text:
Broken screen while debug mode was disabled. How can I re-enable adb?
The screen of my phone is physically broken, so it doesn't display anything, but the touch aspect does seem to be working, as I can unlock my phone, and get haptic feedback.
Before I go to get it replaced, I'd like to back up some personal data from the built-in memory to the SD card. I'm fairly certain that if I can get adb to recognize the device, then I can use Android Screencast to see where I am touching the screen and do what I need to do. Problem is, when I plug it in, it's not recognized, while my emulator is.
I suspect that I might not have USB debugging enabled, which I think is necessary for adb to work. If this is the case, can someone give me screenshots of their Droid X (running 2.3.X) going from the home screen, through all the menus, to activating debug mode? Hopefully I can do it by dead reckoning and adb from there.
Edit: I haven't changed anything about the ROM or launcher; it's all stock.

Sounds like the USB connector has been broken too. Can you connect the phone to your computer? If so, then maybe you could set it to be in USB drive mode.

No, the USB connector is fine, I think. When I plug it in, my computer makes the 'device connected' noise, but nothing else happens.

Did you ever accomplish this?

Unfortunately no, I lost the data when I got a replacement phone. I should enable adb on my current phone now to avoid this...

Bluetooth multi-function keyboard like the DiNovo Mini I had lying around, helped w/ a Nexus 7 device where touch screen was broken.

Had exactly the same problem recently (on a friend's Nexus S running stock Android 4.0 with a completely broken screen & digitizer and adb switched off):
Get a recovery system running with adb enabled. Then use adb console to access the device's data and create a backup. On Nexus S you cannot use the sdcard to get the data off the device, so you need to use adb for that.
Prerequisites:

Phone does have fastboot mode with boot command enabled
Phone still works (except for the screen)
SDK installed (with working adb + fastboot executables)
CWM recovery image downloaded to /tmp/cwm.zip (has enabled adb when started)
Linux with installed uudecode (part of package 'sharutils' on Ubuntu)

How to do it:
a) Start device in fastboot mode and boot the CWM recovery this way
me@workstation:~$ fastboot boot /tmp/cwm.zip

b) wait some time for CWM to boot, then log into the device
me@workstation:~$ adb shell
shell@android:/ $ mkdir -p /tmp/backup/data /tmp/backup/sdcard

Replace DATA_DEV and SDCARD_DEV by the real devicenames
depending on your phone, it's most likely one of these:

DATA_DEV: /dev/block/mtdblock*
SDCARD_DEV: /dev/block/mmcblk*
use df command to find candidates by size.
shell@android:/ $ mount -oro <DATA_DEV> /tmp/backup/data
shell@android:/ $ mount -oro <SDCARD_DEV> /tmp/backup/sdcard
shell@android:/ $ exit
me@workstation:~$ adb shell tar czf - /tmp/backup \| uuencode foo | uudecode -o - > /tmp/backup.tar.gz

Caveats and further explanations:

Why uuencode? ADB console seems to intercept the data stream and obviously inserts a carriage return before each single line feed. Uuencoding the data before transmitting it via adb's stdout protects against that.
Does not work on encrypted devices
You can also just repeat the process on unmounted devices and transmit all of the /dev/block/* one by one and figure out which one is for what afterwards
You need to find a suitable CWM recovery image yourself

I typed that first fastboot command. It's stuck on <waiting for device>. What does that mean?

A device in fastboot mode wasn't detected and the program needs either more rights or is waiting for you to plug in a device in fastboot mode. What model do you have? If it's a Nexus or a Sony: is the bootloader unlocked (else fastboot boot doesnt work)? You need to press some unique key combo on each device to boot it into this mode. Note that Samsung phones don't offer the fastboot command mode at all.

Thanks. I have a Motorola Droid Razr Maxx HD. Do I need to hold power button + volume down when booting? I didn't realize that's what "fastboot" mode was, but I just read it on the Motorola site while researching something else. I will try it when I get home from work.

You will probably need to get it fixed, I'm doubtful that this model has an unlocked bootloader that has the fastboot boot feature.

Late addition: Instead of using uuencode, an easier way would be: adb shell "stty raw & tar czf - /tmp/backup" > /tmp/backup.tar.gz. The stty raw tells the system to send the data "raw" (i.e. unaltered) – and not add any carriage returns to it. So one requirement less, as stty is available on the device as it ships.

fastboot boot /tmp/cwm.zip This saved my phone from boot loop. Thumbs up.

is it work on android 10 ??

The Droid X does not have a physical keyboard - but if it did you could try this in a terminal. I'm leaving this answer here for other phones that have busted screens.
setprop persist.service.adb.enable 1
That turns on USB debugging (on a HTC Dream running RC29), and is one of the ways to root the Dream when it has a busted screen.

Where do I type this?

@JasonC In an Android command-line shell. If you don't already have a method of getting to one, you're not going to be able to set one up with the screen broken.

If the device supports USB OTG, you could hook up a USB keyboard, then need to know the key sequence or key combination to bring up a Terminal, then enter the command line.

If the device is capable of USB host mode you can buy a USB-OTG cable (USB on the go) and connect a USB mouse or a USB keyboard to bypass the broken touch screen.

I have GT-I9305 device which should support USB OTG, at least 'google' says so, but if I connect my wireless mouse nothing happens, any ideas how to get cursor working?

@tomasb Were you ever able to get the mouse to be recognized?

@Jason Yes, I was. Both USB OTG and Bluetooth mouse, the solution is quite complex but i haven't found anything simpler (or just working) yet, described here: http://android.stackexchange.com/a/69600/60711 My situation was little bit more complicated because I flashed new ROM thus had my android uninitialized.

I had my digitizer burned (by flashing corrupted recovery) and flashed new ROM and I was able to proceed as described here: https://android.stackexchange.com/a/69600/60711


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Unable to mount /data after multiple wiped
Everytime I try to flash anything from TWRP it says "E: unable to mount /data". I have tried multiple wipes and entirely reflashing the os but everytime i finish setting up the phone after wiping it, it goes back to that error.
Phone is a Samsung J5 Prime (G570Y)

How did you reflash the OS? using TWRP or ODIN?
A simpler solution is to flash Stock Firmware for your device via ODIN & then flash TWRP again.
You might first want to try the solution suggested on this XDA Thread if you are comfortable with using Terminal
https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2683787
Reflashing the Stock Firmware via ODIN will most likely fix this issue.

Alright, i found a solution a few minutes after i posted this question.
The solution is to

download the stock firmware
then open up the AP Tar and
replace the boot.img and recovery.img with the patched kernel and
twrp respectively.
then flash the AP Along with the BL, CL AND CSC
files you get with the stock firmware file.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
SDK versions in aapt command output
Update:
- My first question was answered here, thanks to Andrew's comment.
Quote:

If you specify API level requirements directly in your app's manifest
  file, the corresponding settings in the build files will override the
  settings in the manifest file

I was able to retrieve minSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion by aapt list. In this example, after converting from hex, they are 16 and 26, respectively. I am aware of minSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion which are usually declared in AndroidManifest.xml file. However, I have decompiled the APK file using apktool and checked the AndroidManifest.xml file but  could not see any declaration of targetSdkVersion or minSdkVersion either.
Was that because apktool did not decompile everything or these elements can be declared in other place of the APK instead of the manifest file? (my first question)
aapt list -a  0348e77633b7831d1d56cd2f45023bd4.apk | grep -i sdkversion
A: android:minSdkVersion(0x0101020c)=(type 0x10)0x10
A: android:targetSdkVersion(0x01010270)=(type 0x10)0x1a
...

By issuing aapt d badging. There are sdkVersion:'9' and targetSdkVersion:'26' in the output.
aapt d badging 0348e77633b7831d1d56cd2f45023bd4.apk |head
package: name='com.theborneopost.mobileapp' versionCode='60001' versionName='6.0.1' platformBuildVersionName=''
sdkVersion:'16'
targetSdkVersion:'26'
uses-permission: name='android.permission.INTERNET'
uses-permission: name='android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE'
...

So, are there any differences between targetSdkVersion in aapt and apktool output? Assume that targetSdkVersion is available in AndroidManifest.xml (my second question)
What is sdkVersion in aapt d badging output? (my third question)
Disclaimer: due to limitations, I could not add appropriate tags like aapt or sdkversion to the post.

Some insights on this on Stack Overflow

Andrew, that definitely helps. I will modify my question based on it

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text:
Physical keyboard layout is reset with every reboot
In my Yoga BOOK, which comes with a physical keboard like a laptop, I have to set the layout of the physical keyboard every time I reboot the device. How to keep the settings?
How I set it: Settings, Languages and Input, Physical keyboard, The individual keyboard apps (it forgets the layout of all of them).
Android 7.1.1


text:
Android scoped storage on Android 11 - permission denied
The scenario is that one app is creating some files on its external storage /sdcard/Android/data/myPackageName and during testing automation I need to retrieve some files from that folder using adb.
The compileSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion are set to 31, and also uses:
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />

For some reasons, the adb pull command doesn't work (permission denied) on Android 11 but it works on Android 13 (I used real phones not emulators)
These are the mount points:
Android 13 (Pixel 5)
/dev/block/dm-40 on /storage/emulated/0/Android/data type f2fs (rw,lazytime,seclabel,nosuid,nodev,noatime,background_gc=on,discard,no_heap,user_xattr,inline_xattr,acl,inline_data,inline_dentry,flush_merge,extent_cache,mode=adaptive,active_logs=6,reserve_root=32768,resuid=0,resgid=1065,inlinecrypt,alloc_mode=default,checkpoint_merge,fsync_mode=nobarrier,discard_unit=block)

id result:

uid=2000(shell) gid=2000(shell) groups=2000(shell),1004(input),1007(log),1011(adb),1015(sdcard_rw),1028(sdcard_r),1078(ext_data_rw),1079(ext_obb_rw),3001(net_bt_admin),3002(net_bt),3003(inet),3006(net_bw_stats),3009(readproc),3011(uhid),3012(readtracefs) context=u:r:shell:s0

Android 11 (Pixel 5)
/dev/block/dm-12 on /storage/emulated/0/Android/data type f2fs (rw,lazytime,seclabel,nosuid,nodev,noatime,background_gc=on,discard,no_heap,user_xattr,inline_xattr,acl,inline_data,inline_dentry,flush_merge,extent_cache,mode=adaptive,active_logs=6,reserve_root=32768,resuid=0,resgid=1065,inlinecrypt,alloc_mode=default,fsync_mode=nobarrier)

(the only differences are: discard_unit=block and checkpoint_merge)
id result:

uid=2000(shell) gid=2000(shell) groups=2000(shell),1004(input),1007(log),1011(adb),1015(sdcard_rw),1028(sdcard_r),3001(net_bt_admin),3002(net_bt),3003(inet),3006(net_bw_stats),3009(readproc),3011(uhid) context=u:r:shell:s0

I read a lot of posts, Android documentation etc and but I wasn't able to figure out the reason why this is happening. Why it works on 13 and not on 11? Any idea?

