then download this .zip file.  If your phone is currently on GRH78C then download this .zip file.
Rename it update.zip and place it in the root folder of your SDCard.
Shut your phone off.
Hold down the volume up and power buttons at the same time to access the bootloader.
Use the volume keys to navigate to recovery.  Press the power button to select it.
You should see a triangle with an exclamation point in it.  Hold down the power button and tap the volume up button to access the recovery menu.
Use the volume keys to navigate to apply update from /sdcard, select it with the power button, choose update.zip and press the power button to start the update.
When the update is complete, reboot your phone.

(These instructions were taken mostly from http://www.intomobile.com/2011/02/24/how-to-manually-update-your-nexus-s-to-android-2-3-3/ except for the download links.  I do not own a Nexus S and have not tested this personally.  If these instructions look incorrect to you [or anyone else!] don't use them.  If at any step during the update process the instructions do not line up with what you see, you should stop proceeding and use menu options to back as far out as you can from the menus.  I'm not responsible for anything that happens to your phone, good or bad.)


Where can I find documentation for shell commands? For using a shell commands through a terminal program, where can I find documentation or help or man pages for the commands as implemented in Android?

While it would be nice to have them on the device via man, PDF or web-based would be fine, too.

When I run "man" from terminal, I get an error and I haven't found a good source online.

You may have a look at http://www.busybox.net/downloads/BusyBox.html for a description of busybox and the commands provided by it.
And trust me, if you are going to do work in the console, you probably want to use busybox.


Phone doesn't respond to ping I'm trying to develop an application that knows when I am home based on my phone being on my wifi network or not.  I'm running into a weird issue in that I can only ping the phone if I have recently (within the last minute or so) tried to access a web page on the machine I am pinging on.  I'm not even able to get an ARP reply unless I've tried to recently access the machine.

So, do Android phones have a very restrictive firewall by default?  Is there any way that I can change this?

I don't believe it to be a network issue, because I can ping the phone at any time from my router, it just doesn't respond to other clients on the network.

I believe this is simply because Android puts the Wifi to sleep to save power when the screen is turned off. You can try setting the Wifi Sleep Policy: Settings > Wireless & Network Setting > Wifi Settings > Press Menu button > Advanced > Wifi sleep policy to Never and see if your problem still persists.

Alternatively though, instead of having your server ping your phone, I think it will be easier for the phone to "ping" (or make a HTTP request or through other methods) the server when it is connecting to your Wifi network. Your application can register to the system to receive a broadcast Intent when certain Wifi events occurred.


Phone asking "SIM network unlock PIN" after flashing new Stock ROM on Xperia S I have Xperia S (LT26i).
Earlier it had 6.2.B.0.211 installed.

I flashed it with "XperiaS_LT26i_6.2.B.1.96_1257-6919.ftf", flashing was successful, but after I started my phone I saw this message "SIM network unlock PIN". What should I do now?

(Click the image to enlarge it)

Try this...

Link to LT26i firmware

You might have flashed different firmware that's the issue or Your phone might be factory locked... Try the solution in the link provided... :-)