Spotify/pandora timer Is there an app that is preferrably free that will shut off (not just mute the phone as I don't want Pandora sucking bandwitdh all night) that will shut off Pandora or spotify after a certain amount of time?

Not free, but you probably can use Taskerto do this.   I use Pocket Casts to listen to podcasts, and have a Tasker profile set up:

3 Contexts: Shake left-right; app Pocket Cast running; Not Docked Car

2 Tasks: Notify (turn LED on, title "Sleep"); Wait 12 minutes, then Pause Simulate Media Button, then Notify Cancel title "Sleep"

Net effect is that I can shake the phone left then right, and Pocket Cast will behave as if the Pause button on a headset were pushed 12 minutes later.   I used the notification LED so I could tell whether Sleep had been activated when the screen is off.

I'm guessing Pandora would observe the headphone pause function; if it does, this profile should work for you.


link2sd: Replacing sdcard, unable to install gmail I had installed link2sd plus and created link for the Gmail app, so that Gmail app is completely moved to the SD card 2nd partition.

The SD card then failed, I had to replace the SD card. After replacing the SD card, all the applications that were "linked" to the SD card did not work (of course). I had to re-install all the apps.

Some of the apps could not be installed, the error message was "Insufficient storage available". I figured that there were some apps like "com.google.....", which was listed in the Apps Settings menu (with 0.0B). I deleted such apps (for ex: com.google.android.keep), and then was able to install the corresponding apps (ex: Google Keep).

However, I am not able to install Gmail, which always shows "Insufficient storage available". I did "adb shell pm list packages" and do not find any package like "com.google.android.gm". Storage space is not an issue, there is sufficient space.

Any help allowing me to install Gmail will be appreciated!

Note: It is android 4.4.2 custom rom, found at http://forum.xda-developers.com/micromax-a116/development/discovery-rom-micromax-a116-t2863476 on Micromax A116 device

There are leftovers from all apps you moved to that SD card. You have to uninstall those apps manually (even though they are not existing anymore) which deletes all those leftovers. Then you are able to reinstall those apps again.


How does reducing brightness of screen increase battery life? For all I have heard, reducing the screen brightness of your phone can increase your battery life. Just about every expert in the field agrees to this statement. But today I came across this article which kind of raised quite a few questions in my mind. The excerpt from the article in question here is:

  All these screen dimming/color cast applications function in
  essentially the same way: by overlaying a graphic on the screen to
  reduce the brightness and/or change the color cast of the screen.
  Think of it like adding a partially opaque layer to an image in
  Photoshop. When you tell the Lux application, for example, that you
  want the screen 50 percent dimmer than the actual hardware in the
  phone can provide via LED adjustments, the application essentially
  cheats by layering a gray mask over the screen that decreases the
  brightness because the screen elements are darker. Other apps like
  Screen Adjuster, Darker, Easy Eye, Twilight, and even the brightness
  adjustment function in popular battery-saving app JuiceDefender all
  work the same way.

So if the screen brightness applications (like Lux) only add a partially opaque layer they are essentially not dimming the backlight (correct me if I am wrong here) so in turn it would not have any affect in battery life. Right?
The article continues saying – Anything that layers something over the screen in anyway disables the “Install” button as the button is rendered unclickable in order to prevent malicious software from creating a false overlay that leads the user to think an application has a different set of permissions or that the application is an entirely different app altogether. So does reducing the screen brightness via Settings uses some other technique (probably it actually reduces the backlight)?

I think you've got to differentiate between "software-layers" and "hardware-layers" in the first place. If you put a "display foil" on top of the screen, that will certainly not reduce battery consumption (though it "dims" your display). But if it's a software layer reducing brightness, that's something completely different: How should that be achieved other than reducing the "amount of light created"? It's not a "physical layer on top", though it kind-of works like that when it comes to LCDs.1

I have no means of proving it "physically", but here are two ways I can imagine2:

reducing light intensity of the "light generators" (LEDs for OLED, or backlight for LCD) by feeding less power to them – which would work for both types of displays, and is the way the actual brightness control works
altering the color values (e.g. convering "#FFFFFF" to "#DDDDDD", making "white" a "light gray") – primarily working for OLED to "safe power", but in theory also for displays using differently colored LEDs (or LED arrays) to compose the color, if such exist3

As Dan put it1: Using a filter/overlay like this will make either type of screen look darker, but it'll only reduce power use on OLED screens. On LCD screens, only decreasing the backlight brightness saves power.

Apart from that, your quotes nowhere state the filters would not affect power consumption in either way.

1 Following up a discussion in chat between Dan and me, on LCDs it in fact is similar; quoting Dan: Using a software overlay to darken pixels on an LCD screen won't reduce the power consumption [… which works] by putting a transparent grey full-screen window on top of other windows; that's more likely to increase overall power consumption, because you're giving the window compositor more work to do. Doesn't contradict whith what I wrote, but gives more insight in "applying the right filter to the wrong display type": The same amount of "backlight" is generated, just the crystals (LCD = Liquid Crystal Display) are darker.

2 There might be other possibilities which escaped me, so I don't claim the list to be complete. It should give some insight nevertheless.

3 There are differently colored LEDs at least for Red, Green, and Blue (read: RGB, so such a combination would cover the full color spectrum), making displays like this potentially possible (note I didn't say they already exist!); different colors feature different efficiency – so "red-ifying" the screen would safe power (red-orange LEDs feature the most lumen-per-Watt according to Wikipedia).


Move app data (on /data/data) to SD card I bought one of those budget phones that claimed to have 4GB of internal storage, but it looks like there is only 1.08GB. I don't know why it says that I only have 1.08GB if I already used 1.12GB for apps.

I removed all bloatware and moved all my APKs to the SD card, but I still don't have enough space for Google Docs, etc.
The main culprits are SpanishDict and Facebook, which take up 200MB of internal storage each (at /data/data/com.spanishdict.spanishdict and /data/data/com.facebook.katana)
Of course, I googled before asking and such, and I used this program called FolderMount. But it doesn't seem to work well with moving things outside of the SD card, defeating the whole purpose of it.
Does anyone know a way to actually move app data from the internal storage to the SD card?
Btw, I am using a Lanix X200.
TL;DR no space on the internal store because of app data on /data/data. Need to move it to an SD card.

First, when they say there is 4 GB storage, they count all partitions, so there is 4 GB on your phone.
To move data to an SD card, you will have to use an app called Link2SD (root required) or use an adoptable storage feature (Android 6+ only). In both cases, you don't move folders manually if you do that you will probably screw up something.
Also, if you really need a Facebook app, use the lite version, or access it via a browser. The normal version uses too much space and too many resources. Generally, I say this because I assume you don't have more than 768 MB of RAM, so use it wisely.
Check out the Link2SD's tag wiki


Google talk in Sony Ericsson XPeria Mini Pro I've a Sony Ericsson XPeria Mini Pro with Android 2.3.3 and GTalk didn't came installed. I search it in the market and can't find it.

Is there any way to get it installed?

I thought that may be I could share the apk file through bluetooth from another phone and I succeed. Here are the steps:

All the steps are for the phone which already has GTalk installed.

Open file manager.
Go to System (outside sdcard) -> applications.
Search Talk.apk.
Send it to the phone where you want to install GTalk by bluetooth (or any other way).

Once Talk.apk is already in your phone, just click it to install the app.

I think (not sure) the second step requires rooting. Also I'm pretty sure that the native file manager doesn't allow you to go up from sdcard. I would need something like Es File Manager or Astro File Manager.


Gmail Auto Suggest Not Working I installed Lineage 14.1 and then flashed: open_gapps-arm64-7.1-full-20180303.zip on my rooted ZTE Axon 7.

I let the phone do all the updates and checked the permissions for Gmail, Calendar, and Contacts and they seem set properly; however, in Gmail, the addresses of known contacts don't populate on a new email or forward. Similarly the Calendar won't let me choose invitees for a meeting. Contacts and Calendar are properly synced.

I subsequently deleted my Google account and all its data and reflashed Gapps again. This forced Gmail to ask if I wanted auto suggestion (or auto complete). When I tried to click on the option, it feels like it never allowed me to complete the selection. In the app permissions Gmail has access to contacts, and no amount of selecting or unselecting does anything. I can choose to i"add from contacts," but this is very clunky.

I consider the lack of autocomplete for Gmail (and calendar) enough that I might have to nuke the device and go back to stock.

I have googled to find a solution, to no avail. I've also searched the forums. Any ideas?

To fix this, I deleted my Google account from within Lineage OS. I then downloaded the Aroma of Gapps and pushed it to my device. Rebooted into TWRP and wiped cache/dalvik cache and then flashed the new version of Gapps. Aroma allowed me to exclude whichever Gapps I no longer wanted and I then rebooted.

I double checked that both Gmail and Calendar both had permissions to access contacts, but thankfully this process brought back auto suggest.

P.S. there was an issue with contact syncing all the way, whereby I was given the dreaded "Sync Is Currently Experiencing Problems" message. I used the Contacts Sync Fix app in the Play store to remedy this (it worked). It discovered a malformed contact with illegal characters in the notes field (this may ultimately have been the problem in the first place).


Is it possible to stop notifications of an OTA update? I rooted and modded my Samsung Prevail (Gingerbread) a couple weeks ago, and all is going well there.

However, I am now getting notices about an OTA system update, which I have no intention of installing. I will wait for the makers of my mod to produce a parallel version.

In the meantime, is there any way to kill the constant notices about the update?

On my S2 running ICS, there are options available for notification as well as downloading via Wi-Fi. Look under SETTINGS > ABOUT PHONE > SOFTWARE UPDATE

If you don't have such options and you have a rooted phone, use software like Titanium Backup to FREEZE the software update module.


How can I flash ClockworkMod with Heimdall on Galaxy Mini? I tried to flash ClockworkMod with Heimdall on my Galaxy Mini by doing the following:

I go into download mode
Plug in my phone
Go into the recovery image folder
Run heimdall flash --kernel zImage

I get this error and my phone stays in download mode:

Initialising connection...
Detecting device...
Claiming interface...
Attempt failed. Detaching driver...
Claiming interface again...
Setting up interface...
ERROR: Setting up interface failed!
Re-attaching kernel driver...

