Why can't I add any more user? I have an Asus tablet with Lollipop on it.

Two week ago I was able to create another user on that device.
Now I want to edit another user but touching the lowermost bar does not start any action. (the text is greyed out, i don't know, if that was the case also two weeks ago)

I already contacted Asus support and they said, this feature had been removed by Anroid and they can't do anything.

I checked the build.prop and it does not contain a single entry for fw.xxx

Any idea, why I can't add another user?

You've reached the maximum numbers of users supported for your device. That's why the entry is grayed out. You can attempt to confirm this by executing the following command in a terminal emulator app or through adb:

pm get-max-users

If it shows Maximum supported users: 2 (Guest user is not included in maximum limit, so it doesn't matter whether it is setup or not; Primary user/Owner is included in the limit) then you know you hit the wall. The limit is set by the manufacturer.

Example for Nexus 6 running Android 5.0:

(Click an image to enlarge it)


Can't install custom rom: "Can't mount SD card" I've some trouble with my HTC Desire and I'd like to ask for help.
I've recently rooted it with unrevoked and turned in S-off mode. All went well, or so it seemed, until I decided to flash a custom rom. I get problem either while doing nandroid backup and backup using rom manager (free version). Both cases give the following error:

can't mount sd card

I'm pretty sure my sd card is working well cause I'm using link2sd and it works well. The sd card has 2 partitions done with g-parted: Ext3 and FAT32.
Moreover I have trouble downloading a custom rom via rom manager, it gives a download error.

As I noted in a comment, one thing to be aware of is that (typically) the order of the partitions matters. Android basically only looks at the first partition in the table, so you need to make sure the FAT one is first on the disk and the ext2/3/4 one is second. Otherwise Android will see the ext partition and won't know what to do with it.


I can barely hear the touch sounds on my Galaxy Nexus ICS I enabled "touch sounds" (click sound when pressing buttons) on my Galaxy Nexus ICS but they are so faint I can barely hear them. The same is true for the screen lock sound.

All other sounds are loud and clear. All volume settings are turned up to maximum. Pressing the hard volume buttons only adjusts the phone volume.

Strangely, in ICS there is no setting for "system volume" like there was in 2.3.3 (only media, ringtones/notifications and alarms). How do I adjust the system volume so I can hear touch sounds?

Thanks in advance...

I'd suggest trying an app like Audio Manager.  I haven't tried it on ICS myself.


How can I permanently disable USB debugging mode? I have a Samsung Galaxy Ace and I've encountered a strange issue. When I was connecting my mobile to the PC I unchecked the box for "USB debugging mode" and did my work without issue. However, after some time passed and I again tried to connect my mobile to same PC, it was unable to connect. When I checked my settings, I noticed that USB debugging had become re-enabled again. Is there anything I need to set to disable USB debugging permanently, or is this the default behaviour of the Samsung Ace?

This happens to myself, you would have to turn the device off several times whilst your USB is connected and just wait for it to stay turned off, once its turned off it will not turn back on unless upon reconnection. It's a very old phone and is not a good phone so this is why it's like this. I wish there was a better resolution myself but after browsing the internet for around an hour I figured I'd help a somebody else and let them know what I know.

Thanks.


How to find Google Assistant in Settings=>Apps in order to clear its storage/cache? Since How to stop Google Assistant from freezing Xiaomi Mi Box S 4K's remote control? received no replies, I'd like to ask a more general question - how to clear Google Assistant's settings?

Or to put it more simply, how do I find Google Assistant in my list of apps in order to reset it there?

It's supposed to be play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.googleassistant, but - in the Settings=>Apps of at least 2 different devices (a phone and a TV - both have Google Assistant in the general settings) - I find neither the aforementioned app ID nor Assistant nor Google Assistant, not even when system apps are included in my view.

Google assistant is not a separate app it's bundled with the Google App. So to clear the data for the Google Assistant you need to do it with the Google App


Fully control Android phone from another Android phone over the Internet Before I write my own app, I want to know if there is an app to fully control one Android phone from another Android phone (over the Internet)?

I need this so that I can remotely start apps, install apps and control apps for a remote Android phone (un/rooted) without requesting permissions. An app to basically do remote screen sharing with full privileges given.

I have used TeamViewer and AirDroid, but I don't like these as the remote device needs to allow permissions.

The usecase is simple: I am giving my mother (not so tech savy), who lives in another country, an Android phone (assuming it will have Internet connectivity over Wi-Fi). I want to be able to fully control her phone from my Android phone (from another country).

You can try RemoDroid. Install it on both system and I believe instructions are in the app.


I have sold my phone on eBay. What should I do before I send it off? I have an Android phone which I just sold on eBay. What measures should I take before posting it off to its new home? Please answer thoroughly!

As said already, factory reset for a start.

If you care about the privacy about what is on the SD card you should use a secure erase utility. Even after formatting the card you can still recover the data...

If you google for secure erase you'll find a bunch of freeware tools to do the job.


How to copy 2GB video from Samsung Galaxy Orbit running Android 9 to Windows 10? I recorded a nearly 2GB video of my kid at an event. Now I'm unable to transfer it to Windows 10:

I can email pictures from my phone via gmail, but it won't do it with the large file.
When I connect the phone to the computer with a USB cable, I don't see the phone as a drive.
I tried the Microsoft's "Your Phone Companion", but they won't connect.
I found something about uploading the file to Google Drive, but several hours later it still says "preparing to upload file".

Apparently there's something called "MTP" which if enabled would allow a sort of managed file transfer. But all the steps I've seen for enabling it lead to dead ends on my Samsung Galaxy Orbit running Android 9.0; if it's there, maybe it requires different steps to enable it than I've seen.

Any suggestions??

Files successfully transferred with SD card.


HELP! A shortcut that open other shorcuts! I'm kind of desperate here!

So, a strange thing happens with me, and now, I don't have any idea how to fix it.

I was typing like I always do, using a USB keyboard, with External Keyboard Helper Pro, bought from Google Play. I usually type in Evernote.

In a moment, I'm kind press more than one key a the same time - problably a Fn, Ctrl or Alt and other. I have no ideia what I pressed! But since then, I CAN'T type anything, because  the keys open other apps! Really, if I press "e" in the keyboard, the e-mail on my tablet open, and if I press other key, other app open. I tried figure out, search in the settings from my tablet and in the settings of EKH, but I don't have any shortcuts configured!

Please, tell me this already happened with other user, and you guys know how to fix it. I'm beg!!! I really don't know what to do, and I use EKH a lot!! I'n thinking that I press some kind of shortcut that activated other shorcuts, but I don't know how to back for what its like before!

I looked at the site for the app you mentioned, External Keyboard Helper Pro, which has some tutorials. This section may help:
EKH Tutorial 5 - Application shortcuts and Text strings

A nice feature in External Keyboard Helper is the possibility to add
Application shortcuts and Text strings to keys. In this example I will
configure Alt+G to start Gmail and Alt+M to start Maps. I will also
make it possible to quickly write http://www.apedroid.com by just
pressing Alt+A.
First I enter the Advanced settings and choose to setup some
Application shortcuts.

Perhaps that setting has what you need?


Is there a way to send a video signal into an Android device? I have Samsung 6 and I'd like to use it with Gear VR. I would like to send an external signal into it like my VCR or Laser Disc player (I'm joking I'm not that old, geewhiz). I'm actually thinking of sending a regular HDMI signal into it.

Is there anyway to do this? Even if it requires hacking? I remember at one point it was impossible to send the video signal out an Android device but now it's not so there is hope?

TrinusVR is an app that allows you to stream HD video from you PC to your smartphone, either wireless with some latency, or with a USB cord without latency. Meant for video games but it will stream whatever is on your computer screen. Then you need an HDMI capture device connected to your PC, and you've got a way to port HDMI into your Android. The catch is that it split screens the image for use in VR goggles, but I believe you can bypass that.


Ok Google Go to "Blank" Is there a way to navigate to locations using Ok Google?

Similar functionality on the iPhone would be "Go Home."

Make sure you have the latest supported language pack. (You can get in-app updates)

Assuming you already have Google maps installed;

Set your custom address (e.g school)

On your Android phone or tablet, open the Google Maps.
Tap Menu Menu and then Your places and then Labeled.
Choose Home or Work (school).
Enter the address.

Note: You must be signed in to set, edit, and see your home and work on the map

Use voice search and navigation commands

Open the Google Maps app
Say “Ok Google” or tap Speak.
Ask a question or tell Maps to do something e.g "Ok, Google. "Get directions to [school]." Alternatively, "Navigate to school."

Edit

If someone's address is in your Google Contacts, you can find their address on the map by searching for their name. If you search for an address, you can see any contacts matching that address.

If you wish to add or manage your google contacts, navigate to Google contacts.

Adding an address to a Google contact

Open the Google Maps app .
Search for an address.
At the bottom, tap the address.
Tap Label.
Enter the name of someone in your Google Contacts. To create a new contact, tap Create contact.
Choose an option:

Add home: Add the address as your contact's home address.
Add work: Add the address as your contact's work address.
Add custom label: Make a new label for your contact's address, like "Friend's house."

Note: Only people stored in your Google Contacts will show up as suggestions. You won't see contact info for people who are stored on your phone or tablet.

Credits

Find, add, or hide your Google Contacts on the map


App not available for your country I'm currently in my home country. I purchased my android mobile from the same, i.e. Huawei Mate 10 Lite.

I want to install an application (FOODPANDA) which is also available in my country but unable to do so. There appears a message "App not available for your country" and Play Stores does not allow me to install this app.

Your urgent piece of advice will be highly appreciated. Thank you very much.

Google Play support says:

You can only change your Play country once per year.

When you change your country, you won’t be able to use your Google Play balance that you have in your old country in your new country.

So, avoid Google Play and use another market app. I suggest either:

APKPure
Aptiode

Both allow auto-updating apps.


Battery Popup at 25% I seem to have run into a bit of a challenge on one of our Android/Samsung devices...

On the device, regardless of what's open, when the battery reaches 25% on discharge, the below screen pops up and covers the entire screen, with MUCH difficulty to get rid of. I've tried to trace it to a certain app, but was unsuccessful in doing so.