The reason why I posted the question here is because I feel that the issue is related to file systems, so not exactly related to Android development. Anyhow, I can move to SO no prob

Then it would be good to generalize the question, so instead of "my app" use "one app". Please name the phone models you have tested.

can you please update question with output of id? actually never tested A11+ but my assumption was adb can access the whole emulated storage /sdcard

answer updated. The only difference is that the output of id on Android 13 has these additional ids 1078(ext_data_rw),1079(ext_obb_rw), 3012(readtracefs)

1078(ext_data_rw),1079(ext_obb_rw) are exactly the permissions missing. please double check the storage permissions for the app com.android.shell


text:
Remove unused/empty screens on Square Home launcher
I'm using the Square Home launcher and somehow, it creates additional home screens parallel to my main screen. I don't know what triggers this, but right now I have 23 home screens, and 22 of them are empty. And my contacts are at the farther right end of them. That is, I have to swipe left 24 times to reach my contacts from my home screen.
Normally, using the standard Android launcher, I could get rid of empty parallel home screens by pressing and holding some empty place and swiping up the empty home screens. However, that totally does not work here.
Does anyone know how I can get rid of this?

Pinch out on the homescreen
Tap the Edit icon on the bottom right corner.
Delete button should appear

Check the screenshots below

Solved. I didn't think about pinching...


text:
Stock Android always using 100% physical memory. How to free it up with ADB?
I have a non-rooted phone. I just realized why Android is bad at memory management. I'm monitoring running progress in ADB shell with top. I can see the memory is about 100% used.

Image resized. Click for full-size
How do I stop unnecessary processes with ADB shell?
Also, I can't scroll down top command. It shows weird char ^[[b. I think that's because the shell uses sh instead of bash.
Any idea how to free up memory with ADB? Maybe pkill or what.

How to free RAM on Android?. Disclosure: This link belongs to me.

You paid good money for a phone with all that RAM. Why would you want some of it to go unused?

What is the android version? I see you have only 4 GB of RAM which is way too less for the apps in 2023. RAM consumption has increased drastically by apps. I have a 6 GB RAM phone which lags a lot as time goes on. To test (if possible) you can reset the phone once and check RAM usage. If it is similar then you need to upgrade your phone,

Android memory management works differently than traditional OS. The main principle is to keep apps in RAM even if they are not used at the moment because the OS never knows when the user switches back to that app or the app becomes active in the background because of other reasons (e.g. incoming push message). Therefore, apps are kept in RAM unless another app really needs that RAM.
From the Android perspective, having free RAM means that RAM is unused and thus wasted.
It is because when an app has been removed from RAM, it needs to be loaded from flash and then perform the start-up phase. This will always be slower and consume more CPU resources (-> more battery usage) than just switching to an app that is already loaded and present in RAM.
However, RAM always takes the same battery no matter if it is free or used.
If Android OS needs RAM, then it simply closes or kills the oldest unused app (not sure how the OS RAM management decides which app to exit). All Android apps have to be implemented to be resistant to this out-of-memory exiting. In detail, the Android OS will first send a notification to an app it has selected to be exited. If an app receives this notification, it has a very small time span to do some clean-up. If the app does not respond in a certain time, Android will simply kill the app process and thus regain needed RAM.
As you can see, having a system with about 60-100 MB of free RAM is just normal on Android.

What is the point of leaving small free RAM such as 50MB?

@MuhammadIkhwanPerwira Closing an app takes some time may be up to a second. If a foreground process needs more memory and the OS would need to first close apps for gaining the required small amount of RAM you would recognize that as a lag which is undesired.

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text:
Replace notification bar
The default notification bar in Nexus S is very basic. It doesn't have any toggle buttons like others do. Can I replace it?

From what I've seen this is not generally very easy to do. I know that replacing the icons and such requires modifying the underlying framework-res.apk file, and I've never really seen anything that modifies the functionality of the bar itself (aside from custom ROMs with custom frameworks and the like). I'm not completely positive on this, however.
If you just want to get the toggles, though, you could try an app like Notification Toggle. It says that it's a little bit hit-or-miss depending on the device, but I'd imagine that the Nexus S would be on the better end of the scale.

If you are just looking for toggle buttons in the notification bar I would check out Widgetsoid, it's a very full-featured app that will let you create widgets or notification toggles of whatever you want.
If you are looking to change the way the notification bar looks, you will need to have root access and install a theme, which would void your warranty and is only for the highly technical user.

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


text:
Is there a way to see the device's screen *live* on PC, through ADB?
I am a vlogger and after getting HTC Desire HD, found out its camera was all I ever needed. However, I usually have to see myself while recording video, to control my facial expressions, and with a rear-facing camera it's just not possible.
I know ADB allows for screenshots, but is there a way to stream the screen output to my PC's display?
Not necessarily at 20+ fps, just a couple frames per second will do.

Is this question really a duplicate? The other one only asks on how to mirror screen. This one asks to do that via ADB specifically

Try the Android Screencast app.
See the XDA thread for more details.

Looks nice and answers the question I put in my thread's title... But ironically, displays the black bar instead of camera output. I guess it's like print-screening Windows Media Player: you end up with everything except the video itself :(

I'm not sure why you got that problem, but even if it worked appropriately it only gives you a 4-5 fps refresh rate, which is far from "Live".

I doubt you will be able to pipe output from your phone's camera to another device.  Have you tried a more hardware based approach, like setting up a mirror? :)

screenrecord
screenrecord is an internal Android executable that dumps screen to a file, and ffplay from ffmpeg happens to be able to play an H.264 encoded stream from stdin
First enable ADB USB access and then on Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install adb ffmpeg
adb exec-out screenrecord --output-format=h264 - |
   ffplay -framerate 60 -probesize 32 -sync video  -

You might have to make the screen move a bit before you see anything:

Uncut demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVgeoMYm61Q
Explanation of parameters:

-probesize 32 -framerate 60 -sync video reduce the delay between the image on the phone and the image on the disktop (thanks to @arbuz)
we use adb exec-out instead of adb shell because shell might mess up some control characters due to being a shell (thanks to @Bowi)

See also: Use adb screenrecord command to mirror Android screen to PC via USB

Tested on Ubuntu 20.04, Android 11, Pixel 3a.

The video starts faster with smaller probesize. I got good results with ffplay -framerate 60 -probesize 32 -sync video  - the "-framerate 60" removes the delay effect and "-sync video" drops the frames instead of fast forwading them.

Exactly what I was looking for! I didn't want to install an app just to grab a screenshot when security policies were restricting it. For the record, it worked for me on Ubuntu 18.04 with Android 7.0.

@b_laoshi great, added the new working versions report to the answer.

Anyone knows if this could be made working on Windows? In PowerShell I ran adb shell screenrecord --output-format=h264 - | ffplay -framerate 60 -probesize 32 -sync video - but no preview window appears. adb shell screenrecord --output-format=h264 - seems to work fine to stdout.

@Constructor basic question, does ffplay work at all on your system? E.g. with a regular mp4 :-)

Yes it did! Admittedly I don't use ffplay every day, but when I did ffplay some.mkv it works with a basic preview window (some video information: Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High), yuv420p(progressive), 1296x972, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 1k tbn, 2k tbc (default), so it seems h264 is not the issue)

@Constructor OK. Gotta debug further then. E.g. ensure stdout is going out and into ffplay compare that with input from file.

Addition: You should use adb exec-out ... instead of adb shell ..., the latter seems to modify data for interactive shell purposes while exec-out doesn't.

@Bowi thanks for this info, can you provide a thread talking about that in more detail? E.g. providing a sample specific output sequence that gets modified?

@CiroSantilli郝海东冠状病六四事件法轮功, this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/31401447/6403504 and, basing on it, this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/13587203/6403504

Got it working on macOS Big Sur with Pixel 4 and Pixel 2. Awesome solution

Sample command to play with the IINA player: adb shell screenrecord --output-format=h264 - | iina --stdin --keep-running --mpv-framerate=30 --mpv-untimed --mpv-framedrop=no --mpv-correct-pts=no

There is a limit of 3 minutes using the screenrecord command. You can use a loop to continuously run the command and stop the stream from freezing.
adb exec-out "while true; do screenrecord --output-format=h264 -; done" |    ffplay -flags low_delay -framerate 60 -probesize 32 -sync video -an -

Some Android phones have TV Out capabilities, usually through USB or HDMI, but sometimes through the 3.5 audio jack. I don't think HTC Desire has any TV-Out capability though.

Airdroid is all you need.  Simple and easy to use. You're able to see your camera out put live but for some reason not able to record it. Your pc and android phone must be on the same WiFi network.

Airdroid works over WiFi AFAIK. OP wanted a solution for ADB (via USB). He also wanted to see the device screen live, i.e. with no or just marginal delay. If not added recently, Airdroid doesn't support that IMHO.

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text:
Installing GalnetMIUI Rom on HTC Desire
I Have an HTC DESIRE which I upgraded to Gingerbread recently. My friend told me about Galnet MIUI for Desire, and now I want to root my device. Is this possible? These are my phone's specs:
HTC DESIRE
Android Version  2.3.3
Base band version - 32.56.00.32U_5.17.05.23
Kernel Version 2.6.35.10-g3f43272
Build No 3.14.405.1 CL 96875

The "low storage space" issue has been covered in the past (particularly regarding the Desire). You can take a look at this question for some good information.

