Xposed Framework Modules

Posted on 2016-01-31 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

Rooting, CyanogenMod, Xposed Framework. Those are three things I always wanted on my phone. Well, I finally got the 3rd so I am happy. Here is a review on the modules.

XMultiWindow was the main draw. I wanted to be able to watch a view while going through Gmail. But this did not work for me. I could only open one app at a time in half the window. The other half would be black. Then! Whenever I opened the apps later, they would be in half screen mode until I killed them.

GravityBox [MM] allows configuration of the system. I feel like options of adding a Screenshot to the power menu is already available in CyanogenMod, but the ability to add Screen Record was also nice. This is a nice app to get since the amount of configurations is rather large.

RootCloak did not work for me. I wanted to be able to use Snapchat since Snapchat blocks rooted devices. I was disappointed as this was the driver for researching Xposed. Seems like Snapchat checks for Xposed now and then blocks!

XHangouts makes Hangouts better but I love Facebook Messenger more so I did not use this one too much.

Greenify from the Play Store has options for the Xposed Framework. I cannot use a phone without Greenify, so the more power I can give it, the better.

Sources:

Posted in Android Apps, CyanogenMod, How-To, LG G3, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Recalibrate Android Battery

Posted on 2016-01-10 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

Symptoms

  • When phone is turned on, my LG G3 would not charge beyond 30%.
  • When phone was turned off, my LG G3 could charge to 100%.
  • Phone would power off randomly at 10%.

Treatment (rooted phone)

I am rewriting the steps given in the AndroidPit article to be a bit easier to read.

  1. Phone On. Discharge the phone to 0%.
  2. If your phone can turn back on
    1. turn it back on
    2. let it turn itself off again.
  3. Repeat sub steps below.
    1. Turn Phone Off.
    2. Charge to 100%.
    3. Unplug charger.
    4. Turn Phone On.
    5. Charge to 100%.
    6. Restart phone.
    7. Continue to next step if battery = 100%. Repeat otherwise.
  4. Install Battery Calibration app
    1. Restart phone.
    2. Launch Battery Calibration
    3. Recalibrate the battery
  5. Phone On. Discharge to 0%.
  6. Phone Off. Charge to 100%.
  7. Turn on phone. Battery percentage is reset!

Results

My phone’s battery is fixed. It charges to 100% and shuts off at 0%. Battery life is still good, obviously not as good as day one, but what you would expect from a older phone.

Sources

Posted in LG G3, Reviews | Leave a comment

System UI has stopped

Posted on 2016-01-05 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

I installed a new theme called Pury onto my T-Mobile LG G3 running a nightly version of CyanogenMod 13. I am not blaming Pury, but I am just giving specifics. My theory for the problem is that Pury said it was for CM12 but I was running CM13. Though, other themes were CM12 that I had installed but I am not taking that risk anymore!

My phone started giving “System UI has stopped” warning messages. Normally after 5, the theme will be reset to the default theme. That did not happen this time after multiple restarts. Just the same error notification.

To fix this, you need to restart your device into Safe Mode. Other websites suggest rebooting into TWRP and deleting the theme from the disc. I do not believe this is necessary.

On a LG G3, to reboot into Safe Mode, restart your phone normally. Once you see the splash screen, hold down the Volume Down button until the OS loads. It should say “Safe Mode” on the bottom left. Now you can uninstall the app that caused your error message.

Note – When I restarted into Safe Mode, aCalDav and DavDroid had their Accounts removed on my phone. I had to create the accounts again.

Posted in CyanogenMod, How-To, LG G3 | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

OwnCloud 8.2 Security and Setup Warnings

Posted on 2015-12-22 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

On the Admin Page’s Security and Setup Warnings section, I got a new warning that needed investigation.

Transactional file locking is using the database as locking backend, for best performance it's advised to configure a memcache for locking. See the documentation ↗ for more information.

From the documentation, it seems that the OwnCloud team played with the cache to make OwnCloud faster. APCu is gone and in is Redis. There are two steps suggested that need to be done to get rid of the warning message and to get your OwnCloud server faster!

(1) Go to your Apps and the Disable File Locking.

file_locking_app(2) Follow the documentation linked to by OwnCloud for installing Redis. It is great and so simple to follow. Here are my only improvements to it:

  • Step 6
    • When setting the default locations, make sure your user has permissions or you have to use sudo on the rest of the steps.
  • Step 8
    • Change the given command to the following suggested command per www.antojose.com.
    • pecl install redis
    • sudo pecl install -Z redis

Sources

 

 

Posted in How-To, Nextcloud/OwnCloud | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Let’s Encrypt certificate steps for OwnCloud

Posted on 2015-12-20 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

Let’s encrypt is available now for OwnCloud (and everything else) users to run and get a free certificate for. No more self-signed certificates that display an ugly error page or having to pay for a certificate from a certificate authority.