Can someone perhaps help with some advice on this, on how to get rid of it?

This is caused by the Peel Remote app. I deleted this app and it stopped.


Nexus 7 2013 error upgrading to 5.0.2 OTA I updated to 5.0.1 via OTA sometime ago, and it worked fine. Now I got a notification that 5.0.2 is ready but when Android shuts down to install update it returns error (with no other message. My Nexus 7 is rooted but has the stock recovery.

Is there an easy fix that doesn't require factory reset or installing recovery?

Since Android 5.0, any modifications to /system will cause OTA updates to fail. Android Police noted that:

  ... the OTA script no longer patches individual files. Instead, it patches
  the system block directly and treats it as one enormous blob.

Therefore you have 2 choices if you want to update your device.

Remove any modifications to the system partition and remove any files that you may have added/renamed and restore any deleted files.
Flash the factory image. For the 5.0.2 update you can probably flash just the system image although this may not be the case for later updates. To do this you can use the instructions in my answer here (although it is for a different Nexus device the procedure is the same, the file names may differ though). To just flash the system image you can just perform steps 1 and 6.


How do I stop my phone from beeping when it completes charging? I have a Samsung Galaxy 2 S running Android 2.3.

When I plug it in to recharge, it beeps when it reaches 100%.

I would prefer that it not notify me with a sound.

However, I can't for the life of me find anywhere that this is set.

Is it possible to disable this annoying chime?

Here's Here's [tnx @GAThrawn] a free app that claims to be able to do that.


How do I take screenshots on a Samsung Galaxy A3? I've been trying to take screenshots on my Samsung Galaxy A3 by using both the "home + lock" key combination and the "volume down + lock" key combination, and neither have worked. I don't want to install a Screenshot app on my device.

Does anyone know how to take screenshots on it without downloading any type of Screen Capture, Screen Grab, or Screenshot app?

Try holding Power + Home together a few moments. it works on all Samsung phones.

Also there's an alternative solution which works only on Samsung and Android 4.0+ phones (has to be activated in Settings > My device [tab] > Motions and gestures > Palm motion > Capture screen). It works by Swiping screen with the side of your hand.


App control another app I have a special scenario in which I should be able to update an app without getting any access to the phone. So I think of another app (something like a boot loader for the original app) which is installed side by side. So my question is whether an app can stop another app, update it, and start it back or is it completely out of question for a non-rooted phone?

If you are using consumer devices, one option is to use Android for Work or other Enterprise Mobile Management software which supports Android.

See: https://developers.google.com/android/work/requirements?api=clouddpx#35-silent-app-distribution

IT admins can silently distribute work apps on users' devices without any user interaction.

Or look at this StackOverflow post: PackageInstaller "Silent install and uninstall of apps by Device Owner” - Android M Preview which is off-topic for this group.


Power empty android (Samsung) - cannot charge Samsung SM-T580 power became empty and stopped. Connection with charger result in flickering (black) screen with the charge icon showing. I used several cables and adapter. After many hours the tablet still does not power up.

Disconnect it from the charger. Press the power button for 60 seconds and let go. Now connect the charger. Again press the power button for 30 seconds. This way usually works with tabs.


Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 root knox? I see directions for carrier based versions of the galaxy tablet, but none seem to mention the particular one that I have(a wifi only sm-t230nu). they also mention Knox, but I cannot tell if it is installed by default on this model. if I root/flash this type of tablet, will it trigger this Knox and render it serviceable or is that a feature specific to certain types of tablets?

According to Samsung's website, the Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 comes with Knox.  Are you asking if the Knox enterprise features will be enable (where it creates a "safe" environment on your table) or if it will trip the Knox flags, essentially telling Samsung service departments that you've tinkered with it and voided your warranty?


Unable to install Custom Recovery I am unable to install custom recovery on my phone. I am following these instructions : http://www.informationlord.com/root-micromax-canvas-a1/. Every time I try to do it i get the following error:

error: cannot load recovery.img
Please help.
P.S. I have enabled USB debugging and successfully unlocked bootloader.

After many attempts, I got this in my last attempt.

When I try to get into the custom recovery, it always takes me to Android System Recovery instead of Philz.

When you are all rooted and unlocked install minimal adb and fastboot, then connect your phone. Open the winshell and type

adb devices

to check, if you are properly connected. Adb's output should be your phone ID. Then make sure you have the boot.img placed in your adb folder then type

fastboot flash boot boot.img

EDIT:

Grant superuser-access and wait. Then try to boot in recovery.

Then you should load Framaroot http://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/framaroot/root-framaroot-one-click-apk-to-root-t2130276 to your phone and start with choosing aragiorn This should root phone and install supersu. After doing that unlock your bootloader and flash recovery. When you use Windows 8 try to reboot holding shift, choose the problem related menu entry and reboot. Then choose option 7 (will turn off driver signature) reinstall driver and try again.

Had the same issue with my adb and phone driver (xperia z2) on my windows 8 machine.


How to export annotations from mobi/epub files? So I use FBreader for mobi/epub ebooks and I highlight lots of text.

How can I export all the highlights I've made into another file (or share them all with the Internet)?

OK, this might not be really relevant to this post, but for other FBReader users who are stuck at the same, I'll share my (rough) solution:

Note: This should be specially relevant to Icarus eReader users! Icarus e-ink readers come with a modified version of FBReader 2 which is pretty stable on that device but unfortunately very basic too. And you can't even update it! I don't know if newer versions of FBReader can do this by default - sorry if this is obsolete information to most of you.

Using a file manager with root access on your ereader (I use Solid Explorer) , navigate to /data/data/org.geometerplus.zlibrary.ui.android/databases/
Select the books.db file and copy it to a non-root directory (like for example to /sdcard/) that you can later access from your computer.
On your computer, open books.db with SQLiteBrowser (you can't just open a .db file with a text editor, you'll see unreadable code). I guess you can perform this step directly on Android with Sqlite Viewer for Android, but I haven't tried that yet.
In SQLiteBrowser, go to the Annotations table of your database and you'll see all your highlights. SQLB is not the best app for editing text, but there's a few export options.

There you go!


How to change the default saved user and password for sites in browser? A friend borrowed my phone and logged in to a website with it (and logged out). However, after that, his account became my browser's default account for that site. Every time I try to log in to the website, the user and password fields become automatically filled with his user and password. This is very annoying because I have to delete these and type my user id and password repeatedly. Is there any way to change/clear the default id and password?

The browser is Galaxy S stock browser, and the OS version is 2.2.

[edit] Another question: Why did his account become the default? I mean, I logged in repeatedly before and after his logging in, but his one-time login gets picked as the default,

I don't think it's possible to clear only a single saved password in the stock Browser, but you can do Menu > More > Settings > Clear passwords to clear all saved password.


Mirroring PC screen to android via USB There seems to be slight variations of this question that have been asked to no avail, but is there a way to mirror my pc desktop to my android device STRICTLY using a USB cable?
I've seen may solutions for this using wifi such as splashtop and windows remote desktop, but my I don't have access to wifi or mobile data on my android device.

No. Both ends lack functionality for this. USB isn't designed to output in this way without pricey adapters that act as port replicators, forcing your CPU to act as a virtual video card, then outputting through a video port on the replicator, and adding USB, Ethernet, etc. But then you'd need to go from that adapter to your phone, and your phone has no inputs for this type of communication, or software functionality to handle it.


Bluetooth issues on note 2 when paired to speaker Problem : After pairing Galaxy note 2 (Android 4.4.2) with my Bluetooth speaker ( Jbl flip 2) i get a lot of fluctuation in sound while playing any song.

Even when i slightly move the device or the speaker, then i notice following changes:

Sound fluctuation
pauses while playing
finally speaker gets disconnected.

The problem is only noticeable when i pair it with Galaxy note 2. My Bluetooth speaker doesn't have any problem when pairing with other devices.

What have i tried:

I have tried to disconnect and reconnect the Bluetooth device.
Restarted my device and then again paired.
I have even formatted my device.

Please help me to fix this error!

When you say slightly move, how much do you mean exactly? There's a range Bluetooth devices work in. Are you sure you're not moving out of range?

If that's not the issue, try updating your phone, or installing a custom ROM. Another possibility is that there is a problem with your Bluetooth driver, but an upgrade in your phone might solve it. Note at this point it's like threading a needle in the dark and the issue seems rare, so it might not actually solve the problem.


How to limit/throttle WiFi data speed on my Android device? I am testing an Android application and need to understand how does the app behave on different internet speeds.
An example of test case is:
1. set the maximum bandwidth to 20kbps and check how it works;
2. set the maximum bandwidth to 50kbps and check how it works... etc.

The problem is - I have no idea how to limit the traffic.

I am using WiFi and Charles Proxy. I use Charles to check how does the app reacts. Unfortunately, I am unable to throttle using Charles - for some reason Charles limits do not affect my app at all.

Anyway, can somebody assist me with this problem? Do you have any ideas on how to limit the bandwidth?

Thanks in advance.

FOR ROOTED DEVICE
(copied from Mansour's answer on this post)

Checkout BradyBound. It's a system wide download speed shaper/limiter. Few things to note:

The app requires root access.
It works by dropping packets using iptables. This wastes some traffic - how much depends on the type of traffic (e.g. long running download, web browsing).
Rate measurement is done by number of packets instead of bytes so the speed limit won't be accurate.
This only limits TCP traffic (it makes no sense to drop UDP packets).

Note also that I'm the author of this app.

