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Way to ‘remote clone’ my tablet
Earliert this month, I forgot my Huawei tablet (MediaPad T3) at an airport on a different continent. While I did submit a lost property notice, I didn’t think of checking my Google account’s mail address. Initially, I heard nothing, so I presumed it was gone and bought a new one (same model, same size memory card), logged on with my Google account—and then received the mail to that account that my device has been found.
The airport’s lost and found office told me that shipping it my way would cost around €100, while sending it domestically would cost €50. Picking it up at the office would cost €20. I have friends who live in that country, so needless to say I won’t let the tablet get shipped across the globe.
However, I am wondering if there is any way to clone the tablet’s data from the old (lost) one to the new one I bought the other day. I’m mainly interested in apps and app data (i.e. transfer savegame status and login status); the only files on there were videos that I have backups of.
I heard of Huawei’s PhoneClone app which seems to be the easiest/quickest/dirtiest option, but naturally the descriptions assume that both devices are in the same room. I was unable to confirm whether data transfer works across the internet. Of course, if there are other (better?) options, I might be interested in those, too.
So in short:

Can I use Huawei’s PhoneClone app to clone my tablet’s contents via internet connection only?
Are there other, potentially better options to clone the app data on my tablet without the two being physically close to each other?

As I mentioned, they are logged into the same Google account. Furthermore, I could send images of any QR codes or the likes to whichever friend I ask to pick it up for me so that should not pose any inherent problem either.

If you're having a Google account connected to the device, and don't mind Google seeing those data: did you activate Google Cloud backup on the original device? If not, one option would be doing so, waiting a little for it to be performed – and later reset your new device. The first-run wizard should then ask you whether to restore from the Google backup, and offer you the ones made on the original device. Note however that not all apps support that, so this will certainly be incomplete.

@Izzy I believe I did not but I also assume that I can ask a friend to activate that type of backup after they retrieve the tablet from the lost and found. It sounds like that might be another interesting answer. (I wonder if there is a list of apps that do support this type of backup, too?)

In both cases: unless the device is rooted, the backup will be incomplete (apps can opt-out of it, and do so for queer reasons sometimes). You can use my Adebar which includes this in its app listings (the flags row includes ALLOW_BACKUP if the app supports it); Adebar also creates scripts for backup/restore, using the same mechanism Helium uses ([tag adb] backups). But it requires the ADB tools (and on Windows, device drivers). No big deal on Linux, but the driver might make it tricky on Windows.

A possible solution is to backup the old phone with Helium - App Sync and Backup. Then upload, the data files created by it to Google Drive (or any other cloud storage). Download the data files from the cloud storage to your new phone. Finally restore them using the same app.
Obviously, your friend will do the backup and upload the files. While you will download and restore them.
Note: I don't own a Huawei phone, so I could not advise whether the app you mentioned will work or not.

Just now I was taking a look at Helium for initial testing and it wanted me to connect to a PC to‘perform the backup correctly’. Can you confirm if that is a requirement for your suggestion?

@Jan Yes, it is. You will also need to enable USB debugging in your tablet's Developers options. You can get the desktop app here

I did some testing of the PhoneClone app on just my new tablet. It turns out that when you select ‘this is the new device’ a hotspot is generated with a QR code for direct connection or the manual account information to connect. Thus, data transfer will happen locally via the new device’s hotspot and PhoneClone is not suitable to transfer data from far away.


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Unable to load some websites USB tethering
I am sharing internet from my Samsung galaxy S10+ to my HP Pavilion 15-n208tx laptop via USB tethering. On my phone, I am getting browsing speeds of upto 10 mbps but while tethering, I am unable to load many websites. I am using the USB type C cable provided with the phone for tethering.
Example of strange behavior:
Sites loading:
www.google.com
www.instagram.com
Sites not loading:
www.codeforces.com
www.amazon.in

What do you mean not loading? Is the connection  timing out or the site's cannot be reached at all? Is this the  ase with both the phone and the PC or just with PC. Try pinging the sites in both the phone and PC when tethering. Also try tethering in a different PC or maybe in a Linux live boot session just to rule out your current OS is not the problem here.

The sites are reachable but after quite a long time (minimum 30 sec). It is just the case with the PC on which my OS is Ubuntu 18.04. I have tried pinging the websites on my PC and the ping is just fine. Moreover, I tried USB tethering with a different phone using a type B USB cable on this laptop, and everything works fine.

I found that my wired ethernet connection is still active and hence some sites are failing. I disconnected the wired ethernet and my usb tether is working properly for all sites.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Google Pay hidden & its device admin

I cannot locate Google Pay on my Z971 ZTE phone in Apps, system, hidden, etc, however it is a device admin. If I attempt to click on it to remove it as an admin, the settings app immediately pops up a msg box - "settings has stopped". Trying to find an answer, I've attempted searches in FF & Duck but the results were rediculously unrelated.
Quite some time ago I stopped updating all google apps & disappointedly learned several apps cannot be; stopped, uninstalled or disabled!

Can you setup [tag:adb] in your PC, execute the command adb shell dumpsys device_policy, and then provide the output in the question by [edit]ing it?

Can you borrow one from somebody? We need to find out exactly whether Google Tez is indeed the device administrator or an impersonator app is installed? Also, can you browse into Play Store, search for Google Tez and see whether you get the option to install or open it? Also, try booting into [tag:safe-mode] and then try to remove that app from Device administrators. See if that makes any difference.

I'll post a scan from the Device Info app. after this response. As you can see, it found 2 instances each of Pay & locate, yet I cant locate them in apps & system. If I try to uncheck either Pay or Locate from Device Admin, Settings shuts down immediately.
I did as you requested:
Zte Device Admin - not found
Google Tez - Install
Lookout - Open
Find my Device - Install
Google Pay - Install

Hello. Please use pastebin.com to upload the output data and then paste its link. It is hard to make sense of the data from the comments.

https://pastebin.com/gS97QVXJ

Now instead of the 6 I now have 11 multiple instances. A new item, Screen Lock Service is new.

Firelord - any ideas?

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


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How to get rid of Microsoft Authenticator?
I have Office 365 subscription and it works well. However, I got the Microsoft Authenticator app installed on my Samsung Galaxy and it got my Outlook account added there. I have no idea how that happened since I did not add it.
I've read the instructions from How to use the Microsoft Authenticator app, but the instructions are complicated. I don't need this Authenticator, so I want to get rid of it.
How can I get rid of it and keep my Microsoft account?

You must both delete the app from your old device and tell Microsoft to forget the old device and unregister it from your account. From Common questions about the Microsoft Authenticator app:

To remove the app from a device using a personal Microsoft account. Go to the two-step verification area of your Account Security page and choose to turn off verification for your old device.

Then you can uninstall the app just like any other app.


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Should my "adb backup" include the system files or not if I'm planning to downgrade my Android version?
I'm using Oneplus 3t on the latest Android 9 OS. I'm planning to downgrade it to Android 8 and hence backing up my data with adb first.
adb backup "-apk -obb -shared -all -nosystem -f d:/other backup/phoneadbbackup/backup2.ab

Now here's the problem. I could backup system apps as well. But I'm not sure whether or not that is a good idea.
After I downgrade, there's a chance that the system apps would remain the same. If yes, then that's great because all the data could get restored back for the system apps. However, if there are a few system apps missing in 8 then could that error out the restore process? If the apps are same but the data was different in 8 then restoring data from 9 would cause errors, isn't it?
So my question is:

What does "-system" back up exactly?
If I'm planning to downgrade my OS then does the above command look good?

Do not  restore system apps' data when you are downgrading. It can go very bad. From boot loop to app crashes, with only factory reset as the solution. As for what these arguments do, see https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/205354/show-adb-backup-manual#

Thanks for replying! I'll watch out for that.

Nobody posted an answer over here so I'm going to post one.
Backing up system files with ADB is a bad idea. The problem is that there can be small differences in system files between Android versions. And it's more likely to not work owing to the fact that it didn't work even without the system files (more details on that below). Based on the following experience I would recommend not backing up system files via ADB. In fact there was no use of going via ADB route in the end because ultimately I had to restore everything manually.
My experience with ADB backup: was not good. It created a file of 3GB which took upwards of 30 minutes. After restoring only 4 apps were actually restored but it occupied 3GB of my space. When I checked later via file manager then I noticed that it had created all kinds of junk files with missing apks or leftover fragments. Considering that you might have updated your os in your old Phone (multiple times), then ADB backup is going to copy paste all the file fragments for system files.
Hence, I don't recommend ADB backup/restore for system files.


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Disable sound when a specific App shows a notification
Is there a way I can allow notifications yet turn off notification sounds for one particular App? I want the notification sound to be off even if my phone is not on vibrate or silent mode.
I am using a One Plus 5T running Android 9.0.8

I assume you mean OxygenOS 9.0.8, based on Android 9 Pie.
To do this, you can go to Settings > Apps and Notifications > See all apps
Scroll down the list to find your app and select it from the list.
Tap Notifications.
Choose which notification channel you would like to mute notifications from.
Tap Behavior and select your desired behavior.


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Enable and disable system overlays with shell command
I'm trying to create an automatic Dark Mode using Tasker, which would work disabling overlays (to get a default light theme) and enabling others (to get a dark mode). For the light theme I run cmd overlay disable --user 0 + package name
However, when i try to use com.android.system.overlay.dark (an overlay that comes with my custom ROM) it changes it for a moment and gets back to how it was before.
If I do cmd overlay list | grep dark, I can see for a moment that it does get disabled, and enables itself again. When i run cmd overlay enable it does the same, enables and then disables the overlay.
I also tried running the command with su
If I change the theme from the ROM settings, everything works fine. Also, the command works with other overlays from substratum themes and some settings overlays that come with the rom.
Im using HavocOS 2.9, with android 9.0
Can anyone help?