Also related: How to root a HTC Desire running official Android 2.3?

Notes:

Rooting allows you to install a custom recovery (Clockwork Mod or AmonRa) to install ROMs
S-OFF allows you to change the HBOOT to rearrange your internal partitions

I rooted with Unrevoked before I used Alpharev's S-OFF some months later
Nowadays it's easier apparently. You can get S-OFF with Unrevoked Forever too but I'm not sure your phone is supported. And Unrevoked/Alpharev teamed up for revolutionary
Finally, there are many ROMS out there, some are better then others. I use Oxygen personally with the Oxygen HBOOT for 330MB internal data space. I'd use Devnull (same developers) but it doesn't have long press to kill

For rooting HTC Desire 2.3.3 official update you have to use revolutionary.io beta app. Its very simple process. You've to download the program on your computer (Windows/Linux), get the beta key from the website and follow the steps the program asks you to do. I've written a detailed blog here if you want.


text:
how to use ext partition in my android?
I partitioned my MicroSD card and created 1GB ext3 partition.

What is the next step so I can use it to make the performance of my android better? It seems to me that it is mounted into /sd-ext
What are all the options I can use ext for?

CM7 on HTC Desire

well it seems to me that it is not the best idea to use ext3 for swap. And we can store app on FAT so I will not user ext3 at all ....

As discussed, you can store apps on the ext3 partition which will free up internal phone memory. There are also apps like Swapper2 which allow you to put your swap file on the SD Card.
Be warned, that this will degrade the life of your SD Card and will also chew up battery due to frequent read/writes to the card. Weigh the potential of additional free space in view of this.

I am after the second paragraph you wrote down. Could you elaborate more so I can choose better if I am going to use ext3 at all or not. So far it seems to me that it is not the best thing to do for me ...

Could you explain why you feel so? What part do you need clarification on?

I do not need much of clarification but more info why yes or no. Let's say I have never thought that swap will degrade the life time of SD card and that it will also chew up battery. So I am happy to hear any more info on that topic from somebody who knows ... more than me :-) that's it.

@Radek Using the SD card for swap will degrade it because the device will be writing to it all the time, just as it does with main memory.  SD cards are designed for storage (infrequent writes).  And as Sparx said, all the reads and writes take battery power.

@Matthew: I understood that never thought about that before so I was wondering if there are more 'points' like that to consider why YES or why NOT :-)

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text:
Touch input does not work right when phone is plugged in
Basically touch input either doesn't work at all, or works erratically.  This includes the the lock screen too.  It happens both plugged in to a USB port or to the outlet.
I've had this problem on two phones, and HTC Nexus One and and Samsung Nexus S.
Does anyone have any idea about what the cause of this and if I can do anything to fix it?  Have you seen this problem?

Never heard of it. My Droid works just fine when plugged in to a USB port as well as an AC outlet.

The only reason I can think of for this happening on two phones is that you have a buggy app installed on both, although I don't know how an app could do that.

I've seen this on the Droid X.  Touch input can sometimes be sluggish or non-responsive.

related: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/9416/no-touchscreen-response-when-charging

are you using original charger?

I had the same problem with the HTC Nexus One and it was directly related to heat. Whenever the phone got too hot the touch screen would flake out. Charging the phone makes it heat up, the worst time for me was when it was in the car dock, heat from charging and from the screen being on all the time. When ever it did this all I had to do was hold it in front of the AC vent for 15 - 30 seconds and the screen would work normally.

Holding your phone infront of AC is bad for the phone screen and IC. Let it cool normally or one can remove the charger from phone, use it and again put it back to charging. But yes, heating is the issue. This normally happens also when you phone is overcharged.

@Lucky I did this to confirm that it was the heat causing the problem more than anything else. But I am interested to hear your theory on how cooling it off with the AC vent would cause damage to the screen or the IC.

All I'm saying is when your phone is hot(around 50°C) the moisture from AC vent condenses and might form water droplets inside your screen when exposed directly. Read this too http://www.userbytes.com/how-cold-weather-can-affect-electronics

I have encountered this problem with my Samsung Galaxy II S, but only when I am using a third party charger of dubious quality.  The hardware buttons continue to work but the touchscreen becomes unresponsive.  The issue does not occur with the OEM charger.

My friend also had similar problem with Motorola Milestone third party chargers.

I had this issue with my Droid Incredible. Only did it with a generic charger never with the OEM charger.

I've had this issue happening with three different devices - Motorola Backflip, Motorola Defy and Genesis GT-1230. The cause is always cheap third-party chargers -- and in my case, it works fine when plugged to the computer via USB cable (it's an original Motorola cable).


text:
Do I need an SD card to add apps to an Advent Amico Android Tablet?
The Advent Amico Android Tablet PC arrives without an SD card, and has 487Mb of internal ROM available.  Plenty for a few apps surely?
There is no Android marketplace or alternative marketplace app visible on the tablet to get new apps from.  The nearest thing is PK Manager.  That offers an option to install apks from a micro SD card.  It doesn't offer an option to install from internal ROM.
I can upload files to a limited area of the internal ROM using USB, with USB set for mass storage, using either Windows file explorer or 'Amico Transfer Companion'.  So far this doesn't appear to be very useful as besides not being able to install from this limited area, none of the pre-installed apps see the files I put there, even when configured to use internal ROM!  Putting apks in the top level of this directory does not install them.
I don't seem to be able to use the tablet for app development either, without an HD card.  I'd need to use the USB in ADB mode, (and on Win 7) I need a USB driver which does not appear to be available.  The support site, [http://support.thetechguys.com/amico][1] doesn't have any support and just says 'coming soon'.
So without an SD card is there no way to add new apps?  Is there some setting or method to do this that I'm overlooking?
EDIT:
I've now found that the USB uploaded files not appearing when viewed from the tablet was down to me looking for them with USB still connected.  Once the tablet is free floating again, not USB'ed to the PC, the tablet can see the files.

You could try emailing them to yourself or downloading them from somewhere (Dropbox public link or a web host of some sort). On most (if not all?) devices you can just launch an .apk after it's been downloaded and it will open with the application installer.
You'd most likely also need to allow "Unknown Sources" for this to work, which should be found in the settings menu under Settings->Applications->Unknown sources.

Thanks.  Unknown Sources was enabled.  Once I'd disconnected the USB the uploaded .apk file became visible.  PK Manager only offered install from SD, but using IFileManager instead and looking under 'LocalDisk' clicking on the .apk installed it.  Problem solved.


text:
fastboot: usage: no command
Basic information: Windows - Android SDK - fastboot.exe
As the title says.. fastboot won't work in my cmd and fails with the output: fastboot: usage: no command. The android-sdk is located in the root directory (C:\). I also add the pathvariables in the system environment. I don’t try it with an android device, I only test if the command responds, but yeah it did not...! So I actually do everything like it's described in the tutorials, but can't find my mistake.
Did anyone have this problem or does know a solution?

Cross posting is discouraged (you have done it on two other sites)

@beeshyams Yeah I will delete one! I find this part of stock exchange one hour ago! But you don’t have a solution for my problem? ^^

What command did you actually issue? It's important that we can recreate your problem before we can diagnose it.

I only use the command “fastboot” so actually the possibilities of this application should be shown, if everything is configured in the right way! By the way “adb” works!

Are there any special drivers required to run this command in the basic way without a device?

@IrfanLatif ok lol, thank you, that work!  but why does only “fastboot” not work in the same way!?

@IrfanLatif Actually I use the latest version as well! That’s why I’m a bit confused! But whatever - it works

Use fastboot --help instead. This is a kinda standard way to get usage help in Linux world. However sometimes writing only the command name also works as you expect.
Reference:
if (argc == 0) {
    usage();
    return 0;
}


text:
What is the support timeline for Google Play System Updates (GPSU) from Project Mainline?
Since Android 9 more and more core components can be updated by Google by the Google Play System Updates (GPSU) that come from Project Mainline (https://www.xda-developers.com/android-project-mainline-modules-explanation/)
Do you know how long Google will provides these updates? I hope that there will be updates even after the phone manufactures have stopped providing the "normal" android (security) updates. If this is the case the updates of the phone manufactures would be less important since you get important updates directly from Google.

Though Google has successfully trapped a majority of OEMs in contracts and agreements, still Google Play Services isn't a necessary component of every Android device. “End-user devices can receive updates to these modularized system components from the Google Play Store infrastructure or through a partner-provided over-the-air (OTA) mechanism”. Secondly the updates received from Google are just related to AOSP framework. No major (like version) upgrade or critical fixes to vendor code (which are sometimes even more critical than AOSP code fixes) aren't possible without OEM's involvement.

I would assume that even Google does not know at the moment how log they will provide updates. This mainly depends on how many new major Android versions will use this modular system without changes. If for example the modules now described are still used by Android 13 or 14 you have a high chance for also getting updates for older devices. But if Google decides to not only add new modules but also change existing modules (split, or somehow change) then I would assume that updates for those modules won't exceed the 3 years period.

AFAIK, timeliness are not mentioned anywhere for the simple reason that this WIP and not yet matured. It's a part of slew of measures taken by Google over the last two or three years and even measures like Treble aren't fully adopted //Google itself takes it's own time with some measures. For instance, scoped storage was introduced in Android 5 but become a reality in Android 10. Points made by @IrfanLatif and Robert are very valid


text:
What permissions does root give to an app?
All of the normal permissions are listed here, but it does not say anything about root permissions. I can't find the names of individual permissions anywhere else either so I am asking here.

Are you talking about root permissions via a rooted phone?

Yes, that is what I am looking for.

