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Protecting google account password reset from device pin/password compromise?
Today I realized that by just knowing the phone PIN it is possible to reset the Google account password... doesn't matter what 2FA/Backup codes you configured.
For example, you can go under the account's security settings, click to change the password, speicify that you forgot the password. Then you can specify access via Screen unlock, where you can use the PIN to reset the google password.
Question:
Is it possible to remove the "access via screen unlock" from that setting?
Resetting the google account password should, IMHO, always require:

either the password itself
or a backup code

Is it possible to achieve this? If I forgot my password I want to be kept out until I manage to retrieve one of my backup codes.
Is the only """solution""" to ditch PINs and use strong password for screen unlock?
Why would a credential for a physical device be enough to reset the credential of the google account itself? I don't want these to be linked. This sounds like a huge security issue to me. I always assumed that there would NOT be an option to use the screen unlock via PIN/fingerprint to reset the google password.
Maybe I could understand if someone does not have backup codes, but if I have backup codes available, IMHO, they should be the only backup method to reset the password. So is it possible?

I think there's nothing you could do except for adding a 2FA. OR you can create emails on a separate device/incognito and then login on your phone. Because the device on which the accounts are created are considered the owners and it's always possible to reset from it (except if u try want to edit some source codes, took a look at your stackoverflow, it's great :) OR you can reset your device, I think that creates a new login session but google stores the device id so I'm not exactly sure if they let you reset still. Also if someone has your pswd there's many things he could do apart from that

@Aayush adding 2FA does NOT prevent this exploit. When you are asked for 2FA there is an option for "tapping yes on your phone" which an attacker having your phone and knowing your PIN can access. Therefore knowing the PIN means you can bypass any sort of 2FA even if it is set to something that is not that device. Right now the only mitigation seems to use a strong & long password for screen unlock as to reduce the risk of shoulder surfing... except everyone has a camera in their hands, and a short recording of typing a password can be easily achieved no matter the strength of the password

I'm specifically thinking at the scenario (which is happening in real life right now) where people are out drinking in a pub or something, during the evening they will unlock their phones multiple times, sometimes the OS will ask for the PIN/PAssword instead of fingerprint/FaceID, you leave the phone on the table 1 minute while talking/going to the bathroom and someone snatches it... in a matter of 60 seconds you can be 100% logged out of everything and they may access all credentials stored in Google's password manager, which probably means access to bank accounts.


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How can I remove a contact from the "favorites" page of the phone app?
The Phone app has a "favorite" page (the title is a star) which contains the contacts you most frequently/recently(or whatever...) called:

I find the contacts that appear there quite irrelevant and even dangerous (e.g. I recently blocked a contact and it still shows up there because said contact continuously called me)
My question is: how do I remove a contact from said page? The menu does not contain any option to remove them, moreover the contacts are not starred in the contact app.

Hold the contact in the favorites page, drag & drop it on 'Remove'.

@acejavelin Note: "the contacts are not starred in the contact app".

@GokulNC Oh gosh... that interaction is really unexpected & it also feels really weird. Thank you anyway, please post an answer.

Hold the contact in the favorites page.
Drag and drop it on Remove.

(This may vary for different phone apps. The method above works on AOSP stock phone app)

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


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Iam using android emulator but i can't access root, su is not working for root in adb shell

In this image i have given the screenshot of my command prompt,anyone know this please explain how access root in android emulator

By default, Android emulator is not rooted. You might be interested in How to get root access on Android emulator? -- Stack Overflow

From your screenshot, I can't actually tell which image your are trying to boot. You could actually try running Google APIs Intel images as opposed to Google Play images. As discussed in the linked question you could also utilise an older ramdisk.img.
Alternatively just push the su binary, if you want wide-access root for any app you install on your emulator.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Why I couldn't monitor traffic from this page?
When I opened the capture log I found nothing from the page other than this when I first tried to visit it using http only, and then I get that security warning and i click proceed to unsafe anyway i still get nothing from that page
although i have the root debugging certificate installed using
HttpCanary

Clear the cache of the used app (the one you want to monitor). It might have save the old certificate and now does not accept the new one from HttpCanary.

@Robert i have tried it even with wireshark on pc and it still the same !!!
i tried to clear the "Clear the cache of the used app" but still didn't work ... btw the page certificate is invalid !!

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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VPN not working in kitkat 4.4.4
I am using Lenovo A6000 running stock rooted Kitkat 4.4.4. And since about 6 months the vpn has stopped working properly. Everytime I connect to a VPN via mobile data, it connects and then gets disconnected after about 10 seconds and the 3G/4G icon vanishes too momentarily.As a result the VPN disconnects, rendering it useless.
I tried everything, different VPN apps, factory reset, wiped system, data, cache, dalvik cache, internal storage. Nothing fixed the problem.
This problem does not exist in 5.0+ android but i really don't want to update because anything other than stock Kitkat is buggy and drains battery heavily.
Anyone know how to fix this?


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Share known WiFi networks between own devices
It happens every now and then that I connect to a WiFi network for the first time on my phone, but not on my tablet. The second time I visit the place I might not have the WiFi access key at hand.
Is there a way to "share" the known network information between own Android devices?

The easiest way, is using a QR code scanner, to scan the generated code from the wi-fi network. (Note with MIUI the code s generated automatically, otherwise you may need to generate the QR code manually before scanning it with the secondary android device

there is way, but you must create your own app for private use. This one is not what you looking for it is for public sharing only. But maybe you find the right one in suggestions. Let us know https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ljapps.wifix.password

Is there a way to backup and restore through Google account?

If you want to back up and restore though Google (Drive) then perhaps you  may need to look at some third-party applications such as
WiFi Password Manager or Wi-Fi password manager (whichever you prefer as there are more or less similar)
Basically the following features are present:

Manage your wifi passwords (add, edit, delete)
Backup your passwords to Google Drive or to local storage
Wifi hotspots list sorted by wifi signal strength
Recover wi-fi passwords from system settings (ROOT)
Connect to WiFi hotspot directly from the appplication
Copy password to clipboard
Share wi-fi settings

Pretty straight forward to use simply add the target wi-fi network, then back it up on local or google drive, follow the reverse proceedure to restore:


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Samsung j737p frp lock solution when OEM is also locked
I have successfully flashed the eng boot.img via Samsung tool pro but after switching it on adb is still not active. I saw a post that claims I should load the official firmware to remove oem lock I have successfully done that but OEM is still locked. Please any solution is highly appreciated.
P.S the phone is SM-J737P refine edition.

And also all bypass solution on YouTube are not working to me.

The only solution i can think of is a method i personally discovered a few years back that has been adopted by other people and nicknamed "Pre-Hacked" ...
First you need to download a Hex Editor..
The firmware must not be encrypted...

Open your System or Firmware file in the Hex Editor, This may take a while...
Search for # begin build properties
Once found, you have located the Build.prop start.
Scroll through the build.prop, ( After "begin build properties" )
Find ( ro.frp.pst=/ )
Change the line to have a # before it ( Comment the line out )
ro.frp.pst=/ to # ro.frp.pst=/

Now you have removed FRP by breaking the crucial property that tells FRP the whereabouts of your FRP Partition.

Save the file as a new file with the applied changes to Build.prop

thanks but a samsung firmware has various section{ AP BL CSC CP}  so which am are opening exactly?

and please can you give me a link to afree hex editor all are paid

Heres my favourite ( HxD ) ... https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

Try all files... One of them holds the system.

thanks a lot i have search through the hex editior but i can not find the # begin build properties i can find begin. build separately but not together please help me


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Are Foxfi and PdaNet+ simple usb tethering enablers?
I Was just thinking why the FoxFi on play store is a little bit expensive.Does  it just enables the USB tethering from  settings does it have something special or a simple USB tethering?

FoxFi enables WiFi Hotspot on your Android phone, with no tethering plan or rooting required.
Recently FoxFi has been merged with PdaNet+ and still offers extended features to enhance tethering. it is also equipped with additional features such as Bluetooth mode and Wi-Fi direct options in addition to USB tether.
The reason its unique is that it enables users to bypass tethering block especially with certain ISPs such as Sprint Boost Mobile or AT&T without needing root or complex workarounds and such features don't come out cheap.

You can connect your tablets, computers or game console with WPA2
  security. FoxFi usage is covered under your phone's existing data plan
  and secured with WPA2.

If you don't have any tethering block, I guess there is no need to purchase it, rather use the built-in option to tether, or find some alternative gratis software

Inbuilt teathering


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Can you launch an application/activity of a different user with Tasker?
A follow up to this question or another related.
I am currently testing something related to file syncing, and I need to start an application/activity of an application installed in the secondary userspace. I want to launch that application/activity whilst I'm in the primary space (primary user) on demand. I thought Tasker could achieve this but am not sure how. I am somehow currently stuck, anyone who knows how to achieve this?
Something like: am start -n packagename/.activityname   but for the secondary user.

"Some restrictions exist when a secondary user is in background. For instance, the background secondary user cannot display the user interface..."  Source: Multi-user system behavior


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What could cause the camera to turn on automatically while the phone is in standby?
I have a Samsung Galaxy S5 (the blue one just to help set the scene) running Android version 4.4.2
My phone was sleeping beside me peacefully on my desk in standby mode (or whatever you call it when it's just a blank screen not being used).
Suddenly, the screen lights up and to my surprise the camera is active - with no human intervention whatsoever. There were also no notifications of any kind at this point that might have had a hand in it.
What could be the possible causes for this to happen? Are there any conditions is which this might be expected? Is it a bug? Or maybe worse, could it be a malicious application trying to "catch me in the act"?
Additional information that might be useful:

When the camera started it was the main camera that was active, rather than the front camera
Looking through the phone and camera settings, there is nothing enabled (or even available) that might explain this happening. For example, there is no quick start camera gesture or voice command

Maybe you have a broken camera button? Did your phone every have a bad fall?