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Use another Google account in Chrome only
My Android phone has 2 Google accounts set up. I see those when I go to Google > Account in my phone settings:

Google Account 1 (main user)
Google Account 2

Google Chrome is configured to use Google Account 1, and syncs history, bookmarks, etc.
Question: How can I configure Chrome to make it so that it's the history/bookmarks from Google Account 2 that are synchronized, while keeping Google Account 1 as the main user at the OS level?
What I've tried: From Chrome, go to Settings, then click my account: it brings me to a view where I can choose between Google Account 1 or Google Account 2 (or add another account). Clicking either account 1 or 2 takes me to a lists of the various accounts from various apps I have on the system (!?) (Airbnb, Facebook, Meetup, ...). This is the same view as System Settings > Accounts. I can't find any option to choose which account to assign to Chrome in there.
Android: 9
Google Chrome: 77.0.3865.92

Open Chrome, tap on menu (top right corner), open settings.
On the first line, you should see your main account or google account 1 according to you..Tap on that.
You should see all the google accounts logged in to your android  device.
Below them, you will find sync option. Tap on that.
It will open a new window with title Sync. Find the syncing to option, tap on it. Now select which account the data should be synced to.
This will force chrome to use Account2 or whichever chosen account, keeping main account to the OS unchanged
Done!!

Tapping any account in step 2 doesn't make Chrome use it. Instead it takes me to another list of accounts which includes accounts I created in various apps (Airbnb, Facebook, meetup...)


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Why do I have to always clear the cache of the Download Manager in order to download 1 app?
I'm using a Samsung Galaxy J4 Core with Android 8.1.0 Go. When ever I want to download an app on Google Play, I first have to clear my data/cache for my Download Manager and restart my phone. It then takes a very long time to even start the download... I'm not sure why I'm getting this bug.
Edit 1: If I don't clear my cache and restart my phone, no apps will download/update. It will just say "waiting for download...". Before I even thought of clearing my cache, I waited 3 days for my download to start...
Edit 2: I have 6GB free on my internal storage (max. 16GB) and 2GB on my 16GB SanDisk Card. I have 1GB RAM, though for some reason, 560MB is used all the time.

You should edit your question and also describe what bug you encounter if you don't clear the cache and restart. Otherwise it is very difficult to understand what you mean with "this bug".

@Robert I have edited my question :)

How many space is free on your device before clearing the cache?

@Robert, I have 6GB free on my internal storage (max. 16GB) and 2GB on my 16GB SanDisk Card.I have 1GB RAM, though for some reason, 560MB is used all the time.


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How to determine what's causing Chrome to consume cellular data
Short: How can I know why my Android Chrome consumes so much data - which sites, maybe some rogue plugins etc.
Background: Recently I've been getting notifications from my carrier and also from my phone that I've exceeded my 12GB/month data plan. Looking in "Mobile data use", I see that that almost all of the data was used by Chrome. I do use Chrome to listen to podcasts (I'm currently considering a dedicated app), but that hasn't changed recently, while data usage have skyrocketed...
What I tried:

I've looked at chrome://net-internals, which my chrome redirects to chrome://net-export, but that looks quite heavyweight to be running for days on my phone.
I've enabled Chrome's DataSaver/Lite Mode (I think it's the same? My phone is not in English, so not sure). It shows usage by site, but the usage shown there doesn't account for the excessive usage reported in mobile data use. The savings were miniscule.
I'm hoping there's some app/plugin/etc. that I can add to Chrome to summarize data usage. If this exists only for Firefox mobile, I'm willing to switch, though I'd rather not.

Device: Samsung Galaxy S7 (SM-G930F), Android 8.0, Samsung Experience 9.0, Chrome 77.0.3865.92.


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Is any way to lock Android KitKat to a certain frequency/band?
Normally we can lock our mobile to either LTE, WCDMA, or GSM thorough Network Mode option from setting. But I would like to lock specifically 900MHz and/or 1800MHz band, which they are included as GSM in the Network Mode. Then my question is: is any way to do that way? Prefer if I can do with command or script only without installing any application. But thorough application also will be fine too.

AFAIK such decisions like "Which frequencies are used?" are the job of the baseband, which is like an independent small OS running in parallel to Android. Android can only communicated via the Radio Interface Layer (RIL) with this system. Therefore if the RIL has no command to whitelist or blacklist frequencies you can not do what you want, as modifications to the RIL is an extreme complicated and dangerous topic (dangerous because you can easily break laws by misusing or disturbing frequencies of your MNO who will sue you for that).

I remember long ago, I could lock my Nokia phone (a featured phone non Android. So the intention to mentioned Android is could be with different OS we can do) to certain frequency channel. However, the channel still need translation to actual frequency. So, what I am asking here is the same thing. Is any way to lock android phone to certain frequency, or at least to certain band.

@AirCraftLover as Robert said, yes this can be possible but Android APIs don't offer such option. Even, I think, you can't read frequency, rather writing (I'm not a developer though). May be RILD can but that's just a binary blob. Communicating directly with BP may work, if you can find out what modem speaks. May be ATC or QMI or some other vendor specific thing. Or may be some Engineering Mode or Test Mode or Diagnostic Mode or dial code or bootloader mode or service mode may fulfill your requirement, which is again vendor/SoC specific. Generic Android (AOSP) doesn't do what you want.


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Recover photos from S6 Edge+ stuck in boot loop
I have a Galaxy S6 Edge+, Android 7.0 that did something weird.  I restarted it and now it's stuck in a boot loop.  I don't care if it gets wiped, but I want to get the pictures off it first.  It gets to the Samsung logo and hangs there for several minutes and will eventually restart itself.  In the meantime, I can connect via ADB and I would just pull all the files, but the data partition isn't mounted at /mnt/sdcard at this point.  I've tried the obvious, but no luck...

Stock recovery menu accessible
Wiping cache does not help
Cannot boot into safe mode
Firmware download mode accessible
Not rooted
USB debugging enabled
OEM unlock not enabled

I heard that flashing stock firmware would get it working again and not wipe the data partition.  If this is the way to go, is there a reliable source where I can find the image to flash?  I'm aware that the firmware is carrier dependent, so I want to know I have the right one.
I'm also aware of TWRP, but I believe the phone needs to be rooted to be able to recover stuff.  But maybe not for the data partition?  Can I install it without OEM unlock enabled?  This question mentions custom recovery, but I'm not sure how it got there (previously installed, or installed while boot looping).
I'm trying to get a clear idea of what I should do.  What is the best way to go about this?  I hesitate to do anything unless I'm sure it's not just going to wipe or brick the thing.  I rooted another phone before and the first attempt failed and wiped it.  I had backed it up, but that's not possible in this case, so whatever I do has to work.

On a OEM locked device without custom ROM and without ADB access as the system only boot-loops your only chance is flashing a stock firmware. I don't see any other option.

Doing this will keep the data partition intact and accessible afterwards?

Usually yes, but I don't know the Samsung firmware upgrade software in detail.

Well, since you can get adb working can you elevate it to a shell with the command adb shell if yes then try to crawl your way through to get the path to your dcim or dcim/camera location with the ls command. If you can what is the output from the ls command?


text:
Create "dead space" beneath GBoard to move it up
I have bought a Samsung Galaxy A50. The problem is, that with the navigation menu completly disabled, as well as the almost completly gone bessel, the keyboard is way too far down for me to comfortably type.
I know that there is the float option for GBoard, but that doesn't really work for me, as the app gets full screen in the background, which makes it hard to see what you type or generally blocks information.
Is there some way to add dead space beneath the Gboard?


text:
Encrypted SD card data recovery with broken display (S9+)
my phone (Galaxy S9+) was recently stolen, and thankfully I got it back, but it was completely destroyed when I got it back. I'm not sure what they did to it (looks like they took a hammer to it), all I know is the display no longer turns on. It will still power up though.
I need to somehow retrieve the data from the encrypted SD card, and as I'm aware, the only way to do this is with the device that encrypted the card.
As far as I remember, the old phone has developer mode + remote debugging turned on, however I cannot access it via adb (presumably because I can't press the button to allow data transfer that pops up when you plug the phone into a computer). Its not rooted either.
Buying a new digitizer or paying for data recovery is simply out of the question as both are very expensive.
I do have some phone repair experience, and I see my last resort as disassembling my new s9 and using that screen to either decrypt it or copy the contents, but I'd really rather not take my brand new phone apart + these newer galaxies are among the hardest phones I've ever repaired.
Do I have any other options?

adb access don't work because your device is locked. Is your device locked with a PIN, a password or pattern lock? Entering a PIN or password should be possible using an USB OTG adapter and a simple USB keyboard.

Is the type c to regular usb adapter that comes in the box usable for this? I've heard of otg, but never really understood what makes it classified as 'otg- - is it because its small, or does it serve some sort of purpose a regular adapter doesnt?

I don't think so. an USB OTG adapter has on ethe one side an USB-C male plug and on the other side a USB-A female connector, just like this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GGKYXVE (see the second image on the left)

Well, either way, the adapter I had worked -- it allowed me to unlock the phone, but it still won't show it in adb -- as I said before, I probably have to allow it, and the digitizer is completely unresponsive :(

In general Android has the possibility for keyboard navigation, therefore it is theoretically possible to enable ADB. However in reality it would require a second working S9+ you could use of practicing the keyboard commands.

Well I do have a second s9+ -- my insurance replacement. I never thought of that though so I'll try it later. I'll have to reassemble it though since I took it apart in an effort to troubleshoot. I did notice that some people sell old displays with cracked glass for cheap, but I'd prefer not spending money if possible.

Well then you should have everything you need. You can use the following guide as a base and adapt it to your device: https://forums.oneplus.com/threads/guide-activating-usb-debugging-blind-with-black-broken-screen-via-otg-and-restoring-data-with-mtp.717039/

Oh thanks, I'll check that out! I did run into another snag however-- not really sure how to have the device plugged into the computer and the keyboard at the same time. I have a usb c hub for my macbook, and I tried plugging it into my working s9 to use file transfer and keyboard at the same time, but it's not being detected by the computer. I'll see if that article can help though.

It is not necessary to have both connected at the same time. Once you have permanently enabled adb and/or MTP you can just disconnect the keyboard and connect your computer via USB. I assume it won't work on first try, but as you have a device for practicing I assume that with some tries it will work.

