Searched, didn't find answer. Is there any way to toggle between two apps I'm using without going through multiple steps? I'm currently having to hit the home button, go to advanced task killer, selecting the app that is open that I want to go back to and selecting switch to.
I would rather have something like using alt-tab on a windows desktop of laptop. Even better would be like wktask for windows mobile where it shows the open apps at the top left of the screen and I just tap on the icon for the app I want to go back to and it goes right back to the screen I was on previously in that app.
just hold the home button until the 6 recent app list pops up?
Oh, recent apps, can't believe I didn't think of that. Thanks.
Another option is Multitask Manager. It lists all running apps, as well as recently closed apps. You can set it up to where long-pressing the find button will activate the app.
MultiTask Manager
I think recent apps is perfect. Don't want to make it more complicated. Quick, easy, and simple without adding another app. Although is there an advantage over advanced task killer? I guess I was overthinking the problem and looking for a better software solution when I already had discovered the hard button option, just never used it when I needed it and forgot about it.
I think browser smoothness sucks. It's jerky and sucks.
What is a plus icon like health think in top menu notification bar? It's always on left.
What is icon that has 4 arrows up down left right with circle in it with plus line in middle?why does notification menu always disappear in browser? Never used to. Always have to hit menu to see it and the time etc.
Overtime I click on a download in notification bar I get force close Android.browser.
How do I make all sound the same volume? I hate having to adult everything separate.
How do I make phone stop vibrating on power on and shutdown?
I turn volume for everything to minimum. Still too loud. How do I make keyboard click sound quieter but not off and same for boot sound Droid?
How do I get apps top stop launching on startup? I don't want 99% of them. I'll never use blacker or Google talk and more.
How do I stop their processes and keep them from starting again immediately?
How do I stop Droid boot sound so there is no start up sound but phone still has sound when its fully booted?
Advance task killer sucks. Apps just start up right after you quit them.
Why does swype always stop working after a few hrs? Text boxes always flash and make a doing anytime you try to type. Have to reinstall or disable and hope re enable and hope it works. So I don't use it till they fix it.
I'd really appreciate a response and answer to all my questions please. These issues are driving me bonkers.
Sorry for so many ? All these issues really tick me off.
Oh god dude. You should have numbered these.
Here I'll answer a few.
"I think browser smoothness sucks. It's jerky and sucks."
>> Depends on what webpage you're looking at and how much active content it has. Also depends on the Kernel, ROM and moreso the browser you are using (stock browser I assume)
"What is icon that has 4 arrows up down left right with circle in it with plus line in middle?"
>> This is location service. Basically it's like a crappy GPS.
It triangulates your position from nearby cell towers. Usually will give a distance within 1-3 miles radius of where you actually are, some applications for weather especially use it to determine approx. where you are so it can give you an accurate readout for weather.
Also google.com will use this by default to give you search results more accurate to your location.
"why does notification menu always disappear in browser? Never used to. Always have to hit menu to see it and the time etc."
>> You probably have a setting that has it set for 'full screen'. Check settings on there.
I'm not familiar with stock browser because I uninstalled it and I use "Dolphin HD Browser" - suggest you give it a try
"Overtime I click on a download in notification bar I get force close Android.browser."
>> Download from browser or a download from some place like the Market?
Not sure on this one, are you running stock or custom ROM?
"How do I make all sound the same volume? I hate having to adult everything separate."
>> Are you talking about how Media and Ringer are different volume settings?
"How do I get apps top stop launching on startup? I don't want 99% of them. I'll never use blacker or Google talk and more."
>> Root your phone if you haven't already. If you don't know how then you came to the right place, search up- it's not hard and doesn't take long.
After it's rooted you can use "root uninstaller" to uninstall the crap that you don't need.
Stuff like Google Talk will massively kill your battery life if you're not careful about it.
"Advance task killer sucks. Apps just start up right after you quit them."
>> Task Killers are completely useless. Stop using them, you're doing more harm than good
Use a program like "autostarts" or uninstall the program like I explained above.
"How do I stop Droid boot sound so there is no start up sound but phone still has sound when its fully booted?"
>> You can change your boot animation by flashing a new one.
Your phone must be rooted, search up how to by using the search bar at the top.
The rest I don't know or don't want to take the time to explain.
Cheers.
Thanks.
yes the volume slides for everything. Even at the lowest the startup Droid sound and keyboard click sound are too loud.
yes in the default browser I click to download something. It goes to status notification bar at top. when I click on one item I am downloading sometimes it opens a progress window that shows all I am downloading. But most of the time I get the Android.browser has quit unexpectedly force close window.