@geffchang: Nope, I have been very careful with this one and I have only had it just over a month. There doesn't appear to be a hardware shortcut for the camera anyway. There is a lockscreen software shortcut that requires you to slide an icon, but there was no contact with the phone at the time to manage this (of course there may be a bug that thought is was activated)

When you say "the camera is active", do you mean the camera app is visible on screen? A malicious app wouldn't use the camera app, it would just take pictures with nothing on screen.

Could this be the photo unlock?

The NSA. Just had to poke that one :-) Seriously,  though, maybe the OS has a gesture that turns on the camera automatically, and the detection's off. May be worth a trip through the settings to confirm.

@DanHulme: Yeah good point. It was active on the screen

@ctt: Just been through the settings and can't find anything that actives anything, let alone the camera

@JCHulce: Not sure what you mean by "the photo unlock"...

@musefan the face unlock feature, which was introduced in Android 4.0, allows you to unlock a device using facial recognition with the front camera. Details here: http://www.android.com/about/ice-cream-sandwich/ (near the bottom)

@JCHulce: Oh face unlock. That is not enabled on my phone, and I wouldn't expect it to activate the phone automatically. It also was the main camera being viewed, rather than the front camera

@musefan great to clarify this. You might want to edit the question a bit to say the main camera was activated.

Not exactly a solution, but this seems to be part of the problem:

Launch Camera directly from lock screen
Time is often of the essence when trying to capture the perfect
  picture. The Galaxy S5 lets you bypass the lock screen to snap a
  picture. Simply swipe the camera icon up (in the lower right hand
  corner) and you’ll launch directly into the camera app! If this
  feature isn’t turned on you can do so by:
Go to Settings > Lock Screen Check “Camera Shortcut” You’re done! Even
  if you have a pattern or password lock set up this will let you take
  pictures without unlocking your phone.

How this is being enabled is anyones guess.

Yeah I did think this could be the most likely cause, somehow it thought that it had been triggered. If it is this, then it definitely a bug, I guess it's hard to know for sure what the cause was

Faulty touchscreen? Perhaps it is detecting phantom touches where the camera app icon is on the lockscreen?

No reason to suspects faulty touchscreen, I haven't noticed any issues with it. Also, the camera unlock doesn't work unless the lock screen is visible. If I try and to the unlock while the screen is black then it doesn't work, so even with physical screen interaction it doesn't unlock, which I believe rules out the phone thinking it's being touched. But still leaves the potential for the camera unlock widget to falsely assume it has been activated.

Well to activate the camera, the phone has to wake up, then the lock icon has to be tapped. Could these actions be the result of faulty hardware? It would require 2 coincidences - wake up action (either software (possible caused by an app) or hardware related) and then the camera app is activated too. Seems a long shot.

Since the phone is relatively new, perhaps its best to try a  hardware reset now (as opposed to 6 months later, when you have lots of data on it). Then try it for a few days without installing too many apps off the market. If it does this weird behaviour in its factory reset state, then send it back to samsung and get a replacement.

I have an s6 and my phone got sprayed with a little (just a little)  water and later the camera and google app were launching randomly on their own. Both the camera and the google app have shortcut launch options via the home button. It went on for about fifteen minutes before stopping. My guess is a drop or so went in and activated the button sensors. It's still popping up randomly as I type. Turning off the quick launch for the camera made sure that it's only the google app that's launching itself now.

Your home button still worked when you pressed it to go to the home-screen? You didn't specifically mention it.

It was a long time ago now, and the problem didn't stay around too long. At this point I am putting it down to a bug in the OS that was quickly patched

I've got the same happening after use in water. The camera randomly turns on both from lock screen with the phone on the table and when in use.

For me disabling the power button double click gesture didn't work, but in the camera settings there was another setting for the Sony Xperia camera button and disabling that resolved the issue.

could it be  an app that you downloaded and gave permission to use camera, along with other things on phone, we have to give up alot of privacy when we hit the accept button with out paying attention to what they want to have access to

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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Jelly Bean on the Galaxy Nexus - forcing an update?
I bought my Galaxy Nexus in New Zealand - via parallel importing. I believe it came from Russia, given my manual was in Russian(!).  But it works perfectly and is genuine.
A colleague there bought one from the same source the next day, and his arrived a day after mine.
I then moved to Canada, and got a Rogers sim card.  All good.
However, my ex-colleague got a 4.0.4 upgrade about 8 weeks before myself.  I tried forcing an update, but no luck.
Then last week, I finally got 4.0.4, and about the same day, my old colleague emailed to say he got an OTA update to 4.1.
What gives? Is it a geo-fenced roll-out? How can I force an update? (I've  gone to system updates to check for an update, but no luck).  Or would I have to root and do it manually? I'd prefer not to if there's a simple way to force an update...
Baseband I9250XXLA2, Build IMM76K.I9250XWLD2

There are many variations of the Galaxy Nexus. Most likely, your phone is yakjuxw, which gets the updates from Samsung. The other phone is either yakju or takju, which use Google's own updates, which are released quicker.
The versions are interchangeable, if you don't account for international customizations or possible carrier modifications. For example, see my answer here on how to change the yakjuxw firmware to takju Jelly Bean, which can be then officially upgraded to 4.1.1 via OTA.

Baseband I9250XXLA2, Build IMM76K.I9250XWLD2 - can one use that to determine yakjuxw or whichever?

That's the same as I had, don't know if it means yakjuxw definitely. Although, it seems so, because the factory images for yakju/takju over here are IMM76I.

I waited very impatiently for the JellyBean update for few days last week and finally did this to get JB on my Galaxy Nexus.

Manually trigger the update by clearing the data in Google Services
  Framework and then check for System Update in Settings.

You might have to do this multiple times though. I had to do it 5 times to get the update. You might be lucky to get it in fewer attempts as well.
Btw, I got my phone from US and I stay in India. I am not really sure if this really matters.

I had the same problem: I bought my phone from Amazon.com and got stuck on 4.0.2 with no OTA upgrades. When I looked into it, it turned out that I was running a firmware (yakjujp) that was set to get updates from Samsung, as opposed to getting them directly from Google.
First you need to determine if your device is receiving updates directly from Google, which you can tell from its build name. I ended up temporarily installing this application (warning: contains gratuitous ads) and looking at the "Brand" field. If you're not on "yakju" then you'll need to switch builds in order to get official updates from Google.
I followed these painful Windows instructions while I really should have looked at these ones instead (and ignored most of the steps given how much easier this process is on Linux).
The whole procedure can be summarized like this:

Backup your phone.
Unlock the boot loader (which erases everything).
Reboot into fastboot (hold down Volume Up and Volume Down then press the power button).
Flash all of the different firmware images.
Reboot and reinstall/reconfigure apps.

This is summarized from a blog post I wrote about manually moving to the "vanilla" 4.0.4 yakju firmware, and shortly after I received the 4.1.1 OTA update from Google.


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Google Drive directory synchronisation
Is there any software available to select one (or maybe more) directory on your Android device, and automatically sync it to a directory (collection) on Google Drive?
This seems that this could serve as a decent automatic backup utility or as a way to synchronise files on your device with minimal hassles.

Use FolderSync. I was using it to sync folders with Google Docs. After upgrading to Google Drive, sync still works. I have just tested by adding new Google Drive account. Google Drive is fully supported. Just, choose Google Docs when adding account in the app.
In case, you don't want to pay, its free lite version is also in Play Store, but with some limitations.
It supports two-way sync as well as one-way sync (up or down). You can use its up sync for backup purpose. It also supports filters based on size, extension etc. So, if you want to backup all photos from your SD card, the app is good to go. It features Delete after Upload, too.
You can schedule sync jobs, too. So, it can do backups automatically without any hassle. The best: It features Instant Sync. If you turn it on, files will be synced as long as they will be modified or added in folder.


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How to resolve Instagram force close for CM9
I'm using CM9 (Alpha 14) adnroid 4.0.1  for my GTi9003. Every other app works fine except for instagram.
Picture doesnt load at picture editing/ picture filter screen (screenshot)    and instgram hangs and I have to force close every time.
It was working fine on stock ROM. Any patches?

i have cm10.2 nightly kernel and happens exactly the same. i read that some peolple with cm10.2 quarx didn´t have this trouble.
On the other hand I couldn't find any solution, so I'm thinking in testing cm9 (for motorola defy+) or go under cm7.

try the oldest version of instagram that is allowed on your device. Instagram 3.4 worked for me. The problem seems with HW composer.


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How to transfer WhatsApp from Windows to Android?
I have a Lumia 535 and a Samsung S7 Edge. I am unable to transfer my WhatsApp to Android from Lumia. I have WhatsApp backup on OneDrive. Is there any way?

whatsapp has an option to restore from Google drive backup. Is there any option to backup to google drive in lumia 535?

Windows Phone uses OneDrive and Android uses Google Drive for backup.Currently, Whatsapp does not support inter cloud backup transfer. You can subscribe to this Reddit group for updates.


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How to detect spy software like flexispy, mspy, phonesheriff?
I don't want to factory reset my phone nor do I want to reflash Lineage OS ROM. I just want to check for a possible trace of spy software like flexispy, mspy, phonesheriff, ikeymonitor thetruthspy, and possibly others that I don't know of.
Just to check for root is enough? I have not installed the root feature of Lineage OS.
Is there any way which could do that? I don't mind doing things manually but I need to know instructions or pointers to begin with.

I have seen a site suggesting using a wifi access point to sniff network traffic from/to the phone. I could turn my rpi into an AP and sniff traffic but it will be tedious to check for every connection made by the phone to see if it's legit or not. But I could try. I just hoped for something else.

So the AP idea has limited value because there is encrypted traffic. And all info you have is at best a domain name or worse only an IP that the phone connected to. You could only make limited guesses then...


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How to transfer VCF file between two phones?
Does it require a cable between an old and a new Android phone to import a VCF file on new phone?