It's a bit trickier to get to that spot on this phone, but I managed with my working phone. Problem is that it's asking for permission to allow usb debugging, even with file transfer set as the default usb method. I coulda sworn I had this computer set to "always allow" for usb debugging, but if I did, it should have showed up on adb right away

Answering my own question because I just figured out the simplest way possible (and tbh feel like a bit of an idiot for not realizing this before haha)
There was a method suggested on the comments thread of the OP, which might work as well, but what I ended up doing is using my USB hub (which has an hdmi port) and plugging the phone directly into my tv via hdmi. It required having my keyboard plugged in as well, but there were no permissions to bypass, and if you have a bt keyboard you could essentially use a physical keyboard to pair the bt keyboard, and then use a usb c to hdmi adapter to hook up to the tv -- cheaper option since this usb hub was like 50 bucks :P

Congratulations that you managed it in the end. Could you please add the USB hub brand and product name - just to make sure in case not all USB-to-HDMI converters work.

Long model number so I'll just post a link https://www.newegg.com/p/0ZK-00GK-001C2


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How do I connect to 802.1x EAP Wi-Fi network from an Android 10 device?
My Wi-Fi uses 802.1x EAP with TLS. It works well with the old Android devices, but an Android 10 device pretends that it's trying to connect, and a few seconds later marks the connection as disabled. There is absolutely nothing in the Radius logs about any failed connection attempt.
The configuration is quite the same between this device and the older ones, with two differences:

Security field is unavailable, unless I chose to manually add the network, in which case there is no “802.1x EAP,” but only “WEP,” “WPA/WPA2-Personal” and “WPA/WPA2/WPA3-Enterprise.” I suppose that I need to chose the last one.
Domain field is added between CA Certificate and User certificate. I tried to keep it empty or enter the domain name of the company; the result is the same.

What can I do to understand why doesn't the device attempt to talk to the Radius server before marking the connection as disabled?

Before the client (aka supplicant) can talk to the authenticator it must first establish a TLS connection.  The failure might be occurring in the EAPOL START before a user authentication (TLS auth) can occur.  This might be why you do not see any authentication attempts on the Radius server.
Yes you must select WPA/WPA2/WPA3-Enterprise in order to do EAP-TLS.  You need to specify both the CA Certificate and Client certificate in order to complete the EAP TLS Flow.
Are you familiar with Android Logcat?  You could start looking there and filtering on wpa_supplicant or EAPOL to see if there are any certificate validation or related errors.
Guessing why here but, it's possible your older devices will work with the same CA/Client certificate depending how old they are.  Certificate validation has improved (strengthened) in android over the years and it might be why its failing on new devices and not older.


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How to set Wi-Fi HTTPS proxy, not HTTP, via adb shell?
For HTTP I found a link: How to set WIFI proxy via adb shell?
But I want to setup HTTPS proxy via adb shell.

Which app(s) you want to use proxy with?

one of our internal application which runs on a special type of android OS hardware where via adb can use the setting and all there is no UI

Android uses same settings for http and https. You need to configure your app.

Can not configure except adb

sorry what does that mean?

@IrfanLatifI mean its a different hardware where only adb can work there is no physical UI to set Https proxy. ANd via adb i can only set http proxy

There's nothing like "https proxy" exists. It's always http proxy, just methods are different. For https, method used is http CONNECT instead of http GET. But if the program/app itself doesn't know how to use these methods to create a connection through proxy, the proxy settings we make in Settings UI or on adb shell don't make any difference.

but @IrfanLatif How i can capture traffic over https without https proxy with certificate.please help

This question is a near duplicate of questions like this and this, and closely related to this and this. In fact it can be better explained by a developer, but since it keeps on appearing again and again with slightly different situations, I'll try to explain what I know with some unnecessary details to make the picture clear from a broader perspective.
In short:

Unlike VPN, a proxy - by design - is not meant to be set system-wide. Individual apps have to create connections through proxy instead of connecting directly to remote hosts (visited websites).
If an app doesn't have built-in support for proxy, it's possible to enforce the proxy on per-app basis or system-wide. Most of the solutions require root access, but Android's VpnService APIs work without root.

Transparently proxying https traffic requires SSL Bumping (decryption) on proxy server which breaks the security model of https. This needs to be worked around from both sides; client and proxy.

Android lets proxy be configured for Wi-Fi, Mobile Data (APN) or both. As of Android 9 proxy settings are saved in
/data/misc/wifi/WifiConfigStore.xml
/data/user_de/<User_ID>/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/telephony.db

Both files aren't directly accessible for editing without root. But there is another Global HTTP Proxy setting meant for managed devices which saves proxy information to /data/system/users/<User_ID>/settings_global.xml. It's possible to change global device settings through CLI:
~$ settings put global http_proxy <host>:<port>

And to unset:
~$ settings put global http_proxy :0

Or you can manually set keys:
global_http_proxy_host
global_http_proxy_port
global_http_proxy_exclusion_list
global_proxy_pac_url

Android sets this host/port information as the following Java system properties on all DVMs of running apps:
http.proxyHost
http.proxyPort
https.proxyHost
https.proxyPort

But only default browser or other system apps necessarily honor these proxy related networking properties. That's why when setting Wi-Fi proxy it warns:

The HTTP proxy is used by the browser but may not be used by the other apps.

For non-system custom apps, it is up to the app creator to respect the proxy settings and use them for http and https proxy, as usually a server listening on single port can handle both type of requests (GET and CONNECT) as explained below.

HOW PROXY WORKS (EXPLICITLY)
Actually http/https proxy is used only by proxy-aware apps and Android cannot enforce this system-wide. No one can, except the (http client) app which is making http/https connections. It's because proxy is set on per connection basis i.e. client itself decides which kind of connection it's going to make when creating a network socket. For http proxy full URL is to be given after GET verb instead of simple path. For https proxy the CONNECT method is used instead, so that proxy is requested to create a http tunnel towards remote host, through which TLS handshake takes place (without proxy's involvement) and encrypted traffic flows back and forth. It's essentially like doing a single local port forwarding.
See this answer for SOCKS proxy. For further details: Why proxy set on Android does not work when used as hotspot?
CLIENTS' SUPPORT FOR PROXY
Since establishing a proxy connection is the responsibility of client app, many client libraries have in-built support to configure proxy settings. Mostly web browsers let user configure proxy in settings UI or use system provided information e.g. on Windows there are IE Proxy Settings and also netsh command for programs which are linked against WinHTTP library. On Linux environment variables http(s)_proxy are honored by many networking libraries, CLI utilities and GUI programs including web browsers (1).
However native methods aren't directly applicable to Android's Java based framework. Android's HttpURLConnection (2, 3) and Apache's HttpClient (deprecated) handlers honor (4, 5) above mentioned system properties (6, 7). So the apps making use of these APIs are able to use same proxy (8, 9) for all connections. An example is WebView (10, 11) which is based on Chromium:

by default the system-wide Android network proxy settings are used to redirect requests to appropriate proxy servers

But not all Java libraries consider the VM system properties as was the case with Apache HttpClient before version 4.2. Such apps may listen to PROXY_CHANGE_ACTION broadcast (12, 13) to get notified of changes in proxy settings and then getDefaultProxy settings - either set through CLI (global) or GUI (per network basis) or programmatically (14, 15).
Or app may also ask user to configure proxy in app itself and use multiple available proxies (16, 17) including system properties (18) on per-connection basis.
Proxy-aware apps, particularly web browsers support:

Configuring https (SSL) proxy explicitly in settings through GUI (e.g. Firefox's network.proxy.ssl preference) or CLI (Chrome's --proxy-server option) or plugins like FoxyProxy.
Using .pac (19, 20, 21) file to import proxy settings from remote host.
For Wi-Fi APs Android also supports importing .pac files (but not WPAD). In this case ProxyHandler and PacProcessor helper apps make a local proxy available to apps but authentication doesn't work.
CONNECT over TLS connection towards SSL proxy (e.g. Squid or Apache) in contrast to plain TCP CONNECT method which sends unencrypted traffic from client to proxy before TLS handshake. See FoxyProxy and network.proxy.proxy_over_tls option on Firefox.
Authentication if proxy requires, other apps usually fall back to no proxy mode when connection to proxy isn't established. Apps need to handle authentication even if loading some content in WebView.

So if you want your app to work with https proxy, consider all above factors and choose appropriate SDK/libraries when coding the app.
ENFORCING PROXY (TRANSPARENTLY)
For those libraries and programs which provide no means to configure proxy, there are different methods proxifiers/socksifiers use to force traffic towards a proxy server.

tun2socks is a socksifier which accepts all TCP (and optionally UDP) traffic directed towards a tun interface in routing table. That's how VPN works on Android. While tun2socks is a perfect choice to be used with SOCKS tunnels, it doesn't support http(s). But there are tun2http(s) solutions (like TunProxy) which are based on Android's VpnService API and transparently redirect all http(s) traffic towards remote proxy.
redsocks is another similar tool but it NATs all traffic to a specific port listening as SOCKS or HTTPS (HTTP/CONNECT) proxy. transparent_https is another similar custom made minimal solution.

Both above methods can be used on Android to forward traffic to an upstream proxy e.g. on internet or local network (22). Also see related details in this answer.

Setup interactive proxy like ZAP or mitmproxy on your local network (e.g. on router / gateway) using only routing / TPROXY (no DNAT/SNAT) and configure it to use your upstream proxy running in explicit mode (CONNECT).
Use Shared library interceptor method. See details in this answer.

SSL/TLS INTERCEPTION (MITM)
If the purpose of https proxy is the Access Control like logging, anti-virus scanning, content blocking, filtering or adaptation, SSL bumping (23, 24) is required on proxy server. In the absence of CONNECT, the very first HTTP request sent is already encrypted. So the proxy doesn't know who the original intended host is, (SNI may help but even with CONNECT method, you can't do DPI) without decrypting SSL.
It means that every outgoing SSL/TLS connection is to be terminated and re-established by proxy, so the proxy must be forced intercepting (like squid). But not every https proxy supports SSL decryption and working transparently (25); the s part needs special handling of Certificate Authorities. Proxy's root SSL certificate - which signs dynamically forged web server's certificate - needs to be added to credential store of client app and/or device (keeping this in consideration) to avoid invalid certificate errors. Or client may opt to ignore the errors, thus defeating the purpose of secure http.
If the purpose is not the filtering but only to hide visited websites from ISP / local network or to hide public IP from visited websites, an alternative is to do simple NAT on both sides i.e. on device or router and the remote proxy server. SSL Pass through is a similar approach.