USB debugging mode is enabled of course and I'm on Ubuntu. How can I successfully flash ClockworkMod?

I just a got an email from the Heimdall dev, he said it's not compatible with the Galaxy Mini.  Thanks guys for your replies.


How to Check if Script is run once device is booted? I have a script I need to run once, and only once the phone is booted.

I have attempted init.qcom.post_boot.sh, init.sec.boot.sh, debuggerd, and finally mkshrc

While my script ran with debuggerd, I found that it ran every time debuggerd ran, which is not something I need to happen...  thus when I stumbled upon /system/etc/mkshrc   (the other 2 simply did not work)

What I found was, the script runs that one time, on boot... however, it also seems to run every time adb shell runs, along with (I assume) everytime shell is fired up... which is also undersireable.

So, what can I do in /system/etc/mkshrc to ensure my call to my script runs only the one time... at boot?

I thought about running a while loop to check for the getprop sys.boot_completed if it == 1 then dump a file somewhere, and through an if statement inside the looop to check for that file, if exists then exit, if not then run the next command...   however, everywhere I am allowed to dump that file, it persists between boots, so that next command never runs again.

NOTE
Does not need root to do this, nor does my script need root to run (yes, I have confirmed)

CODE

BB=/system/xbin/busybox
MYPID=/mnt/sdcard/.kev-run

while [ `getprop init.svc.bootanim` == "stopped" ] ; do
    # if the run file does not exist, and we are stopped
    if [ ! -e $MYPID ]; then
        # run the scripts, then create the run file
        LOG=/mnt/sdcard/Download/kevs-scripts.log
        $BB rm -f $LOG;
        $BB echo "Launching Kevs Scripts" >> $LOG;
        MY_SCRIPT
        # write the run file so we aren't running this everytime this file runs
        touch $MYPID;
        sleep 1;
    fi
done

# if we are still booting, delete the run file
while [ `getprop init.svc.bootanim` != "stopped" ] ; do
    # we're not done booting, remove our makeshift pid file and sleep a second
    $BB rm -f $MYPID;
    sleep 1;
done

Seems to be off to me

mkshrc is by definition run every time an interactive shell is started, so it’s the wrong place.

You really should hook up your script with Android’s init system instead. (Sorry, I can’t give details on how to do that; I don’t know the Android ecosystem well, I’m just mksh’s developer.)

Writing to a file in tmpfs (so it’s auto-removed on poweroff) is usually a good approach for a script to run only once. However, I’d be surprised if Android’s init system wouldn’t provide such a facility; it’s the ideal tool for your job.


What controls the 3G radio sleep time? Is there any way to control how/when the 3G radio goes to sleep?

Is that, in fact, what it is doing?

JuiceDefender allows you to turn your radio on and off and to set triggers for this.

Tasker will also do this.

One thing to note, the "3G" radio is the same radio that you use to make voice calls, at least it is on CDMA phones.  By controlling the APN you can turn on and off your 3g data and reap gains in battery life without turning off the radio.

I'm not 100% on this but I believe for phones that aren't yet on Froyo (2.2) an app is required to control the APN like APNdroid or QuickSettings. I'm not sure how well these work with the automated trigger apps mentioned above.


Titanium restore vs. ADB restore. Which one is better after a system update? I backed up my phone (HTC ONE M7, Android 4.4.2) with ADB backup -all -apk (one with -nosystem and once without it). I also backed up by Titanium Free (option system + apps). I also copied the media, download, music etc files into my computer.

Then I wiped my phone, factory reset and updated android to 5.0.2.

What would be the best way to restore the apps and the data that I had backed up?
I am worried that by restoring the apps, some of them might be incompatible with the new android version, or the old system files might overwrite the current system files and cause problems, or the residues of the uninstalled apps from the old system are also restored and make my new installation slow.

what would you recommend for the restore procedure?

I would prefer restore apps using Titanium, for the reason that it gives you total control on which user apps you want to restore.  In your case restoring system apps is not a recommended option since you have upgraded OS. It would lead to a mess up. Hence, while restoring choose the option of restoring just user apps with data. Answer how to restore only user apps is covered here

As a general guideline, best not to restore system apps after upgrading or changing ROM. After changing ROM also it is better to verify and update only those user apps which are not included as system apps in  new  ROM. You may often come across this situation while flashing Gapps recommended with new  ROM


What is the APK (and package) name of the Google App? On my Android 4.1.2 I can see force stop, uninstall updates, clear data, clear cache and view permissions of my installed apps via Settings > Manage apps but I am unable to tell their APK and/or package name.

I am particularly interested in knowing the name of the Google App (that's the name appearing next to its icon in App info). Its latest version as downloaded from Google Play just now is 4.1.24.1672412.arm.

Is there a way to get its APK name and package name?

Answering my own question, thanks to the method found on this View app's full package name? thread and the hint provided by Google App's URL in Google play.

I typed:

 adb shell 'pm list packages -f searchbox'

And received:

package:/data/app/com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox-1.apk=com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox


Getting offline GPS fix? I have a simple problem with my phone's GPS:
I have Samsung Galaxy S3 Neo with Android 4.4.2 (unrooted)

Here's the problem:
GPS literally takes forever to load,
I connect to internet and wait some time and it picks up eventually.
But if I restarted my phone and NOT connect to internet and enable gps, it will literally go out of its way to NOT pick up a single signal. It will see more than 20 satellites, but not one of them will be used for fix. This happens anywhere from perfectly open air to indoors (in my case being indoors is absolutely not a reason for not getting a fix because when I do get a fix indoors it sees all the satellites it used to when I was outside)

My question is:
How can I make my phone to pick up signals from those satellites without connecting to internet and end this nightmare?

Thanks a lot

P.S. I have used most of those garbage apps promising "faster fix" "gps fix" and all that crap and none of them helped. In case as I am writing this I have the app GPS Status and toolbox on ""Looking" for GPS location" forever and not picking anything up.

What's the solution?

My question is: How can I make my phone to pick up signals from those satellites without connecting to internet and end this nightmare?

GPS works by getting a fix on your location with the satellites whereas the Internet connection is used to download the map data associated with the particular area you're in.

Give this answer on Stack Overflow a read. It'll solve some of your doubts on how much signal strength is required.


How to prevent phone to install bloatware automatically I have a THL T9 Plus. I just wonder, why are applications installed automatically in background. I already installed NoRoot Firewall and Avira Antivirus. These are in most cases "HotKnotBean" and "Coordinator" named applications. I get notification by Avira, when these are installed and I can remove these too, but unable to protect phone from installation of these.

Looks like malware in your phone is pre-installed by manufacturer.

It's better to install another ROM.
You may check here which one owners of your device recommend.


Internet browser icon changed to Lookout icon My internet browser icon has changed from a picture of earth to Lookout icon. Has anyone else had this happen? Why?

It might be possible that the system got the app icon misconfigured. It happened to me before, a simple on off procedure could fix it.


Picture attachment download keeps using same file name with my Samusung Galaxy S II Epic 4G (Sprint) every time i go to save an attached picture from a text message the menu pops up with the same file name (everytime!) and a checkbox. i have to remember to go into my downloads picture folder and change the previous picture's file name, which is stupid and tedious. is there anyway to reset this for downloaded pics? or set it to auto assign a different file name each time??

Always been that way and if you don't change the name it will overwrite the image.

Till now, haven't found any fix or a work around, besides using another APP from the market.

This two have been recommend in the past and work just fine:

GO SMS Pro

Handcent SMS

Just confirmed and this Google Play Search, still gives you the two above app as the best rated ones.


Set Constant Notification Dot Color I have noticed the new version of Android has notification dots.

The new multicolor dots I find frustrating.   I would prefer if I could set one color for all notification dots(like red for example).

From Android Developer blog

  ....we even extract the color of the dot from your icon.

From Stack Overflow, Is it possible to change the notification Dot's color on Android Oreo, accepted answer says the same with support in comments saying that it changes with icon design

So, not possible


Disable GO SMS Pro weekly nag messages About once a week, GO SMS Pro "receives" (I don't know if it comes from somewhere or if it's written into the application) a nag message from "c10000@go.chat" along the lines of:

  Most of users loves GO SMS Pro because of themes. Thinking of cool & stylish messaging experience? Try out another bestseller: ColorGlass Theme  (Apply it through menu->theme)

It's extremely annoying. I believe I've logged out of GO Chat (though it tends to log itself back in without asking and won't stay disconnected), and have tried going through the app's settings multiple times without finding any way to kill these notifications. They're driving me batty.

I'm pretty sure this will work but I can't test it fully because I never updated Go SMS to the "nagging" new version after reading all the complaints in the reviews...

You have to be rooted.  If you are, install Root Firewall Free and block internet traffic for Go SMS.  I don't get those nagging reminders but I tried it and I was still able to send and receive SMS messages but I could not use features that use the internet like the Go Chat. If you want to download a new theme or use one of the data dependent service periodically you can just toggle the block off from the firewall app and put it back on when you are done. Obviously this won't help you if you use those data dependent extra services regularly.

Alternatively, if you are not rooted you can revert back to version 4.56 of Go SMS.  You can download this version directly on the Go SMS website.  This is the version I have and I don't get any of those annoying nags.  When I started typing this answer I didn't think they'd post past version but now that I see that they do I'd say this is probably the better option.


How can I edit or remove people from the favourite contacts widget on my HTC Legend? How can I edit or remove people from the favourite contacts widget on my HTC Legend?

You can access them through the group "Starred in Android" in GMail


What is the difference between Opera Mini and Opera mobile? What features does Opera Mobile have the Opera Mini doesn't? Are there any other differences such as speed?

Opera Mobile is a "full" browser performing all rendering activities on your Android device.
Opera Mini passes your requests through Opera's servers to render/scale/"tweak" for your device.

Opera Mini tends to be faster.
Opera Mobile tends to hit your device's resources harder.

Security folk cringe about Opera Mini and your traffic going through 3rd party (yet Opera) servers. Think about that before doing your online banking with Mini...