You can import contacts (in .vcf format) from another phone by a number of different methods but a cable between the two phones is the least likely of all.
On my phone, contacts can be backed up and restored to and from an SD card. One could backup to the SD, pop it out, put it in the new phone and restore the contacts from there.
Alternately, there are many apps and services that use cloud storage, networks, Wifi Direct, bluetooh or NFC to port contacts from one phone to another.  The Play Store is full of them.
You can also use a computer to download the 0001.VCF file from one phone and upload it to the second one.
If you would post your phone type and android version, someone might be able to give an answer more specific to that model.

I purchased a new phone (Samsung7) and the old phone is Kyocera. I went to Verizon and had them transfer my "stuff" to the new phone. But not all my Contacts are on the new phone. They also transferred the SD card from the old phone to the new, so I cannot use the SD card for the transfer. And I am a novice at cell phones. I did try to download the 0001.vcf file to my computer, but it did not work because  the SD card was not in the old phone. Looks to me that I will have to manually type in my missing contacts.


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Is there a way to forward online calls to cell network?
I am traveling abroad and roaming costs are extremely high. Therefore, I thought about the following. I would leave a smart phone at home, connected to my home wifi. Then I would call that phone via Skype, Hangouts, whatever online service and the phone would forward my call through the local mobile network. This way I could make local calls via web in my home country.
Is there a way to do this?

Use Google Voice with the Hangouts Dialer app and you take out a step and it's completely free. The Hangouts Dialer app uses Google Talk service, so as long as you are in a country with Google service, you make -and- receive calls free via WiFi.

Unless you have a particular reason for wanting to route through a secondary device, a more direct approach would be to investigate apps that are available to you that use wifi-calling. These can be used even in airplane mode (with wifi subsequently turned back on) and behave the same way whether you are in your home country or abroad - ie no roaming charges.
These are often carrier specific (at least in my experience).


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How to disable dashboard summary in Settings app?

I find the dashboard conditional summary infuriating. How can I have it disabled?
I earlier thought disabling the following receivers would help, but to no avail. (Yes, I did verify and reboot post disabling them.)

com.android.settings.dashboard.conditional.HotspotCondition$Receiver
com.android.settings.dashboard.conditional.AirplaneModeCondition$Receiver
com.android.settings.dashboard.conditional.DndCondition$Receiver
com.android.settings.dashboard.conditional.CellularDataCondition$Receiver

I'm currently using stock Android 10 on OnePlus 6 with Magisk and Riru.

I vaguely remember having seen a similar question recently, so it might be worth checking with our search engine. Don't remember the phrasing, though – but AFAIR it was about "no SIM card" (OP didn't want to use the phone functionality anyway).

I don't know Izzy. Before posting this question I did try the search but with the terms "dashboard" and "settings" app for Nougat tags. Didn't find anything relevant so posted my question.

I couldn't find it either (just checked). I don't think it used the term "dashboard". IIRC it was about a Samsung device, so at that time I wasn't sure if it was talking about some AOSP generic feature or something Samsung special. Well, just thought to mention it – not crying "dupe" or the like :)

Simply swipe from right to left on the conditional summary and it will disappear.

It's a temporary solution, but a reboot or toggling the corresponding option on and then off will bring it back again. OP made it clear that he want a permanent disable ("not show up for ... settings change").

I agree with @Andy.

I mean its the simplest solution I found, and it literally takes less than a second to remove the conditional summary this way, but lemme see if I can find a "permanent" solution.

Could not find any permanent solution, seems like swiping it is the only way to dismiss the conditional summary

If only you can prove it.


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How to run Whatsapp without app?
My Samsung Tab is locked. It is only meant for educational purposes. My tab cannot run any app but only use Google through Wi-Fi. Tab can not use Sim card as well as it is locked by college authorities.
So how can I run Whatsapp online on this tab?

Whatsapp web doesn't run standalone. It is an another frontend to an already installed and functioning Whatsapp session in a device. That is to say, if you have a device with Whatsapp already installed and connected to internet, then you can access it through Whatsapp Web as well (requires authentication from device). But the web functionality doesn't offer to create an account and use Whatsapp services so you're at loss here.
More info: How do I use WhatsApp on my computer?


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Does the Nexus 7 [2013] (Wi-Fi) tablet update to Android 6?
In my country, Nexus 7 2013 Wifi only tablets are still available. It comes with Android 4.3, but I was told that it updates to 6.0.1 (official update). Does anyone know if this is true? Also, is it stable on 6.0.1? And will Facebook, Instragram, Pintrest & Google Photos apps be stable on it?

Yes, it is true that Nexus 7 [2013] (Wi-Fi) can be updated to official Android 6.0.1. On Google's factory images page for its devices you can see all the updates.
The concerned apps work fine with Android 6.0.1, at least on my Nexus 6 with Android 6.0.1.

Thank you. Do you think it makes sense buying this tablet today? I cannot find any other decent tablet in the price range?

I'm sorry. I'm not really good on such suggestions and that's off-topic here as well.

I just found this page https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en where it seems to say the Jul 2017 is EOL & Autoupdate won't be available


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How to fix LG Tribute stuck at 0% on "Firmware Update"?
My parents bought me an LG Tribute from the store. Suddenly, it is stuck on a screen saying "Firmware update", and is stuck at 0%.
I have seen people saying to remove the battery, but if I do that, I cannot turn the phone back on, because my power button has stopped working over a week ago. Does anyone know how to fix this?


text:
How to find out which new permissions are required by an update?
When updating an app that requires new permissions, those new permissions used to be labelled with a green NEW tag. No more. Now I can only see the full list of permissions required. I'm still prompted to confirm the change, but I can't save time by only looking at the new ones.
Without manually keeping track of the old permissions and other impractical ideas, is there a workaround? A way to see what changed before I install the update?

As far as I know if it it has new permissions it advises there are now ones, and makes you accpet them before installing. I tried it on Play 4.8.20 and it did indeed bring up the message. What version of Play and Android are you using?

I believe there is an xposed module that gives more control over the play store updates.

@RossC no that's correct, I see the same. It asks me to confirm again, but it shows the full list of permissions, without showing which ones I confirmed the last time, requiring me to check them all again.

On the app details page, you can scroll to the bottom of the page. You will find a link under PERMISSIONS saying "View details". That will open a popup page that will display all the permission categories with expanded view and list all the permissions the app needs, including the new ones required with "NEW" tag.

And so you can! Brilliant. Just a note for future visitors: this is not available from the permissions prompt; you have to go and open the app's details page.


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How to prevent sleep while installing lots of updates?
Whenever I need to install a bunch of updates, I find myself sitting next to the phone/tablet and tapping the screen every 20 seconds, else the updates never complete.
There must be a better way! Right?
What I've got:

Sony Xperia Arc S, with 4.0 - pretty sure the updates stop when the screen goes out.
ASUS Transformer Pad, with 4.1 - will have to re-check whether the updates stop now that you guys mention they are expected to carry on.

How I'm connecting: Wi-Fi.

You mean the updates stop when the screen goes off?

What phone have you got, what OS version is running on it, and how are you connecting to the internet at the time (wifi, 3G, etc)? That's not how it should work, the updates should carry on downloading and installing regardless of whether the screen is on or off.

Just increase the screen out time. In ICS, it's settings>display>sleep. Maximum is 30 mins. Hopefully updating will be done before then

@romkyns How are you connecting to the internet when you're updating, if wifi we have a lot of previous questions about wifi disconnecting when the screen goes off, that could be the problem that you're having? See How do I keep my wi-fi on in sleep mode

The fix that I found satisfactory in the end was to set the sleep timer to 10 minutes, as suggested by @Sid. I'm the type of person who likes to manually turn off my phone anyways, since otherwise random things get activated in the pocket.

There an app developed to deal with that issue, Smart Timeout Keep Screen On by guidology available from Google Play Store:

Smart Timeout allows you to specify apps that will keep the screen / display on. Once there are no specified apps visible on the screen the normal screen timeout is enabled.
  Works great while reading articles in web browsers, email, or any app you specify. You'll no longer need to worry about touching the screen to prevent the screen from sleeping, dimming or timing out.

Ain't free, costs 0,76€, but "saves" you from the described annoying situation :)

Though I don't know about any "official way" (did I miss some option in the playstore app?), I can think of a work-around using Tasker (or a similar automation app). As a long-term Tasker user, I can best describe it for this app, which is the most feature-filled and complete automation solution for Android (but for sure not the cheapest and easiest one). You might be able to adapt that to a different tool.
Tasker combines "conditions" with "tasks" to so-called "profiles" -- so let's create a profile "AppUpdates":
Condition: App (select the playstore or whatever market app you use)
Task: Display (disable timeout)
That should do it: As long as one of the selected apps (you can select multiple entries there) is running in the foreground, the display will be kept alive -- and thus the device from going to sleep. Mission accomplished.

If you are connected to wifi, then it may be set to turn off when the screen is turned off.
You can use the video linked below to explain how to do it, in essense:

Go to the System Settings
Select WiFi
Press the menu key
Select advanced
Change Wi-Fi sleep policy to 'Always'

Video

You mean to "Always", I think, looking at how it's phrased. Mine was set to "Never".

Yes, that is what I meant. Thanks :) If it was set to never, that would most likely be the cause if you used WiFi :)

Hm. That doesn't work for me. I have "always" but it still stops downloading updates :-(

For the record, this didn't work for me either, not really sure why.

I saw this issue on my Moto X.  I also had the WiFi sleep policy to always and the download would freeze once the phone went to standby.
I found that if I put the Play Store in the background, it will continue to download and install.

Wow, so simple. This is counterintuitive and I would have never thought to try it. Thank you!
Works on Galaxy Nexus (Verizon) w/ CyanogenMod 11.2 (Android 4.4.4).

It works on a galaxy S4, android 5.0.1. Thanks!


text:
Atrocious battery life with Cyanogenmod 11 on Galaxy S4 mini
I love so many things about CM10, but the battery life is an absolute nightmare. I made a comparison against the stock firmware by leaving the phone unused for as long as I could. Results:
Stock: ~5.2 days standby to full discharge
CM10: ~1.7 days of standby to full discharge
Is there anything I can do about this, or is CM10 simply not supported properly on my device?

