Ask Android

Hey! I looked around a bit and the last thread like this I found was several months ago, so I thought I'd make a new one. As per the title, what game do you play on your phone? I'm both looking for new ones myself by also hope others might find some of interest to them.

For my own part of this I mostly like puzzle games, especially these:

Hook, Klocki, NABOKI etc. from Rainbow Trains games

Monument Valley games from ustwo games

The Room series from Fireproof games

I Love Hue duology from Zut!

And all the games from Legenbeary games (very addicted to Wordathlon, currently at level 3253)

(all playstore links)

Would love recommendations of any lesser-known similar ones! But post anything you like of course. :)

Hope anyone finds something they like from my list above or recommend by others in comments (if there are any, heh).

Cheers!

In light of what's happened to Durov and possibly seeing Telegram compromised, I'm doubling my efforts to find a new main messenger. Before you start, not Signal as it's a bad fit for the needs of me, my family and friends.

So what do I need?

• The ability to run on multiple devices. Me, my family and friends all have multiple Android devices.
• The ability to run on desktop. Linux and Windows.
• Built in sticker repository. What can I say, I like to lazy flirt.
• Animated Emoji. I like my messenger experience vibrant.
• Material You. Again with the vibrancy, but also, it's a sign of modernity.
• Phone number linking. My family and friends are lazy as hell.
• Synchronized chats. I don't mind self hosting a bridge, but the ability to see messages on multiple devices is a must.
• Voice Messages
• Video Calls
• Group Video Calls
• Stories integrated into as first class citizens
• Private. If you suggest WhatsApp, I'm assuming you're either stupid or a troll.

Can anyone recommend anything?

Share your favorite, go-to, most loved Android Browser here and why you prefer it over the rest!

Hey all, newbie to the Lemmy, signed up recently.

Also a relative android newbie, I've had a pixel 6 for about a year and a half.

I've played around with tasker, KWGT, KLWP, and all kinds of other power-user techie apps, so I'm reasonably confident in my ability to tinker with my phone.

I've been experimenting with my launcher, having gone with stock pixel launcher for my first half, and then using Lawnchair 12 for the second half, I wanted to try something new.

So, I open the floor up to you guys! What launcher are you using, what do you enjoy, and most importantly, why do you enjoy it? What sets your launcher apart?

I was using the Nova launcher forever, but it's been getting buggier and buggier and support just blames android. plus I understand there are privacy concerns about them these days

I switched to hyperion, and it works just fine except for one feature, and I can't get support to respond anywhere for any reason.

which launcher do you use, and why do you like it?

This isn't an iOS vs. Android thread, although I'm aware this might come off that way to some. I've been using Android phones since the Galaxy S4 and at the time it felt like Android was far and ahead the best smartphone OS at the time. It was objectively better than iOS in 2010 in just about every metric apart from UI fluidity.

I'm not so sure about that any more. I still do prefer Android - the UI, the customizability, the ability to sideload apps, etc. That said, why is it that every single time Android gets a feature that truly makes the phone more usable, Google goes ahead and guts that functionality, only for Apple to actually give a shit about that feature a few years later and do it way better.

Just off the top of my head, I can't believe Google screwed up:

• Android Beam
• Google Now on Tap (not to mention all the things it did that Google Assistant can't)
• Hangouts (not necessarily Android but it could have easily been better than iMessage)
• Nearby Notifications
• Android @ Home
• Bump!

I get that Google as a company is out to make money, but do they really have to shut down any functionality that isn't directly generating revenue?

Is it still safe to use as long as apps continue to be updated and is supported by the play store?

How long would you say someone could safely use an Android phone that no longer gets security updates for?

i am using nova launcher because i can change icons of apps and i was using lynx launcher before that just for the sake of using a custom launcher

I’m new to android. (Default android 13, not looking to install custom ROMs because I need this to be very functional and dont have time to deal with bugs).

Anyways, I’ve installed F-Droid, Helix Keyboard and my go to VPN app.

What next? What browser, third party YT player, torrent client, jellyfin client (I’m deaf so need one with opensubtitle integration), email clients, rss aggregator, note taking apps etc. should I install? I’m paralysed by choice.

Is there an equivalent to the ios shortcuts app?

Anyways, I’ll be happy to try out any suggestions. Cheers.

Not looking for me personally, so leaving the specs/features open, and generally interested in what people might recommend.

Imo there's almost always some surprising budget phones floating around to learn about. Only condition I might add is that preferably they're from 2022-2023, and if not, mention their release year to help know its version/update situation.