Read more in the comparison chart here: http://www.opera.com/mobile/features/


How do I reactivate Swype on a Motorola Atrix HD? I disabled Swype on my Motorola Atrix HD. How can I get it to reactivate after turning it back on?

I went into 'Language & Input' and deselected it, but when I took the same path to turn it back on, it didn't work.


NVIDIA SHIELD tablet, how do I return to 4.4 KitKat from Lollipop? I mistakenly installed 5.0 Lollipop on my NVIDIA SHIELD tablet, and I hate it. Is there a way to revert back to KitKat? I've tried finding a way, but no luck so far.

This was the original post:
Downgrade nVidia Shield to Android 4.4 KitKat

StackExchange doesn't let me comment or reply to this question because I don't have enough reputation... so I am forced to create a duplicate.

the whole downgrading procedure for NVIDIA SHIELD on OSX is reported here:
https://github.com/drtaglia/drtaglia.github.io/issues/13


Is there a way to fine tune locale settings? I have had this question for quite a long time and I hope that it can actually be done.

I live in Greece, but I mainly use my Android (Lollipop 5.0.2) mobile phone in English (US). The reason is that this is my personal preference. I feel a lot more comfortable having a UI in English.

The problem I have is that when using applications that operate based on locale settings (distance, decimal points, etc) everything is according to the US locale and that's normal.

But I live in Greece and would like, for example, Foursquare to display km instead of miles by default. Even though that's something you can change in settings, the decimal point in the Calculator app cannot be changed (US locale uses . for the decimal point and , for the thousands, while in Greek locale it is the other way around).

So, is there a way (not necessarily a user-friendly one) to fine tune these settings to match the Greek locale, while still using EN_US as the display language?

This does not answer my question. I would also be interested in manually editing the US locale, if necessary and possible.

In principle, no need to download any extra application to your cell phone to solve this problem. Try going to the region or language configuration and change from English from the United States to English from Europe, at least it worked for me like this.


Security tags on library book interfere with phone operation I've just noticed that the security tag that's usually found on books from library is somehow the cause to my phone (HTC M9) sending out notification sounds incessantly when it's nearby. Google searches lead me nowhere so I'm asking the question here. I'm assuming it's because of magnet. Has anyone else noticed this and how do I solve this sort of problem? Thank you for any help.

After trying out other related searches, I've discovered that turning off NFC (Settings > Wireless & networks > More) will solve this particular problem.


If /system partition is never encrypted (even in "full-disk" encryption), how is it protected? It seems that Android's "full-disk-encrytpion" is only concerned about encrypting the data or internal storage partition. It says:

  Full-disk encryption is the process of encoding all user data on an Android device using an encrypted key. Once a device is encrypted, all user-created data is automatically encrypted before committing it to disk and all reads automatically decrypt data before returning it to the calling process.

I am puzzled what encryption (at rest) of user-data is worth, if an attacker can simply modify the content of the /system partition, to contain a malware that would exfiltrate data or encryption key.

Is there a reason to consider Android's encryption to be effective even though /system partition is not encrypted?

I assume that an answer involves a chain-of-trust, relative to a locked boot loader.

/boot, /system, /vendor, /vbmeta and ODM Partitions are protected by android verified boot (AVB). They are not encrypted but their integrity is verified during boot. Any modification to these partitions will halt the boot flow and brick the device. At this point without EDL mode, you won't be able to flash stock OS to unbrick it.
AVB verifies vbmeta partition image using OEM public key which is hardcoded in android bootloader (ABL). Then hash of boot image is calculated and compared with the hash stored in vbmeta. Once the boot image is verified, kernel constructs hashtree of every partition and compares their root hash with the ones that are stored in vbmeta. In this way, just by protecting vbmeta, every other partition can be verified on boot.
To protect ABL from tampering (e.g. replacing OEM public key with your own and resigning vbmeta with your private key, thus breaking chain of trust), chipmakers implement secure boot. In Qcom devices, Primary Bootloader (PBL) which is burned on CPU die, verifies Xtended Bootloader (XBL) using Qcom's public key which is stored in eFuse. Then Xtended Bootloader verifies ABL and ABL enforces AVB.
When you unlock bootloader (unlock and unlock_critical), AVB is not enforced but secure boot is still enforced by SoC. This chain of trust goes upto the hardware level making any modification useless. There's no reason to encrypt system partitions as those images are already public. What matters is protection of their integrity.


Setting android-for-work profile on Samsung Galaxy Tab I have being trying to set a android-for-work profile on my Samsung Galaxy Note Pro but the only thing that I managed to do is to define a new normal google profile. I have successfully set my android-for-work profile on my Nexus 6.
The Samsung Galaxy Note Pro runs Lollipop

Does someone know how to solve this issue?

The Android for Work app only works with 3rd party EMM solutions. It doesn't work with Google's own EMM which is kind of stupid.
As far as I can tell, if you device isn't on the list of supported devices you cannot manage application installs with Google Apps EMM. You can only do things like enforce password policies etc.


Tasker: How can I randomize a wait action? I know how to make a randomize variable, but I don't see anywhere in the wait action to enter the variable.

I've been told to look for "crossed arrows" that will let me enter a specific value or a variable, but I don't see these crossed arrow anywhere.

I just had to disable beginner mode in Tasker preferences. The crossed arrows (shuffle symbol) showed up after that.


Removeable battery-like "thing" that provide unlimited power for android phones Is there this "thing", that have the shape of your android phone's battery, but does not hold any charges, and act as a unlimited power supply for your phone when your phone is plug into a socket?

Yeah, I think it is hard to describe this "thing" but in another words, it is a "thing" that have the shape of your battery for your android phone.

Normally, a phone battery contain charges (e.g. 1600 mAh) but this "thing" does not hold any charges. Basically you just put this "thing" into your phone and plug your phone into a socket outlet and this "thing" will act as a medium to keep your phone running -> meaning that you have unlimited battery life for your android phone as long as the power socket outlet is not switch off.

Of course, if you are going to somewhere and require portability, you just need to replace this "thing" with your normal phone battery. However, if you are going to be in one place for quite a long time, you just need to replace your normal phone battery with this "thing".

Also, you would not need to care for the battery life anymore as this "thing" act as a medium between the power socket outlet and your phone.

So, is there really such a "thing" right now or coming by the end of this year?

Your question is related to How to use android phone without battery?

IMO, the "thing" you visualise is "not a thing
" (couldn't resist the pun) , since

Battery is integral to Android device (unlike an accessory) and the designed usage of device - both these are discussed in my answer to question linked above
Removeable batteries are being phased out , even in lower end devices, so the usage of that "thing" even if it exists,  is very limited

Whether such a "thing" is going to come in any time is open ended but unlikely for reasons above


Wifi and cellular data keep turning off by itself. I have an Alcatel onetouch fiercexl.  All of a sudden my wifi and Metro PCS cellular data keep turning off.  It only stays on for a few minutes. If try to use any app or go on the internet by the time I load it it says no internet connection.  I use my data if I'm not home and wifi at home and they both keep turning off.  Is there anything I can do about it?

I had the same problem.  Android Samsung S5.  Wifi kept turning itself off. Very annoying.  I had the smart network switch on or off...didn't matter.  I discovered that I had the ATT Smart WiFi app enabled.  I turned that off and it solved the problem.


Getting rid of my SD card Very frustrated so please forgive the rant.

I've given up searching Google because despite well written search queries such as

"How do I move everything from my SD card to my phone"

or

"How do I get rid of my SD card"

I get results that all have to do with moving stuff TO my SD card FROM my phone.

My SD card is flaking out on me and I have gone through several attempts to scan it and fix it and it never stays good for long.

My phone has plenty of internal storage I just want to completely get rid of my SD card but I don't want to lose the stuff I have on my SD card or break where things look to find stuff like pictures and music.

Does anyone know of ANY forums or tutorials to do the opposite of what it seems everyone else wants to do in relation to SD card storage.

Thanks in advance for the help.

If you've installed any Apps on the SDCard, you can simply move them back to internal storage via the Settings→Apps→Manage Apps menu, walking your downloaded apps one by one and see whether it is installed on SDCard. This should be your first step.

For the remaining files: If your device offers an "internal SDCard", you could simply use a file manager like e.g. ES File Explorer File Manager to move "normal files" from the external to the internal SDCard.

Both steps done, remove the SDCard (either should down your device to do so, or simply use the Settings→Storage menu to unmount the card first if you can access it without shutting down the device).

Optional step: Once the card is removed, you could check again if you still can move apps to SDCard, as the device might use the internal SDCard for this.


How can I completely remove all files from the device I recently installed a custom rom over my Android after flashing, removing all user data and wiping dalvik cahe etc.

But after installing it I ind out that the old files are still there such whatsapp folders and other apps also.

Why is that ? how can I completely remove  everything from my device and reinstall and fresh rom.

In addition to that, go to Settings > Storage  and touch  Erase xxx Storage for all the types of storage. That should wipe all your stored files.


Chrome white pages and image not loading Since I upgraded to Android 4.4 (Kitkat), I'm having a lot of problems with anything web related.

Often, when calling an URL, the loading is fast and shows nothing: the page remains white. Even refreshing won't do. Clearing the cash doesn't help either. I have to close all tabs, serveral times, relaunch Chrome or even reboot my device to get the page to load. Even then, I'm not entirely sure if rebooting the device did make it work or it's just random.

Sometimes, when loading an animated gif, it will start to load and stop and never play again. It could also just stay on the first frame.

Also, the webview of reddit's app does the same thing, I switched it to show the link inside the browser instead to see if it helps, but it doesn't.

I'm don't know if the Play Store has webviews in it, but sometimes the app just doesn't load anything and the page is also white.

At first I thought it may be my connection, but I tested over nealry 10 wifi (home, work, cafe, friends, etc.) and it seems to be very random as it starts to act weird from over time.

My device is a Nexus 4.

As you have already tested, trying out different browsers might be a good alternative. I suggest you try either Boat Browser or Dolphin Browser.