First of, it gives you the app permission to the 'root' or the system files. Modify them, delete them, or even push an app inside the system. Know more of it here : https://lifehacker.com/top-10-reasons-to-root-your-android-phone-1079161983

From my understanding and past experience programming Android apps in rooted phones, getting root permissions in an app is to have access to everything.
Once a phone is rooted, you, the user, have access to the entire file system1, which allows anything to happen with it, including apps modifying their own permissions2.
Android is built on Linux, which means that su, or the root user, is the master user. Root user has the ability to do anything they want3. Apps granted root permission can add, modify, or delete things as they please throughout the file system. Along with that, they have access to the APIs that control the hardware of the phone, which means that they are capable of doing anything without your knowing, among other things (reason 3).
TL;DR Root has access to everything and can do anything.

I'm asking about permission names. For example, "CHANGE_WIFI_STATE". One permission I am particularly interested in is the ability to stop a phone from receiving power from USB or wirelessly.

@Deoxal there are none. Getting su root user will allow you to exploit that option.

su is the only permission you would need to access any permissions or change anything within the OS and file system.

OK thanks, I was just thinking that since normally a rooted app has full control over the phone that there would be a way to give a subset of root permissions to an app. A custom ROM would have to be running on the phone to do that though.

I am not saying this will work, but you might try looking at creating a user that root controls and limit the permissions on the Linux side of things. Then use that user in the apps. I have not tried that before, but it should be possible since it is an operating system with users.

Root (superuser) is not an app, it is a user that runs various processes in the Linux kernel (upon which Android framework runs). The permissions you listed are applicable only for system apps and third-party apps. When an app is granted superuser access, it does its things as the root user (UID 0). Barring some SELinux policies, there is no restriction for the most powerful user in the device.
Do note that app permission model of Android is controlled by system user (user 1000), and system user is not at par with superuser, so latter can override anything which other users are capable of doing.

I never said superuser/root was an app. I was thinking that by having root that you could give apps access to some but not all of the phone's features. This probably wouldn't work that well, since if an app expects to have root access, denying it would result in an exception.


text:
Recover hidden pictures from my system
I am currently using Calculator Vault to hide my photos and would like to recover all my photos. But my system does not want to start since this morning. I have the password with which I lock it.
Where can I found all my pictures by the file manager ?
Thanks by advance for your help!

From the Google play page of the app-

Q - I uninstalled this app and again installed. Can I get my locked
  pictures back? A - You need to unlock pictures before uninstall. Files
  are not available in new install.

Unless you can get the phone working to access the app again you won't be able to decrypt the files. Decryption won't be possible on your computer too.

Ok but so How the app can do that ? All encrypted files must be decryptable, no ?

The app itself doesn't have its source code published anywhere so it's hard to say what protocol it uses for encryption.

Do you think if I decompile the app, can I invert the protocol to retrieve my files ?

Unlikely. It's not easy to decrypt encrypted stuff without the key.


text:
how can i access All application which is using INTERNET in Android
i want to access all application which is using Internet at the background of our mobile phone kindly help me how to find applications which is running on Internet at background.

Welcome to Android Enthusiasts! Your question is somewhat unclear. What do you want to achieve? What do you mean by "access"? Something like you find in Settings › Data Usage (where foreground and background usage is listed explicitly)?

It can be found in Settings > Data Usage.
Below the data usage graph, you can see all the applications that have used Internet for the last month.
If you tap on an app, you can also see how much of its the data it used was in the background.


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"You don't have another device" when trying to install Android apps on ChromeOS
This is a weird situation: since I don't have a smartphone, I installed PrimeOS on a USB stick and booted on a laptop. Under this live system, I installed some apps in Google Play Store just to test them (the laptop is recognized as a mobile device).
Afterward, I decided to overwrite the USB stick with ChromeOS. Now under ChromeOS, the Play Store shows my installed apps, but of course, I cannot access them anymore. It seems impossible to delete them or install them again. The Play Store says, "You don't have another device".
Any ideas to solve this?

PlaySore can not know the other "device" running PrimeOS because it doesn't exist anymore. From PlayStore perspective the installed OS is the device not the physical device.

Welcome to Android Enthusiasts. Sorry, I'm not sure what you want to achieve. Do you actually want to have the Android app on ChromeOS? Otherwise, you might have to resort to dual boot or use an Android emulator.

Yes, I want to use them under ChromeOS. In the past, I had bad luck with android-x86 (neither wifi nor lan worked).

If it's okay, could you mention the app you want to install? It seems the app is incompatible with ChromeOS and thus it cannot be installed, but without knowing the details, it's only a wild guess.

@AndrewT. I don't think that is the problem. It happens with every app, including Telegram or the official app from my bank.

Fair point, but I still think the relation to PrimeOS is tangential as Robert has explained. Instead, this looks like a question on how to install Android apps on your laptop running ChromeOS. I have to admit that I don't have experience with ChromeOS, but I learned that not all Android apps are supported on ChromeOS and even more, ChromeOS Flex doesn't support Android apps, thus probably back to the alternative of dual boot or using Android emulator.

Yes, it is probably not related to PrimeOS. Given that I run ChromeOS as a live-system, I'm pretty sure the same problem arises from different boots from the usb stick (I may try this later). The actual problem is that the play-store tries to book-keep my installations.

As Andrew T. pointed out in the comments, ChromeOS Flex (which I'm actually running) does officially NOT support Android apps.


text:
How can I force the phone to have a fixed IP address on 2GHz and 5GHz WiFi?
I am running an FTP server on my Samsung Galaxy Note 20. On my router, I have given it a fixed IP address based on its MAC address on a 5GHz network. But when the phone connects on 2GHz, it has a different MAC address.  My router refuses to give the same IP address to two devices, even if only one is connected.
How can I resolve this?

I would disable MAC address randomization for both Wifi entries that belong to your Wifi router.
Then your device is seen by the router as one device with one MAC address.
You can do so by editing the Wifi entry, open the "Advanced options" section and there change the Privacy setting to "Use device MAC".

I had set the IP address on both networks, on the phone to static.  This was working but I wasnt happy with it.  Above is a better solution.

While I prefer the accepted answer, there is another way to do this.
Set the static IP address on both 5G and 2G Wifi settings.  This works well, but I prefer the IP address to be set by the router/DHCP.


text:
Kies stuck on "connecting" on Mac+Samsung Galaxy S2
I have the latest version of Kies, OS X, and a Samsung Galaxy s2 with CM10 on it.
It is set to MTP with USB debugging off (if it's on USB storage rather than MTP, Kies crashes).
I tried playing with many parameters but none of them seem to work - when I plug in my Galaxy, Kies shows "connecting" and nothing happens.. (the program itself is not stuck).
Someone suggested launching phone util (7284) and changing the PDA/modem stuff, but it doesn't launch on my phone, I guess it's because of my CM10.
I also tried rebooting the phone/Mac several times.
What else can I do?

You can't use Kies with custom ROMs (like CM), only with Samsung ROMs.


text:
Does blocking a number from a phone app blocks even SMS messages?
If I block a number from the first paragraph of this help, will SMS messages from the same number be blocked?

It depends on the apps.
Number blocking is usually implemented on the app level, and thus it only affects that specific app.
This also means that even numbers blocked on a phone app are not guaranteed to be blocked in other phone apps (if the user has multiple phone apps installed).
However, some apps may share the blocked numbers between apps like Google Phone (call) and Google Messages (SMS), or block both on multipurpose apps like Truecaller (call and SMS).

I haven't tested yet if the default phone app and default messaging app are not Google's, whether the SMS will still be blocked or not.


text:
How does Samsung S-View Flip Cover work?
How does the S-View Flip Cover work? I know some apps that use the proximity sensor to check this and turn on and turn off the screen.
S-View Flip Cover does not require any softwares, so how does it communicate with the device?

It's simple. There are hidden magnets in the front part of the flip cover. These magnets tell the device that S-View Flip Cover is attached.
The glass window that is on the cover is conductive, through which you can operate only that much part of the screen leaving the rest of the screen non operable to avoid accidental touch.
The idea behind is just like the Apple smart cover. What makes the S-View Flip Cover different is the conductive window functionality to accept or reject calls etc.

okay.So does this affect the compass adversely like some flipcovers with magentic flaps do? I want to get a new Fcover,what i have is one with magnet,the compass seems to go crazy when opening and closing the cover.

Yes it unfortunately does due to the magnetic elements.

I think that there is another element to this - but I have not determined what it is - There is one magnet in the front of the flip cover lets the device know that the cover is open or shut - but it will not work unless the case back is attached to the phone - and there are some contacts in the back cover of the flip case that connect to the phone - I cannot find any magnets in the case back, so I presume that the connections in the case back let the phone know that there is a flip cover installed.
I am working on figuring the rest of this out because I would like to use a different case (not the flip) and have a magnet in my holster to unlock the phone when I take it out of the holster.

Magnetic flip covers use hall effect sensor to switch screen on n off, for example you can cover ur screen with a magnet n the screen goes blank, so does the hall effect sensor

This does not provide any new information from the top-voted answer.


text:
Cannot control Nvidia Shield volume while streaming to TV
My setup:

Nvidia Shield is connected to the TV
I use the optical out of the TV to connect two speakers
I use the Nvidia Shield remote to control the Shield volume out (not the TV volume or the speaker volume: just the Shield volume)

This setup has worked just fine for years, but I recently changed my TV from an old Panasonic plasma TV to a QLED from LG and it doesn't work anymore.
What happens is that I can change the volume just fine if I'm in the dashboard or if I play a file locally. But if I stream something (I tried Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+), the volume doesn't change and I get the pop-up saying that I have to go into settings and set up the remote control. This ONLY happens when streaming, and it did not happen with my old TV.
I can change the volume just fine if I set the output to be the TV speakers instead of the optical out, but obviously that's not what I want. I have tried checking/unchecking IR, CEC, and HDMI fixed volume control in the Shield's settings but no luck. I also try to set up the remote again but also there, no luck.
I'm looking for suggestions on how to be able to make it work also during streaming. Thanks!

It turns out that the issue was due to the new TV reporting being able to do surround.
The old TV did not do this, but what happens now is that because this one allegedly supports "surround", Shield expects that the remote for the surround system has to be used.
The workaround was to disable surround in the sound settings of Shield, and now the remote works just as before.
Still, it'd have been helpful to have a better message than "set up your remote", used in pretty much every kind of situation.


text:
Resetting Android Phone from CyanogenMod to Original
When I bought my (pre-owned) Nexus One, it came with CyanogenMod.
I would like to change it back to Google's official 2.2 (or 2.3) Android.
What does this entail and how do I go about doing this in the safest possible way (e.g. with bricking it or any other side-effects)?