Edit #1:
Explanation:
Data is divided into small parts called Packets to be transmitted across the network.
It can be transmitted using TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) or UDP (User Datagram Protocol)
Let's take an example:
Suppose you are the server and I am the host and I want to download a file, so first I will send you a request for it, after which you will process, and instead of sending the whole file, you will divide the large file in small packets.
Now each packet that has been created will contain information like source IP (yours) and destination IP (mine), along with some additional data (sequence no., data size, time to live, etc.)
You will send those packets and they can reach me via routers.
It is not necessary that all the packets have to come to me via the same route.
They can come to me via different available routes.
When they reach me, TCP/UDP comes in picture.
If you have used TCP for transmission, when a packet reaches me, an acknowledgement stating that the packet reached me is sent back to you.
This feature is lacking in UDP. If you have used UDP, unlike TCP, it doesn't send acknowledgements to you. That means you, as a server, have no idea whether packets are reaching me or not.
In case it is lost in transmission, it is lost forever.
Dropping Packets
Dropping packets means discarding packets.
So basically, when I will drop the packet sent by you, an acknowledgement will be sent to you (in the case of TCP) that the packet was lost in transmission, so you will have to send it again.
In this way, it wastes traffic and limits speed at the same time I get the whole file.
If I will drop UDP packets, I will not receive the whole file.
That's the reason the app doesn't control UDP traffic.
And yes, root privilege is a must, since iptable can be accessed with superuser access only.


Samsung galaxy s3 kernel version I just completely reset my phone.

When I checked the About Device section, it among other things shows:

Kernel version
3.0.31-2168382
se.infra@R0301-02 #1
Thu Nov 28 21:02:26 KST 2013

Is this normal or should I be worried that my phone has been hacked or something?

That's completely normal. What about it worried you?


Moto G 2nd Gen - caught in a boot loop My Moto G 2nd Gen, got caught in a boot loop. My phone keeps restarting, but doesn't get past the screen where Motorolla symbol with 'powered by android'title at the bottom shows up. Is there a known solution for this problem ??

I had to factory reset my mobile. If you don't know how to do that, you can  refer  this artice...


How to Disable FLAG_SECURE without root? I just realised the only way to bypass screenshot security on certain apps is to disable this FLAG_SECURE, which as I see can be done using Xposed module.

But I don't want to root my phone. Is there any way to disable FLAG_SECURE and bypass screenshot security without root.

You might want to give Virtual Xposed a spin.

It is an application that acts as a sort of "host" for other user apps you can install inside it. It then has full control over the process of the inner app, and can apply the functionality of some Xposed apps without requiring an unlocked bootloader or Root.

However, it can only work for Xposed modules that don't modify the system. If your mentioned module tries to do that, VX won't be any good.


Disabling downloaded app In Android, you can disable a built-in app so it won't run and will disappear from the app list. But it will still remain on the phone and
can be easily re-enabled.

However, there's no such option for downloaded applications, you can only uninstall it.

Is there, perhaps, a hidden way to do so?

A use case could be a public transport app for a city that you visited for
a while, and may visit some time again. You don't want to lose bookmarked routes, but you don't want it to update its schedules and waste
internet traffic and other resources, either.

Requires root (at least on 6.0.1). System permissions (uid<=1000) is required but adb runs as userid 2000.

The Package Manager (pm) will do exactly what you want.

In either adb or Terminal Emulator (both require root), run the pm command and you can see its capabilities.

We look at 2 of them:

pm list packages
pm disable <package>

pm list packages lists all installed packages, this list is unsorted but if you know some easy bash, you can use grep to search for substrings in the package names:

pm packages list | grep google will list all packages with "google" in their name, effectively returning just Google's apps:

Sample output:

package:com.google.android.apps.unveil
package:com.google.android.gsf.login
package:com.google.android.apps.translate
package:com.google.android.backuptransport
package:com.google.android.apps.books
package:com.google.android.apps.giant
package:com.google.android.ears
package:com.google.android.keep
package:com.google.android.talk
package:com.google.android.apps.ads.publisher
package:com.google.android.apps.youtube.music
package:com.google.android.play.games
package:com.google.android.apps.magazines
package:com.google.android.apps.adm
package:com.google.android.inputmethod.latin

pm disable <package name> disables a single package you specified. Disabling the Google Keyboard would then be pm disable com.google.android.inputmethod.latin.

To find out what package name maps to what app try this url: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=<package name>
Replace <package name> with the package name you want to check.

Instead of using pm, you can use Titanium Backup, given that your device is rooted.

In Titanium Backup you can scroll through all your apps, filter that list and select the app you want to disable or in TB's case freeze.
This, however, requires the paid version of Titanium Backup.


how to get data from Note 3 broken screen I have a Samsung Note 3 and the phone went black due to me dropping it. I have since got a new phone but want to retrieve my photos from the old phone with the broken screen. The problem is that I have a passcode on my broken phone and I am unable to see or use the screen. I know the code but just don't know how to retrieve the photos. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Link the phone to a PC with cable and then it should load up the storage data if it is set automatically and then it should be under 'My Computer' as an external memory, your photos should be under DCIM.


Emergency alerts: is there any way to silence the "severe threat alerts" and "Amber Alerts" while I'm sleeping? There are some emergency alerts I would be very grateful to receive even when I'm sleeping, but so far I've only receive alerts for things that didn't actually put me in danger or for things that I could literally do nothing to help with until I woke up the next day.

I would like the emergency broadcasts to be silenced at night, specifically the ones in the categories "Show severe threats" and "Show AMBER alerts."  I would still like to receive these alerts (so I can do something about them in the morning if I need to), just without any sound, and just for the period while I'm sleeping.  Additionally, I would prefer to still have "Show extreme threats" and "Presidential alerts" sound at night if it is possible.

I know this is a fairly specific order and in all my searching on this subject I have found no way to silence the emergency alerts without unsubscribing from them altogether, so I don't know if this is currently possible.  But that's why I came here, to ask if there's something I've missed so far.

Please note: I am talking about the emergency broadcasts you access through "Settings," rather than the feature available in "Google Now" I've seen floating around this website.

Phone info:   model: Moto G   Android version: 5.0.2

In the Emergency Alerts stock app -> Settings, there is an option "Emergency alert tone" with subtitle "Play a sample emergency alert tone."  When you do this, it plays the tone and a dialog says "The sound you hear now will be played when you receive an emergency alert.  The alert volume matches your phone's volume."  This indicates that you could avoid the alert sounding when you are asleep simply by silencing the phone when you go to sleep (or using an app to change the volume on a schedule).

This doesn't discriminate between different classes of alerts (e.g. make sound for some but not others); if there's an app for that (probably is) someone else can post that as an answer.


Backup YouTube's offline videos I want to format (factory reset) my device (Lenovo K3 Note). I have saved some offline videos from YouTube and I am afraid that I might lose them after the device format.
How to back up those videos and save them?

Yes you will lose them from local storage, you may want to use unofficial client "NewPipe" that allows you to download the videos on your user media folder, giving you total control on the file for your backup needs.


Search for apps based on language Can I search for  Android APPs that are in Hebrew or Kurdish?
or are all apps automatically translated into all languages?

Can I search for Android APPs that are in Hebrew or Kurdish?

No. AFAICT, there is nothing that marks the language used in the app.

  Are all apps automatically translated into all languages?

No. The complexity of reliable machine translation so is currently beyond our current technology; natural language processing and machine translation is still a hot research topic.


Apps' update status in Market app not always reliable? So this is kind of a two fold question but it all falls under the same umbrella of update status reliability and might even be caused by the same factor.

First, this morning I saw that my Logitech Revue remote App had an update, as indicated by the 'Update' label when viewing list of apps. However when I clicked it, the only options were 'Open' and 'Uninstall'

I attempted to clear Market's cache and force close it, but still the same thing. 4 Hours later. it worked normally (i.e., providing the update button).

What causes this and how can I fix it immediately, rather than just checking back every few hours to see if it was fixed.

Second part/example:
A couple weeks ago the same issue happened with the system app 'Youtube.' Under my main google app that I use on my phone and all my non-system apps are associated to,  I saw the update label, but again same issue as above. When I switched to my other account that I only use for email, I could update Youtube just fine.

There seems to be some sort of synchronization problem. The Youtube example lasted for days (with the daily update notifications) before I thought to switch accounts and try it on my secondary google account. The exact same thing happened with Google Maps.

I have a stock Droid 3 using stock Market.

I have noticed that I sometimes get a notification that an update is available, but when I go in there, I am unable to update. I, at first, thought that it was some type of syncing issue like you describe, but I have realized ( at least in my situation ) that I have the apps set to update automatically. So I get the notification, but the market actually has already updated the application in the background.

Based on your comments, and if you eventually go in to the market and there is actually an update available for an app that you previously were notified about, then I would say it has to do with how google rolls out the updates. As Chahk discussed, the notifications seem to go before the apps, in some cases. Google does this with just about everything they roll out. Updated in batches.


My HTC One M9 has a pattern lock that I forgot (I know, dumb). Used Android Device Manager. No prompt So the screen actually appears saying "Locked by Android Device Manager" but I have absolutely no prompt to type or a keyboard or anything. Hitting the home button just brings the pattern back up. I would much prefer not having to factory reset this phone. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

What os version is your phone? If it's kitkat, it should have a Forgot pattern below it if you don't draw the correct one.


AnkiDroid: Change decks tts language In my phone, Ankidroid ask me every time what language shall be used for each card side. Which is listed as a bug.

But with other phones (eg. Samsung S2 mini) opposite problem arises. Once you select TTS language for a particular deck there is no way to change it.

I reinstalled both, TTS engine and Ankidroid, but the TTS language setting is still there.

What should I do to force ankidroid to allow me to select another TTS language?

Phone: Samsung S6500 Galaxy Mini II
Ankidroid: 2.0.1

In AnkiDroid preferences, there is a "Reset Languages" item:

  Reset language assignments (for text to speech and dictionaries) for all decks. Reset specific deck assignments on deck picker


Can one add email contacts to the Kitkat Email app? (as in iOS7) As a newbie to Android with a shiny new phone (Prestigio 5508 Duo) I have begun setting it up ready for use. I have added my BT Mail account details and the system hooked up and displayed mails straight away.  Excellent!  However, there seems to be no option within the email account to include the details of where the Contacts file associated with my email are kept by BT. Is there some way to do this?

Android tends to work better with Google's mail (Gmail). I don't have any knowledge specifically of BT as I am a Yank, so I can't address that. I just read up on the BT/Yahoo split and looked around for a couple of minutes for a solution for you, but it didn't look good.

I would recommend Gmail and then grit your teeth and make the switch.