My stand for Chrome Browser still remains. It is still an immature browser, and lacks many features / add-ons that are available in other browsers.


Problem with accents in Xperia x10 Mini Pro using CyanogenMod When you press and release the button in the bottom-left corner, it normally comes up with smilies and accents. If you hold down on it and press "e" once, it will give you "é".

But with CyanogenMod's mod, it doesn't work. It just does the same as the blue button. Can anyone help?

As far I as I know this feature is available on Stock ROM given by the manufacturer. May be someone might consider this and do a work around to fix this issue on CyanogenMod ROM.

Even this key doesn't work with other soft keyboard applications.


My phone is soft-bricked after ADB update This is the problem:

I always connect my phone to computer, to charge it, but I tried to execute ADB shell into recovery mode.

1- I've entered into recovery mode
2- I tried to go to "Apply update from ADB"
3- I tried to execute commands from computer (but it not worked)
4- I removed the battery to force shutdown
5- I got a soft-brick (I suppose that reason is because I interrupted the update)

EDIT: My phone is not rooted and I didn't try to install custom roms.

I don't understand how can this cause soft-brick?
Apply update from ADB and force shutdown.

EDIT: I tried to wipe data and cache, it not worked for me.

EDIT: My phone system state is Official

Which phone is it? You have to download stock firmware for it and flash it via flashtool, adb or fastboot (depends on phone). If you have Samsung phone, then download firmware and Odin from sammobile.com and flash.


How to disable USB OTG on Android 6+? I need to disable the OTG (USB) on Android 8. I already did it on Android 6 by disabling a permission on the file android.hardware.usb.host.xml but it is not working anymore on Android 8.1.

android.hardware.usb.host.xml file - located under /vendor/etc/permissions/ or /system/etc/permissions/ before Treble - contains feature name="android.hardware.usb.host" which indicates that the device can communicate with USB devices as the USB host. This feature is evaluated by PackageManager (along with other software / hardware features) and used by Google Play to filter (in)compatible apps based on the value <uses-feature android:name="android.hardware.usb.host" /> in AndroidManifest.xml. See details here.

Also if the device doesn't support USB host mode, UsbHostManager service is not started, so apps like this which use USB host APIs cannot connect to USB devices. But any connected device is still detected by kernel and appears under /sys and /dev.

To confirm if the device supports USB host mode:

~$ pm list features | grep usb.host
feature:android.hardware.usb.host

~$ dumpsys usb | grep host_manager
  host_manager={

These lines shouldn't appear after you delete android.hardware.usb.host.xml file.

However since Android 6 USB storage devices such as a USB stick are handled by vold, which doesn't depend on the feature discussed above. vold listens to kernel through a netlink socket for block device uevent (1) and matches that with some entry in fstab (2). Then it creates disk and partition nodes in /dev/block/vold/ (3), checks filesystem for errors and mounts in /mnt/media_rw/ (also emulates SD cards in /mnt/runtime/) (4). After that ExternalStorageProvider (a content provider) is triggered which grants apps URI access to OTG storage through SAF or  Scoped Directory Access.

So in order to disable auto-mounting of USB storage devices by vold, you need to remove the corresponding entry from fstab as referenced here:

/devices/*/xhci-hcd.0.auto/usb*    auto    auto    defaults    voldmanaged=usb:auto

fstab is found under /odm/etc/ or /vendor/etc/. Before Treble it was in rootfs (/). See details in this answer.


How to block websites from chrome using Google family link or similar While using Google family link I am unable to block some websites. Maybe it's a bug, but for some reason for website like Instagram is blocked from being accessed but reddit is not. Does anyone have any idea why that might be

I had the same problem with android. Clearing app cache and app data didn't seem to help. It started working after I went to Settings -> Accounts -> click on the account. Untick Sync Chrome. Go to chrome have a look in the settings to see if anything has changed. Go back to the account and retick Sync Chrome,  I also have an option in the menu for Sync Now which I did.

Not sure which action solved this problem, but the chrome browser is now blocking and asking for permissions as expected.
As an alternative to family link maybe you could use some monitoring software or parental control? Usually, those tools can block certain websites and apps.


AVG by DroidSecurity - legit? Useful? Re-post from StackOverflow, when suggested this was a more appropriate forum. I originally posted this on Whirlpool as well - I am very interested to see what new input I can get from this community.

I was looking at AVG by DroidSecurity in the marketplace today and am a bit confused. On the free version there is recent feedback saying that AVG isn't affiliated with the app and other comments saying it is malware that slows the machine, deletes data and sends spam. But my Googling skills reveal articles saying AVG acquired DroidSecurity.

So, has anyone on this forum had experience with this app?

And... do I really need an anti-virus on my Android device? Is it so bad? Are we talking about bad things coming from .. what, apps, email or web pages? I am coloured by my experience with iPhone, nothing evil to worry about so far.

Also, if there's nothing to worry about, what are these AV apps doing? Scanning with an empty database?

I have no experience with this specific app, however here's my two cents on the second half of your question.

The Android security model is very well thought out. Android runs on the Linux kernel (a modified version) and sandboxes every app through a variety of measures, including running each under a different user account. The biggest legitimate threat you have is installing malicious apps. Most likely these will be trojans that ask for reasonable permissions (reading your SD card, communicating with the network) and use them for nefarious purposes.

If I remember correctly, the malware prevention portion of AVG works by scanning apps before you install them, much like desktop virus scans work. This is a reasonable way of protecting you, malicious apps can be added to a database and you are warned if anything you download (from either the internet or the Market) is known to be Bad. The only catch is that Google usually removes illegal and malicious app from the Play Store within a few days of it becoming available. (I have nothing but anecdotal evidence to back that claim up though)

So if you're installing a lot of apps from sources other than the Play Store, or you don't trust Google to quickly catch malicious apps, installing an anti-virus is probably a good bet.


How do you NOT sync contacts when adding a new google account on Android? By the time you add a new google account it adds the contacts already and you have to uncheck the option but its too late. Its running lollipop

That's almost a chicken-and-egg problem: you cannot disable sync before the data are already gone, and you cannot create the new account offline to prevent this. But there are two apporaches which should work:

create the account and turn sync off before you save any contacts/calendars (not always possible; I assume you are speaking of an additionbal account while already using the device for a while)
have your contacts/calendar data in a separate calendar/addressbook which is not synced. To achieve this,

either use the "device only" storage (if your device offers that)
there's e.g. offline calendar for calendar. And there's DAVDroid (and probably other DAV-based sync tools) creating its own calendar and contact storage.

You should then make this other storage the "default storage" so that, whenever you add a contact/calendar entry, it will be saved there. Now you'd also need to move your data over to the new storage. For contacts, you could e.g. export them to a .vcf file (the contacts app offers that), then delete them all, then import the .vcf into the "other address book". For calendars, there's no such export possibility, unfortunately, though the .ical format could take care for that.

The easiest way of course would be not to create a Google account …


How to know why I get sound notifications? Every hour I get 2 notifications (sound) at 27' and 57' exactly. There is no app nor message in the status bar, just the sound.

It started a couple of days ago. I did not install any new software before that.

How to know which daemon or app does this ?

It was a mail account failing to retrieve emails. I had to delete the mail account and reconfigure it. There was an icon flashing at the time of sound but not staying in the status bar.


Does "How will you use this SD card?" wipe data? There is a notification almost every time after boot saying "Issue with SD card" "Tap to Fix".
What happens when I then choose "Use as portable storage"?
I don't want any formatting to happen and it is not clear if it will format or not. ( My SD card works fine from recovery and I can mount and view it in the terminal without problem. Not sure what the notification is about. )

I have now backed up my contents and am able to try this out.

The popup indeed makes it clear that data will be lost.

Process
If, like me, you don't believe the system that your card is broken, you can try running fsck like @alecxs advised me to. Use the -y flag to avoid manually confirming every fix.
I used mount/blkid to see what filesystemtype my SDcard uses and what its block device id is. And then I ran fsck.exfat /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 which told me
1|beryllium:/ # fsck.exfat -V /dev/block/mmcblk0p1
exfatfsck 1.2.2
Copyright (C) 2011-2015  Andrew Nayenko
beryllium:/ # fsck.exfat /dev/block/mmcblk0p1
exfatfsck 1.2.2
__bionic_open_tzdata: couldn't find any tzdata when looking for GMT!
__bionic_open_tzdata: couldn't find any tzdata when looking for posixrules!
WARN: volume was not unmounted cleanly.
Checking file system on /dev/block/mmcblk0p1.
File system version           1.0
Sector size                 512 bytes
Cluster size                128 KB
Volume size                 463 GB
Used space                  211 GB
Available space             252 GB
ERROR: unknown entry type 0x89.

ERROR: unexpected continuation (0).
Totally 5536 directories and 64646 files.
File system checking finished. ERRORS FOUND: 2.

whoops, I should have unmounted it first!!
Running it again (this time from boot instead of recovery (shouldn't matter), and not mounted) I get the option to actually fix it. Note that I did this as su:
beryllium:/ # fsck.exfat /dev/block/mmcblk0p1
exfatfsck 1.3.0
Checking file system on /dev/block/mmcblk0p1.
File system version           1.0
Sector size                 512 bytes
Cluster size                128 KB
Volume size                 463 GB
Used space                  211 GB
Available space             252 GB
ERROR: unknown entry type 0xc0.
Fix (Y/N)? Y
ERROR: unknown entry type 0xc1.
Fix (Y/N)? Y
ERROR: unknown entry type 0xc1.
Fix (Y/N)? Y
Totally 5537 directories and 64860 files.
File system checking finished. ERRORS FOUND: 3, FIXED: 3.
reboot

The reboot was fairly quick, the login afterwards took a bit of time, and now... the sd card warning is gone! This also answers a question I was already typing but haven't submitted yet: How to fix the SD card without data loss!
I shall publish that question as well soon, so that it's easier to find this solution.


Automatically power on Nexus 7 when plugged in Is there any way to power on Nexus 7 2012 automatically when charging started? I want to use Nexus 7 as a car PC, so I need this feature for energy economy.