I'm not sure about rooting since I don't wanna mess up anything. I like sense mostly too. oh yeah.
how do I shut off the auto location for weather? its never accurate. how come HTC creaking sucks balls they don't have most small and even most major cities? passes me off I can't find even the capital of Montana or butter Montana or tukwila, wa and many more.
Is anyone else having the issue of their on screen nav buttons cutting off part of the google maps screen? When I'm navigating I can't see the ETA section or hit the 'X' to close navigation. Really annoying. I'm wondering if it's a maps app issue or possibly the ROM I'm using somehow. I'm on the latest ICE custom ROM. Also, it might be related, but when the pop up asking which app i want to use for various options pops up (ie when I click a number to call it asks if I want to use phone or skype) I can't click on the 'Just Once' or 'Always' option because it makes me hit the nav keys (even though I am hitting the 'Always' selection). Thanks for any help.
Hey everyone! I just got an XZ1C myself a few days ago, and I'd like to share a few of the little quality of life changes I personally use to make the everyday experience with this phone more to how I like it. I figured maybe everyone could contribute a few ideas here and there to help other users deal with things they might be frustrated with, but not know a solution for.
A couple of notes - I gave up the root life a while ago, so all of these solutions are non-root! Also, some of these apps are paid apps (though they might have lite or free versions). Sorry! But as a software developer myself, I have the obligation to pay it forward when I find a nice app.
So here goes!
Making the volume keys default to Media Volume:
Having owned a Samsung phone before, this is one of the things I miss most in almost any other Android phone. But, as they say, there's an app for that! There's a very simple app called Media Volume Only (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=catchpower.gogo.mediavolumeonly&hl=en), which binds your volume keys to Media by default. It asks for Call permissions to see if you're in a call, where it will then bind the volume keys to call volume. Otherwise, it will always be Media, which is great!
However, that means there isn't a super easy way to changing your ring volume, unless you first press the volume key to bring up the sliders and hitting the down arrow to show the rest of the sliders....which brought me to:
Re-adding the missing Ring/Vibrate Mode switch to quick switches:
I am using Central Europe .374 + US oem file to get Fingerprint+VoLTE on T-mobile; I'm not sure if it's because of the CE1 region or whatever else, but I couldn't find any button in the quick settings that would just toggle the phone to ring mode, vibrate mode or silent.
To remedy this, I use Shortcutter (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.leedroid.shortcutter&hl=en). This allows you to enable a ton of different switches in the quick settings dropdown, though some of them may not work properly without root and only with other phones. After installing Shortcutter, swipe over to the "Pull-Down" tab, then hit "System Setting Tiles". In this list, scroll down and you'll find "Ring Mode". Turning this switch on will put the Ring Mode icon into the box of icons you can edit your quick settings with. Finally, pull down your quick settings, click the pencil icon to modify the quick settings and scroll down to find Ring Mode.
This way, it's easy to switch the phone to silent before going into a movie, or a meeting at work.
Fixing the crazy stock backlight control:
The stock backlight is a little crazy right now. It jumps around when the room is dark and it does not transition smoothly. A great app for controlling backlight is Lux (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux&hl=en). It even allows you to keep different profiles and define exactly how bright you want the screen to be in any lighting situation, and it will keep a map of your selections for you! You can control all sorts of variables, like how quickly it will transition, if it should only transition given what % of lighting change, so on and so forth. It's really very powerful and useful. I haven't had any trouble with the XZ1C display since installing Lux, which I've used on previous phones as well. Highly recommend this one! There's a free version called Lux Lite (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vitocassisi.luxlite&hl=en), but I've never tried it so YMMV.
Alternative for No Double Tap to Wake (or not having Ambient Display):
This is another one I have almost always used on phones that aren't Nexii/Pixel or Motorola. Gravity Screen (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.plexnor.gravityscreenofffree&hl=en) gives you a ton of different ways to automatically wake up the phone to the lockscreen. I find that using ONLY the Proximity Sensor setting to turn ON the screen (and turning everything else off) has negligible effect on the battery, and maintains extreme usefulness. With just that setting, when my phone is on the desk I can poke the phone where the proximity sensor is (as if I one-tap it) and it will wake up. If I take the phone out of my pocket, the phone turns on and is already waiting for me by the time I look at it. Super convenient!
UPDATE: Another user (quack3d) mentioned the app WaveUp(https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jarsilio.android.waveup) which does exactly how I have Gravity Screen set up. If you want just that, this seems to be a great and simpler alternative! Thanks!