Made these screenshots on my S4 mini by leaving it unused for as long as I could. In the CM10 example it actually powered off due to low battery and I had to plug it in before it would even turn on again, so this is NOT due to any calibration; the battery was actually empty at the end of the test. But even if you take the final charge as 15%, the numbers are still atrocious.

Clearly it states in the screenshots that mobile standby uses the most power, possibly even wakelocks. Are you leaving it on 3G/4G/LTE without a mobile data connection?

@aureljared 3G and Wi-Fi were permanently enabled in both cases. The phone was in exactly the same location: my house.

CM11 did not improve things; BetterBatteryStats doesn't show any significant wakelocks either... A real mystery. Glad to know I'm not the only one.

These are the settings I use on my phone, which have helped with the power consumption.
Under Performance
-> Processor

CPU governer: ONDEMAND

-> Profile

Power save

General Settings page
-> Location Services: off
-> Bluetooth off
-> Mobile Data (3g): off
There are also some apps that may be helpful, one of which (I've only heard of it not actually used) is called SnapDragon Battery Guru.
If you can't find the performance settings turn on developer options (instructions here)

Calibration needs to be done after flashing a new ROM.
I've solved this problem by using "Battery Calibration" app from the Play store.
http://zoranpetrovic87.blogspot.com/2014/10/cyagenmod-battery-problem.html

I'm now on CM11 and battery life remains a constant struggle. There are just too many things that will happily keep the phone awake, almost always due to bugs or incompatibilities. You're lucky when it's just a bad app you've installed: kill it and the problem is gone. But far too often, the thing keeping your phone away is Google Play Services, and then you're basically stuffed.
So my best advice is to simply decide whether a constant battery life problem is worth CM's improvements (it is for me, but it might not be for you).
You should also expect that whenever you do manage to track down and fix a battery life killer, it won't be a week before something else crops up. Just recently I had finally found an amazing fix that made my phone actually enter sleep, and it was to set Wi-Fi to turn off when the phone is off. I had a few weeks of bliss, but fast forward to a few days ago and it's back to the usual battery-eating never-sleeping state.
So yeah, you will probably experience battery life issues with CM, but I think it's totally worth it.


text:
How to mount external SD card at a fixed path in CM13?
In Marshmallow (and consequently in CM13), the external SD card is mounted at a path that contains its serial number. I have a bunch of Tasker tasks, the occasional script, and lots and lots of apps configured with a specific path to the external SD card (in my case, /external_sd because that's where it was in CM12).
Is there anything sensible I can do about this change in Marshmallow? Fixing paths everywhere just because I've upgraded to a faster/larger SD card (which has a different serial number) is not going to be fun.
How would I go about making the external SD card available under "/external_sd" on CM13/Marshmallow?

I've found a reasonably easy way to do something close enough: just set the volume serial number to something fixed. This is easy enough for FAT32-formatted SD cards: just use Sysinternals VolumeID:
D:\>vol D:
 Volume in drive D has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 07F5-432C

D:\>volumeid D: ECAD-ECAD

VolumeID V2.01 - Set disk volume id
Copyright (C) 1997-1999 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

Volume ID for drive D: updated to ecad-ecad

("ecad" for "external card" but there are other possibilities, of course)
Now my external SD card is mounted at /storage/ECAD-ECAD, which is easy to remember for typing in those apps which don't let me pick a path, and more importantly, can stay the same when I upgrade to a faster card, for example (if I repeat this procedure).
The only complication is SD cards larger than 32 GB, which Windows refuses to format into FAT32. The best tool to work around this is Rufus, an open-source tool with a focus on bootable drives, but it can also just format a large FAT32 drive.

Another option would be to use a init.d script to re-create the sdcard link.
#!/system/bin/sh

SERIAL=`ls /mnt/media_rw/ | head -n 1`
FULL_PATH="/mnt/media_rw/$SERIAL"
SERIAL_LENGTH=${#SERIAL}
LINK_NAME="/external_sd"

if [ -e $LINK_NAME ] ; then
    echo "Link already exists!"
elif [[ $SERIAL_LENGTH -lt 1 ]] ; then
    echo "Badly formed path!"
elif [ ! -d "$FULL_PATH" ] ; then
    echo "SdCard path not found!"
else
    mount -o rw,remount /
    ln -s $FULL_PATH $LINK_NAME
    mount -o ro,remount /
fi

This script assumes:

that init.d scripts aren't being blocked by SEAndroid,
that your device needs to be turned off to change the sdcard, and
that it only has space for one sdcard.

I assume the reason for the introduction of serial numbers in the sdcard path is for devices with space for more than one sdcard.


text:
Can't boot to Clockwork Recovery on Atrix (several methods tried)
I have a Motorola Atrix 4G, with AT&T Carrier.  Android 2.3.4
EDIT 11/6/2011: I don't know if this means anything, but I don' have an sdcard in it.
I have rooted it using this tutorial.
I installed Rom Manager and installed the Clockwork Recovery Image, with success (supposedly).
Here are where the problems occur.  When I turn off the phone and turn it back on, while holding the volume down button, I get the big red M and scroll down to "Android Recovery" and select that.  I then get "Failed to boot 2".
Ok, so I reboot and go back to my stock rom and try reinstalling the rom, and it down nothing to change the situation.
Next, I try running the fastboot software in the command window on my pc using the command "fastboot flash recovery recovery.img" (recovery.img is the clockwork mod).  On my phone it says "Flashing Partition Recovery" then "Flashing MBR to device" and finally "Failed to process command flash:recovery error(0x180002)".
Any suggestions?  I did google the problem, but the answers I have found didn't apply or didn't work.
Please help, Thanks.

Did you get the recovery.img through ROM Manager?  How exactly did you install it the first time?

The first time I did try, I used the ROM Manager.  Since then I have tried reflashing the ROM with the fastboot flash and the ROM Manager again.

Rooting the Atrix 4G does only that - gives you elevated privileges on stock OS.  In order to be able to install a different recovery image and custom ROMs, the phone's bootloader must be unlocked first.
This is a fairly complicated process that carries the usual warnings and disclaimers of modifying phone software.  It will most definitely void your warranty with AT&T (and possibly with Motorola as well,) so be very certain that your phone is either free of hardware defects, or out of warranty with your carrier before unlocking it.
See this thread on xda-developers forum for further details and installation instructions.

I just unlocked the bootloader last night, and it fixed the problem.  I never thought to check it because I believed that the 2.3 update for the Atrix was supposed to unlock it or something.  Anyways, I now have a rom on it and everything is well.  Hopefully this answer will help someone else.

I've taken a Motorola Atrix a couple of months before and all the threads I found have links to "sbf" (required to unlock) which have been removed from the net (I believe by Motorola itself) so basically I couldn't find any working "sbf" files to be compatible with firmware 2.3.4 nor a version of a program fastboot with inside a command called oem unlock available (all the versions I have tried are telling me that "unlock is not implemented")
I was not able to un-lock the Atrix for my girlfriend which is very depressing, because the actual ROM installed burns the battery in a very short space of time.
So, can anybody point me to a website that has a "sbf" file that works with Firmware 2.3.4 or a fastboot.exe which has enabled the function oem unlock
Thanks for help


text:
How can I forward SMS via Jabber (XMPP) to read them on a PC?
I want my received SMS to automagically be forwarded via Jabber (XMPP), so I can read them on my current PC.
I don't want to send SMS from my computer, though I would not mind the feature as an extra bonus.
How can I achieve this?

Why Jabber? Try Air Droid..

@SachinShekhar Because I want it :) I want to instaread my SMS on my current PC.

Related: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/4738/how-can-i-be-informed-through-my-computer-if-a-new-sms-is-received and http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/1784/how-do-i-send-sms-from-pc-through-android-phone-or-to-android-phone

If you want this for a separate phone number (not relayed over your android device or similar) you could look into https://jmp.chat

GTalkSMS (Google Project Page) does what you want (and much more).
Edit: After actively developing GTalkSMS, I decided that it's time to spawn a new project called MAXS. See my second answer.
Note: According to the FAQ I have to disclose that I am involved into GtalkSMS. GTalkSMS is an open source GPL licensed Android app. Everyone can contribute.

MAXS (Modular Android XMPP Suite) does what you want, and much more. You can reply to incoming SMS messages or send them via XMPP. All you need is a standard XMPP client on your PC.
Note: According to the FAQ I have to disclose that I am involved into MAXS. MAXS is an open source GPLv3 licensed Android app. Everyone can contribute.

If XMPP is not a must have you should check out MightyText app and Chrome extension.
I use it every day. You don't need to have your phone near you because you see SMS messages and you can respond from the app. You can even initiate a phone call from the extension (web app).

@al-everett, thanks for correction, I learn a lot with that :)

Always happy to help.


text:
How can a third party app run in safe mode?
I had a problem with my phone restarting at random, and it all started when I asked a third party app, FX File Explorer, to carry out a task (searching for duplicate files). So I duly rebooted the phone in safe mode.
The phone crashed on reboot, but with a cache wipe I was able to start it again and it was verifiably in Safe Mode.
FX File Explorer was absent from the home screen as expected and absent from the app list. I tried to force it to stop through app manager, but the phone just hangs, tried to uninstall it but with the same problem.
Moving back to another task using the recent apps list (Overview screen), I noticed that FX File Explorer had a window in that list. I touched on it and it opened, a fully functioning app. I thought safe mode was supposed to disable third party apps?
Firstly, how does FX File Explorer get to be still running even in safe mode?
Secondly, how do I stop it? Force stop just hangs forever until the phone restarts, uninstall just hangs forever. The phone appears to be working fine until I actually ask it to do anything (open an app, uninstall anything etc) then it just hangs. Being fairly sure it's FX File Explorer that's causing the problem, I need to stop it, but nothing seems to be able to get to it.

If that doesn't help try Firelord's solution https://android.stackexchange.com/q/129427/131553

@beeshyams I appreciate the pointer. It's not a device administrator (I managed to check that), but I can't do anything with Google Play because all apps just hang when I ask them to do anything significant. I really don't know enough to follow the answer you've linked, but will have a go if all else fails.