Unable to run pushed binary I've pushed executable adb file to /system for using it to connect to other devices, but shell can't execute this file. Why?

chiron / # file `which adb`
/system/xbin/adb: ELF executable, 64-bit LSB arm64, dynamic (/lib/ld-linux-aarch64.so.1), BuildID=408e8d3f813fbb95b782db5d56f91bc41b451acb, stripped
chiron / # adb
bash: /system/xbin/adb: No such file or directory

You probably did cross-compilation badly.

As file suggests, the dynamic linker for the binary is /lib/ld-linux-aarch64.so.1, which doesn't exist on Android. Android's linker is located at /system/bin/linker (32-bit) and /system/bin/linker64. You need to specify this path as the dynamic linker when compiling.

You may try symlink-ing the Android dynamic linker to the path revealed by file.


Install Android. v 4.0.4 on a STAR H3000+ I've got mobile "STAR H3000+" (a rip off iPhone5) with Android v4.0.4.
I just wanted to ask if it is possible to install Android v4.2. or newer.
Does anyone know how to do it?

I don't think so. Most Custom ROMS are developed by users in the XDA forums. Apparently there are no ROMS for Android 4.2.2 for this phone. 3rd party developer support for this phone seems to be rather poor. You won't be able to install Android 4.2.2.


How to get the information of users connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot? How can I get the IP address, MAC address, etc. of a user connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot? ( Using Karbonn A21 Phone running Android 4.0.4 with minor changes to the skin)

Take a look at Network Discovery1 -- it lists all devices within the same network, together with some details on them, as e.g. IP, MAC address, available services:

Network Discovery (source: Google Play; click images for larger variants)
Other port scanners will do as well.

1: This app is no longer available on Play Store.


What is the front camera resolution for recording video on a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge? Most resources I've found seem to say 1080p, but I found a Youtube demo that goes up to 1440p. Which is right?

Based on this forum post, which shows the below image, the S6 is certainly capable of 1440p video. It seems that it's not the default setting. It's unclear why so many review sites that I found have misquoted the resolution.


motorola droid turbo battery not charging I bought droid turbo about five months and I upgraded it to marshmallow. Unfortunately, it fell on the ground four times, then the fourth time it stopped charging. When I connect the charger, it sshows charger is connected but in the battery performance section, "it says not charging".

This had happened with my Nexus 6. As a workaroud I used to align the USB cable at an angle with the charging port. The solution however was to get the charging port repaired or replaced which stopped this problem.

I have unfortunately no information as to why it shows connected, but  not charging.


How to get files from a Galaxy S6 Edge with Android 5.1 to a computer with Windows 10 by USB How is it possible to transfer file over USB from an Android phone to a computer?

Situation: Windows 10, Galaxy s6 Edge on Android 5.1.1.

(I've read articles, followed dozens of tutorials, installed drivers, on differents winX computers, upgraded a lot of things, and it still doesn't work.)

Windows 10 is currently not compatible to galaxy s6 edge.

I've made it works on some windows 10 computers sometimes, but sometimes there is nothing to do to make it works.

If you want to be able to connect your phone to your computer, do not upgrade to windows 10.


What is Mobile Device Management and How can I use for my enterprise? What is Mobile Device Management and How can I use for my enterprise?

What is the benefits of using MDM?

All MDM products are built with an idea of Containerization. The MDM Container is secured using latest crypto techniques (AES-256 or more preferred). All the corporate data like email, documents, enterprise application are encrypted and processed inside the container. This ensures that corporate data is separated from user’s personal data on the device. Additionally, encryption for entire device and/or SD Card can also be enforced depending on MDM product capability.

Secure email: MDM products allow organization to integrate their existing email setup to be easily integrated with MDM environment. Almost all MDM products support easy integration with Exchange Server (2003/2007/2010), Office365, Lotus Notes, BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) and others. This provided flexibility of configuring Email-over-air. Secure Docs: It is frequently seen that, employees copy attachments downloaded from corporate email to their personal devices and then misuse it. MDM can easily restrict/disable clipboard usage in/out of Secure Container; forwarding attachments to external domains can be restricted, downloading/saving attachments on SD Card. This ensures corporate data is not left insecure.

Secure browser: Using secure browser can avoid many potential security risks. Every MDM solution comes with built-in custom browser. Administrator can disable native browsers to force user to use Secure Browser, which is also inside the MDM container. URL filtering can be enforced to add additional productivity measure.

Secure app catalog: Organization can distribute, manage, and upgrade applications on employee’s device using App Catalogue. It allows applications to be pushed on user device directly from the App Store or push an enterprise developed private application through the App Catalogue. This provides an option for the organization to deploy devices in Kiosk Mode or Lock-Down Mode.

Additional MDM features

There are plenty of other features depending on which MDM product is chosen:

Policy Enforcing: There are multiple types of policies which can be enforced on MDM users.

Personal Policy: According to corporate environment, highly customizable
Device Platform specific: policies for advanced management of Android, IOS, Windows and Blackberry devices.
Compliance Policies/Rules

VPN configuration
Application Catalogue
Pre-defined Wi-Fi and Hotspot settings
Jailbreak/Root detection
Remote Wipe of corporate data
Remote Wipe of entire device
Device remote locking
Remote messaging/buzz
Disabling native apps on device

Source


Should the phone be fully charged before flashing a rom? In posts like this, and from other sources, I have heard that the handset should be fully charged before flashing or installing a customer ROM.  I assume this is because the calibration for the battery is kept somewhere within the ROM, but I don't know for sure.  Is this really necessary?

It's just because, under some circumstances, flashing can take a while.  You really don't want your device shutting off while it's being flashed; it can brick the device.

The calibration for the battery is stored, yes, but usually it gets adjusted within a few charges of the phone.  It might be a little inaccurate for a while, but it's not a major concern.


Android x86 Won't boot up I am trying to install Android-x86 6.0 marshmallow on Oracle Virtual Box. I was experiencing difficulty installing, but I read elsewhere to change the grub from android_x86 to x86, which I did with little to no difficulty, and successfully installed it.

On bootup, it gives the message: Failed to find cpu0 device node, but it keeps going. When it gets to the A N D R O I D message, it stops, unlike all the tutorials floating around on the internet.

I am a total beginner to android, so help would be appreciated. Thanks!

You can get a little further by using Grubs 'edit, e' key and adding debug DEUBG=1

That will give you a linux shell, and kernel debug messages.

Also, you can force by choosing the resident option and replacing USB_PARTITION=1 with INSTALL=2

http://support.jide.com/hc/en-us/articles/222974048-How-to-install-Remix-OS-for-PC-single-boot-on-hard-disk-


SIM card not detected on Lineage OS I installed LineageOS on my OnePlus One (bacon) a few months ago. With Covid-19 lockdown it was weeks before I noticed that the SIM card isn't being detected. I thought it might be damaged, but EE sent me a replacement, and inserting it changed nothing.
Could it be an absent LineageOS driver? Is that likely? If so, where would I get it from? Perhaps there is a problem with the SIM connectors? As there is the "NO SIM card" message, I assume that no other diagnostic software can communicate with the SIM when it is in such a state.

I think I found a solution to this. In my case, the sim stops working every time I place the sim into another device and back into my Oneplus One (lineageos). It works perfectly until I remove the sim card, put it into another device and then back. I have tried factory data reset, different custom os, stock os, ubuntu touch, nothing worked. After having tried hundreds of different variations, here's the recipe:
1.) Flash Lineage OS recovery
2.) Install lineage OS (all with SIM inserted)
3.) After install, boot into the system. Sim won't be detected at this point.
4.) Go back to the recovery mode (vol down + power for several minutes)
5.) format cache data ONLY
6.) boot back into the OS. Sometimes the sim will start working even at this point but if not, just do a factory data reset now (initiated from the OS settings) and the SIM will be working perfectly.
I don't know if anyone else will find this useful or maybe it's just pure luck and it is indeed totally random whether it works or not but I have done this a few times after having succeeded to test stability and so far this method works every time.


How to use alphabets on keypad in Phone App? - Samsung Galaxy 3 I5801 When I select Phone app and go to keypad tab, on keys I see alphabets besides each number key. How to use them?

I suppose it should find a contact already in my contacts. When I type key 7 twice it types two 7s and it doesn't show any contact starting from Q.

Note: I've upgraded to Froyo using steps mentioned at  http://theandroidfans.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-to-install-android-22-froyo-latest.html

As far as I can tell, you can't : press the 7, and it will show ( on my Galaxy S ) the first phone number with a 7 , next to that field is a downwards arrow.

Pressing that arrow will display a popup selection, with at the top the same number already selected ( the first with a 7 ), and underneath the first contact starting with a P - scrolling down shows all contact up to and including contacts with an S.

But if you want a contact, why not use the Contacts tab, you can search there and to the right of my screen is the complete alphabet. Pressing one of these letters, will jump to the first contact name starting with that letter.


Is it possible to disable Google Voice Search headset control in 4.1 Jelly Bean? I flashed my Samsung Galaxy S i9000 with the RemICS-JB 3.0 ROM, and now long-press on my headset is hard-coded to start Google Voice Search, which doesn't interest me. I'd much rather have long-press be available to other apps (I used it as "rewind" in my podcast player). Is it possible to disable this hard-coded headset control, or disable Voice Search entirely? There isn't a separate app for it, and I can't seem to disable the Google Search app.

You can use one of the "headset button controls" available on the playstore, e.g. JAYS Headset Control or Philips Headset. Both allow you to define an app started automatically when your headset attaches, and as well to assign actions on short/long/combined headset button presses.

To make that better understandable, let's take the morse code: . is short, - is long press. So the default configuration e.g. does on...

. play/pause or answer incoming call
- increase volume
.- decrease volume
.. skip to next title or reject incoming call

and more, up to triple combinations. With most of these apps, actions can be freely configured.


Why do "android system" and "androd os" take 30% battery in the battery stats "android os"  takes 16%, "android system" takes 14%. How can i know why?