RELATED:

How to set up a socks5 with Android cli?
Why is not all traffic captured from my device when routing through proxy?

This is for Http proxy but i need to setup proxy to capture https traffic where i need to configure proxy of https (with certificate)

@Manish SSL/TLS INTERCEPTION (MITM) is not about https? Please go through the answer once, I can't explain everything in comments. Another related answer: https://android.stackexchange.com/a/219280/218526. From which program/app you want to capture traffic?

I'll go through this document .
An APK is installed in a special type of hardware.

@Manish you need to build that APK with a proxy-aware http client library in order to use proxy. Or otherwise force the proxy as explained in the answer and linked answers.


text:
How can I only have sound when being called (phone)?
In my Android phone, I have the following options for sound:

Media volume
Alarm volume
Ring volume

However, if I increase ring volume, I also get each time a sound when I get a Whatsapp message, Facebook massage etc.
Is it possible to (temporarily) get sound only when I will be (phone) called (by another person)?
(background: I always leave my sound off, but I expect an important phone call today I do not want to miss).
Mobile: Motorola S5+, Android 8.1.0
Thanks in advance.

Whats app calls or phone calls?

@ReddyLutonadio phone calls (when I am called by someone else)

You can try this:
Go to System settings->Notifications->Select WhatsApp->Choose Block all and/or Show silently according to your need.
Do the same for Facebook.

Thanks; I was hoping for a better solution, because whatsapp/FB were just examples, I have lots of apps making sounds for notifications (mail, text messages, linkedin, ...) if I switch on sounds. But these will rule out the most important, thanks.


text:
Unable to copy the files to /system/app
I am working on i.MX 6Quad SABRE-SD with Android 9. I am facing some problem when copy the some data to system/app from USB Mass Storage,
I got error, when I mount the system to write access:
sabresd_6dq:/ # **mount -o remount,rw '/system'**

**EXT4-fs (dm-0): previous I/O error to superblock detected
Buffer I/O error on dev dm-0, logical block 0, lost sync page write
EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: block_validity,delalloc,barrier,user_xattr,acl,inode_readahead_blks=8**

And also I got error when copy the some data to system/app from USB Mass Storage.
sabresd_6dq:/system/app # cp /mnt/media_rw/2A61-DD07/ota/update.zip  /system/app

EXT4-fs error (device dm-0): ext4_mb_generate_buddy:757: group 11, block bitmap and bg descriptor inconsistent: 32768 vs 0 free clusters

EXT4-fs (dm-0): previous I/O error to superblock detected

Buffer I/O error on dev dm-0, logical block 0, lost async page write

Buffer I/O error on dev dm-0, logical block 1, lost async page write

Why are you using device-mapper with /system? dm-crypt? dm-verity? Or something else?

Is there any possible to disable dm-crypt and dm-verity?

Disabling is the next step. I don't know what and why are you using. I'm asking you. From where did you get system.img and kernel?

Configuration to unmount the system,

adb shell

reboot bootloader

fastboot oem unlock

Reboot the devices,

adb root

adb disable-verity

adb root

adb reboot

adb root

adb remount

adb push adb push 'D:\VINOTH'   /system/app/

Wait until finish

adb reboot


text:
file manager doesn't find folders
I am using a terminal, Termux, and Qute.
The terminal Qute shows me a path data/user/0/com.ddm.
In the file manager Cx File explorer I am not able to find them. In Android folder, there is a data folder with a lot of folders called com.something, as com.dropbox.android, but not the above cited folder, idem for folders of Termux. How can I find the wanted folders in file manager?

First is /data/ and latter is /data/media/0/Android/data/. Names are same but those are different directories. If you want to access /data/user/0/ from some file explorer, you need root access. If you just want to copy some files, do that from within Qute app, e.g. using cp command.

@Irfan Latif Thanks so much.  Do you know if it's possible to create and directories that are in the visible part of the phone with a non rooted Android terminal?

Visible part for non-root apps is /sdcard. Yes you can create directories there provided that the app owns storage permission.

@Irfan Latif very good thank you.


text:
How can I duplicate an event in the Microsoft Outlook Android application?
How can I duplicate an event in the Microsoft Outlook Android application?

To duplicate a calendar event in Outlook is not straight forward. There is no copy or long-press to copy an event. You have to copy the description on the existing event, create a new event, paste the description, select the attendees and time, etc.
The feature has been requested in Uservoice since at least 2016. However, Microsoft has not implemented it yet.

Now that the UserVoice forums have been retired, I've put a related suggestion in the feedback forum: https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/2bc069a1-511f-ee11-a81c-000d3a7a48db


text:
Architectural details of Android VPN service : How tun0 gets created?
I would like to know how android creates a VPN tun0 interface. After I call establish from VPNService, Builder, the ServiceManager takes up the process and create the tun0. For that it uses parcels to send to Binder, but I am kind of confused as to what it does after that. I want to understand in detail how an interface gets created.
I have tried using strace on the application to see what kind of system calls get executed, but I did not see any ioctl calls from the application pid, but saw them on the system_Server pid. I understand that system_Server is what creates the interface, but how does Binder talk to system_Server asking to create an interface. Kindly point to any source code . It would be really helpful .

Is this a user-focused question? Asking for source code makes it rather look like developer-centric. And development questions are off-topic here. They rather belong to our sister site at StackOverflow.

This is more like a development related question but what I know is that binder is inter-process communication (IPC) mechanism (like sockets) which processes use by opening /dev/*binder character devices. Binder IPC is used by Android's Java framework (for JNI communication) as well as native processes (e.g. for communication with vendor's binary blobs).
tun is Ethernet-like virtual network interface created by kernel (provided that it's built with tuntap support) so that a program can directly read/write IP packets from/to this interface. Creating tun needs ioctl TUNSETIFF be sent to kernel over /dev/net/tun character device (it's /dev/tun on Android). Manually you can do:
~# ip tuntap add dev tun0 mode tun

Android's VPN service uses binder to call native code for tun creation.
RESOURCES:

Android Architecture
How AOSP created tun interface: 1, 2, 3, 4.


text:
All contact names on device changed without user intervention
All of the contact names stored on my device got changed to "1 Null" without my intervention.
How can I get them back? Any ideas?

Did you try some other contacts app?

What did you do that might have led to this situation? Anything you remember between when it worked last time and then started being like in that screenshot? Like: installed some other app, tried to sync with something, experienced a sudden device shutdown/crash…


text:
How does carrier/network lock work? How is it implemented?
I feel like I should have been able to find the answer to this, maybe I'm distracted or something, but does anyone know how carrier/network/sim lock actually works and if there are any workarounds? Say I wanted to make one of those unlocking services. What is the process?
I saw a couple answers from some years ago, they all seem fairly vague and as if it's actually an unknown, so I'm not sure if that's current information. It seems inevitable that someone would have leaked or reverse engineered that information by now, right?

Carrier locks work at SoC/bootloader level. In simple terms the modem - which has its own Baseband Processor -  is tuned to certain frequencies / bands or programmed to register with only one MCC/MNC which identifies a universally unique carrier. MCC/MNC is part of IMSI which is stored on SIM card and used in initial authentication process when device goes online.
Both modem (which is integrated in SoC) and SIM (which is a Java card Secure Element) are completely isolated from Application Processor (the one on which Android OS runs); they have their own processors, OS and possibly storage. Modem's communication protocol (through RIL) is usually vendor-specific and closed source (used to be simply ATC in good old days). Communication to SIM (APDU commands) is also routed through BP. So the unlocking workarounds aren't very straightforward but hacks do exist and they work, usually through special hardware/software.
Mostly modems accept some kind of dial code for SIM unlock, which is calculated by passing phone's IMEI through some mathematical functions, which are cracked by hackers sometimes. Another approach is to communicate with modem thorough some service mode e.g. Diagnostic Mode (DM) on Qualcomm SoC's (see this recent example), or possibly go even below that and directly use UART/JTAG entirely bypassing Android OS. So there is no standardization and official/unofficial unlocking methods largely vary from vendor to vendor and device to device.


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

android.hardware.usb.host.xml file - located under /vendor/etc/permissions/ or /system/etc/permissions/ before Treble - contains feature name="android.hardware.usb.host" which indicates that the device can communicate with USB devices as the USB host. This feature is evaluated by PackageManager (along with other software / hardware features) and used by Google Play to filter (in)compatible apps based on the value <uses-feature android:name="android.hardware.usb.host" /> in AndroidManifest.xml. See details here.
Also if the device doesn't support USB host mode, UsbHostManager service is not started, so apps like this which use USB host APIs cannot connect to USB devices. But any connected device is still detected by kernel and appears under /sys and /dev.
To confirm if the device supports USB host mode:
~$ pm list features | grep usb.host
feature:android.hardware.usb.host

~$ dumpsys usb | grep host_manager
  host_manager={

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

However since Android 6 USB storage devices such as a USB stick are handled by vold, which doesn't depend on the feature discussed above. vold listens to kernel through a netlink socket for block device uevent (1) and matches that with some entry in fstab (2). Then it creates disk and partition nodes in /dev/block/vold/ (3), checks filesystem for errors and mounts in /mnt/media_rw/ (also emulates SD cards in /mnt/runtime/) (4). After that ExternalStorageProvider (a content provider) is triggered which grants apps URI access to OTG storage through SAF or  Scoped Directory Access.
So in order to disable auto-mounting of USB storage devices by vold, you need to remove the corresponding entry from fstab as referenced here:
/devices/*/xhci-hcd.0.auto/usb*    auto    auto    defaults    voldmanaged=usb:auto

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

At least for Android 7 (fstab in /) this does not seem so easy, because the root partition gets rewritten on every reboot, so changing fstab does nothing. It seems you have to unpack boot.img change fstab and pack it again, because on boot, this filesystem gets written to root.