@beeshyams Just to confirm, I can't do anything with USB connection because "USB connectivity is not responding". Like everything other app, it just hangs when I ask anything of it.

Bit drastic because you will lose data but doing a factory reset comes to mind

@beeshyams Yes, I think it's coming to that. Although I'm half expecting to get "Factory Reset is not responding. Would you like to close it?". I can't even do a software repair from the PC because USB connectivity won't work. I can't believe everything can go from completely fine to completely screwed in the space of one action.

You may like to wait for some other suggestions


text:
How to determine the cause behind various apps freezing, including system apps?
I understand if this is too broad a question, but on the off-chance there is at least a broad category of problems anyone could point me to...
I've had a problem with the phone after asking a third party file managing app (FX File Explorer) to look for duplicate files (usually quite a long operation). It failed to complete, and since then nothing has been working on the phone and it keeps restarting. The weird thing is (or at least weird in my experience). It hasn't frozen or crashed. It's just that everything seems to be finding it hard to do anything. It's exactly the same in safe mode.
I turned on some developer tools (CPU indicator and notification for unresponsive apps). I don't really know what the CPU indicator is showing me (having no point of reference), but it spiked very quickly one time to cover almost the whole screen then calmed down to sit about a quarter along, so I'm presuming CPU usage is far from full. The unresponsive app notification is more telling as every minute or so a new app comes up with "... is not responding. Would you like to close it?". Basically everything is not responding.
I also tried checking running apps and cached processes, the third party app is not still running, just the usual set of background Google apps.
I can't do any USB debugging or software repair because "USB connectivity is not responding". I can't uninstall or re-install anything because "Settings is not responding" and "Google Play is not responding". I can't even use certain developer tools because many of those are "...not responding"
I realise this means I'm probably out of options, but before a factory reset (or the bin!) I'd just like to try and understand what could have happened. At least I could possibly avoid it next time.
Just to add - I've just done a Factory Reset. The problem is still there, apps don't respond, I can't uninstall anything, USB connection doesn't respond (or does respond but keeps dropping out) and after a while it will spontaneously restart. How on earth can one operation do this to a phone?

Malware is the only thing I can think of

@beeshyams Scary! Even after a factory reset?

Yes. Some stubborn malware get elevated privileges which make them reside in /system , which makes factory reset useless ( I am not clear how exactly they do that). Only option left is to flash  stock / custom ROM

@beeshyams Oh dear. I will look into those two options then. Thanks again for your help.

Welcome. Please post your solution once resolved. May help others

Which Android device and Android version are you using? Can you link that third party app you used, post which, this issue started to bug you? I'm afraid, as beeshyams noted, this is most likely a system level malware, but an analysis won't hurt to prevent this problem in future.  Is the device rooted or bootloader unlocked btw?

@Firelord Sony Xperia Z2 on Android 6 (I think). I didn't want to necessarily tarnish the reputation of the app that started it all in case I was wrong about identifying it as the cause. It's a really popular app so I doubt there's anything seriously wrong with it. I don't really know much about these things, but don't you actually have to download malware on Android? I don't think I downloaded anything I only use this device for mapping, communication and browsing the news/weather. It would have to be a seriously cunning bit of malware to hide in any of the tasks this phone is put to.

... no, I wasn't rooted or bootloader unlocked (not knowing what either were at the time), but it is now. I finally have it working again after unlocking the bootloader and flashing a new ROM, at least I think that's what I did. When I've caught up with all the work that I'm now two days behind on, I can post the exact process if anyone thinks it will be helpful, it was quite Herculean.

I'm glad you managed to fix the device on your own. Yes, please do post an answer whenever you can. :-)

Well, after a week of working perfectly well, it's started doing the same thing again, really slow, apps not responding, restarting at random. Given this is a completely wiped phone with a new stock ROM, I'm presuming I can rule out malware? So what's left? It's an older phone, have Sony started to deliberately slow them down with updates like Apple and Samsung did?


text:
How to get the IMEI number of a lost phone?
I lost my Android phone Vivo 1713 (v5s) recently. I don't know its IMEI number. How do I get it?

I believe IMEI is a unique number given. No one can tell yours unless you modify it for other purposes

Login to the "Find my Device" page with your Google Account that was used on your phone. Your phone should be listed. Click the "!" button to see the IMEI number of the phone. You should see something like this:


text:
How to login only to Google Music and not the other Google services?
I have Google Music All Access and I have an old unused Huawei Honor floating around. I want to set it up as a Google Music playing device for the kitchen.
I am wondering now: How do I login only for Google Music?
I want to allow guests access to the device in a sort of kiosk mode, but I would not like them having access to my mails and other private data.

As someone who tried to keep a select few Google apps from opening a bevy of other Google apps, just to preserve battery life, and that failed so spectacularly that I opted to use non-Google apps, I have a suspicion you really can't do it unless GMusic runs in kiosk mode (possible; I use iPods for kiosk music so I'm not sure about GMusic).
If GMusic doesn't have a kiosk mode, maybe you can run GMusic in a kiosk browser like SureFox? (I think you can, but it's been a while since I've tried GMusic). There are several of those to try.
But I imagine your best bet is seeing if one of the paid kiosk apps works well with your phone. Note that some of those apps reportedly "mess up" certain phones/tablets, so check the reviews on Playstore for your particular device before trying/buying one.


text:
How to have Moto Tag be listed in Find My Device?
I bought a Motorola Moto Tag.
I can pair the tag, I can see it in the companion Moto Tag app. Here, I can let the Moto Tag ring.
Yet if I follow the button to find my device on the map, I see Google's Find My Device, yet my Moto Tag is not listed.
If lookup my Moto Tag via the bluetooth settings, and Find Devive, I get a view stating that my Moto Tag is not connected.
What am I missing? How to add Moto Tag to Find my Device, so that I can view it on the map?

I think I located the issue by the Moto Tag not realyzing that the Find My Device has been enabled. It asks to enable the Find My Device, yet it never continues.
All I can do is cancel or swipe the menu away:
Prompt

Enabling the Option

Yet not found in Find My Device, asking again to enable:

I am using a One Plus 9 Pro having Android 14 (October 2024).
I could update the Moto Tag to firmware 2.0.35 (it had 2.0.19), yet issue persists.
I tried resetting the Moto Tag via one-tap, quickly followed by an at least 5 second tap while holding until it beeps. Yet on reconnect, the issue remains.

Related: https://support.google.com/android/thread/295299000/moto-tag-not-visible-on-my-find-my-device-on-browser?hl=en

Related: https://www.reddit.com/r/motorola/comments/1fv4cow/problem_moto_tag_does_not_appear_under


text:
How to fix HP printer only printing blank page when trying to print from Android phone?
I have a HP 5520 connected via WiFi, I can print from a Windows PC, I can print from an iPhone, yet once I try printing from an Android phone (e.g. Samsung 10e, One Plus 9 Pro) all I get is one white page. The Android phones are on Android versions 13 to 14.
The Android phones can see the printer, I can also access the printer's internal server.
The phones have the apps HP Smart and the HP print  service plugin installed.
The only way it would print is to use the ePrint feature, which basically turns my home based printer into a cloud-printer and I find it unreasonable to send private data from an Android phone per email to HP servers. This may be a workaround for someone, but ia no option for me.
I tried factory resetting the printer, yet still: when printing from Android phones all I get is one blank page.
Is there any way I can fix that or is this a known bug?

Related but no duplicate as not random: https://superuser.com/questions/450054/hp-4015-printer-randomly-printing-blank-pages

There's similar bug reports on HP forums yet the provided help is absolute generic copy paste unhelpfulness: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Tablets-and-Mobile-Devices-Ready-Only/blank-page-when-printing-from-Android-device/td-p/7928548

From what I can find the HP 5520 supports AirPrint which is for Apple products. There may be Android apps which support sending via that protocol.

@MorrisonChang I am open to app suggestions, as the search is not looking great: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17417265/printing-from-android-over-airprint

Related: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4293975/printing-to-an-airprint-printer-from-android

Based on https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/436250/64146 and I'm inclined to think that the holdup is the lack of a good open-source "Apple Raster Format (URF) encoder" which AirPrint devices use.


text:
How to fix TV stream over VLC Android crashes instantly, yet plays on Windows?
I have a FRITZ!Box 6690 Cable that offers TV streams. I can watch TV on the official Fritzbox TV App on my One Plus 9 Pro (Oxygen 13.1), I can open the stream on Windows through VLC and it plays fine.
Yet, my goal is to cast the signal to Chromecast. The official app doesn't feature a cast button, so I'm trying VLC.
Yet, on both Chromecast and my Android phone, the stream plays for a couple of milliseconds (I see a bunch of frames and hear the sound, so it's actually playing the stream), only to exit immediately.
How can I force VLC on Chromecast to play the stream?

@k0pernikus The "official Fritzbox TV App" you mention, on what platform is it executed? What Chromecast do you have? AFAIR there are three or four different versions with different capabilities.

@Robert Oxygen 13.1, yet the app has no "Cast to Chromecast" feature.

I ditched VLC once I discovered these two apps:

dream Player TV for FritzBox (Chromecast TV App)
dream Player for FritzBox (Android App for smartphones)

dream Player TV
I installed it directly on my Chromecast TV.
While the free version only allows navigating to 3 channels per list, it (at the time of this writing) also allows sorting the tv channels, so you basically can watch all channels as long as you don't mind sorting the channels once in a while.
For my use case, the free version suffices. The full premium version costs 7,99 EUR.

Player for Fritzbox
Fritzbox Player are for Android phones. It is available as a free version having advertisement, or as as premium 3,49 EUR variant. You are not limited in the channel selection. The phone app might have to transcode the signal in real time, so depending on your phone's capabilities you might run into playback issues.
This solves the other use case of casting a TV channel to a Chromecast from the phone.