Those percentages are from apps that use Android functions instead of their own modules (to save time/space/compatibility). The battery report bundles all battery usage from those Android functions and puts it into those two entries (depending on function). You can install an app like Wakelock Detector to see what exactly is using your battery the most in the background.
According to this post by Joe Levi at PocketNow:

“Android OS” and “Android System”
1% and 2% are nothing to be worried about, but that’s just what my device is reporting now. By the end of the day those numbers will be much different. Some users are even reporting that either of those two processes make up 30- or 40-percent of the battery usage on their phone or tablet. Something’s not right there, but what is it?
An operating system is a pretty big “thing”. It’s got tens of thousands of lines of code, acts as an abstraction layer between hardware and software, and often includes a bunch of apps and services all bundled together.
...
When an app wants to know where you are, it asks Android. When your battery stats are reported, it’s “Android” that used the battery to determine your location, not Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Waze, or whatever other geo-aware app you were using. Location awareness is just one example. We could talk about apps that use data from the barometer, pedometer, light sensor, magnetometer, etc,. but geo-location is probably the easiest to talk about to illustrate the concept.
Everything is behaving as it should be, but your battery report isn’t being as helpful as you’d like it to be. You want to know what apps are using more of your battery than you’d like them to, then put pressure on their developers to fix it, right? We’re not there just yet, and even with the advancements in battery reporting coming in Android 5.0 Lollipop, tracking down the power gobbling culprits isn’t quite as clear cut as we’d like it to be. Not yet anyway, but we’re making progress!


How to remove google acccount from my LG 4X HD/ P880 I had my gmail account from an old employer disabled. It keeps on notifying me on "Account Action Required". I can only disable the sync in "Accounts and Settings", not remove it entirely. How do I remove it?

I use the 4.2 OEM OS.

There should be an option to remove non-primary Google accounts if you go to Settings -> Accounts & Sync -> (the Google account), tap the three-dot menu in the top right corner and select Remove Account.


my s3 lock screen is all black My galaxy s3 lock screen is black. No time or shortcuts at the bottom. I went into the settings and couldn't find anything to change this. I deleted an app I thought was causing it..but nothing. I even tried to change the wallpaper and nothing happened. I also checked for  viruses but I have none. Someone please help me get my lock screen wallpaper back

Re-install with kias or because samsung dropped support gor it, if you want a secure ROM use CM;

https://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/D2att_Info


Remove a word from Stock dictionary When I write the word "OK" in Swedish it says "Ook" which doesn't mean anything in swedish. I haven't added this ook myself so I can't find it in "Personal dictionary". I wonder if it is possible to simply remove this strange word that comes with the stock swedish dictionary?

Perhaps I should add that I use the new Nexus 4 google phone with latest everything.

thanks for any help.

I actually managed to temporarily solve this: add OK to your personal dictionary and be done with it.


What does it mean when appears a no Sim/SD Card when I turn on internet I got a Lollipop 5017 A, and sometimes when I use the phone internet it appears a little ícon close to the internet one that shows a card with a diagonal risk as if the phone can't find the SD/SIM card (one of the two, I'm not sure which).

When I go to Settings > Storage the option to activate SD card is grey and I can't click it.
My question is: is this SD card (the one mentioned in the Settings) a external one (the black one that we can plug in PC) or is it a reference for the SIM card, like in the folder /storage/sdcard0 ?

It would help if you shared a screenshot of the same. But I'll try to answer your question,

The SD card mentioned in the Settings is mostly external
The icon that appears close to the internet icon is usually a sim
card icon
The option to activate your SD card might appear grey if the SD card is not detected(if you have one) or not available.


Tasker: If variable - not connected to Wifi I want my display brightness only to rise if not connected to any Wifi network (doesn't mean Wifi has to be turned off) but I can't figure out how exactly the Wifi variables work. The official documentation is very general and technical.

Edit: The problem is that my Wifi is instable which means Android doesn't have Wifi for about 2-3 seconds and then catches it back. So I added a 5 seconds Wait Action so that my display brightness doesn't change every 15 minutes but it happens anyway, only now 5 seconds later.

I think to finally make it work a "If variable" is necessary.

You're going about this the wrong way.

Go to Profiles → (New profile) → State →  Net →  Wifi Connected. Leave SSID blank and tick "Invert". Link this profile to a task which changes brightness.

Edit - Okay, I think I've found the solution. In the task which changes brightness, do this:

Wait for 5 seconds
if %WIFII (matches regex) \bSCAN\b

(Increase brightness)

Explanation: The %WIFII (WiFi info) variable not only gives the name of the WiFi that you are connected to, but also miscellanous information such as Mac and IP address and contains the phrase ">>> CONNECTED <<<". If you are not connected to any particular WiFi, it lists all of the WiFis available along with the phrase ">>> SCAN <<<".

The above task basically

Waits for 5 seconds (adjust accordingly!)
Checks if the %WIFII variable contains the word "SCAN" by means of a regular expression

If it contains "SCAN" it means that the device is NOT connected to a specific WiFi (if was connected, it would have the word "CONNECTED" in it).

Increases brightness accordingly

Note: Might cause problems if there are WiFis with the word "SCAN" in them! You can always change the if condition to something else such as if %WIFII (doesn't match regex) \bCONNECTION\b, or make it more specific for the phrase ">>> SCAN <<<" (I'm still new to regular expressions so I've no idea how to do it).


Camera data of Galaxy S3 for tracking I'm trying to make a camera tracking of a video make by my Samsung Galaxy S3 (I9300), but I can't find info about its focal length, sensor size, etc. so the scene and camera match exactly what was used when filming.

I think that maybe ok to use default settings but if some one know what need to be set for the Samsung Galaxy S3 could be very good, so things get more accurate.

According to this thread on Blenderartists, sensor size is 4.54 × 3.42 mm and focal length is 3.7mm, which gives a crop factor of 7.7 and a 35mm-equiv. focal length of 28.5 mm.

Be careful to check if the video is cropped in comparison to the still images, reducing the effective sensor size.


I've bricked my HTC Thunderbolt with Cyan... help? Well, this is totally my fault.  I had a little extra to drink last night and on a whim decided to upgrade the Cyan rom on my HTC Thunderbolt.  There appeared a later version in my Rom Manager so I clicked the buttons, gave permissions and off it went... next thing I know, the phone does not get thru the white HTC screen.

Help?  Can anyone provide a simple step-by-step?

Thank you kindly!

Are you able to get into the recovery boot menu? (On my phone, it is accessed by holding down the vol down button when turning on the phone). If so, there may be something that can help you. I have had this happen to me, and what I had to do was to try re-installing the ROM from the zip file, using the process described here (scroll down to Flashing CyanogenMod - method via recovery). On that page, it also states "As of right now CyanogenMod is not officially available for the HTC Thunderbolt". I did a bit of digging, and found that the only available CyanogenMod roms for the Thunderbolt are unofficial. At this juncture, I would suggest flashing a different ROM, or an earlier version of Cyanogenmod, if you still have the ZIP file you used before the update.


Where does music downloaded from Google Play go on my phone? New Nexus 6 with Lollipop. I downloaded some music from Google Play, but cannot for the life of me find where it is on the phone. I've searched through the entire thing using Astro, and can't find my music. (The Play app sees it, but I want to make one of my songs a ringtone, and apparently with Lollipop, you need to copy your file into a certain location for it to be available.)

I'm afraid that's not possible. Like with iTunes, Google uses DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology in order to prevent you from illegally copying music. So, the music is stored on your phone in an encoded way and thus you can only access the music through the Google Play app.


HTC Desire C screen just flashes when I press unlock! Help! So I turned my brightness all the way down on my HTC Desire C and it just locked itself. Now when I press the lock button it shows me the lock screen for about a second then locks itself!? HELP!!

Typically I found this after finding the same problem. I too just turned the brightness all the way down. You can get back in by holding the power for a while and restarting... Might do it again and turn the brightness back up and see. Tracker1972

Edit- brightness back on automatic, now working fine again :-) good luck with yours!


How to unlock Android phone without the touch screen I have a Huawei phone with Android installed. The LCD display cracked recently, and as the cracks have spread over whole display over few days, it's now totally uncontrollable.

The phone has a 4 way sort-of-joystick thingy, so when it's unlocked I can still use it. However, once the display turns off completely I cannot unlock it to use it.

Is there some key combination or a trick to unlock the phone without using the display? The phone is not password or key locked, it just requires to slide from left to right.

I have USB debugging enabled, but I have no idea how to use it. The phone is not rooted.

Also, I'm wondering how I'm going to save my phonebook and other stuff.

The device name is Huawei U8500.

You can use a USB cable and buy a USB mouse so that you can use that [a mouse] instead of touch screen. Check out a USB adapter for Android that fits your budget [and make sure it's compatible with your device] and purchase it.


Getting Google to know I got my phone back My phone was stolen so I remotely locked it and now I can't open it(I managed to recover it) as it says  'the phone you are using is lost or stolen' How can I unlock the phone again?

I'm assuming you locked the device through Android Device Manager. But yes you need to really edit your question to make it more understandable. Shut down is also not an appropriate term to mean locked.

If you indeed used Android Device Manager to lock the device then you were requested to enter a password . You will use that password to unlock the phone.
If you forgot that password then your other option would be to perform a hard reset on the phone. Again you haven't informed us of the phone model but most android variants require the phone to be off first then press the on key simultaneously with home key and volume down key. You will then boot into Recovery mode. Select wipe data/factory erase through navigating with your volume keys and selecting using the on key. Note this will erase everything on your phone on the internal storage.


Turn off vibration for 'Sign in to WiFi network' notification Since the Android 6.0 update on Nexus 5, everytime I get the notification 'Sign in to WiFi network' the phone vibrates. Any idea where I can turn this off while keeping the vibration for calls, SMS, WhatsApp messages, etc.?

There is a workaround involving Do not disturb's Priority only mode.

To put it simply, you must use Priority only (from Quick Settings - Do not disturb) since it has per-app setting for notification alert that can overwrite system's default setting. Priority only mode will still show all notifications. However, only priority notifications will be alerted (sound, vibration and LED light).