@user136036 correct.


text:
How to recover unsaved video file on Android?
I've got a Samsung S9 phone and today I was taking a lot of photos and videos.
For one video we pushed record for about 30 seconds and then pushed stop. It appeared to have been recorded.
However, later today I check my photos and videos and the video is not there. Everything else is.
Is there a way to try to recover this video file?

If your storage is not having read-write failures and you are absolutely certain (use a file manager app to look for it instead of gallery) that the file is still not there, than you cannot obtain it anymore because it was never saved to begin with.

Yeah I looked with a different file manager and it's not there. Is there a temporary directory to look somewhere?


text:
How can an existing storage server in Solid Explorer be edited?
In Solid Explorer (2.7.7), how can an existing network storage server (e.g. SFTP, LAN/SMB; all grouped by Solid Explorer into "Cloud Storage") be changed? ? How can one be deleted? Holding on the server name in the "Storages" list or the title bar has no affect.

Tap the "hamburger" icon (☰) to open the sidebar.
Tap the vertical ellipses (⋮) to open the menu.
Tap "Storage Manager".

From here, tap a storage's menu button to edit or delete the server. Additionally, the storage order can be changed by holding and dragging an item.


text:
System bootlooping after TWRP installation
I have installed TWRP through Odin, then I booted it. I only seen it, I haven´t done anything, just rebooted to the system again, and it got stuck on trying to boot the system.
It's Samsung J7 Prime with Oreo, Odin 3.13 and TWRP-3.2.3-For-Galaxy-J7-Prime.tar
So, what the hell? Why is it not booting? Any idea?

Can you boot into TWRP? If you can I would try these steps:

Boot into TWRP

Once TWRP is booted you first need to wipe your /data partition or go into Wipe > Advanced Wipe and make sure Data is ticked then swipe to wipe.
If this is your first boot into TWRP: swipe Wipe > Format Data from left to right and follow the instructions displayed onscreen.

Once it's finished go back to  the home screen and swipe Reboot > Recovery from left to right. TWRP should be able to mount your data partition.

Now flash the no-verity-opt-encrypt zip you downloaded from this link, put it on an SD Card and flash it by going to Install > %zip location% This zip prevents your phone from bootlooping since Android Oreo uses dm-verity to prevent modification to the system.

You are (hopefully) now able to reboot to your OS without bootlooping.
Hope this helps.

Thanks Joe.
I was in the process that led me to wiping, but I didn't want to wipe, so I tried to do anything else. As soon as I ran out of hope I can preserve the data, I wiped it. And it was back to normal.

wipe is just necessary for fixing problems with decryption - if your twrp does mount your data partition successfully, you can continue with installing no-verity.zip without wiping data


text:
How can I automatically backup a file on my phone to my NAS running on my local network?
I have a NAS running and I can connect to it from my Linux machine (fstab):
 //192.168.1.4/home/backup /media/nas-backup cifs vers=1.0,username=***,password=***,auto,iocharset=utf8,gid=1000,uid=1000,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0

I'd like to set up an app to run on my phone and backup my photos and sms messages daily when my phone is on my network. I think I can accomplish a lot of this with Tasker. But the actually file copying, I'm not sure how to proceed. I hear Syncthing for Android is good but I can't find any documents about connecting it to to a CIFS mountable NAS.
How can I setup Syncthing (or a different program) to connect to my NAS and backup files on a regular basis?

Simply run busybox crond. Mounting cifs on Android with busybox mount also works.

do I need to root my phone for that?

yes. Mounting can't work without root. Also crond run by unprivileged app will be killed.


text:
Sharing contact throught SMS
When I am share the contact throught SMS, during the addition of contact it is converting to MMS formate and message is not going.
Please help me.
Phone mode: MIA3 andriod one

it is converting to MMS formate and message is not going

This only happens if you try to send the contact as a vcard file (.vcf is the extension).
To send the contact number only, copy the number to clipboard and paste it in message body. The message will be transferred as text.
If you want to send the message as a  vcard file, contact your cellular company (eg. Airtel , Jio, Vodafone etc) and request them to enable MMS on your number.


text:
How can I expand an email thread Gmail on Android?
How can I expand an email thread Gmail on Android?
When looking at Gmail in a web browser I can do:

I'm looking for the same option for Android.

In Gmail settings > youraccount@gmail.com > untick "Conversation view". Emails should then be expanded by default.

@ReddyLutonadio thanks, unfortunately that would display emails from the same conversation as independent emails, which I don't want. Sorry I've just realised that the red arrow in the first screenshot doesn't point to the right option: it should point to conversion view on.

I would recommend you to try out FairEmail an open source, privacy oriented email client, which can provide far greater customization than Gmail app


text:
What does the icon of a phone with “ID” written on it mean?
My friend is using a Samsung Galaxy Note 10 with Android 9.0 “Pie”. This icon appears on the notification bar.

The icon also appears as the picture of some calls in the list of recent calls on the stock dialer app, mainly when the number is not saved as a contact.
Let’s say 20 calls were showing on the call list:

17 calls were from saved contacts. These had a circle with the initials of the contact next to the call (e.g. John Doe will be displayed as "JD").
1 call was what looked like a saved contact - it had a name, not just a number. It had that icon next to it.
The last 2 are just phone numbers with that icon next to it.

What does the icon mean and when it is meant to appear?

Wild guess: it's probably has something to do with Caller ID.


text:
Destroyed (boot/recovery).img after rebooting the device
I use Realme 3 pro device with SD710 running android 9.0 with ColorOs UI, and i'm trying to root my device with Magisk module. First i followed the instructions at link to unlock bootloader,then followed this link to install TWRP recovery for flashing Magisk to root my device, but after that the device cannot boot-up and i have this message on screen :
 i tried these solutions to overpass this message :

Disable verity-check using ADB with command ./fastboot - disabled-verity - vbmeta flash-verification-enabled vbmeta.img but i get error fastboot: usage: unknown command - .
Disable verity-check by flashing a zip from this link.
Try to patch stock boot.img by using Magisk manger followed the instructions link.

noticed: Secure boot status still yes in fastboot mode, and the device only boot-up iff after flashing the stock boot.img and stock recovert.img but with no root.
So i think the problem caused by secure boot, how to solve it? and if there is another one what could it be?
Thanks for advance.

patch your recovery.img with Magisk Manager on any working phone (no root required). flash the magisk_patched.img to your recovery partition. This should by-pass dm-verity

https://topjohnwu.github.io/Magisk/install.html#magisk-in-recovery

"If you are patching a recovery image, manually check Recovery Mode in Advanced Settings" https://topjohnwu.github.io/Magisk/install.html#boot-image-patching

After trying this solution, i have the same problem

then flash VBMETA from this thread https://forum.xda-developers.com/realme-3-pro/how-to/guide-unlock-bootloader-install-twrp-t3938845

I have tried this solution and i got an error as i mentioned below the picture in my question

what is output of fastboot --disable-verity --disable-verification flash vbmeta vbmeta.img

Here is: fastboot: usage: unknown command -

update your fastboot to latest version https://www.xda-developers.com/google-releases-separate-adb-and-fastboot-binary-downloads (and check your commands for typos)

Install the stock recovery first through fastboot. Then install twrp recovery again through fastboot. Then install the zip file of the stock rom. It worked for me. Get the stock recovery and stock rom from
https://forum.xda-developers.com/realme-3-pro/how-to/guide-to-stock-rom-stock-recovery-t3940604


text:
How to protect my Wi-Fi password from being displayed by Android phones when sharing it with QR code?
I would like to know if there is any workaround to protect or hide my TP-LINK Wi-Fi router password from being displayed on phones using Xiaomi (Redmi) phones.
If we go to Wi-Fi in a Redmi phone and tap on previously connected Wi-Fi, then the phone allows us to share the Wi-Fi network by scanning QR code by some other phone or the same phone.
And if I scan this QR code with any other phone, then we can easily see the password. So how can I protect my Wi-Fi password?

Just a note, but the standard QR format for Wi-Fi automatically includes the password in plain-text. So I assume what you really want is more like, disabling this sharing feature for a specific SSID instead (if it's even possible)?

I just want to protect my wifi password so that it can not be detected by any phone (QR code). Is there any option in TP LINK?

The QR code is generated on-the-fly based on the format above by the phone, not the router; the router config doesn't have anything to do with this. The practical solution is to totally avoid sharing Wi-Fi config using QR code. The extended (and research needed) solution is to find if it's possible to disable/protect this feature using password systematically...

Is access control an acceptable solution? (Asking the general public as well as OP) Limiting access through your router to only allowed, trusted devices wouldn't protect your "password" per se, but would prevent unauthorized clients from accessing the internet and your network. (which has the same general effect as limiting your passwords share-ability right?)

What you want is to give your friend the key so he can use it the way you intended. But also not give him the key, in case he tries to use it in any other way. This is simply not possible.

The answer to this question is more general than the specific hardware you referenced in your question, and not Android specific in any way, but since this question seems to arise from time to time I will answer it as best I can so that people can see this isn't "magic" in any way.
The reason this is showing your password is that the QR code for WiFi information stores and transmits the WiFi password in plain text, so that anyone who scans the QR code will have your WiFi password. The QR code isn't something special here: although you can't "read" it per se, any device that knows the standard code used for the QR symbol can read it just like words on a piece of paper. This is just how QR codes for WiFi are done and it doesn't matter if it is a TP-Link, Asus, Linksys, or any other device creating them: the password is in plain text. It also does not matter what device is reading the QR code: whether it's Redmi, Samsung, Apple, Google, Huawei, or whatever, it can read the QR code and display the network name and password in plain text, although some apps might "mask" the password for basic privacy (but they do have the information).
The proper way to handle this security in a home environment is not to give your WiFi password out to your friends, only to your family (or set it up yourself for them, although they may still be able to retrieve the password). And for your friends' or guests' use, have a separate SSID with a simple password that is setup to only access the Internet (commonly called Client Isolation), possibly at a throttled rate. I don't know about TP-Link, but many companies like Asus have an app for your cell phone that can very quickly allow you to enable a guest WiFi network for a certain period of time (say 4, 24, 72 hours) then automatically disables it. This example is useful for friends who are over for dinner, the entire day, or weekend perhaps. Some people, myself included, just enable a guest network with a password all the time, but this network has client isolation (users can only access the Internet) and it is throttled to about 1-2% of my ISP speeds (they have 5Mbps down and 500Kbps upload to use) and I change the password 3-4 times a year and put it on the fridge. None of these are perfect answers to security, but they are usually good enough.
Otherwise, if you are giving people access to your network, you might as well just give them the WiFi password... Once they are connected to WiFi it is largely the same as if they plugged into your network with a cable and can access everything, so having physical access to the network and having the WiFi password are essentially the same thing. Besides, it is fairly easy to change the WiFi password later if needed to restrict access. It also isn't a bad idea to change your WiFi password on a regular basis, once every 30-90 days or so, so that if the password is out there, it cannot be accessed later if things change, like your friend for whatever reason is not your friend any longer.