If you want more options, it has all sorts of other things like turn on by motion, etc. etc....I personally don't use those though, so I can't vouch for how well they work.
Double Tap to Sleep
I'm pretty sure you have to pay for this one, but Nova Launcher Prime (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teslacoilsw.launcher.prime&hl=en) is an incredible launcher, and it allows you to specify custom gestures on the desktop. The gestures can trigger all sorts of things, one of which is Screen Lock. If you select the Time-Out method of locking the screen, it will work with fingerprint unlocking.
Custom Auto-Rotation Switching:
Normally, I don't like auto-rotation. I use my phone a lot in bed (lying sideways), but I still want to use it in portrait. So, I prefer to have my phone default to NO auto-rotation. That being said, it's annoying when you pull up a funny gif or the photo album or youtube and you want to just flip your phone over to watch a video. Sure, you can drag down the quicksettings and flip that switch, but there's a better way! That's where Automate (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.llamalab.automate&hl=en) comes in! Automate allows you to program your phone to do just about anything (especially if you have root) based on custom triggers.
In Automate, if first select "More flows..." and search for a script called "Auto Enable Rotation" by the author Anthony Beaumont. Once you download this script and run it, it will present you with 2 options, either to "start" the script service, or to "modify" the list of apps. You'll want to "modify" the list of apps and start a new one. To this, you can add apps such as Album, Youtube, Twitch and whatever else you want to watch in landscape mode. Finally, once that's done, stop the script and start it again, but this time select "start". (You can also select in the 3 dot menu to have this script run at start-up. Highly recommended!) Now, when you open Album/Youtube/Twitch etc. the phone should automatically flip to auto-rotation.
Enter all your app and website passwords automatically with fingerprint:
For better or for worse, I keep all of my online passwords saved in Lastpass. It turns out that once you have an account and saved passwords, Lastpass has an incredible app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lastpass.lpandroid&hl=en) that can pop up over Chrome and just about any other app on your phone that can fill in the username/password fields for you using your fingerprint! It doesn't work for all the different browsers out there (I just use Chrome), and there may have been a pay wall for the in-app password filling, I forgot (sorry!). That said, it's super convenient to head to any site and just tap the fingerprint to log in.
Additionally, if you're a Lastpass user already, they also have a Lastpass Authenticator (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lastpass.authenticator&hl=en) that works in place of the Google Authenticator (you can add Google Authenticator 2factor sites to the LastPass one), which is IMHO superior because the keys are linked to your account rather than to the physical phone. Also, if you have LP Authenticator + the Chrome addon on your PC/Mac, on some sites you don't even have to enter the Authenticator number, you can just press "approve" on your phone to get into the website on your PC. Awesome!
Send links from your PC to phone or phone to PC
Ever read something on your PC and wish you could link it to your phone super quickly and not have to go through emailing it to yourself? I use Pushbullet (Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pushbullet.android&hl=en PC: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pushbullet/chlffgpmiacpedhhbkiomidkjlcfhogd?hl=en), which allows you to directly link webpages from PC to phone and vice versa. Additionally, if you give it the permissions, it can hook up your phone's notifications to your Windows notifications (not sure about mac), including allowing you to read and send SMS from your PC. I believe it also has file transfer capabilities, but I don't use it.
I think that's it for now...I'll add more when I think of them. These are just a few of the mods I run which makes using the phone more effortless and enjoyable; please, feel free to add more and I'll add them to the list if there's something you want to share! Hope this helps someone out there!:highfive:
maidguitar said:
Re-adding the missing Ring/Vibrate Mode switch to quick switches:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Alternative implementation that I use: Add a toggle on the home screen to quickly switch between Ring/Vibrate/Silent modes
First install Media-Mute [free & ad-free]. What this app does is automatically mute the media volume whenever the ringer volume is also muted, which applies to both Vibrate mode and Silent mode.
For some reason, since Android 4.x Google has decided that Silent mode should only apply to the ringer, instead of silencing everything that can make sounds out of the speaker. Media-Mute fixes that.
Next, install Silent Mode Toggle [free & ad-free], then add the widget on the home screen. Switching modes is now super easy, just tap on the toggle.
What I really appreciate about this app is that it allows customization to the toggle order. For example, I never use the vibrate mode, so I can set it to toggle between Ringer > Silent only.
As a bonus, it also lets you use your own custom icons for the toggle, super cool and makes it possible to perfectly complement your home screen layout.
Hide the annoying "running in the background" notification that comes with Android 8.0
With Android 8.0 Oreo, Google thought it would be a great idea to permanently remind you of any background processing currently running in the form of an impossible to dismiss notification.