The idea is to treat all notifications as priority (from Settings - Sound & notification - App notifications - [app name] - Treat as priority) except for captive portal notification, which is under Android System app (by default, system apps are not listed. You need to tick Show system from overflow menu. Leave this app as non-priority, but don't forget for the rest of system apps).

However, there are some disadvantages that you might consider first before using this workaround:

You sacrifice the intended usage of Priority only mode, only leave Total silence as the only option (however, if you never intend to use this feature, then you're fortunate since you can utilize it).
If you have many apps installed, it's quite tedious to set all apps to treat their notifications as priority (perhaps a script might help...). Also, every time you install a new app, you must not forget to treat its notification as priority (unless you don't care about its alert).
You won't get any alerts for all notifications from Android System (you need to experiment with this, since I don't know what notifications are considered by Android System).


Malware automatically installing unless I disable the play store So I have been working on my brother's Elite 6.0l+ Sky device. This poor thing has been struck by the xhelper virus which auto installs firedoor, firemyn and an app that likes to hide itself by appearing to be settings.

I have been chasing this malwares source for a couple of weeks and through a ton of trial and error I've discovered that disabling the playstore seems to keep the malware from being reinstalled. However, if I re-enable the playstore so I can grab a game or check for app updates, the malware is immediately re-installed on the device.

I have also discovered that the device itself is apparently known to come with pre-installed problems (SKY/x6069_trx_l601_sky/x6069_trx_l601_sky:6.0/MRA58K/1482897127:user/release-keys) but what I can't find any where is solutions!

While disabling the playstore does keep the malware off the device, it's not exactly a perfect solution and if it's at all possible I want to remove this malicious pest at the roots so the phone will actually be totally functional.

does anyone know how to deal with this? I'm tech savvy and completely comfortable in command prompt, and I'm not afraid to work with code if need be as long as I have instructions.

Thank you in advance for any and all help!

regarding xHelper

unpack firmware247.com/sky-elite-6-0l-plus-firmware
install VCOM preloader usb drivers
install Mediatek SP Flash Tool
load the scatter file, DESELECT all checkboxes (especially preloader)
switch off device completely
flash boot, system (click Download only, Download, then connect usb-cable)
flash cache, userdata (= factory reset if you wanna be 100% sure)

regarding OTA updater

readback boot.img with SP Flash Tool, patch with Magisk Manager, flash magisk_patched.img into boot, root the device and disable the OTA updater from terminal or adb shell

su
pm disable --user 0 com.adups.fota
pm disable --user 0 com.adups.fota.sysoper
pm disable --user 0 com.fw.upgrade.sysoper

after this, restore the original boot.img (unroot device) and uninstall Magisk Manager

(Note: unlocking bootloader is most likely not required for this old device, SP Flash Tool can flash with locked bootloader. However, be aware unlocking bootloader will perform factory reset)


Is there an Android equivalent of diskutil? I'm a Mac and Android user. I've used simple commands in the Terminal from time to time. But now I'm trying to understand the Terminal Emulator included in the Rom Toolbox app for my Android.

What I'm really trying to accomplish right now is finding if there's an equivalent of diskutil on Android. I just want something simple enough to do disk erases and formatting, etc..

Is this possible, or can I somehow use bash commands like on my Mac? (Sorry I'm very new to this)

Anyway, thanks for reading my question. If you have and questions for me, in order to progress my search, please feel free to ask.

The android terminal emulator uses busybox linux. Hence you should look at the busybox commands to find out what all you can do with it.

Follow this link

try this command

  fdformat DEVICE eg. fdformat /dev/sdcard


Xperia Tipo Reboot Looping at Internal Storage Load Today, I was listening some music and suddenly my phone rebooted. When it booted back, it rebooted again after it notifies "Loading Internal storage". So the problem probably lies in the internal storage, I don't have an external SD card and I need to somehow do a factory reset. Apparently, I am not able to do a factory reset through the phone since it reboots in 5 seconds. I just want to keep my contacts and messages and do a factory reset. By the way the phone is rooted but it doesn't have any stock or external recovery tool :(

If you are unable to boot the internal memory and don't have special equipment you are likely going to have to bite the bullet and lose your contacts. I would re-flash the phone in this situation. Hopefully you have been using Android's built in contacts backup.

Xperia Tipo Re-flashing


How to make Termius look for hostnames on the local network first? I have four devices:

Windows 10 PC
Android Phone (v6.0.1)
Internet Router
"servername" (Raspberry Pi 4)

All are connected locally using Wifi (not that it should matter) using the simplest possible configuration imaginable.  Every device has working internet access.  Everything talks with everything else nicely apart from when I try to use Termius on Android to ssh into "servername".

On the PC I can simply issue the command putty fred@servername and I can login without difficulties, as one would expect.

However Termius on the Android phone does not seem to understand that "servername" is attached locally to the same wifi network as the phone itself.  If I open a local SSH session on the phone itself and ping "servername", then it appears to be going after some random internet IP address (92.xxx.xxx.xxx) and fails to login.

If I use the server's local IP address (192.168.xxx.xxx) then Termius can SSH to it with no issues.

So, how can I persuade Termius (free version) to understand local network host names?  I cannot find any settings that correspond to this problem.

So, how can I persuade Termius (free version) to understand local network host names?

In fact you have to persuade Android OS, not a specific app. Resolving hostnames is handled by Android's C library to which apps are linked through APIs at the time of compiling.

  On the PC I can simply issue the command putty fred@servername and I can login without difficulties, as one would expect.

You haven't mentioned which Wi-Fi router you are using and if you have a DHCP/DNS server running on local network or not. But to resolve local hostnames on Android, you must have a local DNS server running. Usually Wi-Fi router is the DHCP/DNS server.

  I cannot find any settings that correspond to this problem.

That's the difficult part, you have to configure your phone to use a local DNS server but Android doesn't provide a straightforward way to do this.

  If I open a local SSH session on the phone itself and ping servername, then it appears to be going after some random internet IP address (92.xxx.xxx.xxx) and fails to login.

It indicates that Android phone is sending DNS queries to internet. You have to make sure that DNS queries are sent to the local DNS server only. Public DNS servers don't know what hostnames you have set on your private network. Android loves Google so much, so you will often find queries going to 8.8.8.8 (may be when router is advertising the IPv6 DNS server). Configure static IP in Wi-Fi settings to set IP address of local DNS server as the first (and preferably only) DNS. Or if you have root you can use Android kernel's built-in firewall netfilter to force a nameserver. Since DNS uses UDP port 53, do a Destination Network Address Translation (DNAT):

~# iptables -t nat -I OUTPUT -p udp --dport 53 -j DNAT --to 192.168.1.1:53

Non-root solution which works for both Wi-Fi and Mobile data is to use a VPN app like Virtual Hosts which intercepts DNS traffic and makes queries to configured upstream DNS server.

This should resolve your problem.

For more details please see How to ping a local network host by hostname?.

Related: How DNS works on Android?


Exchange no longer working after upgrading to Froyo I have a HTC Desire that was on 2.1 and worked perfectly with my works exchange server.
But since upgrading to 2.2 I cannot get it to work at all. There are no errors it just synchs forever.

Any suggestions?

It looks like there is an issue with the Exchange Server certificates and Froyo. I have found a few others with the same issue:

Exchange 2007 doesn't work after ota 2.2 update
Android 2.2, FRF91 now Active-sync is unable to connect to server, all was fine on Android 2.1

Those links have several workarounds that might solve your problem as long as you can get your IT team to help figure out what is going on.

I have seen several people mention the the Touchdown (appbrain link) app is not having any problems. Touchdown is an alternative to the built-in Exchange sync. It might be the easiest solution for you - though it is a paid app - $19.99 as of right now.

QR Code for the app market:


Youtube video quality Youtube app allows switching between normal and high quality videos. Is this normal and high quality depended on screen dpi or are they some fixed quality videos independent of mobile and tablets and their resolution?

For eg: Is the high quality video in my HTC Desier with resolution 480 X 800 same as in 1080p phones like HTC One?

If the quality is set to Auto, the video quality is dependent on the internet speed (faster connectivity better resolution, slower connectivity lower resolution), screen resolution, quality of the original uploaded video.

You can choose in the settings a resolution of your liking (240p, 360p, etc).
However, be aware that only resolutions that your phone or tablet can handle will be shown. For example, you will not see 1080p or 1440p if your screen can handle only resolutions up to 720p,

Source: Change the quality of your video


Unable to read internal storage/SD card on Samsung Grand Prime Plus so I follow a tutorial for setting my SD card as part of Internal storage with adb. Here is a photo of how it looks like:

As you can see, I have 7.88 gb used out of 37.47 gb and my device tells me I don't have enough space (the capacity of cellphone storage its 8gb), so I'm guessing there is something wrong with the configuration or something.

Can someone help me?

Cellphone: Samsung Grand Prime Plus
Model number: SM-G532M
Android version: 6.0.1

Thank you for your time.

remove the sd card
remove apps
reinstall the card as adopted stoRage
then reinstall the apps while adopted storage is on
that will make the physical space of your phone stay empty and disable the notifications about low memory


USB not recharging anymore I have a Samsung Tablet 10 and so far it recharged when connected to my computers usb plug.

Suddenly i am not able to connect my device anymore.

With a recharger cable I am able to charge the device.

Any thoughts ot help ?

If you can still transfer data between the phone and the computer via the cable, the computer might have an issue with powering the USB port. Maybe you somehow exceeded a current limit.

If you can no longer transfer data, and you can using a different cable, then your cable is broken. I think this is the most likely case.


mediascanner scan from system directory /data How can I make mediascanner scan phone memory, i.e. the /data directory? I want to test playing MP3s from this directory.

When I try to hack it by replacing the "pathStr" from /mnt/sdcard to /data before MediaScanner::doProcessDirectory(), it fails saying

W/MediaScanner( 1713): Error opening directory '/data/', skipping: Permission denied.

And also crashed (probably in free).

I just want to play MP3s stored in phone memory and avoid reading the SD card for some experiments.