So in brief, conclusion is there exists no proper technical solution for my this problem. It's very strange and ridiculous that technology has improved so much but we don't have any robust technique for this!

@user3779493 it might be better if you can think an idea on how to improve this technology... 1) the purpose of Wi-Fi QR code is to conveniently share Wi-Fi config for the other devices to connect, and they need the SSID and password. 2) if other devices have connected to that Wi-Fi AP, and if those devices are rooted, then they also can retrieve the Wi-Fi password stored locally on their devices.

@user3779493 Technology is there. You can have a more secure system with every user having his own username and password. But if you choose a simple one password for everyone then when giving it out you have to reveal it. That is the nature of a single password. The guest's phone has to get the password in a readable form, be it QR or a simple text or your mouth telling it to your guest. You can offer the guest that you will fill the password for him on his phone.

@user3779493 Of course more secure solutions exist, but they are not as simple as having a single generic passcode. Enterprise organizations use them all the time, such as WPA2-Enterprise (Radius) or 802.1X where the user does not need a "wifi password" at all, but uses other credentials such as a domain username/password or installs a specific certificate (a file) in the device manually. These are generally not intended for home use though, this is why guest networks (sometimes duration specific) are built into modern home routers. Is the technology there? Yes, but there is no demand for it.

@user3779493 I would also advice caution about entering the credentials for someone in their device, there is absolutely no security in that... Anyone with minimal Google search skills could recover the password. The other thing to remember is that once it's entered into say a mobile device, this information could  also be backed up to the user's cloud account such as Google, and every device they add they account to would immediately have access to your network and password. Again, this lends to having a secure guest network for such purposes where you can limit the time and password use.

@user3779493: It's not ridiculous. The network layer is not access control, ever. If you're using it as such, you have serious problems; any compromise of any of your devices gives access to whatever is treating the network as trusted. This may include "compromises" that aren't even native code execution, e.g. just javascript running in a browser on one of your devices. Always treat the lan no differently than the public internet.

The short answer to this question is you can not stop anybody that has the WiFi password from sharing it. Which is exactly what the phone is doing when it generates the QR code.
If you want to prevent users of your network from sharing access with others then you have to use something other than the default password WPA to secure the network. There are a number of possible solutions

Use MAC address white lists, this means that only known hardware will be allowed to connect even if they have the password (MAC addresses are easily spoofed with laptops, not sure if it's possible without jailbreaking a phone)
Used WPA-TLS, this uses individual certificates for each user, once installed on the phone there is no way to export the private key so no way to share with others (it is possible to extract keys on some jail broken phones that do not have hardware secure elements)
Use a captive portal and require a second password that changes regularly (this could be from a 2fa token only given to authorised users)

This list is not complete but should give you some options to look at.

MAC address whitelist/blacklists are tough now days... MAC address randomization is being built into devices for privacy purposes, my Pixel phone has it. https://source.android.com/devices/tech/connect/wifi-mac-randomization and the other methods are often hardware dependent, not all home networking equipment can do supplicant based authentication, although most can do a guest network with captive portal, I don't see the point of the captive portal if it is a unique SSID anyway, unless you need people to accept T&C to indemnify yourself if they do something malicious.

Mac address randomisation is only used when searching for a SSID, the device's real Mac address is still used for the actual connection. The captive portal allows you to add a secondary layer of authentication which can be easily changed, it has nothing to do with indemnity

Good to know, thanks for the info!

@hardillb At least on my Pixel 3a, it's an option in the settings which MAC to use when actually connected, and random is listed as the default.

You can have a dedicated guest SSID (if your router supports it). This can separate guests from you to some degree, depending on router capabilities.
If you don't want give the guests permanent access, you can change the password time-to-time.
If you want to go further, you can look at WPA2/WPA3 Enterprise. This allows better access control. However, you probably don't want to do this on your home Wi-Fi, because it is too complex to set up and you might need a better (and more expensive) Wi-Fi router for that.
For explanation why QR code does not hide the password see @acejavelin's post.

I have a second router, just a small cheap one, connected by cable to the main router. They have different wifi networks and different passwords.
I give my friends the password of the second router only.
I can change it anytime easily. Or disconnect it.
I find its an easy and effective solution.

This is actually a terrible solution... You are giving everyone on the second router full access to everything on the first router's network, and no one on the first router's network can access anything on the second. Unless you have client isolation on the IP address assigned to the second router...

Who said I was giving everyone access? You? I sure didnt. I can configure it so they dont have access to each others networks. Seems safe enough.

If router 2's internet port is connected to the LAN of R1, all anyone on R2 needs to know is the IP address scheme of the LAN of R1. To R2, your R1 LAN subnet is the Internet, so they can access everything in it as if they were connected directly to it. Simple IP routing says so unless you have made some very specific changes not common in home routers. For example, if my IP on R2 is 10.0.0.10 and your printer on R1 is 192.168.1.50, I can access that directly because R2 will happily route to that device as it knows exactly where it is. Your R1 LAN however knows nothing of 10.0.0.10.

Depending on your router you can configure it so that they are not showing each others networks.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
Remove brand from Wear OS Watch faces
I just bought a Fossil Gen 5 Carlyle. Before this, I used a Huawei Watch. I noticed they have a lot of builtin watch faces in common, so this must be builtin to Wear OS. The difference is, the watch faces on the Fossil watch show the Fossil logo, whereas the Huawei Watch doesn’t.
I don’t like having the brand name on my watch face all the time. Can it be removed (while using the builtin watch faces)?


text:
Sandisk SSD USB not detected by Android
I have a Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD 500 GB. It works fine with Windows 10 but it cannot be detected by any of my Android devices. I tested with an Nokia 3.1, Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact and a Sony Xperia 10 Plus, both with and without a Transcend OTG adapter. As well, I reformated it with exFAT and NTFS. What could be wrong?
The tablet runs Android 6 while the two phones run Android 9.
Other USB memory sticks work fine with the OTG adapter on all devices.

What's the power rating of SSD? Did you check kernel log (requires root) if something gets detected on USB?

There are one major differences between an USB stick and an USB SSD: power consumption
As SSDs usually don't have the possibility to use a separate power supply you have to place an active USB hub (a hub with an own power supply) between the phone and the SSD.
The SSD is optimized for high performance and therefore requires much more power than a simple USB stick.
The Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD 500 GB requires about 4 Watt.
Most smartphones only support USB 2.0 and therefore the output is limited to 5V at 500 mA = 2.5 Watt. Only a very few smartphone support USB 3.0 or USB power delivery in OTG mode which would make it possible to use an SSD via OTG.
On a regular computer the SSD works because USB 3.0 allows 900 mA (5V at 900mA -> 4.5 Watt) and therefore it can power the SSD correctly.

I have Xiaomi RN4, originally released with Android 6, officially stating USB 2.0 support but it supports USB 3 (xhci-hcd driver). So I can run my old WD 500GB HDD on it which won't be drawing amperage less than a SSD. Also many SSDs claim to be drawing less than 2W though there could be high ampere surges depending on how efficient internal circuits and silicon cells are. So I think it's hard to define a thumb rule w.r.t. power usage.

@Irfan: I think it is more the question if the used USB device implements the USB rules in a strict way or just uses as much power as it wants. Especially HDDs without extra power supply often work on USB2.0 ports even though this should be impossible.

@Robert Thanks, that makes sense! Nowadays you take it for granted that USB always delivers enough power, but of course mobile devices may be limited.

I had the same issue before. Android doesn’t recognize the NTFS file format but some phones can read exFAT. You can try the app Total Commander and exFAT/NTFS for USB by Paragon Software.


text:
How to remove/delete files from my shared folder in Google drive?
How can we remove or delete files from shared folder in Google Drive as I can't see any remove/delete option there. See the screenshot below:

Here I want to remove ymusic-latest.apk from my shared folder. How do we do that?

You should have the Remove options as shown on the first image below. If not (as is your case), then long-press on the file, a menu should appear as seen on the second image. You can then click on the trash/bin to delete the file.
I used version 2.19.392.02.35 of Google Drive.

I tried it too, but strangely no delete option appeared.

I simply deleted this file from desktop version of google drive.

@user3779493 What about other files? Does the Remove option appear for them? Have you tried to clear the app's cache?

I had only one file in shared folder. Yes I did clear app's cache and updated the app too but nothing worked for me. The desktop version of this app did the job for me.


text:
How to set ringer modes on Android 7?
In Android 7, where are the various ringer modes? They seem to have disappeared or been hidden. Before, in previous versions, it had 3 modes: Silent, Vibrate, Normal. Where have this icon and mode gone?


text:
How to flash Magisk-x.y.z.zip using fastboot without using TWRP?
Is it mandatory to use twrp to flash Magisk. Can it be flashed using fastboot

you probably can't flash magisk with fastboot
you must have twrp installed or any other custom recovery..
Thanks..

You probably meant fastboot mode.
And no, Magisk cannot be flashed using Fastboot mode. It is a zip file and not an image file that you can just flash to a partition.  If you want to use fastboot, you should consider patching your boot image using Magisk Manager and then boot that image using fastboot boot command.
fastboot boot magisk-patched.img

Or if you are sure you have the correct boot image, you can flash the patched image too:
fastboot flash boot magisk-patched.img

Thanks. Fixed typo. Magisk Manager is a apk file. How to use Magsik Manager to rewrite the boot image on a non-rooted phone while i am trying to root the mobile using Magisk.

