Develop Bugs

OpenHome and Bettercut

So far I've stuck with free apps from the Market, haven't seen the need to spend money on one yet. But, I've been reading a lot about how people are using BetterCut to change icons, etc., (still not sure how that works, but I haven't spent much time on it, too busy flashing ROMs!), and I've just found OpenHome.
Two questions: Is BetterCut worth buying and what does OpenHome do?
Thanks!

ElectricWraith said:
So far I've stuck with free apps from the Market, haven't seen the need to spend money on one yet. But, I've been reading a lot about how people are using BetterCut to change icons, etc., (still not sure how that works, but I haven't spent much time on it, too busy flashing ROMs!), and I've just found OpenHome.
Two questions: Is BetterCut worth buying and what does OpenHome do?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Open Home is a home launcher (others are Launcher Pro and ADW). Basically it is a replacement for the Sense GUI (or home) you see
They have a free version of open home that you can try out. I believe the feature it banks on is its "live" folders. Personally i had a LOT of force Crashes but it was a while ago now.
I personally recommend Launcher Pro as a home replacement or ADW launcher
As for bettercut. If you want to change your Icons for individual apps then yes it is worth it. (i use app organizer and just make folders for groups and custom icons for the folders)

ElectricWraith said:
So far I've stuck with free apps from the Market, haven't seen the need to spend money on one yet. But, I've been reading a lot about how people are using BetterCut to change icons, etc., (still not sure how that works, but I haven't spent much time on it, too busy flashing ROMs!), and I've just found OpenHome.
Two questions: Is BetterCut worth buying and what does OpenHome do?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i haven't tried openhome, but i love bettercut. you can see the different icons i have implemented on my dock, and a few on my screens. as you may have guessed, on the dock, camera, phone, app drawer, handcent, contacts, market, where, app drawer again, maps/navigation, remote droid, browser, voice search, barcode scanner, note monkey, and weatherbug elite. i've also made a toggle for silent mode (the ninja, lol), and a custom yelp icon
totally not necessary, but i like the customization, and i think the icons looks tons better than stock. and, there are oodles of them to pick from. you can even use downloaded icons sets from your pc, just load the folder onto your phone.

timothydonohue said:
i haven't tried openhome, but i love bettercut. you can see the different icons i have implemented on my dock, and a few on my screens. as you may have guessed, on the dock, camera, phone, app drawer, handcent, contacts, market, where, app drawer again, maps/navigation, remote droid, browser, voice search, barcode scanner, note monkey, and weatherbug elite. i've also made a toggle for silent mode (the ninja, lol), and a custom yelp icon
totally not necessary, but i like the customization, and i think the icons looks tons better than stock. and, there are oodles of them to pick from. you can even use downloaded icons sets from your pc, just load the folder onto your phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To change the icons on the dock you dont need bettercut you can do that through LauncherPro itself. Though the ninja silent icon and the yelp one you needed it for since they are on the screen itself.

omegasun18 said:
To change the icons on the dock you dont need bettercut you can do that through LauncherPro itself. Though the ninja silent icon and the yelp one you needed it for since they are on the screen itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ah yes, you're right. but, if i didn't have the apps loaded on the dock, i'd want to change the icons anyway

Friendstream/Facebook Friend Status Updates?

I am having the most frustrating time with my Facebook updates and I am hoping someone can give me advice.
When I use the official Facebook widget, I receive ALL of my updates. However, I HATE the official widget since it only shows one status at a time. I want a widget that shows the entire news feed and is scrollable.
I tried using Friend Stream, however 1 of my friends (my sister, specifically) does not show up. I never receive any of her status updates. To my knowledge, she is the only one I cannot see.
If I try OTHER 3rd party widgets (such as Colorize Widgets or Android Pro Widgets) they also do not show her status updates but they ALSO leave out 2-3 more friends from appearing in my newsfeed.
Everything shows up fine on my computer when I look at my news feed, and like I said all statuses show up in the official Facebook widget. I have already looked at my application permissions in my preferences and all appear to be good. I do not understand it at all! Any help?
Thanks!

Hi,
I'm one of the developers of Android Pro Widgets.
We are using Facebook's Graph API and what you see are probably bugs of this API (on Facebook's side).
Facebook for Android uses a different method for fetching data (FQL queries).
We plan on changing to this method at some point as the Graph API is really disappointing.

Awesome, thanks! Any idea the time frame on what this new technology will be implemented? It sounds like this is something that all of these 3rd party widgets (including Friendstream) uses, is that right?

The Graph API is the trivial choice when using the SDK Facebook provides , so I guess most 3rd party applications use it.
I have some tasks with higher priority in my TODO list but hopefully I'll get to it soon.