EDIT: This is rendered obsolete with Jelly Bean. Android 4.1+ has a unified /data/ and /sdcard section (the sdcard partition is emulated and really resides in /data/media, it's exposed via a special fuse layer to emulate FAT32 behaviour)

My thoughts on this:

The media scanner scans everything below /mnt
/data/* is protected, only individual apps can access their folder (/data/data/[app's package name])

To get it working the way you like:

You need root (obviously)
symlink /mnt/music to /data/data/your-music-location
you can also do a bind-mount instead of a symlink:
mount --bind /data/your-music-location /mnt/sdcard/your-music-location
Lift access rights accordingly (chmod -R ugo+rw /data/data/your-music-location)

Hope this works (the scanner should scan the whole /mnt as there's also /mnt/emmc and such). If not, you can also bind-mount a /data/data/* folder to /mnt/sdcard/your-music (as done with /mnt/sdcard/.android_secure (see the answer))


How to create a shortcut to some file in another folder? I have a PDF on the folder ExtSD/Documents/. I need to make a shortcut of this file to the folder ExtSD/CurrentlyReading/.

So simple on Windows... Apparently never asked on Android.

If it's of any use, my explorer is ES File Explorer V4.0.
XPosed available.

"Shortcut" is a purely Windows concept. It's an ordinary file (with .lnk extension) which contains a reference to some other file or folder. Windows Explorer and other programs know how to open the actual file by reading reference information from shortcut file, just like as they know how to open a .pdf or .mp4 file. Other operating systems do not know what a .lnk file is, because phenomenon of mounting partitions and hence file paths are different across different OSes.

At filesystem level, Windows' NTFS supports junction points, symbolic links and hard links (1). But FAT family (including exFAT) supports none (2).

Android is based on Linux kernel. Linux's native filesystems (like ext4) support hard links and soft (symbolic) links. For non-native filesystems (like FAT) it depends on the filesystem driver. exfat driver (for exFAT filesystem) supports symlinks, but FUSE based exfat-fuse does not. So is the old vfat driver (for FAT[N] filesystems). New sdfat driver (for FAT[N]/exFAT filesystems) from Samsung does have optional symlink support for FAT[N] filesystems as well. After MS open-sourced exFAT, mainstream Linux driver is also based on sdfat (3).

However that's not the end. External SD cards are usually formatted as FAT32 or exFAT, so they may support symlinks depending on the driver being used. But Android does not expose actual filesystem to apps, instead it's emulated using FUSE or sdcardfs. Emulation is another twisted story (basically a permission-less filesystem to make sharing files among different apps/UIDs possible), see detail in Android's Storage Journey and What is /storage/emulated/0/?.

FUSE drivers may support symlinks (if the underlying filesystem does), but Android's FUSE implementation does not. So is the in-kernel sdcardfs implementation.

So in short, for the most cases, you cannot create symlinks on external SD cards as well as internal SD card. You will get "Operation not permitted" or "Function not implemented" or similar errors. On rooted devices a commonly used alternative is bind-mounts. See details in How can I make a symlink (or equivalent) inside /storage/emulated/0?


Mute Phone Audio when Headphones are Unplugged I only ever unmute my phone when my headphones are plugged into it. I'm looking to automate this process. Here's what I want to happen:

if (headphones are unplugged) {

  mute all audio on the phone

} else {

  play audio through headphones

}

I've heard of automation apps like Tasker and Task, but I don't really know how to use them, or even if this is possible.

I am using Macrodroid and Automate to demonstrate what you ask.

With Macrodroid

You will need to create 2 macros.

1st macro: Headset plugged

In the Trigger tab, select Headphones Insert/Remove, then choose Headphones Inserted followed by Any.
In the Actions tab, select Volume Change, then give the appropriate permissions. Set the level of each audio stream (see below picture on the left).
Give the macro a name, then save it. It will look like the picture on the right.

2nd macro: Headset unplugged

In the Trigger tab, select Headphones Insert/Remove, then choose Headphones Removed.
In the Actions tab, select Volume Change, then give the appropriate permissions. Set the level of each audio stream to 0 (see below picture on the left).
Give the macro a name, then save it. It will look like the picture below on the right.

With Automate

In the Interface section, select "Wire headset plugged?", then link its IN with the OK of the "Flow beginning" block.
In the Camera & Sound section, select "Audio stream mute state" twice.

Click on the first block, set the state to Unmute, select an audio stream, then click Done. Link the IN to the Yes of the "When wire headset plugged" block, then Link the OK to the IN of the "When wire headset plugged" block.
Click on the second block, set the state to Mute, then select an audio stream. Link the IN to the No of the "When wire headset plugged" block, then Link the OK to the IN of the "When wire headset plugged" block.

It will look like the image below. Give your flow a name then save it, then click on Start.

Note: I have selected Music stream for this example. Only the music will be muted/unmuted. Add more blocks for the other audio streams (voice call, alarm, system, etc).


Many apps don't work for secondary accounts I have a Google Nexus 7 that I share with my kids.  I am the owner and created a second account for my child.  I've found that many games work on my (the owners) account, but will not work on the second users account.  One of the apps in question is Unblock me Free.  It works great on my account, but on the second users account, it will get to the splash screen and then just disappear. I cannot find any app, user or security settings that could be causing this.  Hoping for some insight from this group as to what is causing this.  I hesitate to install a root-kit or unlock the tablet unless I can be convinced that's the best/safest way to go.

As far as Android SDK documentation goes:

    As an app developer, there’s nothing different you need to do in order for your app
to work properly with multiple users on a single device.
...

    To be certain that your app behaves properly in a multi-user environment, do not refer
to your internal app directory or external storage location using hard-coded paths and
instead always use the appropriate APIs:

Hence theoretically speaking, if the app developer had used appropriate methods this app should work normally. In that sense, I do not think you have any better way other than reporting this to the app developer.

Rooting your Nexus 7 doesn't going to solve this issue - in my opinion.

Update: I sent an email to the support team of the app developer quoting this question. I received a reply as:

Thank you for your information.
We have filed the issue with engineering team.
We'll try our best to fix them ASAP.

which in my opinion supports my assumption.


How to figure out which app changes pulse notification light in system settings? The nexus 5 has this "pulse notification light" that blinks when the device is sleeping and you receive an email, sms or something like that. I don't like it, so I turned it off in Settings > Display by unchecking "pulse notification light"

That works all fine for a couple of days/weeks but then suddenly the pulse notification light is back! And if I go to Settings / Display the checkbox is checked again! So one of my installed apps must enable this notification light again.

I want to figure out which app does that (most likely it is sms, mail or a chatting app). I guess notification light can only be enabled if the app has the System Settings permission, or is maybe the Vibrate permission enough? What is the best way to figure out which app actually made changes to my System? Is this logged somewhere?

You should check which is the first notification after your notification light is turned on automatically. Most probably that app is the one that is overwriting your permission, and as per my observation most of the apps that can access notification light have an built in option in their settings to disable led notification. You should try disabling it from there.


How to set default browser used by NFC? I have a Samsung S4 mini, stock Jellybean ROM. I have several browsers installed, one of which is Firefox configured for browsing through a proxy. When I tap on an NFC tag, Android opens up Firefox - I want it to open up a different browser. How?

Normally, only apps that specifically support NFC will work, not just any browser. If you've tried resetting Firefox as a default app, as Izzy suggests, and you still don't get a choice of browser, it may be because your other browsers don't support NFC.

In this case, you can use my app bURLy to choose any browser. It's a free download from Google Play, and it supports NFC and lets you choose any app that understands the URL in the tag: whether it's a browser, the YouTube app, the Facebook app, or any other site's app, regardless of whether the app supports NFC.

You can choose the app each time if you like, you can set a single default app, or if you like, you can add rules for particular URLs, sites, or other conditions. For example, you might want one site to open in Firefox, another site in Chrome.


Can the Whatsapp icon appear and disappear from someone's contact? I have this problem of my boyfriend's whatsapp icon appearing and disappearing on his contact. It doesn't seem honest to me that he says that he doesn't have whatsapp when I clearly see that during his working hours or at times he is not with me the icon is not there but on the afternoons or on weekends the icon dissapears. Is this possible?

Yeah the contact apps have contact accounts. You can click options button and select contacts to display. Unmark WhatsApp as a contact source and it won't show up in contacts. Tried for my CM13 on Wileyfox Spark and it works fine


How can I change the default search box to use another browser? I've installed Dolphin which I love, but the search box on the homepage always defaults to the regular browser.  I'd prefer it just go into Dolphin right away..how can I do this?

In settings, goto applications > internet > clear defaults. Next time you perform a search it should ask you which you would like to use and simply select dolphin.


Are my phone contacts notified when I install WhatsApp? When I install whatsapp, I read that it tries to add all other whatsapp-registered numbers in my phone Contacts list to my whatsapp contacts. Are all of these contacts then notified about this, or is this strictly just a convenience on my end, while remaining quiet to other users?

Are all of these contacts then notified about this, or is this strictly just a convenience on my end, while remaining quiet to other users?

No contacts are not notified, they are notified only if you message them, however if they view their WhatsApp contacts then they can view your name there.


How can I make my hacked WPDN run faster? I have a white Pandigital Novel that I hacked to run Android 2.1.  Is there any way I can make it and the apps it runs go faster?  It's already overclocked to 800Mhz and I have no home screen shortcuts.  Is there anything else I can do?

Using JIT (Just In Time) compiler (e.g. installing Froyo, Gingerbread, or "Frozen Eclair") will typically increase CPU-bound processes by 3-5 times.

If your device use FAT, RFS, or NTFS filesystem, your device might be faster by converting to ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem. However, if you want to prolong the lifetime of your internal memory, use YAFFS2 filesystem.


What are some of the effects of flashing my HTC Desire with cyanogenmod? Recently rooted my HTC Desire (GSM) and considering flashing it with cyanogenmod. However I have a few quick questions related to flashing with cyanogenmod (or any ROM in general I suppose).

Firstly, will flashing with the ROM delete my apps/data? ie. will I be starting from a "fresh" state? (I have done a nandroid backup and also backed up all system apps + data with Titanium backup, but just curious).