@Talespin_Kit this way

You need the stock boot image. Then you can use Magisk Manager to inject Magisk into the boot image. And then flash/boot the image which will load magisk init commands when the device starts up.


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Can WhatsApp video calls be restored/reviewed?
In WhatsApp, one can view the detail of video call history by tapping the entry on it.

The video calls have a volume on the device, so can they be restored and reviewed?

No, WhatsApp video calls can't be restored and reviewed. It's not stored anywhere locally on the phone or remotely on the internet.
The size shown here is the total data transferred through the internet while on the video call. It's basically the usage of network data, mostly for data usage auditing/monitoring on a limited internet plan.
There are some 3rd-party apps that can record WhatsApp video calls locally on the phone, but WhatsApp doesn't have a feature to record both phone and video calls natively.


text:
is an SD card mounted with setuid mode?
Related question here which gives all the gory details (that I won't repeat in this question), motivations and context.
Android is a Linux kernel based system. I know quite well about mount(2) and mount(8) and the filesystems on Linux.
Can the SD card in a tablet be mounted (e.g. as an Ext4 file system) without the MS_NOSUID flag? If yes, how?
I am willing and capable of writing, cross-compiling, and building a statically linked ELF executable (for my ARM-based tablet), which is root-setuid and mixes the features of sudo and sash on my Debian system. I am capable of formatting some SD card (on my Debian) as an Ext4 filesystem. And if I know how to install and run it on my tablet, I will write that program as a GPLv3+ software (in C).
A related question is what exact cross GCC compiler should I use on Debian/x86-64 to target such an ARM tablet.

External storage (/sdcard) and physically external storage both are mounted by vold with nosuid irrespective of the filesystem, can't be mounted other way without root.
Both storages are accessible to apps as emulated filesystem (with fixed file permissions) or through SAF; both don't let files be executed.
You can move ELF executable to somewhere on /data e.g. to /data/local/tmp/ using adb shell or to /data/data/com.termux/files/home/ using Termux app. /data is formatted as ext4 or f2fs, lets file permissions be set, so you can execute files there. But that too is mounted with nosuid by default.
Android apps are run with all Linux capabilities dropped (empty bounding set and NO_NEW_PRIVS set), so they can't make use of setuid or file capabilities to elevate their privileges.

You may want to have a look at How Magisk works? or How to manually root a phone? to see how root works on Android devices, not possible with locked bootloader.


text:
Unlocking bootloader on HTC Desire 320
I am trying to unlock bootloader on Desire 320, but failing on retrieving the OEM number:
$ fastboot oem get_identifier_token
...
FAILED (remote: unknown command)
finished. total time: 0.004s

I've also tried flashing recovery with TWRP directly using
$ fastboot flash recovery <recovery.img>

But that failed with security deny, error code 0x2017. I've rooted the phone using KingoRoot but that did not change anything.
I've even tried an automated application HTC Bootloader Unlocker, but this app failed on the same step as I did. Also, after investigating its logs, this app tried to read various variables using fastboot and could not read any of them.
I've also tried to update ROM directly from stock recovery using both SD card and ADB sideload, but both installations were canceled (but sideload on itself works).
The phone specs and prerequisities:

android 4.4.2, core version 3.4.67
Developer mode unlocked, USB debugging enabled (was able to send adb/fastboot commands)
Unverified applications can be installed (was able to install KingoRoot)
Cannot enable OEM Unlocking option as many guides suggest (this option does not exist in my phone)
Cannot use RUU (my phone does not have a carrier)

The question:

Am I screwed or is possible to unlock this device (and how?)

If you have rooted your device have you tried to install TWRP using the "Official TWRP App"?

Tried it just now and I bricked the phone

There seems to be an issue with USB3.0 and Fastboot. Fastboot commands won't work on a phone which is conencted via a USB3.0 port. In order to investigate further and look for the solutions, I need you to crosscheck this first. Try running other fastboot commands such as:
fastboot reboot

and see if it works.

Yep, this command worked, but as I stated in another comment, I've tried Official TWRP App and now phone's completely bricked.

Does your phone enter a boot loop or is it not able to boot at all? Also, are you able to enter the fastboot mode?

No fastboot, no recovery, no boot loop. It doesn't even vibrate. It is completely bricked.


text:
Install Magisk on Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge (SM-G935FD) UAE ROM
Going quietly mad here... have tried and tried. Steps taken are
I purchased a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge online - its an SM-G935FD, with an original ROM (official) from the UAE (XSG).
I install TWRP - no problems there - then install Magisk Manager on the phone via the website.
I download Magisk also, and then boot into recovery with TWRP.
I install Magisk, but after rebooting, I get the following message -
"Verification failed" "Unable to restart your device. The integrity verification has failed. You need to reset your device to factory default settings. This will erase all your data"
Any ideas or suggestions as to what I should do with this? I rooted to phone, and have lost access to Samsung Health, which I'd like to use. I don't need Samsung Pay.
Any advice greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Did you set OEM Unlocking ON in Dev Options and unlocked bootloader?

Yep.
I finally solved my issue late last night. In recovery, using TWRP, after trying to install Magisk, I'd get a response that was something like "unable to mount /data partition"..and I believe that was what was causing the issue. I found this html site at XDA developers
https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/general/how-to-fix-unable-to-mount-data-t3830897
which steps you through the process of repairing the data file systems (both ext2 and ext4), and that worked. Magisk installed correctly and is now working with my banking details, as well as Samsung Health (which involved changing a digit in the System/build prop file (tima from 1 to 0).
Now if someone could show me what to do when the next samsung update comes along, I'd be grateful. Don't want to lose it all (Magisk install) after the next update...

Looks like found the (partial) solution to your own issue which is great! However, it seems you also accidentally created a duplicate account. Please follow this help center to regain the ownership of your previous account and the question so you can comment on the question & accept the answer. Thanks!


text:
save to homescreen is not working
Android Nougat 7.0 on Motox Pure 2015 -- rooted
I can't save shortcuts to home-screen anymore. None of the installed browsers save to home-screen. Google maps doesn't save to home-screen.
I just tried to save a directions shortcut from Google maps and it said that the shortcut was saved, but it is not.
Added edit:
Here is a log entry while saving the Google maps shortcut:
[10-06 09:18:46.584 1146:1179 W/BroadcastQueue]
Background execution not allowed: receiving Intent { act=com.android.launcher.action.INSTALL_SHORTCUT flg=0x10 (has extras) } to com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox/com.android.launcher3.InstallShortcutReceiver

I'm starting to think this has to do with one of my battery app background restricter apps.  I am testing that out now.

SOLVED: I allowed com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox to run in the background and that fixed the problem.

Looks like you have found the solution by yourself, and that's good! However, can you post it as an answer instead? Comment is not for providing the solution, and you can also mark the answer to indicate that the question has been solved. Thanks!

SOLVED: I allowed com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox to run in the background and that fixed the problem.
In my case the app that was restricting was called BackgroundRestrictor.
I also have both the RootBooster and Hibernation apps running, and they didn't need any adjusting.


text:
Unable to open Wikipedia app on Android TV
I have Mi TV 4a pro and I want to open Wikipedia app on it. I had installed Wikipedia app on TV via pendrive but when I open the app it crashes. Is there is any way?
Further I had installed chrome browser on TV and when I search on it then it works fine and show results. But how can I open the links? Like when I search "mathematics", it shows Wikipedia link in results but how do I open that link? (As I have TV remote not a mouse to click on link)  Please help.

You should check the Play Store for the Wikipedia app from the TV box directly to see if the app is compatible for your Android TV. Not all apps are compatible with Android TV. As for the second question, usually there are navigation buttons on the TV remote as a replacement to point-and-click.

@AndrewT. Sir, wiki app isn't available on play store (given in TV ). Only limited apps are available. Though I had downloaded a browser named puffin, from which I can open different sites including wiki too. But that browser doesn't support save pages options for offline viewing. Is there any browser available in Android TV play store which can save pages for offline viewing? ( Wikipedia app can save articles! But not working on TV :-( )

Explicit app recommendation questions is off-topic here, but there is an SE site for that: Software Recommendations. However, please follow their strict question guideline to ensure that you get the app you want.


text:
Deleting apps from android phone that can't sign in
We have an old android phone that grandchildren use for play.  No SIM card, but on wifi.  The Google account previously used is obsolete, so we can't sign in.  But without signing in, the "play store" won't let us get to the list of apps to delete them.
We'd like to delete Contacts and the contact list, Phone and the list of calls and transcribed voicemails, and other things like that.
If we reset to factory settings, all the games disappear too, and we'd have to log in to a valid account to get them back.
And, I cannot find the settings! (Also want to turn off the unneeded cell radio to save battery.

Deleting an app doesn't need Play Store, but there's always a possibility that the Contacts and Phone apps are system apps, which you can't uninstall without root access. You can try my answer if it's possible, but you probably need this question instead...

I’d rather not root it, for the risk that an experimenting child will inadvertently trash the whole thing.  So I’ll post a different question.

https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/217350/delete-personal-data-from-phone-that-cant-sign-in-to-google

There should be no need for Play Store, as I answered in your duplicate questions. You can use Settings-Apps to remove or disable most apps, and if you need to disable system applications that are not accessible here, you can do it via ADB without root. Google would be your friend here...

Since the ‘settings’ can’t be found, that doesn’t help. And it was not a duplicate; it was a different question.  And Google (NSA’s biggest competitor) is never my friend.


text:
Delete personal data from phone that can't sign in to Google
We have an old Galaxy that grandchildren use for play. No SIM card, but on wifi.  The Google account previously used is obsolete, so we can't sign in.  But without signing in, the "play store" won't let us get to the list of apps to delete them.  And some of them need root to delete, and I don't want it rooted.
We'd like to delete things like the entire contact list, the list of calls and transcribed voicemails, facebook messenger stuff, etc.  Nothing to hide, as the saying goes, but no need to have curious little ones reading about deceased relatives, other peoples' phone numbers, things their parents did as kids, or questions on child-rearing.  :-). Or unintentionally tapping a name and sending an e-mail.
The method that I used on the Moto X4 that I lost in Spain a year ago for deleting messages doesn't work here.
If we reset to factory settings, all the games disappear too, and we'd have to log in to a valid account to get them back.