PS - my Nexus 7 is rooted and uses CM 10.1

Install Tasker to be able to:

Power off tablet when car is off
Use command

fastboot oem off-mode-charge 0

To reset to normal, change the 0 to 1
Event for Tasker profile : Power


Turn off automatic loading of MMS messages A new exploit is said to exploit MMS loading.

  For now, there's not much end users can do to protect themselves other than to install a patch as soon as one becomes available for their specific Android device. People can also prevent MMS messages from automatically loading in Google Hangouts or other text apps. That will prevent malicious code from being automatically loaded [...]

How to disable automatic loading of MMS messages?

If it depends on the app, the procedure for the most popular apps would be appreciated.

Nicolas, possible solutions very much depend on how far you will go (and partly, how far your carrier goes along). There is no 100% cure, but a few items you might consider:

Say Goodbye to Hangouts. If you can live without that app, make another one the default SMS/MMS handler and don't use Hangouts – at least not until Google fixed that "autoplay". I'd expect an update there soon where you can at least disable that autoplay feature.
Disable your MMS APN. This of course you can do only if you can live without MMS altogether (I can: didn't get a single MMS in the 20 years I'm using mobiles – and the only one sent to me never reached my device because of carrier policies: to receive, I had first to send an MMS, which I never did). And apart from that, this might or might not work: I know of providers ignoring APNs, at least for the normal Internet connection (which then works even if you have no APN at all configured – they somehow fix that at their end).
Ask your carrier if MMS can at least temporarily "switched off" somehow from their end. They should have those capability: If you e.g. send an MMS to someone having a non-MMS-capable dumbphone, they'd send that person a link to where to read the MMS with a browser. You then could use a web browser at your PC to read the MMS – where Android-specific exploits had a hard time dealing with OSX, Windows, or Linux :)

Afraid only few of us can hope for OS updates to really fix that. Though, when under warranty, one might try pressing them: depending on how one uses the device, this bug might very much "render it unuseable" for daily use without the user's fault – which in my eyes is a case for warranty: fix it or have it back. Enough people with this argument, and some with good lawyers … might make them think twice ;)


Whatsapp not installing after factory reset I have done factory reset on my phone Samsung (galaxy Y duos) android version 2.3.6 and after that Whats-app is not installing. Its showing your device is not compatible .
But, how can be that, when factory reset is done updates are removed totally so it must be , but it is not so.

Anyone can help ?

Here is the newest version of WhatsApp I found that is compatible with Android 2.3.3+ (WhatsApp Messenger 2.16.382)

https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/whatsapp-inc/whatsapp/whatsapp-2-16-382-release/whatsapp-messenger-2-16-382-android-apk-download/

I suspect since your phone is old, you will need the x86 arch variant.


Oreo: associating an app with all files with a given extension? NOTE: my question is indeed similar to the question above. However, there is a slight difference, which I explain below in my ADDENDUM section.

Original question ...

I am creating lots of text files on my Oreo-based Android device with various file extensions besides simply .txt. For example, I have files with .xyz extensions, .abc extensions, and others, and I want all files with these particular suffixes to be seen as text files by my chosen text editor app. This way, whenever I select such a file, the system will choose that text editor to open them.

I have not found any way to do this, especially given that there is no default file association for text files that is offered in Android. But even if such a default text-file association were to exist, I don't know how to cause ad hoc filename suffixes to be associated with text files.

Furthermore, intents seem to operate on mime types, and I don't know how to associate these extra suffixes with text/plain under Android.

Is there any way in Android (Oreo) for me to accomplish what I want?

Thank you in advance.

ADDENDUM: The post referenced above talks about how mime types are managed on an application-specific basis in Android, and that there is no official way to manage mime types on a system-wide basis.

I understand this, but I am asking something slightly different. Suppose an application is already configured in its manifest to respond to text-plain items. My question is this: where in Android is the .txt suffix defined as corresponding to text-plain, and is there any way to add more suffixes (such as .abc and .xyz, as I describe above) on a system-wide basis to also be mapped to text-plain?

I have a rooted device that makes use of Xposed and Magisk, and so even if there is no official way in Android to implement these kinds of mappings, I'm wondering if there might be any unofficial Xposed or Magisk modules that will enable this. I couldn't find any such Xposed or Magisk modules, but perhaps I'm overlooking something.

Also, since my device is rooted (and I also am able to change my selinux settings to permissive), I could manually edit system configuration files anywhere on the device to add more filename suffixes to the text-plain mapping, assuming that this mapping is indeed managed in some sort of system configuration file.

I also run Tasker, and if such a mime configuration file exists, I could make sure that Tasker always copies a special version of that file in place during boot-up. In addition, I run other utitilies which allow ad hoc scripts to be run at startup via init.d.

Any thoughts? ...

The following looks like a promising answer ...

The file /system/lib/content-types.properties contains the following info. It looks like I can add abc=text/plain and xyz=text/plain to this file in order to get my desired behavior. I'll test this and report back.

# If you want to support more recognized mimetypes in libcore.net.MimeUtils, add them here

docm=application/vnd.ms-word.document.macroenabled.12
xlsb=application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.binary.macroenabled.12
xlsm=application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroenabled.12
ppsm=application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.slideshow.macroenabled.12
ppsx=application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.slideshow
pptm=application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.presentation.macroenabled.12

asm=text/x-asm
cc=text/x-c
conf=text/plain
cpp=text/x-c
css=text/css
c=text/x-c
cxx=text/x-c
def=text/plain
dic=text/x-c
f77=text/x-fortran
f90=text/x-fortran
for=text/x-fortran
f=text/x-fortran
hh=text/x-c
hpp=text/x-c
h=text/x-c
ics=text/calendar
ifb=text/calendar
in=text/plain
jad=text/vnd.sun.j2me.app-descriptor
java=text/x-java-source
ksh=text/plain
list=text/plain
log=text/plain
pas=text/x-pascal
pl=text/plain
properties=|
prop=text/plain
p=text/x-pascal
py=text/x-python
rc=text/plain
sgml=text/sgml
sgm=text/sgml
s=text/x-asm
vcs=text/x-vcalendar


I want to upgrade my samsung s3 mini sd card How do i change the sdcard without losing all my games pictures ect and does every thing on the phone on on the chip or do you need to do something to put it all on the chip (YES im thick when it comes to phones LOL thankyou paula

Just copy all your data from your previous SD card to your newer SD card. Everything would work fine if nothing is left behind.


My phone got factory reset and all data wiped, can I find out how? Today morning after a long taxi ride (I am travelling this week, personal vacation), I took my phone from my pocket and it seemed to be turned off. I switched it on and the phone started up as it was the first time.

All my settings, config, apps, widgets were gone. I think the phone was factory reset. Not sure if it was locally (accidental click in settings?) or may be remotely. (The phone was fine earlier in the morning).

I tried to get the data from my Google account backup (which I remember setting up when I got this phone) but I could not (no 'Restore' option was enabled in settings. But that would be a different question).
I had to manually (painfully) set up things again. All my photos are backed up to google and I think I can get them back. Same for apps, most of the should have data on the cloud somewhere.

Is there a way to know what happened?

I have a HTC one (M7), and use Google for most services including backups.

Well, I don't think you could get to know what has made your device getting factory reset on its own. As far as I know I think somehow the volume up and power keys may have been pressed which results in factory reset. I have also heard the if you put the patter lock wrong over the HTC M8 for more that 10 times, the device gets automatically factory reset. I am sure Accidently you may have !!


Migrate whatsapp from phone (old expired number) to another one? I have a phone now that have WhatsApp installed on for over 2 years now, and the phone number registered for the account is now history (it's been long gone and there is no chance I will get that SIM back, because it is from another country).

I got a new phone today with a new SIM, when I start WhatsApp , I put my old number but it needs to send a Message to the number and that is not possible.

Is there any work around for this, I don't want to lose all my WhatsApp contact. Please help.

If you are concerned about the contacts and not the chat history then backup the contact in your old phone and import in your new phone. Sign in whatsapp with your new number and it will read all the contacts in your new phone and your contact will be updated.

Only downside is you need to send a whatsapp message to all the contacts saying that you changed your number


Is there a way to block USSD balance notifications on Android 4.3? I'm trying out a H20 Wireless SIM on my Nexus 4 running Android 4.3.  One annoying feature of this service is that they send a USSD balance notification at the end of every phone call, text message, and data usage.  Is there any way I can disable or block these messages?

I found the "Balance Update / USSD blocker" app in the Play store, but it specifically states it does not work on 4.2+ versions of Android.

I also contacted H20 customer service and they will not disable the messages on their end.

Easy method (requires root)
Yes, there is an app for exactly that and much more called 'GravityBox' (it is an Xposed module).

For information on how to install it, view a similar post here

Alternatively (does not require root)
If you are lucky your Phone app should have a "Blacklist" to which you can add numbers and prevent calls and/or messages (notifications) from them. Normally found in the settings of your default phone app...
If you don't have it, then you could even try a 3rd party phone app that will replace your default phone app that will do the trick (There is a large variety that are more beautiful, simplistic, up-front and have features including black-listing options...).
Using a 3rd party phone app will leave all your contacts intact, but you may loose your speed dial settings.


Upload battery status to a website I would like to maintain a central list of the battery status of my devices. For my Linux laptops, I will write a small shell script that reads the battery information from the kernel and uploads it to my webserver.

I have no idea how to do this for Android devices, though. Basically I would like them to open http://example.com/tracker.php?id=cell&battery=0.67 every 30 minutes or so.

Is there an app that can do that? Although I have never programmed on Android yet, I have experience with Java and Linux. Is it possible to program something like that with reasonable effort?

You can also write a script shell for Android. You just need an app like Script Manager that can run your script periodically.

You can read value from the kernel like on a "vanilla" Linux : the actual battery capacity is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/battery/capacity.


Asus Zenfone 2 screen broken and blacked out, need to retrieve files. I own a Zenfone 2. My phone's screen has gone kaput completely. I just see lines in multiple hues but cannot see the unlock screen or anything beyond that. I need to recover files, however:

No USB debugging turned on, at least I don't remember it being turned on.
The screen is locked using a pattern and not a number.
Can't see anything, can't even take calls. I just know if I get a call
because the phone vibrates.