Icons for Folders

I'm sure this must exist, but I haven't been able to locate a good solution yet. On my N7, I just have one home screen with a full screen Beautiful Widgets widget providing the information I want. Then, along my dock, I have folders that are sorted by category (messaging, news, movies, music, books, etc.).
Most of the high-quality icon packs and themes mostly just create icons for apps, not for categories. Of course, I can use an app icon to represent a category, and this is what I usually end up doing. But the little bit of OCD in me is never satisfied with this as a solution. I would love some high-quality icons that are more generic and representative of categories. Does anyone have anything they've found that they really like?

ejchis said:
I'm sure this must exist, but I haven't been able to locate a good solution yet. On my N7, I just have one home screen with a full screen Beautiful Widgets widget providing the information I want. Then, along my dock, I have folders that are sorted by category (messaging, news, movies, music, books, etc.).
Most of the high-quality icon packs and themes mostly just create icons for apps, not for categories. Of course, I can use an app icon to represent a category, and this is what I usually end up doing. But the little bit of OCD in me is never satisfied with this as a solution. I would love some high-quality icons that are more generic and representative of categories. Does anyone have anything they've found that they really like?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Custom launchers typically have lots of options for folder design and background. That is the missing link. I use Nova Prime. Apex does too if I remember correctly.

player911 said:
Custom launchers typically have lots of options for folder design and background. That is the missing link. I use Nova Prime. Apex does too if I remember correctly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the response. I'm not looking for the ability to use custom icons though. I'm looking for some good sets that are more folder oriented.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

[Q] How to fix blurry google icons?

I recently installed google play store and started installing apps and noticed the icons in the fire phone carousel aren't high quality. I read about using APK Icon Editor and tried using it to repack apk's with a higher resolution icon but for one the device selection doesn't even list the fire phone and 2nd i tried repacking apk's a few times by clicking on different icons sizes like 624X624 and installed but still the icon is blurry. I have even re-sized the icon in the program and tried that way and when installed still doesn't work. Does anyone know of a way to do this on the fire phone so Google apps look like they belong on the phone?

I second this request.

blurry icons
Those blurry icons are driving me nuts!! I have playing around with apk icon editor and have been able to get youtube and the playstore to display a high quality icon but now they crash when I try to open them. I chose All Models under the device menu and then the xhdpi (624x624). All the rest don't do anything to the icon in the carousel. It's a start!

That's better than nothing. I'm going to try that too

i hate the low res icons
amazon dev sucks

Have you tried this method?:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/guidechange-launcher-icons-apps-t3019440

I definitely haven't. Interesting. I'm going to try it out. Did you do this and it worked?

No I haven't, but seems to make sense and should work as far as I can tell

[Q] Suggestions for Alternative apps for weather, photos etc.

Hi all, So i as usual installed Nova to use some of their gestures (such as bringing down status bar from swiping down anywhere on screen etc)
In the process i lost access to the google weather widget (as it isn't available through Nova launcher)
Any lightweight suggestions to replace it? or is there any way to get the google weather widget functioning on 3rd party launchers?
What about alternatives to google photos? To be honest i never really used photos , I'm going to try to start doing so but i notice that it doesn't even pick up all my folders such as facebook folder (pics downloaded from facebook).
How do i get it to recognize folders like this ? What other lightweight yet useful gallery app is out there? (not quickpic please that purple font is killing me)
Thanks in advanced!

quickpic version 3.4.9.1 doesnt have pink icons for me and its neutured down so no google drive, dropbox etc linking - just pure gallery.

virtyx said:
quickpic version 3.4.9.1 doesnt have pink icons for me and its neutured down so no google drive, dropbox etc linking - just pure gallery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Got a trusted source for that APK?
I am seeing some of the benefits of Google photos though... wondering why i didn't use it sooner
Edit: found a trusted apk for quickpic.
How do I get google weather widget in nova

masri1987 said:
Got a trusted source for that APK?
I am seeing some of the benefits of Google photos though... wondering why i didn't use it sooner
Edit: found a trusted apk for quickpic.
How do I get google weather widget in nova
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i was about to upload
how do you find it? its slim, lightweight, fast - and gets the job done without any extra add-ins which is what i like, almost like the huawei launcher plus you can change the display and it recognizes ALL your images on your phone (im looking at you google photo)

masri1987 said:
Hi all, So i as usual installed Nova to use some of their gestures (such as bringing down status bar from swiping down anywhere on screen etc)
In the process i lost access to the google weather widget (as it isn't available through Nova launcher)
Any lightweight suggestions to replace it? or is there any way to get the google weather widget functioning on 3rd party launchers?
What about alternatives to google photos? To be honest i never really used photos , I'm going to try to start doing so but i notice that it doesn't even pick up all my folders such as facebook folder (pics downloaded from facebook).
How do i get it to recognize folders like this ? What other lightweight yet useful gallery app is out there? (not quickpic please that purple font is killing me)
Thanks in advanced!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I too use Nova, for weather, I've been using Weather XL by exovoid for years, link

Action launcher has the Google widget and weather baked in. I switched from Nova to it years ago and while I'll go back to Nova briefly for change of pace purposes I never leave Action for very long. Once I got used to and understood the blinds and shutters features in Action everything else became dad's old launcher; including Nova. You can also set the Now page, assign gestures, all the usual staples of fully featured launchers.

I've used Piktures as my main gallery app for a few years. Great app.