You'll need to download official firmware.  You can find it by searching "nexus one stock 2.x rom", and XDA might be better than Google.  I'd also look up how to use the Android SDK to flash it, probably using flashboot through ADB.  I have a Galaxy S which uses another tool, so I can't help with more detail without looking that up myself ;)

@AndroidEve: Please don't use URL-shorteners on this site.

thank you. Initial search brings this http://forum.androidcentral.com/google-nexus-one-rooting-roms-hacks/12180-reverting-back-original-rom-ota-updates.html  but I am not sure how authoritative it is. If you happen to have recommended URLs, that would be super. +1. :)

XDA is usually the best. Here's the "every ROM under the sun" thread, including stock ROMs: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=744605.  I assume you want the newest, FRF91.

Here is an official site from Google that has various images -- I don't know about you, but I feel more comfortable downloading from here than from some side I don't know or trust: https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images


text:
Is there a way to see what application is performing a sync?
Sometimes you see the sync symbol appearing in the message bar at the top of the screen (mine being a Samsung Galaxy S running Froyo).
At that time, most of the times, the screen freezes.
So I was wondering : is there an application / widget that shows which application is performing a sync operation at the moment ?
And/or is there a log somewhere of all sync operations ?

I've had, over the last few days (since updating to FroYo -- yeah a bit late, I know) an issue with Google Reader sync running forever and crippling the perf of my phone.  As @Ryan says below, you can see what is synching in one of the menus -- look for the spinning arrows next to the app in question.  Non-synching apps will have the arrows appearing static.

You can check the Accounts & Sync in the settings. This will show you what is syncing.
I am going to throw out a guess that you have the Official Twitter client installed and have sync data enabled. I used to get the "lock up" you describe all the time.
The lock up is not really just from the app that is syncing, but it is causing it... Samsung decided when they designed the Galaxy S that the file systems that existed were not good enough for them. So they decided to use a proprietary file system that was developed by Samsung called RFS. This file system is slow, like, Really Fricken Slow. It is the cause of the "Galaxy S Lag".
Even Google decided, with the Nexus S, that they were not going to use RFS on the device, it uses ext4. There are "fixes" out there to convert the RFS to ext4, but they do require you to have root access, a custom recovery (like clockworkmod) and to flash a ROM or a kernel.
Voodoo is one of the best. Roms like Nero3 from TeamWhiskey have voodoo built right in to their ROM.
Now if you don't have root access and don't want to, there is really nothing that can be done to "correct" the lag that you are experiencing... except to disable the syncing of data that cause the lag.

+1 for R eally F ricken S low.  And a great answer otherwise also.


text:
About the android recovery mode
Question 1: what's the android recovery mode? Does it run a full linux kernel?
Question 2: where the recovery.img is installed? (/somewhere_in_filesystem)

Recovery mode is used mainly by carriers/manufacturers for replacing bad firmware that causes the phone to be otherwise unbootable.  Users can install signed update.zip packages (such as OTA updates) through it as well.  It does not run a full Linux kernel.  Custom recovery modes such as Clockworkmod exist also, which allow more complex things such as full backup and restore of the device software and data.
I'm not sure where recovery.img is unpacked to, but you can let the system handle that by using the following: adb shell flash_image recovery <path-to-recovery-image>, where the path is normally something like /sdcard/custom_recovery.img (wherever you put the image)

I don't think recovery.img goes into the file system. I'm pretty sure it gets a dedicated partition in storage.

Recovery mode is a minimal OS that boots from another partition.
It does run a Linux kernel without some display/network/3g modules.
On some ROMS you can actually start adb shell while the device is in recovery mode and see the kernel running (adb shell ps)
the recovery.img image is installed in a block device (partition) usually /dev/mmcblk[x]p[y]


text:
Restoring purchases made with In App Billing
How can I switch the Play Account used for in-app billing?
No matter which account I "activate" in the Market app, all in-app purchases only go through the first account which is contrary to the experience when purchasing normal apps.
When purchasing normal apps, the billed account is the one that was active in the Market app at the time of purchase.
This causes a problem as I am also unable to restore my in-app purchases unless the account that made the purchases is the primary account on the device.

No that is not true I'm afraid. I tried that before posting the question.

Strange. My Nexus one (which I originally tested on) displays the incorrect behaviour. Galaxy Nexus responds correctly in the way Richard says above.

I tried with both phones but only the Galaxy Nexus responded how Google said it should.

I understood you. I tried with both phones. I did not need to actually make the purchase because the account name is displayed on the final purchase screen.

I asked Google. This was their response.

Thanks for writing in. I understand you would like to know how to
  choose what account in app purchases are billed to. I apologize for
  any frustration this has caused. When you go to make an in app
  purchase the purchase is going to be billed to what ever account was
  used to download the app the purchase is going through.


text:
Is there any documentation on the correct/expected directory structure of the external memory card?
There's a couple of issues that i have with the way Android sees my card...

The Gallery App shows CD artwork as a separate photo album.
I want to exclude some things from shuffle playback by the music player.
there's probably more thing that could appear better if we new what Media Scanner was doing....

I've found this: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/data-storage.html#filesExternal but Gallery App still reads pictures from music folder

Seems Gallery ignores Folder.jpg, AlbumArt.jpg, AlbumArtSmall.jpg - so just using windows search with *.jpg and delete the non matches... 'fixes' the gallery

you can also add a file called ".nomedia", minus the quotes, in any directory you want the media scanner to ignore. it does not include sub-directories though, so you cannot just do /sdcard, for example, and have it not scan the entire structure. you would have to put a file in every folder you want ignored.

i gather .nomedia is for app developers to hide their media files from the media scanner, When they don't sound effects etc to appear in the music player/gallery. If you use it you will NOT be able to play music from that folder.

.nomedia prevents the automatic media scanner from finding the files, you would still be able to browse to and open the file from a file browser though.

Summing up from the comments, and adding a little.
Directory structure
There's no complete documentation for the entire cards structure, that seems not to be fixed. However, some directories seem to be more or less common:

the developers guide suggests app specific data should be stored below /sdcard/Android/data/<package_name>/files/ (<package_name> represending the name of the package the data belongs to, which looks like com.example.android.app), and /Android/data/<package_name>/cache/ for external cache files (basically, this corresponds to the /data/data/<package_name>/ directory on internal storage)
same source recommends a bunch of directories to store files intended to be shared among apps. All of those directories are located in the root of the card, and include:

Music/ - Media scanner classifies all media found here as user music.
Podcasts/ - Media scanner classifies all media found here as a podcast.
Ringtones/ - Media scanner classifies all media found here as a ringtone.
Alarms/ - Media scanner classifies all media found here as an alarm sound.
Notifications/ - Media scanner classifies all media found here as a notification sound.
Pictures/ - All photos (excluding those taken with the camera).
Movies/ - All movies (excluding those taken with the camcorder).
Download/ - Miscellaneous downloads.

Excluding directories from Media Scan
If you wish to exclude a directory from the media scan (i.e. from being indexed for the gallery), you can place a file named .nomedia there. This will tell the media scanner to skip this directory (including all files and subdirectories) from a scan -- thus neither images, nor audio or video files stored here will turn up in the gallery. You however can still access them by looking them up manually. Up to my knowledge, there's no way to restrict this to a certain media type (i.e. having the media scanner index audio/video, but skip images). Important: Note the "dot" at the beginning of the file name (making it a "hidden file"). This must be included with its name.


text:
How can I tell at what rate my battery is charging?
I've been told that different charging sources charge my phone at different rates, and have been told that some car chargers act at a normal USB rate instead of a rate closer to an AC outlet.
When I plug into my car charger, is there a way for me to see at what rate my battery is recharging?  My phone is an HTC Evo.

Related: How can profile (log the charging and discharging current for some time period) my battery? (Disclaimer: includes my answer there.)

Battery Indicator Pro will tell you or you can go into Settings -> About -> Battery and look there.

If you're looking for the actual current draw of electricity coming in to your device, the app Ampere will display this.  Note that it may require some tweaking for certain devices.


text:
Does a nandroid backup contain the hboot?
If I restore a nandroid backup will it restore the hboot and the corresponding partition tables?
I'm on bravo-stock hboot now and I want to try the CM7 hboot. Will I be able to switch back to stock hboot just restoring a nandroid or do I need to flash the stock hboot first?

Generally speaking, no, ClockworkMod (and other custom recoveries) do not backup your bootloader. You can physically look at your backup directory to verify this, but I have never seen a custom recovery that included a bootloader in the backups. What you typically get is:

Boot partition
System partition
Data partition (also /sdcard/.android_secure depending on the recovery/version)
sdext (if you have it)
WiMAX partition (if you have it)

The general rule is to make sure you have the correct HBOOT version before you restore a nandroid backup, and you'd have to flash it separately.


text:
Chrome doesn't require permission to download files and install web apps?
Chrome for Android seems to require no permission to download files and install web apps. Disabling storage permission does not prevent the browser from downloading the EICAR test file, and disabling app downloads does not prevent the installation of the Android Developers web app.
In further detail, installing the Android Developers web app seems to trigger a download with Google Play Services, but does not show up in the list of installed applications in Google Play. When attempting to access its page in Google Play through notifications, apparently it doesn't exist and shows an error has occurred.
I'm not sure whether this is an intended feature or if my device has been compromised.

Are you referring to the Chrome feature to save a bookmark as app icon on the Android app launcher? If not please provide a link where "Android Developers web app" can be retrieved from.

https://developer.android.com/ will show an install button as a popup, and if install is clicked chrome will download the app using google play services and install it on the device, with the aforementioned concerns that I have had.