What are my options? Really need a step by step guide.

As the screen is completely damaged you can never use it again right? Forgetting for a second about the files, you have two options, keep it somewhere at home, or sell it for parts. But you can't sell it for parts because you have files on it that you can't delete. So at this point it is a total loss right?

So here's what you can do to get all your files (and some of your money) back.

1) Repair the phone (by paying X amount) if the files are sensitive, keep in mind this procedure is relatively quick, so the tech can do it right in front of you

2) Retrieve the files easily once the phone is working.

3) Sell the phone to get all the money back you spent for the screen plus more. (Or keep the phone to avoid buying another one.)

So in the end, you will have all your files + extra money.

You might be looking for a technical solution, but sometimes practical one is far better.


Browsers that use compression I know that Opera Mini is available on Android. Are there any other browsers available that compress content to work faster when not on Wi-fi or 3g?

I think not. A least, not efficiently. If you want to do that, you need servers, big servers, so you need a big company to run thoses big servers. So I would be very surprised if that big company doesn't advertise for its product, as Opera did.


How to save a text file from the browser? I was reading a game FAQ on my Galaxy S II with the stock browser, and was a little surprised that I had no option to save the .txt file to the phone.

Is this possible?

Dolphin Browser HD has the ability to save the current site that you are viewing:

More -> Save Site


Charging works well with new USB cables only When trying to charge my android devices (Arc S and Nexus 7 (2013)), I noticed that when using new USB-cables, the charging process is going quite fast, but after some weeks (usually four-five) the charging process rapidly slows down, and some weeks later the devices don't charge anymore, i.e. resulting in the need of new cables. Is that a hardware failure, or why do I have to replace the cables every second to third month?

Hardware is not "capable" to decide charging rate based on "newness" or otherwise of cables

In all probability, USB cables you are using are of poor quality, wrong length and thickness

What I would suggest:

Google for "24 awg micro USB cables Less than or equal 2 meter length and purchase from reputed vendor

Why these specs for USB cable? Long explanation but needed to emphasize choosing the right USB cable

Current carrying capacity depends on resistance, for the same Voltage.

  Ohm's Law  Current = Voltage divided by Resistance

Resistance in turn depends on thickness

  Resistance = Length divided by Area (ignoring resistivity)

Resistance is inversely proportional to the area of the wire

Less area = Thinner Wire = More Resistance = Less Current (you cannot make out thickness of the conductor by looking at it- they all seem to be equally thick but internally the conductor thickness varies)

Similarly, reducing length of wire decreases resistance

Arc S has 800 mA and Nexus 7 has 1150 mA Charging current rating and the cable should support that

Cable Length ,thickness, current rating required for device both matter when choosing the right cable. USB Cable Resistance: Why your phone/tablet might be charging slow relevant to your device specs says

  For smartphones, with a requirement closer to 1A, 24AWG wires up to 2m could be sufficient, or 1m at 26AWG, and 50cm at 28AWG.

Nexus 7 is more choosy: It will stop charging if voltage levels drop and resistance comes into play again. Google Nexus 7 Charging goes into details and says

  Nexus 7 will stop charging if the input voltage is less than the internal battery voltage plus 0.2 volts.

Use an app like Ampere or 3C Toolbox to measure the charging current (somewhere midway of your regular charging time is a good time to measure, as the values may be different just when you plugged in or towards end of charging)
Calculate the charging time required using the Battery Charge Time Calculator ( choose efficiency of charging at 90 %)

Repeating this test say once a month for a few months at least would give an indication if it is a hardware issue (weird as it sounds). If there isn't a significant change, it only confirms that poor USB cables being culprit

For everyone: USB Cable Resistance: Why your phone/tablet might be charging slow is a useful read to understand why it is a good idea to spend more but buy the right USB cable


Sony Xperia L won't turn on but it works well when I removed the SD card Help! My phone was recently repaired for water damage. It works fine but when I put my SD card in, it won't turn on (on the pick-up day). I went back to the shop and told them; they tried to put in their own SD card and it worked and they said that I needed to format my SD card. I formatted the SD card and still my phone won't turn on. The SD card works with other devices,e.g. Samsung Galaxy fit s5670, samsung slide phone, laptop. So, it's just my phone that doesn't work. Any idea why?

Try this formatter https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

The standard formatter integrated in windows isn't that great. Give it a shot. You can also try to set your phone back to factory settings after you did the format.


Why my DCIM folder is empty seen in the computer but not empty in the phone I am using HuaWeiNova device, and I tried to access it with aft-mtp-cli.
$ aft-mtp-cli
$ ls DCIM/

I got folders listed here:
|-photos
|-Camera
....

When I tried to list or download my photos in the Camera/ folder, I got nothing. Only the empty folders are listed and the folders that contains files are not shown at all. I am quite sure my photos are stored in the Camera folder in my cell phone. How come I could not access my photos with my computer ?

For accessing your Android device via USB in "File Transfer" mode your computer uses the MTP protocol. This protocol allows to list and read/write the files from/to your device.
What most people don't know is that the MTP protocol does not show the content of the file-system. Instead it uses the Android MediaStore Database (an SQLite database) which is populated by the Media Provider, a special daemon running on Android (app package name: com.android.providers.media).
If you create a new file/directory or delete something without notify this daemon the database and the file-system are out-of sync and you end up that you can see files already deleted or can't see existing files.
You can force the Android MediaStore to refresh it's database.
There are three way to do so, just pick one of the following:

Reboot your phone

Use one of the multitude of apps that can force a rescan of the sd-card

Only for Android 4-7: Use the following ADB command-line (source):
adb shell am broadcast -a android.intent.action.MEDIA_MOUNTED -d file:///sdcard

Resetting MediaStore Database
Some times it can happen that the MediaStore database is corrupted. In such a case open the app info page of com.android.providers.media (enable "show system apps") and clear storage of this app. Afterwards reboot the device.
After reboot login using your password/pin/pattern so that you can see the launcher. Then leave the device alone to regenerate the media database. This can take some minutes or hours depending on the number of media files you have on your phone.
If that still not resolves the problem of missing files and folders then may be you have a corrupted media file on your phone that prevents further scanning of the media files. In such a case you first have to identify the corrupt file and remove or repair it.


BlackBerry priv: double tap to wake up isn't working All of a sudden from yesterday morning, double tap screen to wakeup the phone isn't working. I read few forums where I understood even hard reset isn't working.

Please help to solve this issue.

This got fixed automatically this morning. It was clearly not a software issue as there was no update. I suspect it might be the cause of placing the phone's screen face down few days before this issue, which got fixed when I stopped doing so.


Termux/node.js steam hourboost on android i'm newbie in scripting i'm trying to run node.js script with termux on android and i'm getting errors everytime i have no idea how to fix i know nothing about that so what code must i use?

http://imgur.com/DbYFtJS here is screenshot

https://imgur.com/LgdXobK he do it without problems

From the console it seems, the script requires root privileges to be executed which are not available/disabled on your device


Configure Android black box My apps on my phone keep bugging out on me, but I can never catch them in the act. Is there any way to keep a black box of my phone state (perhaps polled every 1 minute) for the past x minutes so that when I catch a bug, I can save the last x minutes and debug them later?

Run a system monitoring app, then go back through the morning log until you find it. This is just an idea which helped me with data consumption on new Sprint Pro hotspot which should have not been released yet.


Two of my contacts are internally being mixed up Recently I've stumbled upon a very weird and cumbersome bug. Android mistakes one of my contacts for another. As far as I know it happens to exactly one pair of contacts on my phone (let's call them A and B). When trying to message A, it shows the proper message history, but the messages are sent to B >< This causes a lot of confusion for the recipients, and for me as well.

I've tried using a different messaging app (instead of the default one), but the end result is just the same.

Here's the bug captured on video:

https://vimeo.com/261324755

And in screenshot form:

I enter the name of contact A (starting with "Lucyna")

I select the proper suggestion and I can see the message history with A:

I tap the message field, and the moment it gains focus the name of the contact in the top bar changes to contact B!

Sending the message now causes it to go to the wrong person.

The two contacts aren't related in any way, and I have no idea why did those two in particular get mixed.

I'm on Android 7.1.2

Removing BOTH contacts and recreating them resolved the issue.


how to ask google to repair nexus 4? Glass on my Nexus 4 is broken (touch doesn't work) after it falled from relatively small bed (just about 50 centimeters from the floor).

I purshased Nexus 4 on google play, can they fix this by warranty or for pay (how much?)

I've tried to call US support team from here but it is not possible. When I press '3' in Skype they do not recognize that and keep asking me to make a decision.

Cracking your screen most likely isn't covered through a warranty. This is a good reason why you should purchase a screen protector. Mime Ghost Glass would be my recommendation as far as screen protectors go...

You can try to email Google's support: googleplay-support@google.com, explain what happened and you can probably pay to get it repaired, however the Nexus 5 should be coming out in the very near future for $350 so it may be better to just purchase a new device for a little more as screen repairs are usually $100+


What is this version update? Today, I suddenly received this update for my Samsung Galaxy Prime Kit Kat 4.1 and it tells me o update to a wierd random version which I searched on Google and receieved NO results (even when typing the 6th letter of the version)

Here is a photo of it!
Wierd version number

I hope this is not a glitch or someone tryin to hack my phone.

This appears to be a fine update to me. If you check this page on sammobile, it has firmwares named similar to yours. The final base number is pretty same (UIBOJ3).

Besides that, android phones cannot be hacked that way unless you install some real (real) bad app, even then you should be able to recognize such a thing. So I would say just go ahead, this update is fine from security point of view :)


Is it possible to have a TCP/IP network using bluetooth? I have my Android U8220 and I need to have a network with my laptop as if it was an ad-hoc wifi connection (tcp/ip). Is that even possible? If you want to know, I'm using bluez as manager in my Linux box.

EDIT

To clear doubts, I'll be more specific. There's a music program in my laptop called mpd. It is controlled by different clients in the network. One of this clients is in my Android and it works perfectly when I'm connected to the wi-fi network in my house.