While the intention was well meaning, the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
Thankfully, there's an app for that! Just install this cleverly named app Hide "running in the background" Notification [free & ad-free], problem solved!
Vibrate phone when call connects, ends
Yet another app to the rescue! VibCall [free & ad-free] brings this useful feature found on some OEM phones to any compatible Android device.
Basically, your phone will vibrate once to let you know that a call has connected, and twice when a call has ended. It's something that once you've used, you wonder why it's not baked into the Android system as a default option.
Add a fingerprint (Smart Lock) compatible screen lock toggle on the home screen
So Sony has unilaterally decided to remove double tap to sleep feature with no sign of bring it back. But I still want to turn off the screen and lock the device by tapping on the screen instead of waiting for the system to hibernate or hitting the power button.
The OP listed a paid solution which brings back double tap to sleep, but for those looking for a free alternative, this is the solution I'm currently using - Smart Screen Lock Pro [free & ad-free].
It's not a double tap anywhere convenience, but a toggle that is better than nothing, and most importantly it's compatible with fingerprint unlock. I've tried numerous screen off apps in the Play store, and this is the only one that I was satisfied with.
IMPORTANT: Take the time to carefully read and follow setup instructions, it's necessary for it to work properly due to OS restrictions. Once it's setup correctly, simply add a shortcut on the home screen and tap it to lock.
It's worth mentioning that it's not a true "instant" screen off and lock, but without root this is probably the best solution we'll get.
Non-root ad blocking
Ads are a necessary evil for the current economics of the Internet, but aside from the annoyance factor, they eat up precious mobile data, plus there's also very real security risks with ad networks, potentially hogging your phone's resources and draining the battery.
Whatever the argument, if you do decide to block ads, there are quite a lot of ad blockers to choose from.
Personally, I use dns66 [free & ad-free]. In my experience, it's very lightweight, and I haven't seen any ads in my browser or apps.
It does have its quirks though, sometimes downloads fail, such as OTA update or file in browser, for one reason or another (the author says it's a bug with the Android OS itself, see linked post).
But it's easy to workaround, just temporarily disable dns66 by tapping pause on the notification, and download again. After download has completed, tap the notification again to resume.
By the way, this is also the main reason I installed the hide background notification app.
So basically what is happening is that multi window no longer works on my Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 SM-T320, with Android 4.4.2 KitKat and no root. When I press and hold the back button on my tablet, the multi window tray doesn't show up. It also doesn't show up when I swipe from the right of the screen. However, if I make another user account on the tablet, multi window works perfect with no errors. Keep in mind I do have multi window turned on in the settings. Also, if I go to multi window in the settings, and then enable "Open in Multi Window view", and then, for example, I go into the My Files app and open up an image, i can then use the Gallery and My Files app side by side. Another thing that happened is that when I press the button to expand the quick toggles in the notification panel, nothing happens. I have to swipe down with 2 fingers to make it work. I can also expand the quick toggles menu on another user account. But this didn't justs start happening for no reason. I know what I did to cause it. I am just looking for a way to reverse the effects of what I did.
So what I did was I got the app called QuickShortcutMaker. For whatever reason, I went to the app titled "Setup Wizard", and its icon was an Android guy with a cube shape in the middle. Then I launched the activity "com.google.android.setupwizard.SetupWizardTestActivity". That was a mistake. It opened up a setup screen that asked me to choose a language. Then I closed out of it, and some things started happening. Not only did the button to expand the quick toggles stop working, but so did the shortcut to the settings app in the notification panel. When I pressed and held the power button, it opened up the menu to restart the tablet, shut it down, toggle airplane mode, and mute the audio. This time, though, there was no option to toggle airplane mode. I restarted my tablet, and it led to my current situation.
I want to know if there is any way to make this go back to normal. I have tried a bunch of things. I have noticed that the Setup Wizard app now uses 20 KB of storage as oppose to 16 KB of storage, so I tried clearing its data in the Settings app, but that didn't work. I also tried turning off the Setup Wizard app in the Settings, but that didn't help either. I even tried clearing the data for the app titled com.sec.android.app.FlashBarService, which I found out is actually the service for multi window, but that did nothing. I hope I don't need to reset my tablet to fix this, because then I will lose all my data. Multi window is a really good feature Samsung has included, which I used to use a lot, and sometimes i really need to use it.
Sorry if this is hard to understand because of my bad grammar or because I went into too much detail. I was typing this on my tablet, which is the same one that I can't use multi window on anymore, so I was typing on sort of a small surface.