Interesting. This technique is called WebAPK and Chrome doesn't seem to need the usualy install app permission to install such an app. Note that the app is not downloaded but generated by Chrome locally. https://web.dev/webapks/

What you see is referred to as PWA(Progressive Web App). The technology/feature is essentially
to allow services provided by web sites to be launched and displayed as though they were individual apps. With the help from Chrome browser, web apps have their app icons displayed within home screen and may be uninstalled like Android apps.  In essence PWAs are web pages hosted by full screen browser tabs which is why most PWAs rely on network connection to be fully functional.
Reference
Examples of Web apps


text:
How does hibernating an app work technically?
I was wondering how hibernating of an app works technically.
I know about freezing an app (shell pm disable com.mypackage.name),
but this also hides the app icon from launcher. I want to know how Greenify App works. It disables the app from running in background until I launch it again and then when I exit from that app, Greenify automatically hibernates it.
So my question is how does it do that?

This is a citation from excellent explanation by lioux on XDA:
Greenify uses the Android command am to stop an app and applies this command again if the app is awakened by any action whatsoever. That's what hibernating means. Hibernated app will no longer start during phone boot, respond to registered intents or be triggered by alarms from the system. Everything it does is temporary. The am command does not touch the installed files or any configuration information.

Sounds cool, I'll let you know if it worked. oh by the way thanks for the reply... :)

It works wonderfully, but don't greenify blindly everything, but only confirmed CPU/RAM/battery hogs. Use Greenify built in app analyser, Wakelock Detector and Better Battery Stats to identify good candidates for greenifying.

Forget Greenify! I've made an app out of it. I call it OXYGEN.
http://goo.gl/vfyKsv - Light Weight. and takes almost about 2MBs of ram in the background.

@Amit: Why was your app withdrawn from Google Play?

yes brother. Google does not treat their developers well.

am command did not disable apps, it just stop app from running but some event can still run app again. Greenify is using pm command to freeze apps.


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Chrome Android does not Autofill Basic password
I have noticed recently that Chrome for Android does not autofill passwords on Basic HTTP authentication pages.
For example, if I navigate to https://httpbin.org/basic-auth/Bijan/Password on Chrome and save the password, it works perfectly. Navigating back to the same page autofills the password.
On Chrome for Android, I verify that the password is saved. However, navigating to the same page from my phone, does not autofill the password.
Is this a bug for anyone else? Is there anything I can do to fix this?

Facing the same problem for a 2-3 weeks already. Seems like a bug.
Here's what i found:
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1507118

Thank you! It looks like the current workaround is to go to chrome://flags/ and disable #filling-across-affiliated-websites-android.

Same Issue, can confirm the workaround works


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Cannot log in after disabling Android package from TWRP or with ADB
I have Google packages on Android disabled for security. Today I enabled the Play Store, Framework, and other stuff and now I can't log in to Android without restarting. I can't remove the package using ADB because it is unauthorized, as I can't log in.
I am rooted and disabled these Google packages. Enabling them seem to restart the phone at login (after you enter the password)
I can get into TWRP recovery, but it doesn't support the pm command-line tool.
I need to disable these packages.

Answering my own question. If you have a package that is crashing or restarting at boot, you can disable it by using a recovery shell from TWRP. You can disable packages by editing the /data/system/users/0/package-restrictions.xml file and add inst="false" stopped="true" nl="true"inside the XML line of the package that is causing the trouble.


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Silence all notifications by default
How can I silence all notifications by default on Android 12 without resorting to DnD?
I just replaced my old phone (Google Pixel 4a, same as the old one) and restored everything from backup, but sadly the notification configuration has not been restored and the phone is beeping like there's no tomorrow.
I only need sound if someone calls me on the phone or some other app like WhatsApp. Other notifications should be silent.
I don't want to use DnD which I use by night when I don't want any ringing sounds either.
It seems to me I need to silence each individual app, but there are like 100 of them. I want the default notification to be silent and then be able to turn on sounds for WhatsApp e.g.

Depending on the device model, Android version, and custom ROM, there may be a built-in setting to set the default notification sound. The default option may include "no sound", or otherwise preparing an audio file with no sound may be an alternative workaround.
For the Google Pixel series, Android 12 particularly: Settings - Sound & vibration - Default notification sound. Inside "My Sounds", choose "None".

works except for apps that have a "app provided notification sound" like Facebook messenger


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Syncing Firefox Android downloads in Dropbox
I use an Android phone. I use Firefox and Chrome as browsers on it. I want to set the download location for Firefox to a location on Dropbox installed on my phone, such that all my downloads are directly synchronized to a folder which I can even access on my PC.
I am unable to do so. I have tried doing the instructions posted here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1028808
The other option is dropsync. Is there any option which doesnot involve using Dropsync?

The solution in the link worked on my Pixel 2 with Android 9, using a fresh install of Firefox 62.0.2. But it wasn't on my first attempt. It turned out I was too confident when entering the value of browser.download.dir.
Let's say I wanted to change the download folder from "Download" to "Music". So I put in the value /Music, since I thought I didn't need the help of a file manager to get the path of such a simple directory. But nothing happened. Files were still been downloaded to the "Download" directory.
When I actually used a file explorer (specifically, "Total Commander"), it turned out that the actual path to the "Music" directory was the oh-so-memorable /storage/emulated/0/Music. So when I changed browser.download.dir to that value, it worked.


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How to increase charging current on OSX computers when using USB 2.0 from 500mA to 2000mA?
Authenticated Apple devices can charge at up to 2100mA x 5V. Apple-non-fast-charging and non-Apple devices are relegated to much slower 500mA x 5V charging. Thus, while my OnePlus One phone itself supports a 5V charging current of up to 2000mA, it is not possible to charge at higher than 500mA.
Does a method exist to increase the available "Extra Operating Current (mA)" from 0 to the max value possible? I am interested in both OSX and Android related solutions.
Related but not helpful post here.

I can confirm that for my MacBook Pro, charge current is increased above 500mA when using a POWER ONLY cable.
My understanding is that if the phone is connected via a POWER & DATA cable, the 'consumer' negotiates with the host for how much current is passed over the cable. When the negotiation asking for higher current is not successful, the available current is reduced to the standard (USB 2.0 defined) 500mA amount at 5V.
In the case of the POWER ONLY cable, no negotiation can take place and thus, the maximum usable current is provided by the host to the client or 'power consumer'.
Some observations...

When running on battery power (±80% state of charge), my early 2015 13" MacBook Pro (2x USB 3.0 ports) was able to charge my OnePlus One (±60% state of charge) at a maximum current of about 1750mA.
No change in charging current was observed when the laptop was connected to the mains or powered by the internal battery.
No change in charging current was observed when switching from one USB port to the other.
During the phone's charging process, keeping the screen ON resulted in an average charge current of about 700mA. When the screen was kept OFF, the average charge current increased to about 1750mA as previously mentioned.
As the phone battery reached a higher state of charge, the charge current was gradually reduced. At 67% state of charge, the maximum current was 1650mA. Note that this is consistent with the general behavior of lithium ion batteries. The battery controller will reduce the charge current in order to reduce the stress the battery's chemistry experiences during repeated cycling.
According to another answer, using a thunderbolt-powered USB hub in combination with a POWER & DATA cable seems to achieve higher charging currents as well. This, however, requires an additional dongle which is a solution I did not prefer.
The following is taken from an answer to Why is charging from computer using USB slower than using an outlet?

The reason your android device draws less power from your USB connection than from a wall adapter is because of the USB specification. This can be side-stepped by shorting the data wires in in the USB cable, which will switch the phone or tablet into wall mode where it can draw the full available current. The amount of current available will vary considerably from PC to PC.
The reason the specification exists in the first place is that the voltage to the computer's USB ports is usually supplied via the motherboard by a single loop connection which services all of the USB ports at once. Being only a few microns thick, this circuit is not able to deliver the same current as a dedicated charging wire. It is highly improbable that you will 'burn out your motherboard' by trying to draw the full available current through this circuit (although it is theoretically possible if your computer was a total P.O.S. to begin with). What is more likely to happen is that you will exceed the manufacturer's design specification, thereby denying sufficient power to any other USB devices you have connected, and/or other internal circuits which can cause the PC to crash. This is the very same reason it is recommended you use powered USB hubs.

Not true. It is not SAFE to just pass the maximum current possible when there is NO NEGOTIATION between host and device. It's the opposite. Max 500 mA is offered as per USB2+ specs if no negotiation happens. What allows >0.5A and sometimes even different voltages than 5V, IS NEGOTIATION. Different devices have different protocols to do this, for example Apple and Android have different ways to ask for "fast charge". So the solution is usually a USB firmware feature or an OS USB driver's feature. See for example motherboard manufacturer apps that enable this even after rebooting.

Andreas Spiess, the YouTuber with the Swiss accent, has a great explanation/demonstration of how QC chargers use USB data lines to tell a charger/host to change voltage thereby increasing or decreasing charge current, enabling balance between charging speed and battery health.
In USB-C as specified in version 1.3 this functionality migrated to a dedicated serial line. Apple, having often followed their own path, should now be falling into line with official specifications.

While this didn't answer the question at hand, the video is super useful for diving into the plethora of information on this topic. Thank you for sharing :-)

Sorry for that. You can't.
Apple has pretty much built a lot of standards on its own, and Apple devices communicate in their own way. So your Mac is happy to recognize an iPhone or iPad, but never an Android phone.
Maybe get a good charger for your OnePlus One?

Yes, that is what I have assumed to be the default but if the limitation is software-based, it should be possible to reverse engineer and override. The reason for the question is that when I don't have my charger with me, I use my macbook as a battery pack.

@Martin Even if the limitation is software-based, given Apple's close-source on everything, it's unlikely to be "cracked".

IMHO theoretically it should be possible because usually power delivery via USB means that source and drain mutual agree on the maximum power consumption.
But what happens if drain (the phone) just ignores the agreement (or does not agree at all) and just consumes the power? AFAIK the OSX computer will deliver it, because usually the power is just available and I never heard of any computer that actually measures the power consumption on the USB port (if somebody has different info on that topic just correct me). You just have to make sure to use the correct USB port because otherwise you may damage the port if the phone tries to consume more power than the USB port physically can provide.
There you may want to try special USB cables (or an adapter) that only connect the power lines but not the data lines. Using such a cable the Android device may think that it is connected to a power plug instead of a computer and uses a higher charging rate. Depending on the phone charging type the USB data cables may need a certain resistor connected to ground or +5V - this is the way some phone identify special fast charger.