Note: I am not affiliated with the developer. Their apps solves my use case though and was the most straight forward solution I could find.


text:
How can I flash ClockWorkMod on my Samsung Galaxy Fit running froyo?
I was following instructions on xda-developers to install a new ROM, then it linked to these instructions about installing CWM on Samsung GT-S5670. The problem is, there's a Warning there that says:

I take no support for RFS file system So this Recovery will not work
  for Stock ROM or Custom ROM that using RFS file system. Also this
  Recovery will not work for froyo baseband

My device matches both conditions.
I did a mount and checked the output, both /system and /cache are RFS. And I'm running stock Android 2.2.1 JXKA4 baseband (And there's no official update from what I know).
Now, I searched everywhere, and found someone who ported this to support RFS filesystems. I'm not sure that's what I want though, because I will be installing an ext4 ROM.
I also read in the forums about people bricking their device with ROM Manager, as it is not currently supported... (and with the method I linked to also with android 2.2)
I guess I definitely need Odin, but can't find the right version (official or not) of CWM to flash? What do I risk trying to flash the one on xda-developers forum, most probably bricking right?
Or maybe should I use another recovery for my device?
UPDATE:
I just read this thread. It seems there is not other way but to:

First of all upgrade to Gingerbread via Kies/ODIN. Then, install CWM
  via ODIN. Download any ROM and flash via CWM.

So, for CWM 5 on Samsung Galaxy Fit to work, you need to have Gingerbread flashed, and ad my phone has never had the Gingerbread official update, I think I will have to flash another stock ROM (another region), then flash CWM, then probably flash a custom ROM.
Additionally I thought I might install that RFS based CWM to backup stock ROM, then go on flashing a custom ROM.
I'll try it, and if it works, I'll post an answer and accept it.

You should be able to flash the recovery with Ext4 support and then immediately flash the ROM, but I don't know the details for sure.  You are unlikely to perma-brick unless you flash a bootloader, Odin-ing to stock should undo anything else.

@MatthewRead The problem is that I can't make a Nandroid backup before flashing CWM or similar, and I'd rather do that beforehand... I don't want to take any risk.

Odin is better than Nandroid, but I understand.

This is what I ended up doing, just in case this might help someone else:

I tried flashing CWM 5 for RFS file systems via Odin. It's actually straightforward, and then the phone reboots normally. However, trying to get to the recovery mode fails. (I'm not sure how exactly, but it wouldn't work for me, I think it hanged at the recovery screen with android written on it).
(I freaked out) Then I downloaded a stock ROM (indian, based on 2.3.6) from samfirmware. Flashed it through Odin again. The device reboots (and takes some time) and you're on 2.3.6!
Then I flashed CWM 5 for Galaxy Fit (also from Odin) from the forums. It went smoothly. It will also boot into the stock ROM, and into the recovery.
From there, I didn't really try to do a Nandroid backup. (I supposed it would fail).
Then I formatted /data, /cache, ... Then moved the update zip file (the ROM) onto the SD card. And from recovery, installed it.

It's really not a big deal, if you're worried as I was. A simple backup of all your user data and apps via TitaniumBackup or similar, and your contacts synced to Google or exported to the SD in csv format, and you won't even feel the transition.


text:
Getting verification error when attempting to "adb sideload" the OTA update on Nexus 7 (2013)
Notes:

Tablet is unlocked and rooted (SuperSU Pro v1.75)
I have the following recovery flash in place: TWRP 2.6.3.0, but I am booting stock recovery for the adb sideload invocation
The drivers are installed, host is Win 7 x64 and the device is detected in every mode (MTP, USB debug, bootloader)

When attempting to adb sideload (via stock recovery) the file 7d9b309e11da82edb5373a1f59965bca89f6041f.signed-razor-KRT16S-from-JSS15R.7d9b309e.zip on my Nexus 7 (2013) [Wi-Fi], I receive an error:
Finding update package...
Opening update package...
Verifying update package...
Installing update...
Verifying current system...
"/system/app/Drive.apk" has unexpected contents.
E:Error in /tmp/update.zip
(Status 7)
Installation aborted.

What am I doing wrong? What do I have to change in order to make the adb sideload succeed?

There's also a chance you can use another recovery / bootloader. To install latest CM on my XT925, for instance, I had to use the custom image from download page (it's even a little smaller than clockwork's one). Also keep in mind that rebooting from fastload into bootloader can be very, very tricky, as it may be replaced by stock bootloader on reboot.

Goal
If you have the OTA image downloaded and, as in my case, ended up without success you should be able to adb sideload <filename> it still manually (video here).
Problem/Error
... unfortunately the OTA update via adb sideload errors out with:
Finding update package...
Opening update package...
Verifying update package...
Installing update...
Verifying current system...
"/system/app/Drive.apk" has unexpected contents.
E:Error in /tmp/update.zip
(Status 7)
Installation aborted.

where /system/app/Drive.apk could be any system app.
Who's not to blame?

TWRP is not to blame, I thought so in the beginning, but it would work with TWRP as well.
TitaniumBackup Pro. Since I rooted my device and use a power-user feature, I should have known of its side-effects. Now I do know, though :) ... and there's a good chance you learn about this from this answer now.

Apparent cause of the error
Using Titanium Backup Pro I had used the "freeze" feature to get rid of some of the system apps, namely:

ASUS Keyboard
Calendar
Calendar Storage
com.android.providers.partnerbookmarks
com.android.sharedstoragebackup
com.google.android.voicesearch
Exchange Services
Gmail
Google One Time Init
Google Play Books
Google Play Games
Google Play Magazines
Google Play Movies
Google Play Music
Google Search
Google Text-to-speech Engine
Hangouts
iWnn IME
iWnnIME Keyboard (White)
One Time Init

This was apparently why the adb sideload bailed out early with the error message given in my question.
I also uninstalled some of the system apps, and I think I remember "Drive" (remember?: /system/app/Drive.apk) was one of them.
The solution
I found the solution over at forum.xda-developers.com in this answer. The gist is that if you have a modified image, you need to restore that to make the OTA sideload succeed.
First download the stock image for the build you currently have. Make sure it's the correct one for your device. So I was trying to upgrade from JSS15R to KRT16S on the Wi-Fi version, which meant I needed to download the 4.3 (JSS15R) image. That was the file razor-jss15r-factory-ec2d4f76.tgz in my case. I then unpacked that which gave me a subfolder named razor-jss15r. Inside of it there were shell scripts, a .img file and a .zip (image-razor-jss15r.zip). The latter needed to be unpacked. Then I had the .img files in the folder I unpacked the .zip into:

boot.img
cache.img
recovery.img
system.img
userdata.img

Then I followed the steps outlined in the linked answer:

boot into bootloader (keep Volume-down and Power pressed directly after turning it on)
connect USB (make sure before that, that all USB drivers are installed)
change into the folder with the previously unpacked .img files
check from the Android SDK prompt that you see the device with fastboot devices.
then execute fastboot flash system system.img which will flash a stock system partition

Note: unlike in the linked post, I left out the step with the fastboot erase system because that is apparently implied by fastboot flash system system.img as can be seen from the output. I also left out fastboot flash boot boot.img and fastboot flash recovery recovery.img because I thought it was unlikely that these "partitions" had been modified (I was right). You may need the latter two, though. It would probably depend on what you have modified that prevents the adb sideload step (i.e. read and understand the error message).
Here's the output:
# fastboot flash system system.img
erasing 'system'...
OKAY [  1.160s]
sending 'system' (603447 KB)...
OKAY [ 19.786s]
writing 'system'...
OKAY [ 26.720s]
finished. total time: 47.668s

Et voila, a clean system that can be OTA updated.
So in short, you may only need to fastboot flash system system.img from the stock image you are running, if you ever get an error during the verification phase:
Verifying current system...
"/system/<SOME>.apk" has unexpected contents.
E:Error in /tmp/update.zip
(Status 7)

Download for factory images (Nexus 7, both)

Factory Images "razor" for Nexus 7 [2013] (Wi-Fi)
Factory Images "razorg" for Nexus 7 [2013] (Mobile)


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Is the maximum size of the SD card for the S9+ really limited to 400 GB?
Note: while this is not an exact duplicate, this question is a duplicate in that it asks where the limitation is located (software/hardware ...). So I think marking this as a duplicate is warranted, even though my question was model-specific.
I have an S9+ from Samsung and I am considering to upgrade to 512 GB or even 1 TB as it would make space for Kiwix ZIM files.
However, Samsung marketing material suggests a limit of 400 GB (i.e. 400x1000x1000x1000 Byte). This sounds arbitrary (not the usual power of two and the discrepancy between GiB and GB which may be accounted for by reserved space - in case of corruption - doesn't change that). Now, perhaps there is a technical reason that I am unaware of, but from the OS side (Linux/Android) I can't understand why there would be a limitation to 400 GB. SDXC seems to be the supported standard and should support up to 2 TiB (i.e. 2x1024x1024x1024x1024 Byte).
Is this limit simply owed to what was available around the release of the S9+ or is it an artificial limitation imposed by Samsung customizations to Android, or is there perhaps no limitation?

There was a question very similar to this, were the conclusion was, that the advertised maximum capacity is the capacity that is guaranteed to work and was the largest they had at the time. There are numerous phones, that advertise 16 or 32GB of maximum SD card capacity and work fine with 64 oder even 128GB.

@GiantTree thanks, do you happen to remember which previous question that was? I noticed plenty of other questions similar to mine, but not for the same phone model. And since these others all referred to specific phone models I didn't think anything of asking for my specific phone model. Although it wouldn't strictly be a duplicate, it might be worthwhile to mark mine and other questions as dupes of that one question you mention, because if that is the case it answers it enough to make a call as to whether one wants to buy such SD card or not.

I don't think it's about model or manufacturer, it should be a general question about the capability of SD Host Controller. If you need information about a specific device, ask the manufacturer directly that where at hardware or software level they put the limitation on SD card size, which they would never reveal. So mostly answers to such questions would be guesses, ideas or opinions.