Secondly, got my phone online so it's actually from Taiwan, thus it has a locale=en_TW keyboard. I quite like this 'keyboard' because it allows me to input Chinese in many different ways - namely: handwritten, pinyin, zhuyin and strokes. Will flashing with the ROM remove this 'feature' from the keyboard?

Thirdly, according to cyanogen's wiki it says:

  NOTE: the ClockworkMod version 2.5.0.7 installed by Unrevoked3 is widely reported not to work with new "PVT4" batches of the Desire.

I checked and I am in that boat - have 2.5.0.7 and a PVT4 Desire. So does that mean I need to follow the below steps to install a newer version of clockworkmod?

Also, once flashed, how will I get future updates of cyanogenmod? Will I have to reflash the phone to get the updates?

Thank you!

pyko

Strictly speaking, you could try to keep your apps around, but it is generally a bad idea. During the install process you'll want to wipe the /data partition in order to prevent application crashes and weird permission issues after flashing. If you skip that then your apps and data should hang around, but it causes a lot of strangeness. The best thing to do is simply to backup anything you don't want to lose and then restore it afterwards. You will lose your /system apps because the install process will blow away the partition before copying over the CM files. Titanium backup is, in fact, the recommended way to backup your stuff, so you're set there already. Also be aware that your Google apps (Market, GMail, Maps, etc) will be gone since CM does not have permission to package them with his ROM. You can, however, download them here (bottom of the page).
I don't believe that is a standard Android locale, so you won't have that keyboard on CM (I don't see it as a choice on my phone). You might be able to pull the .apk file from your device and install it, though I wouldn't personally know where it is or what it's name is. If you dig around in /data/app you might be able to find it, though.
I generally try to stay on the most recent stable recovery versions, so upgrading is certainly not a bad idea. You can try to do this from ROM manager if it has the most recent version available (3.2.0.1 as of writing, it looks like), otherwise you can find it on XDA.
Updates can be acquired in two ways. One is to buy the premium version of ROM Manager and use it to download updates. In theory it's supposed to allow you to register for push notifications when a new update is released (akin to a typical OTA), but it's still kind of buggy. I can't personally attest to how well this works because I do not use it. The alternative is to simply download the .zip file of the newest version and flash it. You generally don't need to wipe /data or anything when performing incremental updates, only when going from one major version to another (6.x -> 7.x for example), so it's fairly painless. Making NAND backups before flashing updates is always a good idea, though.


Using Google Play music as an alarm I downloaded a song from the Play Store to use as my alarm on my S3 but for some reason can't find it. When I go into Play Music it's there along with all my other downloaded music, but when I go into my alarm and try setting it it doesn't appear. Some of my other music appears, but not my music I've downloaded from the Play Store. Has anyone got a solution to this for me?

You could try to download your music in MP3 format from Google Music through your PC and then put it on your phones SD-card. Then you should be able to set the MP3 as an alarm sound.


HTC HERO OTA update to Android version 2.1 firmware deleted the Calibrate Touch Screen feature from the menus. How do I get it back? HTC directly updated over-the-air (OTA) from 1.5 android to 2.1 android firmware on my handset. Since that time, the touch-screen (which is miscalibrated) can no longer be recalibrated, because the menu item has disappeared.

I have, of course, requested support from HTC via email, but I doubt that they will find an answer here, and I suspect my phone is now junk, unless some enterprising Phone-savvy person can figure out how to restore this thing.   There is sadly no backup that I know of that I can use to restore this phone, and going back to Android 1.5 has a host of issues associated with it.

How can I get this working again?  I could use any technique that will let me recalibrate the touch screen, even if it isn't the built-in menu item, maybe there is a way to bring that up indirectly somehow, or through an add-on app?

Incidentally, HTC HERO's seem to be famous on internet cell-phone forums for glitchy capacitive touch screens.

Unfortunately I'm pretty sure this isn't possible. How long have you had your phone? If it's still under warranty/insured, you should be able to get it replaced and can make sure that the new one has a good screen. Sounds like a hardware problem to me.


How to change lock screen due to VPN settings I just faced this problem.. i turned on my VPN last night and a pop up told me to change my lockscreen settings to either password or fingerprint (I'm using Samsung Galaxy Note 4), so i did. Ever since that, I cant change my lock screen settings back to none.. i have tried deleting all my VPN. I have tried to choose the Clear Credentials option but its grayed out. I have tried entering my google account at the forgot password section on the lockscreen but it shows that i had entered incorrect username or password (but I'm sure of my google account email and password). So what else can i do?

Are you using Android for Work? Try this:

Go to Settings > Security > Device administrators
Deactivate the entry that has installed security policies
Now go back and see if you can change your screen lock settings


How to record clash of clans so that my voice is loud but the sound for the game is low? I am using recordable apps to record clash of clans.

However, my voice is not heard. Buried behind music.

I want the voice and music of clash of clans to be loud and my comments are more clearly heard..

Lowering the sound volume in android does not lower the sound of my voice.

So it works.

I seem to be using this except that I am using the paid version (only $1)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.org.invisibility.recordablefree&hl=en

However, it works for other things too.


How to fix hanging Samsung Galaxy S II phone (GT-I9100)? Also flash and root it? I have a Samsung Galaxy S II model smartphone. GT-I9100 is the exact model number 1, mentioning it since I saw here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_II

that there are variants with slightly different model numbers (such as GT-I9100G) and correspondingly slightly different hardware features.

1 That exact model number (GT-I9100) shows both while it boots up, and also when you go to Settings -> About Phone.

(Sorry for the slightly long question, but I have tried to make it as clear as possible.)

A while ago it suddenly stopped booting properly. Before that it was working fine for over 2 years. I had bought it used; not sure if that has anything to do with the problem, but after I first bought it, it almost never had any problem for those 2 or so years, except for one issue: it sometimes used to shut down automatically, without my doing anything. But powering it on again, always resulted in it working normally again. I asked the dealer from whom I bought it, about this issue, and he said it was a known issue in that model.

Now, whenever I power it on, it only goes up to the initial Samsung splash screen (with a big stylized S in the middle of the screen), with the model number GT-I9100 on the right side of the screen, then only the big S for a bit, then again the big S with the words "Samsung Galaxy S II" below it [2], then hangs at the point, indefinitely. Also, while in this hung state (which can only be stopped by removing the battery), it intermittently a) flashes the big S a little brighter, and then b) makes two short beeps. Events a) and b) keep repeating at intervals, of maybe a minute or two. The phone also gets a little heated, maybe due to the big S getting brighter (and then dimmer).

[2] Image of phone in that state is at bottom of this post.

I would like to know how to do the following:

Fix it so that it boots fully and works normally. I would like to preserve the data on it, such as contacts, etc., but in the worst case, I'm okay with losing all the data, as long as I can get the phone working again. (I have an older Samsung Android phone which I using as of now, and I had saved most of my important contacts in my Google account, not in the phone or SIM.)
I would like to know how to flash and root it, maybe with CyanogenMod or a similar OS. I heard from a friend that by doing that, the battery charge lasts for longer, due to no unwanted apps or services running, apart from the fact that a flashed and rooted phone can be used for more things, such as sshing into a server where I have an account, or getting a Linux console on the phone (which would be cool and useful, even if I could only run a subset of Linux commands).

I will search the net for steps for flashing and rooting it, but would like to know if anyone has any general guidelines for that.

If I need to give any more information for any one to suggest solutions, please let me know.

Thanks.

OK, so for question #1
Try to get into recovery mode and then wipe cache partition and dalvik cache - that should help. As I remember, stock recovery is capable of doing that kind of basic things (if I'm wrong - correct me).
Basically, you can get to recovery by holding volume down and power button while your phone is off, then release the power button but hold the other one. That should work, if not - check YouTube, I bet guys got the video about how it works with your device.

UPDATE

As for second question, I don't really see a point of flashing CM or something similar cause it somehow buggy. My buddie at university has got the same device as you and after all the geeky flashing stuff he decided to go along with rooted stock.

In order to root your device - again YouTube or XDA should help you ;)


How can I replace a carrier-customized system with the original version? Is it possible to remove carrier customizations by just replacing whole system with the original version from phone manufacturer, just like we can reformat a computer and reinstall the operating system? Rooting, removing undesired apps, and other specific procedures that void warranty or do not ensure a clean stock install are a non-go.

It might be possible in some cases (I know Sony has released blobs before for ROM devs to use), but generally OEM's have agreements with carriers and release only carrier-laden ones. I know you said "without rooting", but you could technically flash a custom recovery and from there flash a "de-bloated" stock ROM from another developer. I know it's probably not really what you mean, but it does technically avoid rooting :P. That's probably going to be your best bet. Another, more ad-hoc option would be to freeze carrier apps (via titanium backup or something similar), and/or use alternative launchers like Nova or Apex to hide them from your app drawer. I don't think you need to be rooted to freeze an app, but I could be wrong. I feel your pain though, had an HTC Evo 4G back in the day. Never have I ever cared less about Sprint's sponsorship of NASCAR.


how to install xposed on cm 12.1? okay so here are my device's specs-

Samsung Galaxy note3

SM-N900

I am running CM 12.1 (unofficial) straight from here
. I want Xposed framework on my device so how do i get that? i am researching for the past 3 hours and i have tried this and already and got stuck in boot loop 3 times already.

here is what i did-

rooted my device using odin (works fine till here)
flashed xposed-v74-sdk22-arm-by-romracer-20150911 in CWM
tada! device never boots

I've tested this solution on LG G2 running CM12.1.

Here you will find Xposed Framework for Android 5.1.
First, download and flash "xposed sdk 22", then install Xposed Installer from given link and reboot your device.

For complete details read given XDA thread.


Is it possible to reset to factory settings without USB Debug? Is there any way to reset to factory settings without the USB debug?
I have an Sony Xperia E3 model number D2203. The reason is I bought it 2 years ago and stopped using it 6 months after, but now I need it again. I can't get in cause I managed to put up a password I can't remember probably cause on an app or something.

From user manual

Power Off Your Sony Xperia E3.
Press And Hold Volume up Key + Volume Down key + Power Key.
Now You Will see a Android Robot on screen.
Select ” Wipe Data / Factory Reset ” Option By Using Volume Key .