Why can't you just to Settings - Apps and delete/disable the apps? No access to Play Store should be required. That said, I would highly suggest recovering that Google account if you have many purchases on that account, as this will be a continuing issue. And you can't factory reset without the Google account credentials or you will likely be locked out of the device unless you remove the Google account prior to the factory reset. Otherwise if the account is truly inaccessible, perhaps you should just get a new one with proper recovery information and repurchase the apps if it isn't much.

Can’t find the settings!  And since that account hasn’t been used in years, there must not be any purchases we need.  To delete the account, we have to recover the account (which might be worthwhile).

Finally found the settings, after lots of hunting.  Background was camouflaging it (which is probably a good thing if the kids are playing with it).  The App Manager UI is rather pathetic but I did manage to delete almost everything that the kids shouldn't be messing with.  Contacts, messages, and mail do have ways to delete all the items received/sent, though they aren't the greatest UI either.


text:
What's the point of pseudo-big.LITTLE CPU in Nokia 7 plus?
As far as I understand:

CPUs can change their frequencies relatively quickly, which can be used for performance-power tradeoff based on load and priorities.
big.LITTLE goes further – you can switch between powerful and energy-efficient cores in order to save more energy than underclocking allows you. Those cores vary by architecture, otherwise it would not make much sense. Usually, there is a mix of powerful cores with out-of-order execution and energy-efficient cores with in-order execution.

However, according to GSMArena, Nokia 7 plus has the following CPU:

4x2.2 GHz Kryo 260 & 4x1.8 GHz Kryo 260

That is, you have eight cores of the same type, but four of them can go up to 2.2 GHz, while other four of them can go up just to 1.8 GHz.
I believe we cannot use the same justification as for big.LITTLE. Instead of switching the cores, we could just scale the core's frequency.
Also, if the upper frequency is fixed (that is, if there are four physical cores that never go beyond 1.8 GHz), it implies uneven distribution of load and heat generation.

I think you are mistaking the "Kryo" brand from Qualcomm from being different than just a customized version of ARM big.LITTLE.
As stated in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660/630 announcement article from Anandtech:

Snapdragon 660’s Kryo 260 CPU uses four semi-custom Cortex-A73 cores in the “performance” cluster and four semi-custom Cortex-A53 cores in the “efficiency” cluster in a big.LITTLE arrangement. The Kryo 260, however, does not hit the same peak frequencies as Kryo 280, and Kryo 260 uses 1MB/1MB of shared L2 per cluster instead of 2MB/1MB of L2 for Kryo 280.

The confusion probably is from the fact that while there are 2x2 sets of CPU cores on the chipset, Qualcomm's branding the package of the 2 "performance" and 2 "efficiency" cores as the Kryo CPU. The obfuscation is probably due to Qualcomm emphasizing their customization trying to differentiate from ARM's reference big.LITTLE A73/A53 CPU core set.
Honestly while GSM Arena is a good starting point, if there is confusion/conflict further research should be done.

It is 24 cores, not 22, but that's a minor thing. According to Wikipedia and Anandtech, Kryo 260 is a line of CPUs, so you actually have Kryo 260 Efficiency, Kryo 260 Performance and Kryo 260 Gold, but those are actually various architectures. However, Qualcomm's page https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon-660-mobile-platform does not make it clear if Kryo 260 refers to a CPU core or whole CPU. They mention “Powerful Kryo CPU” (suggesting whole CPU) and “CPU Cores: Qualcomm® Kryo™ 260 CPU, Octa-core CPU” (suggesting eight equal CPU cores). Ugh.

Well, I meant, according to Wikipedia and Anandtech, Kryo 260 is a line of CPU cores.


text:
"Urgent Results" from LG V30 Smart Cleaning
I have an LG V30 (on Verizon, but I doubt that's relevant) that's about a year old. A couple of weeks ago, it updated to Android 9.0 Pie. Ever since that update, about once every 48 hours, I've been getting a notification from something called "Smart Cleaning" that says

Battery draining app
Dropbox constantly ran in the background

If I click on the notification, my options are to restrict or uninstall Dropbox.
I'm perfectly happy with my device's battery life and would like Dropbox to continue running in the background. I've tried disabling notifications in the smart cleaning program's settings, but that's had no effect and the messages keep coming. I've also tried telling the phone to disable this notification permanently when it comes up, but it says "these notifications cannot be disabled". These are starting to get on my nerves, so what can I do to get rid of this recurring message? For reference, I've included an image of the screen that pops up when I click on the notification.


text:
Errors after MIUI ROM flashing with TWRP
I'm trying to flash Xiaomi EU stable version of MIUI 10 on my Redmi Note 4 MTK.

TWRP: 3.0.2
ROM: Xiaomi EU MIUI 10 (HMNote4_V10.2.1.0)
Gapps: arm64-6.0-nano

After first flash with full wipe, it has stuck in Setup Wizard at SIM selection with Unfortunately, Setup Wizard has stopped error.
Java error message:
java.lang.IncompatibleClassChangeError: The method 'void android.telephony.SubscriptionManager.setDefaultDataSubld(int)' was expected to be of type virtual but instead was found to be of type direct (declaration of 'com.google.android.setupwizard.carrier.SimSetupActivity$SetSimDataFragment' appears in /system/priv-app/SetupWizard/SetupWizard.apk)
at com.google.android.setupwizard.carrier.SimSetupActivity$SetSimDataFragment.apply(SimSetupActivity.java:166)
at com.google.android.setupwizard.carrier.SimSetupActivity$SimSetupFragment.applySelection(SimSetupActivity.java:326)
at com.google.android.setupwizard.carrier.SimSetupActivity$SetSimDataFragment.applySelection(SimSetupActivity.java)
at com.google.android.setupwizard.carrier.SimSetupActivity.start(SimSetupActivity.java:93)
at com.google.android.setupwizard.BaseActivity.onNextPressed(BaseActivity.java:378)
at com.google.android.setupwizard.BaseActivity.onNavigateNext(BaseActivity.java:660)
at com.android.setupwizardlib

Then I re-flashed it without wipes. And another error emerged - Unfortunately, Settings has stopped
Java error message:
java.lang.RuntimeException:
Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{com.android.settings/com.android.settings.wifi.WifiSetupActivity}:
java.lang.lllegalStateException: You need to use a miui theme (or descendant) with this activity.
at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(Activity Thread.java)
at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(Activity Thread.java)
at android.app.ActivityThread.access$1100(ActivityThread.java)
at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java)
at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java)
at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java)
at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method)
at com.android.internal.os.Zygotelnit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(Zygotelnit.java)
at com.android.internal.os.Zygotelnit.main(Zygotelnit.java)
Caused by: java.lang.lllegalStateException: You need to use a miui theme (or descendant) with this activity.
at com. miui.internal.app.ActivityDelegate.installSubDecor(SourceFile)
at com.miui.internal.app.ActivityDelegate.onCreate(SourceFile)
at miui.app.Activity.onCreate(SourceFile)
at com.android.settings.kg.onCreate(SettingsActivity.java)
at com.android.settings.wifi.WifiSetupActivity.onCreate(WifiSetupActivity.java)
at android.app.Activity.performCreate(Activity.java)
at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java)
... 10 more

What do to fix this issue?

Do not install any Gapps over Xiaomi EU Stable ROMs. The ROM already has Gapps and installing another Gapps can cause conflict. Flashing the ROM without Gapps solved the problem for me.


text:
Android OS - strange UDP traffic on port 123
I have a Redmi Note 3 (unrooted) phone running MIUI Global 10.2 [Android version 6.0.1 MMB29M]
I have installed AdGuard to monitor the traffic that my phone sends/receives. While checking the 'Filtering Log', I see few connections that the app "Android OS" makes to the remote address "118.189.138.5:123" (see screenshot). As you can see from the screenshot, the requested URL is having a "UDP" connection protocol.
Now, when I do a search for this IP address, I see that it belongs to "M1 Connect Pte Ltd" in Singapore.
https://www.speedguide.net/ip/118.189.138.5
I also noticed similar UDP connections to these IP addresses:
95.216.192.15 belongs to "D2 Internet Investment Ukraine ETTH broadband" in Ukraine 133.243.238.163 belongs to "National Institute of Information and Communicatio" in Japan and the strangest of all 202.12.97.45 belonging to "Ministry of University Affairs" in Thailand
So my question is why would Android OS make connection to this IP addresses. What are these connections for? Am I missing something here or are these some legit connections used for some 'good' work? Is my phone connecting and leaking some information?
Hoping that some expert on networking will answer this.

Stay close to vanilla AOSP AMAP. Avoid using highly customized ROMs, particularly from OEMs, whether it's Xioami, OnePlus, Huawei, Samsung, Google or whatever. You never know what they put on your device.

I don't know what software you used for back tracing the IP addresses, but using the current protocol rdap (successor of whois) I get "Computer Center Khon Kaen University" for 202.12.97.45. Anyway some UDP traffic can be the result of Voice over LTE (VoLTE). Additionally the Port 123 indicates that this is the Network Time Protocol (time sync). Often a large pool of NTP servers is used. May be this is the explanation for the different UDP connections over time.

There is a simple answer what is causing the UDP traffic.
The first indicator is the used port number 123 which is typically used by the Network Time Protocol (NTP). This protocol is responsible for synchronizing the time of your smartphone with a remote server.
To spread the burden among multiple servers and to make sure there is always a server available the NTP protocol usually does not use one specific time server to synchronize with.
Instead a large pool of servers is used. The three IP address 118.189.138.5 95.216.192.15 133.243.238.163 and 202.12.97.45 you mentioned are all NTP servers and they belong to the NTP pool "Asia 1".
Therefore if you capture more traffic earlier or later I assume you will see all of those IP addresses with UDP traffic on port 123.

AOSP has hard-coded value 2.android.pool.ntp.org for NTP server. I wonder if this can resolve to some address in Asia.

@Irfan Maybe this pool uses GeoDNS (different result based on the IP you request it) or Xiaomi has changed the NTP server default value.