@IrfanLatif I disagree. It stands to reason that there have been users encountering the same marketing material but they had a 512 GB microSD card around and simply tried it out. As you can tell from my question I already reasoned about the fact that the stated limitation doesn't make much sense to me. But there's always the chance I - as an individual - am missing something, which is why I turned to "the hive mind". True, no one who hasn't tried firsthand would be able to give an authoritative answer, but contacting the vendor is equally pointless (as you note yourself).

@0xC0000022L this question IIRC: https://android.stackexchange.com/a/129539/86358

Possible duplicate of Is the external storage size limit hardware or software?

I can now confirm that the S9+ supports a 1 TB μSD card just fine.
After a colleague had outfitted his phone with a 512 GB card, I decided to give it a try, because it was already above the limit Samsung claimed was supported but well below the limit one should expect for SDXC (see my question).

Edit (February 2021): Due to the other answer which appeared here, I wanted to update the screenshot and also wanted to state which model I use: Sandisk Extreme (not Extreme Pro, though).
Also note: I have meanwhile read in several places that phone manufacturers indeed specify the "supported card size" based on the SD cards available at time of the release of a phone model.

I have an S9+ and wanted to upgrade my micro sd card to a larger size. I bought a 1TB and the pictures worked fine but after a month suddenly the more recent pictures started to corrupt. Literally before my eyes my pictures in my photo gallery suddenly became grey squares and could no longer be viewed. So Samsung advertises the limit of 400GB for the S9 sd card and my experience seems to prove that it can work maybe but becomes very unstable and can stop working at any moment. I am having to get a smaller sd card. :(

Well, my question would be then, how comes it has worked for me will for over one year, all the while the card was/is filled "to the brim" with well over 800 GiB of data? And yes, I can access it still, oldest and new data. From experience with flash storage it seems a lot more likely you went for a "sweet deal" and the controller reported the size you expected, but the factual size is smaller. So over a certain amount new data starts overwriting old data. Of course it could also be that your card simply died on you.

I have updated the screenshot and I am stating the model of the SD card I am using. It's the same since I initially answered my own question. And as I mentioned before, it works quite fine. Even the older screenshot proved that 400 GB isn't a hard limit. The new one should prove that neither is 512 GB. So you have a colleague of mine with the same phone who proved 512 GB worked, you have me having a 1 TB card, proving it works. Don't you think you'd at least want to adjust your answer with some more information? Can a PC read and write the stated volume of the card, for example?

How about testing your card on another device, preferably a PC with an SD card reader, using a tool like h2testw? Caution: it's a destructive process, but since you're already losing data, perhaps we could establish whether your card is genuinely 1 TB (like mine) or not. Leave it running over night, it'll take ages.


text:
Connect microSD card with your PC folder via Wi-Fi only
Suppose you sit in an office where you have high speed wi-fi internet connection to which you can connect your android mobile phone. On your office pc you have some downloaded videos , pictures etc. that you want to transfer to your mobile micro SD card. Now at home where you dont have internet connection, but you want to see those videos and pictures.
Unfortunately you don't have data card cable or you don't want to use data card.
Is there any application for doing such stuff
[idea is similar to dropbox app, but you should have active internet connection everywhere]

Option 1.
I will explain the setup I am using for past couple of years over various devices.
I use Swiftp in android to make a FTP server. This project is abandoned now, but the apk works on 4.2 jellybean (not sure about 4.3). Or as an alternative you can setup a FTP server via most file managers these days, eg Solid Explorer. Setup a username and password for the FTP server and start FTP server in the phone.
Then I use Filezilla in the PC (which is on same Wi-Fi network as the phone) and connect with the credentials to the FTP server set up on the android phone/tablet.
This will enable you to transfer files from PC to phone and viceversa.
Option 2.
Use AirDroid. Simple to setup and easy to use. I will recommend this over FTP server.
Good Luck.


text:
Why are the speakers on my HTC One so quiet?
I just got a new HTC One, and while it is brilliant, the speaker volume is awful. Headphones sound really good, but even with the media volume all the way up, the speakers are too quiet. This means that I often miss navigation directions, etc.
Is there a hidden speaker volume? Ideally, I do not want to install a custom ROM or root my phone, but any suggestions would be useful.

At least related: How can I boost the music volume higher than the max limit? / How can I make my Samsung Galaxy Nexus volume go louder than what stock allows? / How can I increase the maximum speaker volume? / How to increase speaker volume of HTC Evo 3D

Thanks for the links, but I was looking for something that doesnt require a special app / rooting / pointless advice to use earphones. My old galaxy S had good speaker volume. In fact it was so loud i pretty much always had it on silent......

I'm afraid then you're out of luck. But not having that particular device, I of course cannot say for sure.

Try checking if BoomSound is activated. It is supposed to improve the sound a lot.You are supposed to see a "b" icon on the top bar when it is activated.
Go to Settings > Sound > Volumes
When using speakers it is enabled by default and it doesn't allow you to disable it. What may happen, though, is that when you have earphones plugged it, you can disable it. If, perhaps you have it disabled, then you remove the earphones and the HTC doesn't detect that you removed the earphones, BoomSound can be disabled.
If that's the case, try inserting the earphone again and enabling BoomSound. Then remove the earphones and see if that works.
I have an HTC M8 and and M9. I have had similar issues before.

If the other answers don't work, you can try installing ViPER4Android, it can boost audio as much as you'd like. (though it will require root unfortunately.)

I recommend you to check with another identical phone(from a friend, or from the store) Your phone might a defect

Perhaps, if this wasn't 2.5 years after the issue.


text:
Can't install USB driver for Zopo ZP300+ on Windows 7 64-bit
When I enabled USB debugging in settings for Zopo ZP300+, an unrecognized device appeared in device manager: H9000+.
Then I followed this: https://web.archive.org/web/20160918125953/http://www.zopomobileshop.com:80/zopo-rom/how-to-install-driver-for-zopo-mobile-phone-step-by-step-instruction/. MT65XX Preloader replaced with "MediaTek PreLoader USB VCOM Port (COM3)", then it disappeared. I unplugged the USB, turned on the phone, and plugged it back in. No new drivers were installed. H9000+ is still unrecognized. Eclipse says: No compatible targets were found.

You might want to try Koush's Universal ADB driver.

I used the wrong driver. H9000+ means you need ZOPO MTK6577 DRIVER.


text:
Google Hangouts keeps history regardless of settings
I use Hangouts to chat with friends. As I don't want to keep history, I set it to be turned off.
So whenever I chat, in the input line I see a constant message of "History is turned off".
However, when I open Hangouts again, I can see messages that were sent days ago.
A simple question: how can I see older messages with history disabled?

Open the person hangout. You can uncheck conversation history and you can delete conversation.

The history setting only affects messages as they are sent. Turning history off doesn't delete old messages that were sent while history was turned on. If you want to delete your old messages as well as stopping new messages being saved, you can do this with Delete in the chat's menu (or Delete history in the web-based client).

No, I deleted all the messages a long time ago and turned off history and now I can see the messages that I sent this afternoon. I need them gone without any interaction.

Go to settings, apps and touch the app, and click clear data. Now check if you are able to change the settings and the the settings works.


text:
WhatsApp Settings in Samsung S3 - Where do I find it?
I use WhatsApp on my Samsung S3. I have some questions:

I can't find any settings option. I reinstalled the app and still cannot find the settings option anywhere. Am I missing something?
Is there any setting for showing notifications on the icon (new messages received, etc.)?

Showing notifications on the icon? Like in iPhone? Android doesn't work like that. Notifications are displayed at the top (notification bar).

There is a really simple answer for this. The settings button isn't on the screen, but rather on the phone itself. People often forget that the phone has those 4 buttons : Settings, home, back, and search.

The Samsung Galaxy SIII has three hardware buttons below the screen (from left to right: Menu key, Home Key, and Back Key). You can access the device settings by clicking the Menu key after swiping the screen to unlock it and then clicking on Settings on the menu that pops up on the screen. Once you click on the WhatsApp icon on the Home Screen or on one of the Apps Screen of the Android OS, you can also hit the Menu key to bring up the WhatsApp Options and click there. Android devices also have what is called a Notification Drawer. When you receive a WhatsApp message it will appear in the Notifications Drawer which you can slide out onto your screen by swiping your finger from the top of the screen downwards.

Apps on Android don't change their icon to show that there are new notifications, the notifications appear in the Notification Bar at the top of the screen instead, so that they're always available at a glance, even when you're running other apps.
In Android apps manage their own notifications, so to change WhatsApp's notification settings you need to open the WhatsApp app, and then press your device's Menu button (or press the ... ellipses icon in the top right of the screen)

Then select Settings

And then select Notifications, you can then see the various options that WhatsApp has for alerting you about different types of messages.

Hi geffchang, there is no ... button on my screen. Only 2 buttons appear- one for a new chat and another for search. I also tries pressing the Menu button...nothing happens. Is there some other way to access this?


text:
Lenovo S920 repeatedly shuts itself off and back on by itself
I just bought a Lenovo S920, new set about a week ago. It's been turning itself off and back on every single day since the second day I bought it, at least once or twice every one hour.
An information that might help you figure this out for me, on the second day I downloaded every app I needed & packed about 70% of the phone storage, plus about 50% of my 32GB microSD. Also, my phone has 4GB Internal storage.
Does it have to do with those apps and tonnes of audio/video files? And ultimately, how to fix it?

Just take it to the authorized service centre and they will fix it. My Lenovo S920 USB connection did not work and in service centre they fixed it saying that the "soldering" of the port disconnected. They corrected it in one hour time. So there could be chance in your on/off switch too. So check with service centre and its safe.

As that behaviour started when you installed all that stuff, it at least suggests a relation. It could be one of the apps causing this; the audio/video files are unlikely to be the culprit.
I'd suggest you factory-reset the device and start over, but do not install all apps at once; instead only install one at a time and see if all stays stable before continuing with the next.
Once the trouble starts over, uninstall the last app you've installed and see if that cures it; if so, skip that app and continue with the next on your list. If all stays stable then, you know which app is problematic: contact its dev for further advice then.