NepoRood said:
I too use Nova, for weather, I've been using Weather XL by exovoid for years, link
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks, tried it out, looking for something a bit more lightweight, just for the purpose of widget use.
krabman said:
Action launcher has the Google widget and weather baked in. I switched from Nova to it years ago and while I'll go back to Nova briefly for change of pace purposes I never leave Action for very long. Once I got used to and understood the blinds and shutters features in Action everything else became dad's old launcher; including Nova. You can also set the Now page, assign gestures, all the usual staples of fully featured launchers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So i installed action launcher and I cannot find the option to build out tabs or folders within the drawer itself? Also can't remove the multidot drawer icon and just use the swipe up feature by itself
Cool thing is it did import everything almost from nova
Fuzzy13 said:
I've used Piktures as my main gallery app for a few years. Great app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah i just discovered that app ,
I also discovered that any motion photo or any other like top shot (to show you the whole selection of photos taken) etc doesn't show up in 3rd party gallery apps

You just long press and drag the icon up and out, you'll see the remove label at the top of the screen, drop it there and it's gone. The rest will take a bit of reading as Action doesn't work the way normal launchers do so it takes some explaining. Before I do you can create folders in the drawer section of the home settings, it's under folders. I'm saying this because Action doesn't really work the way Dad's old launcher used to do and there are some new paradigms in play. Don't want to deal with that then just imagine the post ends here.
In action you don't really need to make folders in the drawer as it's laid out to use it's killer features, the covers and shutters. For covers you can drop a shortcut you tap as normal to open that app and then you can also swipe or tap the shortcut and it will open a folder with whatever apps you want inside of it. Those are created by dropping one app onto another to create a folder as with most launchers, open the folder you just created and tap the menu (3 dot), choose create cover and now you have it. Tap the first icon you placed and it will simply open that app, swipe it (or double tap if you select that as the opener) and it will open up the folder underneath. I'm not sure if there is an app limit for the folders, I've had 14 in one now. Using my setup for example I use Hangouts as my personal primary text and instant message app but I also use several others; I have a hangouts cover set in the dock, as its a cover I tap it and open hangouts in most cases. Because it's a cover I have the apps for texting that I use infrequently underneath that which I access by swiping the icon instead. This goes on for all the shortcuts I set in the dock. I use a 2 page dock which is all covers save for one which is a shutter and through those have quick access to 47 applications. Much quicker than finding them in a drawer, even when folder the drawer because you will need more touches to get to the app than with a cover.
The shutter is an app shortcut which you use to either open the app or by swiping it open one of that apps widget. An example would be Whatsapp is my work messaging app. I have the icon set and use it as a shutter. I touch it and go into the app as normal. I get a lot of junk messages though that really aren't for me so sometimes I'll swipe it and open up the unread messages widget. This allows me to skip straight to the more important messages first rather than sort through them all in the app itself. The menu(3 dot) when you first open up the shutter will allow you to select the widget you want to use.
Despite all that you can still access the built in long presses if the app/icon has them. What happens in all this is the app drawer itself becomes more of an initial setup bin where the apps are laying until you set your covers and on the odd occasion you go in there to open a seldom used app. In the rare cases you do need to get into the drawer the sea of icons pulled out of the bottom ala Pixel may look cool but it's slower than using the side drawer which I would highly recommend folks try. While not looking cool it's more efficient; particularly for those with many apps. Still want the bottom drawer pullout it's the default action, just get rid of the shortcut and it's there.
You're going to want to menu dive with Action because there is a lot more going on than meets the eye. You can have it match your wallpaper for the launcher theme in the quick theme section. In quickbar you have what amounts to the Goog searchbar with extra functionality that you can adjust. I don't use it as I find little need for it with all the different ways you can get to the search function and it takes up space which can be better spent showing off my carefully selected wallpaper. The icon pack section is self explanatory. Icon appearance will let you change functions and visual cues like notifications counts. App drawers is where you will decide on trying that side drawer and other related settings. Recommend if you do go to a side drawer to tell it to remember where you left it. Otherwise it will always default to the top of the alphabet. Desktop is where you will do the meat and potatos of setting your desktop, the grid, icon scale, scroll effects, infinite scrolling, etc. One thing of interest in the desktop section is it will allow you to create a quickpage. This is a page you can "pullout" from the side that is separate from simply the page to the right of home. I use it for my travel apps of which I have a fair few but only use during that time. Desktop shortcuts will take you to the settings for which functions will show up when long pressing the home screen out in the open. You'll be able to add typical actions like wallpaper, widgets and so on but also custom actions. Docks is where you'll set up the number of dock pages if any, style of dock, dock seperators (or not), etc. Folders and shutters will allow you to change functions there for those tasks. Shortcuts is where you'll define whatever gestures you want.
While all that seems like a lot when you start fiddling with it it'll start making sense. Sorry for the length of that and I hope it wasn't too boring for those that made it this far.
---------- Post added at 04:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:39 PM ----------
Oh, yeah... If you use a launcher that allows you to set custom action widgets (Nova, Action Launcher, etc.) you could simply install Action launcher, never use it but get use of the weather widget via custom action in Nova or any other launcher which supports that function.

Huge fan of Today Weather! Can choose which service to receive forecasts from and has a number of widgets.