Is it possible? I don't think any of the big companies have a one time buy in, and If they do I doubt it's anywhere near 5 bucks.

I have to have the ability to restrict it to only clean music and ads.

For me it's Motorola G72. It's excellent for the price. The phone is super lightweight despite having a 5,000 milliamper battery. The UI is very snappy and animations are very smooth (high refresh rate). It supports double tap on the back plus all other neat Motorola gestures. The under display fingerprint scanner works extremely well.

Is There No Way to Automatically Record Phone Calls Anymore?

I'm still using an old phone (LG G7 ThinQ), and their Phone app has a built-in recording.

If I wanted to use another phone app (or when I upgrade phones), I would lose this feature. And I have looked (albeit not too much) and found that there's no way to record phone calls unless you root or it has to be built-in on the phone like some Samsung or Xiaomi phones.

Just kinda curious do you guys ever run into issues of lacking imessage (like your friends unwilling to use another app) or is it just a over blown issue.

You can't remove things from it, you cannot rearrange it... Useless things and suggestions get stuck at the top.

I'm on Android 13. Have they made any improvements in the newer versions of Android?

Since I got a nice extension called Dark Reader for Safari on my Mac I fell in love with that extension, now I can't stand webpages which do not support system based dark mode, and this happens on Android too.

I am using Chrome as my default browser and since it does not support extensions I think it would be hard to achieve this.

Do you know about a workaround for this?

Which FOSS degoogled Android rom would you recommend?

@askandroid

(you can recommend googled roms, just let me know it is)

#foss #degoogle #android #AndroidROM #roms #AskAndroid #askfedi

I've set a specific provider under the Private DNS setting and it works for the direct connection between the phone and the network, but it won't work on the devices that are connected to the hotspot of my phone, they instead fall back onto the default DNS of my ISP.
Is there a way to force that DNS on all the devices connected?

I know there are a lot on Ali Express and I'm curious if any are compatible with a FOSS app. I have tried using Tile products in the past but the app and the way they implemented a membership was a bit annoying.

Long time ago I'd use a third party app for that, but I don't really trust them enough for that now. The closest solution I found was to use the work profile with Shelter, would that be the way to go?

In my case the app is Facebook Messenger & phone is Pixel 6.

I think Samsung devices also had a built in way to do this

I don't know what is wrong with my custom ROM (Paranoid Android) it is pretty much perfect it lasts all day and beyond (about 10 hrs of SOT with mid usage in my phone from 2020) and yet I struggle with the RAM management.

I am rocking a Poco F2 Pro which is EOL as of now, even when I moved from MIUI long time ago (is not that I don't like it, I just like AOSP more) one awesome feature I loved was the ability to lock an app so the aggressive MIUI RAM management would not kill it in the background, I used to pin a Reddit app for this matter, and now I want to do the same but with my Lemmy clients.

My device has 6GB of RAM and I feel that many apps reload a lot (Discord being one of them) anyway I only want to keep always active the Lemmy app now (only one at time since I use too many).

It's worth to mention that my device is rooted, so whether you know a handy trick to achieve this or with a mod I'd appreciate it... I have tried the battery restrictions feature but I don't think it is working the same as it was compared to MIUI's feature.

Normally a custom ROM handles the RAM way better than any stock ROMs because it comes with less bloatware and whatnot, but I am feeling I can only multitask 2 or 3 apps and nothing else.

I read you fellow android users!

F-Droid has been giving me some issues for a few days (that I've noticed). It crashes immediately upon opening. Sometimes I will see it open for less than one second before it crashes, but usually it just goes right to a crash submittal screen. I want to reinstall it, but am unsure how to handle all my apps. Will it just pick them back up? I don't really know how to troubleshoot this, I am open to alternative paths!

It's actually compact, cheap, has oled, in-screen fingerprint reader, stock Android, NFC, Snapdragon SOC, supports GSI and has unlockable bootloader. Seems like a perfect phone (well except nonexpandable storage), so what's the catch?

Basically the title, I received a new price with a significant price tag (at least for me). My previous ones I didn’t care much so they weren’t protected. Given that I’d like to keep this one in good shape I’d like to know your experiences: does it still make sense to buy screen protectors nowadays? If so, also on newer quality screens like Gorilla Glass Victus? Thank you for your feedback

Not really impressed with how the free AdGuard works for me, I'm interested in either free or paid app suggestions and I'd like to hear experiences from people who use them. Thank you!