A helpful thing to investigate before going the "hard way" described above is to "debug" the issue. As you didn't state which Android version your device is running, I will describe an approach that should work for most versions:
You need ADB on your computer (see: Is there a minimal installation of ADB? for how to achieve that), and connect your device via USB. Then start adb logcat -v time -f debug.log from your computer's command shell. Let it run.
As soon as the device reboots, stop the logcat task. Now check debug.log from bottom to top to see what initiated the reboot. If you have trouble reading/interpreting it, upload the log and add a link to your question, so we can help you with it.

I had a similar problem with my S920 one year back in Jan 2014. It kept restarted itself every hour or so. Though I did not have too much installed on it, I pinned down the problem to the firmware update S114_130626. A restore back to the original S110_130515 worked for me.
However, now that much of my internal storage is being consumed, I notice that it sometimes (once or twice a week) restarts itself. So, perhaps it could be the full utilisation of the internal storage that is causing the problem.


text:
How to set a tethered Wi-Fi connection (tethered to another phone via Android personal hotspot) as "metered" connection
I have a number of apps set to "Download on Wi-Fi Only" on Android. But the moment I tether, the phone considers itself on Wi-Fi, even if the upstream device is a metered 3G/LTE connection.
Under Windows 10, I can declare a given Wi-Fi connection to be "Metered", and thus save data usage.  Is there an equivalent on Android?  Setting the tethered phone to "Data saver" is a partial solution only.

There is a rather hidden feature, that will let you achieve this:
This option is found under Settings > Data usage (Wireless and Networks).

Tap on the three dots in the top right corner, and press "Mobile Hotspots." (In android 4.3) In later versions of android   the similar option is "Network restrictions" > Metered connections

Next you'll see  a list of saved wireless networks, and you can check the ones which are mobile hotspots.

Edit
I have included the screenshots for Android 7, since interface and options are different from Android 4.3 above:

Such that the options are found under Settings > Data usage (Wi-Fi) > Network restrictions > Metered connections

In this way Android applies the same data restrictions as it does with "Data connections" so no data hogging.
Update
Other devices like Huawei have this setting hidden but can be also enable using adb:
After setting up adb, follow this proceedure to set a metered wi-fi network.

In a command prompt or terminal, execute the following command: adb
  shell
Type the following command into the command prompt or terminal to get a list of all saved WiFi networks: cmd netpolicy list
  wifi-networks
You’ll be given a list of saved WiFi networks with a true/false boolean value. True = metered & False = non-metered.
So from here, you can enter the following command in a command prompt or terminal to change the setting: cmd netpolicy set
  metered-network Wireless true
     (In this case the SSID  is “Wireless”)
You can always revert the setting to false if you want to switch it back to a non-metered network.

Hope this helps

On Android 7.1, this is in a slightly different place: Settings->Data Usage->(WiFi) Network Restrictions

@mattm Thanks for putting this up, please feel free to edit if you like.

Was unable to follow these steps (Huawei p20 lite), comment by @mattm did not help as I cannot even find data usage. -- I did find a data saver somewhere (which might help on an ad hoc basis) but doubt whether it is the same.

@DennisJaheruddin I have updated the answer to workarounds for devices with this setting hidden.


text:
How to USB tether on a Samsung Galaxy Tab A?
I want to USB tether my Samsung Galaxy Tab A (10 in) to my laptop so that I can use it as a second monitor via SpaceDesk in locations with crappy Wi-Fi. So this question will be about USB tethering, but if you know of a way to reliably use my tablet as a second monitor that doesn't require USB tethering, I'd love to hear it!
The tablet doesn't have cellular connectivity, and perhaps for that reason, USB tethering doesn't appear under Settings / Connections (or anywhere else that I can see). I'm looking for any practical way to enable it. This can involve rooting or installing a modded OS, although of course if there's a more straightforward way, I'd prefer that route.

For anyone also looking to use Spacedesk when the WiFi is crappy, see my post and answer here:  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48729541/how-to-use-spacedesk-over-a-wired-connection/48780162#48780162

You can enable usb tethering through adb shell. Root is needed in order to execute these commands:
After adb setup on your machine (if you haven't already setup adb, please see detailed instructions here: Download Minimal ADB and Fastboot Tool & Setup guide, perform these commands:

The following commands call
  ConnectivityManager.setUsbTethering(boolean enable) in Android 4:

adb shell su -c service call connectivity 34 i32 1 turns on USB tethering.
adb shell su -c service call connectivity 34 i32 0 turns off USB tethering.
(For other Android versions replace 34 with the following setUsbTethering calling codes per Android version):
5.1.0: 30
6.0.1: 30
7.0.0: 33

Credits
Is it possible to USB tether an android device using adb through the terminal?

Thanks. I did this (using code 33 for Android 7), but the "USB Tethering" option still isn't showing up. Any ideas?

I think some manufacturers make this feature unavailable due to a variety of reasons probably in favour of carrier specific tethering apps, you may also oversome this using some third party usb tethering apps e.g foxfi, pdanet to mention a few


text:
How to change file type on renaming?
I have Android 4.0 for Galaxy Note 10.1.
How  do you rename files to change the file extension?
For example, if you have a text file extension .xml how do you rename to .txt

Use one of the many file managers availabe in the Play store?

question or answer?

:-) Meant more linke a hint

Almost all File Manager apps support renaming extensions. Install one from Play Store. Some best ones are: Solid Explorer, ES File Explorer, Astro File Manager, Root Explorer.

The "Android File Manager" I have doesn't seem too, thanks for the answer...


text:
Is there a PDF (or epub) reader that allows to take notes (or at least to copy text)?
I have many PDFs that I would like to read on my Galaxy Tab and then take notes. Preferably the notes would be attached to the document (may be like Skim does), but as a workaround I can also imagine to copy a relevant piece of text into a separate note taking application.
Preferably the reader should handle PDFs directly, but if there is no PDF solution I might also start converting the documents (maybe with Calibre) for an epub reader.
I tried Adobe Reader, ThinkFree Office and Aldiko, all of which have acceptable performance loading the PDFs, but aside from cumbersome zooming they also lack the ability to copy or adding notes.

See also my answer here on a similar question :)

RepliGo Reader ($5) allows you to copy text and to make annotations.
Also, if you convert them to epubs the Nook app allows you to make notes.  It may let you copy text on a non-DRM'd book but I don't have any of those so I'm not able to test it.  (Just note that while the Nook lets you read PDFs the Nook app currently doesnt.

The RepliGo reader is great, it even allows to draw. What it doesn't support is to add bookmarks (probably external to the PDF). Usually you just can add a note instead of a bookmark, but for protected PDFs the only thing you can do is copy text.

I'm glad to hear that you like the app.  It's too bad that it can't create bookmarks or store notes external to the PDF inside the RepliGo app.

ezPDF does bookmarking, multicolor highlighting, has an annotation list, and many more things. It saves to PDF and you can open the saved file later in Skim.

FBReader or CoolReader do read epubs, and you can select text/make bookmarks there.

The Kindle app allows you to highlight and make notes on both books from the Amazon store, and other files like DRm free .Mobi and Txt files, if you copy them into the Kindle folder on the SD card.
These notes won't sync to the web or to other devices, but are stored with that book on your phone, and you can search through the book for your notes and highlights and see them later.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/


text:
I have Unknown Sources enabled on my phone, now what?
Along the same lines as this question. What's so special about enabling Unknown Sources, and what are some things that I should do once it's enabled?

I'd upvote but I ran out of votes last night... check back in ~6 hours.

This allows you to obtain and run an application (i.e. the .apk file) from sources other than the Android Market. (i.e. you get it from a download from a developer's site, from an email, etc.). That's it.
Edit:
Once you enable Unknown Sources this post covers the rest: How can I install an app given only its APK file?.

For example, enabling Unknown Sources allowed me to install the Beta version of the Swype keyboard from http://beta.swype.com/ (but if your phone already has Swype then don't do that)

Ah cool. I had always seen "enabling unknown sources" listed as a thing to do after rooting, but never saw an explanation why.

I don't have "Unknown sources" on my Dell Streak. What should I do to get this option??? Please, help!

@Pavel: You must have AT&T as your carrier. AT&T has (in)famously disabled the "Unknown Sources" option. Unless you're willing to root your phone and install a custom ROM, you're out of luck.

What's so special about enabling Unknown Sources?

It opens the secondary gateway to allow third-party apps to live and prosper in your Android OS. The first, centralized and trustworthy gateway is the Google Play Store.
That setting allows developers to use (not limited to) the following channels for the distribution of their apps:

through an App Marketplace, such as Amazon AppStore, F-Droid and many more
by Email - when the user open your email on their Android-powered device, the Android system recognizes the APK and displays an Install Now button in the email message
through a Website - this involves forums as well.

Source: Alternative Distribution Options
The most common ways to install an app are:

from a system app, such as Google Play Store
from adb, the command-line tool
from native Package Installer app - works only when you enables that Unknown sources setting
from exploits - the bread-and-butter of one-click root apps

As you can see, the first choice ties you down to whatever was shipped with the device; the second choice is not user-friendly and requires PC; fourth is an unsafe choice from any angle; third is the only one left to a user. Special or not, that is what gives you the freedom to  install apps, not found or not available in your region per Play Store, whenever and wherever you want.
Note that some network providers don’t allow users to install applications from unknown sources. -- Source
It is to be noted that it is special not only to you but to developers with malicious intent as well.
Elena, in the article Protect against harmful apps, has noted:

IMPORTANT: Your phone and personal data are vulnerable to attack by apps from unknown sources. If you allow downloading apps from unknown sources, be aware that your phone may be damaged or lose data.

I suppose that warning stems from their strong believe in the following statement found in the same article:

The Google Play Store helps protect your device by blocking potentially harmful apps. Before an app is published to Google Play, it's reviewed to make sure it's not harmful.

(Emphasis mine)

Visit m.getjar.com and go nuts! download cranky birds. It seems to be the game so many people like.
I wonder if there is an android version of Cut the Rope out yet.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/