I wanted to make a direct connection with my laptop, without the need of a router, so there are 2 options:

Ad-Hoc, which is not available for my phone (I don't know why)
Bluethooth which is the last option.

This is the link of the player, for those who want to know (although it doesn't have to much to do with the question.)

If you're talking about using your mobile phone as a tethering device over Bluetooth then sure this is:

PdaNet

  Is Linux (Ubuntu etc.) supported?

  Meanwhile only Bluetooth DUN is
  supported (requires android 2.0) on
  Linux.

  We are working on a linux port for USB
  Tether but it may take a while.

  via junefabrics.com

EDIT

Sorry for misunderstanding you. Could any of the following MPD control applications on the Android Market help you?


Device can only boot into download mode I have rooted my Straight Talk Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime (SM-S920L) running with Android 5.0 and while trying to load TWRP recovery I messed up with my device and  now, I can only get into download mode.  It says "Set warranty bit : kernel". Samsung's website doesn't  list my device and it turns out to be a model Samsung makes for the TracFone network, so I am at a dead end.  Using Odin I have tried other firmware with no luck and Samsung Kies is also of no use.

What can I do now to get my phone working again?

You need to reinstall the Samsung drivers from kies then go install odin on pc then download the stock recovery.tar it must be the .tar or it will not work with odin. Then open Odin on pc then plug in phone then click the AP button in Odin then select the .tar file and hit run. All is good.


Change when phone beeps for notifications My phone makes a lot of noise when it's not in use. I think this is because apps running in the background have experienced an event, like Clash of the Clans. How can I change this? I'd really like to find out what apps just made my phone beep. I'm running Cyanogenmod 12.1 with android 5.1.1 (though soon to upgrade to android 6).

Lets take an example that its your clash of clans app(as u mentioned it in the question)...go in settings -> app -> select that app -> there will be a checkbox which says 'show notification'. Uncheck it


Android Studio Emulator is running but but never goes beyond "Android Logo" I am facing this problem that my Android Studio emulator is running but it never goes beyond the "Android logo" in booting up.

Please help me out with this problem, it's urgent!

I do not know how to resolve this problem.

I think your memory is not enough to load the emulator settings (screen density etc). You should try a lighter version.


Use different google account for in app purchases? so I'm signed into an app (pokemon go) with my primary google account. However I have credit on my secondary account that I want to use to buy some in app purchases. It won't let me do this and only gives me options to pay using the first account, this makes sense but its quite annoying. Is there any work around?

Figured it out. I just uninstalled the app, logged into my second account on my pc on the play store website. Then I installed it from the website using the seconds account. After that I logged into the pokemon app using my first google account then i was able to spend the credit from my second account.


Is there anything I can do to similarly access my smartphone? I recently went to SOpt for Google Chrome and found an interesting feature that is the "Tab to Search" (Omnibox).

In short, typing a website address and pressing the  Tab  key performs the search directly on a specific site without the need to change the search engine and other solutions.

The image below best illustrates what I am saying:

Following the example of SOpt by pressing  Tab  and performing a search, the browser redirects me to the site search page, in this case ** https: //en.stackoverflow. with / research? q = term% 20search **.

Faced with this, I have a question

Is there anything I can do to similarly access my smartphone?

No you cannot do the same thing with any browser on your Android phone.


Lenovo A6000 Plus boots into recovery mode after downloading system updates Today I downloaded updates for my Lenovo A6000 Plus. It asked for rebooting so I hit OK. But when it reboots, it says like:

  Android System Recovery <3e>.

The options it shows are:

reboot system now
apply update from ADB
wipe data/factory reset
wipe cache partition
apply update from SD card

I have tried all the four options but with no good results. I attempted update from SD card, but I don't know what file it requires.

Finally, I got the solution. Follow the instructions listed below, step by step:

At first, you have to download system software  in your memory card through another phone. Download the file from here (size of about 1GB; a ZIP file).

Note: Aforesaid link is for Lenovo 6000 Plus.
Remove your phone's battery and insert the memory card in it.
Start your mobile. It would show the same screen as it did earlier. Tap "install updates from SD card" and navigate to the file you have downloaded.
Select the ZIP file you have downloaded.

Now enjoy the latest Lollipop version on your mobile and your problem is also solved.


How to send regular Hangouts message instead of SMS? By default Hangout send messages via my carrier as SMS. It's OK for me in most cases, but sometimes I want to send message (with photos, for example) to a another Hangouts user and not want to paid for this. How to send regular Hangouts message instead of SMS?

If your recipient is also a Hangouts user, you can switch between SMS or Hangouts message before sending the message.

From Google Hangouts support:

  Switch between Hangouts messages and text messages

  When you're sending a message in a merged conversation, you can switch between sending a text message to a person or sending a Hangouts message.

  Open the Hangouts app on your Android phone.
  Open a new Hangout or text conversation, or an existing one.
  Touch the Hangouts or text message icon at the bottom of the screen. When you view the Hangouts icon, you can also see whether the person is available. The green icon means that the person is available on the Hangouts app on a computer or mobile device.

  To send a text message: Touch the SMS icon .
  To send a Hangouts message: Touch the Hangouts icon  .

  Type your message in the empty box of the conversation screen.
  Touch the send icon  .


Why would the Netflix App want to "read sensitive log data" on my device? I just noticed that that Netflix App wants the "Read Sensitive Log Data" permission to run.

What exactly does this permission allow? (besides the fairly generic/scary sounding description in the market)
Why do you think the Netflix app might need it?

Some apps use this to retrieve debug information and send it to the company to help improve the app (eg. Evernote [source]). Couldn't find any information on how Netflix uses the data and can't test but maybe there's a "Send debug information" button or something similar. This, of course, is pure speculation, so you'll have to think "Do I trust this company with my data?"

As to what information is made available by this, you can check this by using aLogcat or the Android SDK and logcat. There's a public Google+ post which describes an example of logcat information.


How to make a URL desktop shortcut have the page's favicon? Theoretically, it should do this automatically. In practice, sometimes it works, sometimes not. All the pages below have proper favicons, but only the O Globo and Amazon favicons made it to the desktop icon. (The former in a better way, as you can see.) I added them the usual way, with Menu -> Add -> Shortcut -> Bookmark.

This is a (rooted) Milestone running Motorola's official 2.2.1 update. These are the pages involved:

http://moglobo.globo.com
http://cracked.com
http://mobile.formula1.com
https://mobile.twitter.com
http://www.amazon.com
http://www.supervia.com.br

Any reason for that erratic behavior?

It has to do with the site having an icon for "apple-touch" defined in the page. for example O Globe has the following:

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="favicon.png" />

And it works. There are differences in how other versions of android handle this. Here is an article explaining some how this works a bit. There could also be a "catch 22" to this though, as I see that the mobile Twitter site does have the apple-touch-icon-precomposed but doesn't seem to show the icon. This could be because of something Motorola did differently in their modified version of Android, or it could just be a bug.

If the site does not define the icon, then you can use a tool like Any Cut to change the icon.


How can I disable the screen lock password in lollipop? I have enabled password protection on the lock screen on my Nexus 5 Lollipop device:

After enabling password, I can't seem to be able to cancel it. Any idea how to go back to None or Swipe?

This works at my device:

Settings -> Security -> Deactivate Administrators. Deactivate anything listed.

Settings -> Security -> Clear credentials.


Where are binaries installed? I just recently rooted my phone so I could install SL4A. I want to execute some commands via a Python script, specifically turn Google voice off for all calls, make the call and then turn it back on. I'm just guessing that I need access to whatever the binary is, but there doesn't seem to be a /bin/ folder, so where are my apps installed to? (p.s. Searching from my mobile browser doesn't work on SE so if this a duplicate, please link me and I'll go ahead and delete the question.)

Android apps aren't binaries.  They're .apk's, similar to Java .jar files, and .dex or .odex files when in bytecode form.  They're run in the Dalvik virtual machine, again very similar to a Java VM.

You can launch an app from a shell as follows:

am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN -n <package name>/<activity name>

For example, Angry Birds:

am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN -n com.rovio.angrybirds/com.rovio.ka3d.app

The name of the activity is found in the AndroidManifest.xml file inside the .apk under //manifest/application/activity/@name.  For Google Voice there are quite a few activities, and you may need to use other intents.  I don't have SL4A.

You can also disable apps temporarily with this:

pm disable <package name>

And re-enable:

pm enable <package name>


How to make a 'Captive Portal' on my mobile hotspot? Some Wi-Fi networks such as those you find on coffee shops, when connected to, automatically redirect you to a web page where you will need to do something (enter credentials, accept terms of service, etc) in order to access the internet.
Is the same possible with an android hotspot?

You can't. There are various articles saying its possible, but its not. A captive portal is something kept like the greatest confidential secret, its almost impossible to find how to do it. Especially on Android. Its better to do it through a router.
The technical explanation is long and bad, some may be able to summarize it, yet the biggest problem you will meet is how to do it. People say it's connected to security issues as you are redirecting your users and capturing them. You can also use this to capture their login details and to redirect them to a bank service saying they need to enter their bank card. The information is very well hidden do to these issues and more. That's why no one will tell you, no one will make an app for android for it and only companies use this feature. It's like the method and encryption used on the bank card chips, no one has even heard of it. But in truth it's just a chip with an encryption method.


Can I create a contact in a particular contact group on Android 2.2? Is there a way to add a new contact into a particular contact group which I have in my Google contacts? Similarly, is there any way to move contacts from one group to another?

It seems as of now, I can only create contacts on Android but cannot put them in any specific group. To do that, I've to use the web interface of Google contacts.

Open the contact, click menu-->edit and scroll down.
You should see a drop down box titled groups just below the email addresses.  Click that and you can then select the groups the contact should be a member of.


Correct text message time after boot up Every time I have my phone turned off or in flight mode, after I turn it on again, the message sent to me while the phone was down appears to be received at the moment the phone finished booting up.

Is there any setting / work around that could display the time when the text message was sent / supposed to be received?