Thanks for this comment. I tried your suggestion out and can confirm that the way to get around the 'negotiation' of power to be delivered while having the ability to transfer data is to use a 'power-only' cable.

@Martin: If my answer solved your problem please accept it enable the check mark  on it's left side and/or upvote it.

Thanks for the answer. It led to me to learning more about the problem and therefore, I wrote up an answer which I think is more comprehensive than what you have provided. If I could accept two answers, I would also enable the check mark on yours. Have a great day.


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Lost Huawei P30 Pro and data protection
I recently lost my Huawei P30 Pro smartphone and I'm concerned because the phone contained personal data.
I don't want anyone to get access to that data.
The phone was protected by a 6 figure password (unlock password).
Is that enough to make sure that my data is 100% protected and that if someone finds the phone, they would have to reset the phone and clear all the data on it before being able to use it? Is it also impossible to access the phone's data by plugging it to a PC with a USB cable?

It can not be 100% protected.  There is a tiny, finite chance that someone can guess your PIN/password.  The best thing in the future is to install some sort of Phone finder that can remotely wipe the data.

Ok, so you mean the only way someone can access my data is by guessing the code, there is no other way, right?

@Platus As long as the bootloader is locked and the device is encrypted, that is correct... The user data isn't decrypted until the initial PIN is entered on power-up. That said, if you had unlocked the bootloader, rooted it, or the device wasn't encrypted (unlikely if stock), then all bets are off and anyone with simple Android knowledge and a PC may be able to access the user date.


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How to run Python 2 and Python 3 CLI programs on Android 14 phones?
It looks like all the methods which used to work for running Python 2 and Python 3 CLI programs on Android phones is now outdated:

SL4A
QPython
Termux + python packages

I can't believe we can't run Python CLI programs on Android 14.
How would I go about it?

Termux itself may be is still a version from 2022, but the package repo like https://github.com/termux/termux-packages is still updated. Also the GitHub build system provides recent debug snapshots https://github.com/termux/termux-app/actions/workflows/debug_build.yml?query=branch%3Amaster+event%3Apush

Yes, it actually seems to work with a fresh reinstall. Before I had https/openssl version problems and I thought it's because things are out of sync.

Hi, I removed the secondary question about "similar terminal emulator environment which is current" because it's tangentially related to the main question about Python. I'd suggest posting it as another question, but unfortunately asking for apps recommendation is off-topic here. Software Recommendations SE may help in this case.

Even though the termux app hasn't been updated in over 2 years, I'd say it's still the best way to run the python cli on Android in 2024. As @Robert notes, the termux-packages repository on GitHub is still updated and provides package updates.
On a fresh install of Termux, the default bintray mirror is down and will need to be changed:
termux-change-repo
# use arrow keys and the space bar to select all 3 repos
# press enter and choose a different mirror

# Upgrade existing packages
pkg upgrade

# Install python
pkg install python

# Check python version
python -V
# 3.11.8


text:
What's turning on Bluetooth every hour on my OnePlus 6?
I noticed something has been turning on Bluetooth on my OnePlus 6 automatically. I googled online and learned to turn off Bluetooth scanning (for location-based features).
However, the problem persists. Something keeps turning on Bluetooth every hour, at the 37th minute, i.e.

I turned Bluetooth off. Then at 2:38 pm, I hear the sound that my phone connected to my Bluetooth speaker.

I turned it off again. Then at 3:38 pm, I hear the sound that my phone connected to my Bluetooth speaker.

I turned it off. The same thing happened at 4:38 pm.

What is doing this?

I had a similar issue a few years ago.  Although I never found the culprit, a workaround was to uninstall the Bluetooth drivers.

You can try to enable developer options and adb on the device and then check adb logcat at the time Bluetooth gets enabled. May be the log contains something you can identify the cause.

Thanks a lot to Firelord's response.
I followed the leads they gave and ended up finding the culprit is the smart lock I installed for my home that requires bluetooth.
I found this line in android.log file: BluetoothManagerService: enable(com.august.luna).
With OnePlus 6, I didn't have to use adb, I was able to:

turned on Developer Option,
turned on Debug level logging (the log line of answer is debug level),
turned on Save Log (didn't reboot though. don't know if it actually mattered),
and then shared the log (uploading it to my Google Drive).

On my OnePlus 6 running OxygenOS 10.3.11 (Android 10) I can find out the culprit using the following adb commands:
adb shell
dumpsys bluetooth_manager | toybox sed -ne '/abled.*due.*to.*APPLICATION_REQUEST.*/p'

Example:

$ adb shell
$ dumpsys bluetooth_manager | toybox sed -ne '/abled.*due.*to.*APPLICATION_REQUEST.*/p'
  01-05 13:31:04  Enabled  due to APPLICATION_REQUEST by com.arlosoft.macrodroid
  01-05 13:31:18 Disabled  due to APPLICATION_REQUEST by com.android.systemui
  01-05 13:31:27  Enabled  due to APPLICATION_REQUEST by com.arlosoft.macrodroid
  01-05 13:32:22 Disabled  due to APPLICATION_REQUEST by com.arlosoft.macrodroid
  01-05 13:34:24  Enabled  due to APPLICATION_REQUEST by com.arlosoft.macrodroid
  01-05 13:39:22 Disabled  due to APPLICATION_REQUEST by com.android.systemui

As you can see the command queries Bluetooth Manager service and filters out information relevant to us. If you want to find out where this information is in the full log/dump, look for the heading Enable log: in the full dump of bluetooth_manager using dumpsys bluetooth_manager. This information may prove useful if my dumpsys query fails to produce output.
The string after by is the package name of the app that requested Bluetooth be enabled or disabled at the given time. To find the app name from the package name you can use my answer for the question "How to find app based on package name?"

One can also find out this information (package name) by filtering the logcat
adb logcat | grep -i 'bluetooth.*packageName'

Demo output:

01-05 13:32:22.305  1193 16018 E BluetoothManagerService: [CW] addActiveLog, reason: 1, packageName: com.arlosoft.macrodroid, enable: false
01-05 13:32:22.305  1193 16018 D BluetoothManagerService: [CW] Bluetooth Manager Service, enable: false, reason: 1, packageName: com.arlosoft.macrodroid

Thanks a lot. This is very helpful. I followed the leads you gave and ended up finding the culprit is the smart lock I installed for my home that requires bluetooth. I found this line in android.log file: BluetoothManagerService: enable(com.august.luna). With OnePlus 6, I didn't have to use adb, I was able to turn on Developer Option and then share the log (uploading it to my Google Drive).


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Rearrange homescreens on Pixel 5, Android 12
I want to rearrange my homescreens on Google Pixel 5, Android 12 stock, Pixel Launcher. Since Android P, it is not possible anymore to rearrange homescreens with vanilla launcher:

Google has removed the option to reorder homescreens on Android P's default launchers
[Developer Preview Android P] ability to re-order home screens has been removed

I tried searching for alternative launchers to use temporarily to switch them back but without luck. The same goes for searching apps that have an app organizing feature.
Is there a way in which I rearrange my apps and home screens easily for Pixel Launcher? Otherwise, do apps on unrooted devices have the privileges of changing app orders?

The launcher app is just an app which means it is also sandboxed from other apps which makes it impossiblem to access or modify from outside (unless it explicitly provides an interface for that). Therefore my suggestion would be to search for an alternative launcher that suits your needs and then permanently switch to it.

Welcome to Android Enthusiasts, a Q&A site for end-users solving their issues. Note that our focus is not on Android developers, which our sister site [so] has covered most of the topics, so we can't provide suggestions on how to create such an app. Also, please note that asking only for apps is generally off-topic, I'll make some adjustments to the question to make it still on-scope on here, but feel free to [edit] and improve if I miss something.

That said, the articles are talking about homescreens on Google's Pixel (Pixel Launcher) and AOSP (Launcher3). But as Robert said, that doesn't mean other Launcher apps are affected. However, it also means that Pixel Launcher doesn't have this feature in-built. Perhaps there's a hackable workaround (e.g. editing the DB/preference file directly on rooted devices) though.

try microsoft launcher. i guess it got the feature you need.

@Robert interesting thing with the sandbox, i didn't know that. Alright then. I basically just rearranged verything from scratch, by clearing cache / data from pixel launcher which was kinda ok speedwise

I used a workaround. Basically deleting my current setup and then setting it up from scratch. Deleting works by clearing data of the pixel launcher app.
It's at least a bit faster to start from scratch without rearranging and takes just 5 to 10 min
Thank you for your Comments and your help :)

I realize this question is a little dated, but I landed on it today, trying to figure out the same thing.
I see one suggestion for an alternate launcher, but I have chosen to use Nova Launcher instead of the Pixel Launcher.
Nova Launcher in Google Play Store
Nova Launcher is extremely customizable and can be made to look identical to the Pixel Launcher layout. Additionally, it allows you to combine several apps into a group, saving space when you have several apps with nearly the same functionality.
You can shuffle pages, change which one is the home screen, change the animation between pages, change the shape, size, and grid size of icons, select alternate icon packs, etc
Beyond that, Nova Launcher has a significant number of options that can satisfy your needs for customizing your Android look, functionality, and even custom gestures.
You can even make a backup of your configuration, layout, and icon positions, so if something drastic happens, at least you don't have to start all over from scratch.
Should someone happen on this question, looking to solve the same problem, I wouldn't want them to miss out on the option to give Nova Launcher a try as an alternative option.

I too use Nova Launcher on my phones. It is excellent


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Where is "su" addon package for rooting LineageOS 17 and newer?
On the current LineageOS Extras Download, you can see su packages for versions up to LineageOS version 16. Where are the newer packages?

This functionality was discontinued. The de facto method of achieving root in newer LineageOS releases is Magisk.


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How to install Another Term, an alternative to Termux for Android 6.0 and below?
I am running a lower Android version and need to install a Linux proot container in Android. Another Term is the closest alternative, but how do I install it? It seems pretty hard.