Apparently it's an application issue:

  The SMS packet itself that is sent from the SMSC to your phone, has a
  field called SCTS, Service Center Time Stamp, which indicates the time
  that the message was received by the SMSC.

  Unfortunately, the SMS application on Android seems to ignore this
  timestamp and instead uses and stores the current system time (in ms
  since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC).


Installing APK signed with different key possible through adb install -r? Android will refuse to upgrade a package, if it is signed with a different key, making me to uninstall first (and lose user data) and re-install.

If I install the new APK via adb install -r XYZ.apk, I switched to the other APK and kept user data. Is that a correct workaround?

Rootless method:

As is mentioned above, you can uninstall an app while keeping its data with adb.

adb shell pm uninstall -k PACKAGE

Do note that it failed to keep data in my test case.

Then you can install the new app with adb install.
Be aware that adb uninstall is invalid as there's no uninstall subcommand for adb. You must connect to a shell on your device and run pm from that shell. However install is a subcommand for adb but it does not take any options, so if you want to run adb install -r you must type in adb shell pm install -r instead.

Root method (Recommended):

If you have root, you should never miss Xposed Framework. Get Xposed Framework and get XInstaller. Navigate to "Installer Settings", scroll down and tick "Disable Signature Check". Now you can install the replacement app in any way you like.


How to delete an app I can't delete, or disable, the app YGPS,
on my Android tablet; and I didn't install it.

It's a preinstalled app(bloatware) so follow this guide and you should be able to remove it(NOTE:Requires rooting your phone which means voiding your warranty and beside rooting no way to remove them exists): https://www.androidpit.com/how-to-uninstall-preinstalled-android-apps#delete-preinstalled


Export WiFi x509 client certificate My Android (4.4) device has a WiFi configured which uses WPA2-TLS authentication with client certificates.

I got my hands on the wpa_supplicant configuration and the relevant entry looks like this:

network={
        ssid="fobar"
        key_mgmt=WPA-EAP IEEE8021X
        eap=TLS
        identity="000123"
        password="000000"
        ca_cert="keystore://CACERT_fobar_WPA_EAPIEEE8021X_TLS_NULL"
        client_cert="keystore://USRCERT_fobar_WPA_EAPIEEE8021X_TLS_N"
        engine_id="keystore"
        key_id="USRPKEY_fobar_WPA_EAPIEEE8021X_TLS_NULL"
        engine=1
        proactive_key_caching=1
}

How can I get hold of the certificates and the key?

Go to :

  /data/misc/keystore/user_0

And find the file's with similar name like below :

USRCERT_fobar_WPA_EAPIEEE8021X_TLS_N


Backup and restore CM10 on broken razr My problem is a little bit complicated, I have a Razr (XT910) motorola phone, the screen is cracked and unusable, the tech support of my carrier (in Mexico) is unable to get the display from motorola...

However, what I want to do (since I need a phone...) is sell the broken display phone I have on eBay (since Motorola USA has the display) so the buyer can repair it and have a "cheap" razr, and I can buy a phone also in eBay or here in Mexico.

But to do so, I need to factory reset the phone (and if possible get my information backed up), but since the screen is cracked I don't know how to do so (The phone receives calls, and maybe the touchscreen is functional, but I'm not sure).

The specific details of my phone:

It's rooted, it has safestrap 2.x installed, it has the ICS stock rom, and CM10 (beta).

You can use Droid@Screen to see the screen on a computer.

Since you have stock ICS, Droid@screen should be enough to boot into stock, remove the CM10 install and/or do a factory reset.


Has the setting to disable icon frames been removed on the Galaxy S10 lineup? On previous versions of Samsung Galaxy phones I've owned, I had the option to enable/disable icon frames around the apps on my home screen. This setting could be found by navigating to Settings > Display > Home Screen > Icon Badges.

After digging around the settings of my Galaxy S10+, I have not been able to find such a feature.  Has this setting been removed with the launch of The S10 and One UI?

Below is a screenshot of the setting I'm referring to from my Galaxy Note 8:

This seems to be a setting that started in Oreo related to Adaptive Icons.  You now need specific themes to remove the border.

Per the following link:

  If you don't want borders, go to settings>wallpaper and
  themes>icons>download and find an icon pack with no borders.

https://androidforums.com/threads/why-is-there-no-option-to-remove-icon-frame-borders-on-the-new-android-pie-update.1295501/


How can I bypass the activation on my Droid 2 Global? I want to put a custom ROM on my D2G, but I think I went about it in the wrong order.

I thought that I had to do a factory reset, but that wound up setting me back. The phone demands that it be activated, but I can't get past that step. I don't want to go back to Verizon with this phone.

How can I get past activation?  I don't want to use the phone on another carrier. I just want access to the phone.

There's a very useful way to bypass the activation on this model of phone.

When you're presented with the activation screen (the little Android), press the following corners of the screen in this order:

Top Left
Top Right
Bottom Right
Bottom Left

You now have the option to completely bypass activation.


Disable touchscreen in Android x86? I'm running a triple-boot between Android, Ubuntu, and Windows. My computer has a bad touchscreen that is randomly clicking certain areas of the screen, and I want to know if it's possible to disable the touchscreen driver. I have Android set up to boot via grub2. (Note that I never attempted to install Android on the machine itself, I installed it to a USB drive on virtualbox then copied the android system folder to Ubuntu's partition, then modified my 40_custom file so I can boot Android.)

The Android version I'm running is 5.1. I installed this because Android 6 didn't seem to boot in Virtualbox so I thought it probably wouldn't boot on my PC. (Apparently it seemed to softlock on boot inside Virtualbox.)

Sounds like your original problem is not specific to Android, and you're making this an XY problem.

What you should really do is unhook the touchscreen cable, and that solves it for all 3 operating systems.

On the laptops I've worked on, the ribbon cables for the screen are detachable from both ends: behind the LCD panel, and on the motherboard. Find out which is easiest to get to on your laptop by searching for disassembly videos, or just by removing screws until you get to it.

If this is an Android-specific problem for you, you'll want to take a look at /dev/input/event0 and event1 and event2 and so on.

Figure out which event corresponds to your touchscreen by using the getevent -i command from a shell terminal to read the descriptions, and getevent without the -i to track all inputs, touches, accelerometer movements, etc. in live action to narrow down which event is touchscreen. I have not verified this, but you might be able to disable the culprit driver by changing permissions on the eventXXXXX file to read-only with a root file browser.

I also just found an app that seems promising: Touch Blocker - Google PlayBut I'm 99% sure that will prevent using the mouse as well.


Network issues with Jio sim on Sim slot 1 and Airtel on Sim slot 2 I have Jio sim on Sim slot 1 and Airtel on Sim slot 2.Both the slots are 4G enabled and have VolLte. Whenever I turn on Airtel data , Jio goes out of coverage and unavailable. What would be the problem ? Is it a network issue?

It is simply compatibility issues.

A quick Google search shows that AirTel use FDD-LTE as their standard, while Jio use TD-LTE.

Due to current technology restrictions, TD-LTE can't stay on when FDD-LTE cellular data connection is established. So it's absolutely normal that your Jio card runs out of service when you turn on mobile data for AirTel.


Google apps (Gmail, Maps, Play) don't work when on data connection (Android - Pocophone F1) lately and seemingly out of nowhere my phone has stopped updating Gmail when on data, even when I manually try to synch. Google Maps and Play also won't work, although everything else does, like Reddit or Chrome. When on WiFi, no problems whatsoever.

I am using a Xiaomi Pocophone F1, running MIUI Global 10.3.8 / Android 9 PKQ1.180729.001.

This has been going on for weeks. So far I have tried erasing the affected apps' cache to no avail, and removed my Google Account from my device. When I tried this last step and tried to sign back in, I got a message saying "There was a problem communicating with Google servers.", so it didn't help either.

Any help would be hugely appreciated as I feel like this is way beyond my capabilities!

I followed several online troubleshooting guides for similar problems but nothing worked. In the end, I had to resort to a factory reset, and that sure fixed it.


Can't locate wallpaper when saved from browser I have read multiple questions on here but none seem to work for my phone.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 with Android 2.3.3.

I really need the photo that's my wallpaper. I can't locate it on the phone or the location on   the Internet.

Background info: I was browsing the Internet on my phone. I clicked on a photo on a website and clicked "set as wallpaper", which it did. Now however I can't find the photo anywhere on my phone. (It is still set as my wallpaper though.)

Most Android phones come with an app called "Downloads" where you can find any file you may have downloaded from the internet. From there, you should be able to view the picture and set it as your background through the Menu key settings.

Another way might be to look in your Gallery application (or any photo viewer). Most of these will display the Downloads folder (or any folder that holds image files), where you can view the image and set it as your background.

Worst case scenario, I'd look in your browser settings to see if you can find a folder path for where it is saving downloaded information (again, ususally /sdcard/downloads) and use a file manager (like X-plore) to find and open the file, where you will be able to set it as your wallpaper.


Sms ringtones type of file i have to use Today i downloaded some .mp3 short files...But when i try to add them as SMS ringtones it tell me that "This is wrong type of file"

In what type should i download those files so i can be able to add them as Sms ringtones?

My device is a Xperia X8

Android ringtones, more often than not, come in Ogg Vorbis format (.ogg), so you'd be better off using that format.

(It's weird that your device doesn't support MP3, mine works great when I put them in /sdcard/media/ringtones. But then again, every device is different.)


Jelly Bean offline voice recognition So, Jelly Bean is supposed to have offline voice recognition, right? I've encountered several situations where the voice-keyboard has said that Google is not available. Has anyone else seen this behavior? If so, how do we fix it?

I've noticed the problem in areas where I have questionable mobile data or wifi access. If I have a good wifi / mobile data signal OR if I enable airplane mode (disabling data completely), then it all seems to work ok.

I'm using a GSM Samsung Galaxy Nexus, FYI.

Have you downloaded the files for you language, that supports offline voice recognition? Under Google Now, hit the menu button at the bottom, select Settings, select Voice, then the option to Download offline speech recognition.

Also, it could depend on what rom of JellyBean you are running. Some things work better than others in certain roms...