First, read the readme of AnotherTerm GitHub repo and this

You can run the stock install-linuxcontainers.sh you downloaded from the Git repo without tweaks for an automatic install. It gave me errors, that's why I did this Q&A style question to write the tutorial on how I got it to run on my old tablet.
Download Another Term from Play Store. If the Play Store version does not work, then go here and try previous versions that work on your device and issue the bug.

Know yor phone architecture

Download run-tpl (after downloading, make sure it has no extension), installshellscript (the file must be like install-linuxcontainers.sh), proot-android.tar.gz (download both if your architecture has 2 gunzips), and minitar.

As for the rootfs.tar.xz, google search images.linuxcontainers.org
and enter. Upon entering, select Distro, then release.
For architectures, if your phone architecture is arm7-a, select "armhf", and if arm8-a, select "arm64". The same applies to i386 and amd64.
Then select default, then choose any build date you want, and then select rootfs.tar.xz, then the file will start downloading.
After downloading all the files, download Simple HTTP Server app from the Play Store or any webserver app to host the files.
Copy or move minitar, rootfs.tar.xz, proot.tar.gz, and run-tpl to /android/data/com.phlox.simpleserver/files
Open the app and start the server. Launch your browser and go to your IP address and port specified in the app. On Chrome or whatever browser, long press to copy the download link address (if using a desktop right click) then go and edit the install-linuxcontainers.sh using a text editor and replace all URLs beginning which are like this http://192.168.43.239:8080 and replace them with corresponding download URLs which you copy from your browser. If your ip local ip is 0.0.0.0 then the url should look like http://0.0.0.0:8080 .Make sure that all URLs have been replaced by your own URLs you copied from the browser and save the script.
Final Step
Install and open Another Term and click the + icon on top, name the shell profile and save (I did not edit anything).
Stop the webserver in the app
Start on the profile to start the terminal. Maybe you will notice too small or too big font, but you will change the font settings later. Tap on the keyboard icon (top-right leftmost icon) to switch to your default keyboard.
u0_a176@goyave3g:/data/data/green_green_avk.anotherterm.oldgood $ cd /storage/emulated/0/Download
u0_a176@goyave3g:/storage/emulated/0/Download $ ./install-linuxcontainers.sh Debian Buster

Installation subdir name proots/___ [linuxcontainers-Debian-Buster]:
Actual name: kgktk

To uninstall: run `rm -rf "$DATA_DIR/proots/kgktk"'

Creating favorites...
Done.

Arch: armv7a
Variant: -pre5
Root FS: Debian Buster

Source: http://192.168.43.239:8080/rootfs.tar.xz

Getting minitar...
failed to connect to /192.168.43.239 (port 8080): connect failed: ECONNREFUSED (Connection refused)

Type your fake random directory name and enter.
Profile pop-ups will appear, but quit both and tap OK and Exit and you will return to the shell.
As you can see above, the variant shows "-pre5". If it's not, you are good to go. But if it's "-pre5", you must start the webserver, go to the browser, copy the download link of prootpre5.tar.gz, go and edit install shell script replacing the proot.tar.gz link with the new pre5 one, then save the script.
Don't stop the webserver.
The second Run:

u0_a176@goyave3g:/data/data/green_green_avk.anotherterm.oldgood $ cd /storage/emulated/0/Download
u0_a176@goyave3g:/storage/emulated/0/Download $ ./install-linuxcontainers.sh Debian Buster

Installation subdir name proots/___ [linuxcontainers-Debian-Buster]: Buster

Actual name: Buster

To uninstall: run `rm -rf "$DATA_DIR/proots/Buster"'

Creating favorites...
Done.

Arch: armv7a
Variant: -pre5
Root FS: Debian Buster

Source: http://192.168.43.239:8080/rootfs.tar.xz

Getting minitar...
Getting PRoot...
Getting Linux root FS...

/etc/passwd:
=======
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
daemon:x:1:1:daemon:/usr/sbin:/usr/sbin/nologin
bin:x:2:2:bin:/bin:/usr/sbin/nologin
sys:x:3:3:sys:/dev:/usr/sbin/nologin
sync:x:4:65534:sync:/bin:/bin/sync
games:x:5:60:games:/usr/games:/usr/sbin/nologin
man:x:6:12:man:/var/cache/man:/usr/sbin/nologin
lp:x:7:7:lp:/var/spool/lpd:/usr/sbin/nologin
mail:x:8:8:mail:/var/mail:/usr/sbin/nologin
news:x:9:9:news:/var/spool/news:/usr/sbin/nologin
uucp:x:10:10:uucp:/var/spool/uucp:/usr/sbin/nologin
proxy:x:13:13:proxy:/bin:/usr/sbin/nologin
www-data:x:33:33:www-data:/var/www:/usr/sbin/nologin
backup:x:34:34:backup:/var/backups:/usr/sbin/nologin
list:x:38:38:Mailing List Manager:/var/list:/usr/sbin/nologin
irc:x:39:39:ircd:/var/run/ircd:/usr/sbin/nologin
gnats:x:41:41:Gnats Bug-Reporting System (admin):/var/lib/gnats:/usr/sbin/nologin
nobody:x:65534:65534:nobody:/nonexistent:/usr/sbin/nologin
_apt:x:100:65534::/nonexistent:/usr/sbin/nologin
systemd-timesync:x:101:102:systemd Time Synchronization,,,:/run/systemd:/usr/sbin/nologin
systemd-network:x:102:103:systemd Network Management,,,:/run/systemd:/usr/sbin/nologin
systemd-resolve:x:103:104:systemd Resolver,,,:/run/systemd:/usr/sbin/nologin
messagebus:x:104:105::/nonexistent:/usr/sbin/nologin
=======
Regular user name [my_acct]: my_acct
Preferred shell [/bin/bash]: /bin/bash

Setting up run script...
Configuring...

Done!

u0_a176@goyave3g:/storage/emulated/0/Download $

Now we are going for the last time. Start the ./install-linuxcontainers.sh, type your distro and release as shown above.
Now, type the real subdirectory name of your pr choice. In my case, I chose to type Buster. This time, save & exit the two pop-up profiles. After saving, you will come back to the terminal and notice rootfs downloading progress. After that, you will be asked to type user and shell preferred, type the ones inside the [] brackets and enter, and you will notice it done.
Quit this shell by tapping back then long-pressing on it, and click terminate then confirm the termination. Tap on any of the shell profiles you save before name; Buster and Buster (Root) in my case and welcome to Debian, I mean your chosen distro.
By the way, I am in no way part of this project, but I'm just a Linux newbie who has found an amazing project he was searching for for quite a long time.
Shoutout to the devs for this amazing app.
Useful Screen shots:

EDIT:
For new android versions the script has been updated and no need to use the edited script and method except maybe if you want to have a backup of the files needed wenr you want a clean container. For "very old android versions" (e.g 4.4.4 range and maybe 5.0.0) you cam use this script because there is an error in old versions.

You can also choose a bit simpler way...
Prerequisites

A ready-to-use statically linked wget for Android:
https://github.com/pelya/wget-android/tree/master/android

Up-to-date SSL CA root certs
(most usual place on Linux: /etc/ssl/certs)

You can easily recreate hashes in your own crafted certs directory
by means of openssl rehash <dir>.

The process

Create a "local" profile with the "execute" field left set by default
and launch it.

$TERMSH pick . to put the aforementioned wget
by an Android file picker into the $DATA_DIR.

Create the $DATA_DIR/certs directory and
put your up-to-date certs into it.

Fix your favorite installation script by replacing all the
$TERMSH cat / copy / etc HTTPS stuff with appropriate
wget --ca-directory="$DATA_DIR/certs" ...

PS
I will create a ready-to-use script a bit later...


text:
Unable to factory reset my HTC Desire S
I have a HTC Desire S. I have firmware updates but when i try to update the same. I rebooted in the updating process and the phone hangs there for hour (i waited for 4 hrs once). I tried to factory reset the mobile, still facing the same issue.
Note: The phone is rooted.
Do I need to visit HTC Service center or is there anything that I can do?

Factory reset only resets all user data, not the OS itself. If your update failed for some reason, you'd have to reflash the phone. You can find info on this in the XDA-Developers forum.
Note that since your phone is rooted, your warranty may be void. Take this into consideration before you take your phone to the service center.


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Samsung Galaxy s2 stuck on boot screen after an OTA upgrade
I upgraded firmware on my Samsung Galaxy SII via OTA. My starting firmware was android 2.3.4 (gingerbread) and after two successful updates it was on android 2.3.6 . Now it prompted me for another upgrade (12.1 MB or so). I downloaded it (successfully), it installed successfully  but when the phone reboot, it got stuck on the booting screen which displays 'Samsung Galaxy SII' and the model no. I9100G . I tired:
1. Reboot
2. Hard Reset
But it still won't budge. When I connect my charger (phone turned off), the battery symbol shows up, and since it is going into recovery mode, I know all is not lost. So what is the problem? More importantly, how do I solve it? SOS.

Have you flashed the phone before and do you have any new boot loaders on it? What kind of recovery mode is it booting into? ClockworkMod? Or does Samsung have its own recovery?
If possible I would suggest maybe downloading the correct ROM for your handset from cyanogenMod and putting it on your SD card then try flashing that on. Do a clean wipe and then set up your Google account again so you have all the numbers on phone again.
On my phone I have installed clockwork mod and new boot loader so I can flash the phone again if the ROM ever gets broken. Obviously i don't know exactly how your phone is set up so i wouldn't be able to give exact instructions on how to do it.
EDIT: I would suggest flashing a ROM onto it from recovery if its not booting then what you have in the mobile world is probably a "brick". Dont see many other optuions to be honest.
Bill

Nope,in OTA, you don't need to flash the device and Samsung has its own recovery. I am going to flash the ROM manually as the last resort, but was looking for better alternatives.

You don't need root to flash anything if you get into recovery.  Just download the stock firmware and flash it with odin.

That's what I am planning to do

this is why samsung uses kies. their firmware has caused issues in just about every OTA. My first OTA put my phone in soft-brick, I had to odin to stock.