Here is how I ran Let’s Encrypt on my Owncloud 8.2 running Linux Mint using an Apache2 server following the instructions from the Let’s Encrypt website and from an OwnCloud forum post by dark-wulf. The auto setup for apache might work but it did not work directly for me.

  • Make a directory of your server
cd /var/www/html
mkdir .well-known
cd .well-known
mkdir acme-challenge
  • Update your .htaccess file
cd /var/www/owncloud
sudo vim .htaccess
  • In the <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> section, add
RewriteRule ^\.well-known/acme-challenge letsEncrypt.php
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}
  • Copy the Let’s Encrypt code onto your computer using the instructions from “Installing Let’s Encrypt”
cd /tmp
$ git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt 
$ cd letsencrypt
  • Run Let’s encrypt from this directory

./letsencrypt-auto certonly -a manual --email your_admin_mail -d your_domain.com -d www.your_domain.com

  • You will be prompted twice with the following:
Make sure your web server displays the following content at http://your_domain.tk/.well-known/acme-challenge/really_long_string before continuing:
really_long_string.more_long_string
  • When prompted, you can run the following commands to create the file and so it is visible online. Do this once for each string, twice total.
sudo vim /var/www/html/.well-known/acme-challenge/really_long_string
copy and paste the string into the file. save the file
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/.well-known
sudo chmod -R 733 /var/www/html/.well-known
  • Your certificates are now saved onto disk! For good practice, remove the acme-challenge files.
rm /var/www/html/.well-known/acme-challenge/*
  • Your Apache2 server needs to know about them now. What version of Apache are you running? Run this command and look on the Server line.
curl --head your_domain.com
...
Server: Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu)
  • Now you can insert the keys and chain into your ownCloud-ssl.conf depending on your Apache2 version where your existing SSL keys are under <VirtualHost your_domain_LAN_ip:443>
sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/ownCloud-ssl.conf
(All Apache) SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/your_domain.com/privkey.pem
(Apache<2.4.8) SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/your_domain.com/cert.pem
(Apache<2.4.8) SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/your_domain.com/chain.pem
(Apache>=2.4.8) SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/your_domain.com/fullchain.pem
  • Restart your webserver.
sudo service apache2 restart
  • Try accessing your site from Chrome Private Browsing. You should not get an error about a dangerous certificate! Repeat making a certificate every three months, hopefully with an automated version by Let’s encrypt for OwnCloud.

Sources:

Posted in How-To, Nextcloud/OwnCloud | Tagged , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Android Marshmallow’s Internal Memory Feature for SD Card

Posted on 2015-12-20 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

Android 6.0 Marshmallow has a new feature that can turn your external micro SD card into internal memory.

When the SD card is inserted and recognized, Android will give you an option of using the SD card as internal memory or as a location for files. Let’s break it down…

  • Internal memory – If you are running an old phone with little internal memory, you can choose this option. You will sacrifice speed for storage.
  • Transferring files – If your phone already has a good amount of internal memory, then select this option. Your apps will be able to use the external SD card as before for saving large offline content, saving your internal memory for apps and speed.

If you are not sure what you selected, apps will not recognized any external SD card if you are using it as internal memory.

If you are trying to undo selecting the internal memory option by using your laptop, you will be met with limited success. Android has to do some funky partitioning of the SD card because on my 32gb and 64gb micro SD cards, my Windows and Linux laptops could only see a 17mb partition. To fix that, insert your micro SD card into another Android phone and do a format with that phone. It can see the funky partitions and recover your micro SD card.

If you are using CyanogenMod 13 to run your phone, as of the writing of this article, the OS was very bugging when using the internal memory option with apps crashing constantly.

Sources:

Posted in Android, CyanogenMod, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

OwnCloud Upgrade to 8.1.4

Posted on 2015-11-12 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

Seems like again upgrading OwnCloud was not as easy as I thought it was going to be. Here are the error messages and how I got around them.

File Permissions
My file permissions were again reset to root and without visibility. I ran the following to get the directory back in the correct state. Of course, you can first run an ls to make sure they files and directory are in bad state, but this will not hurt.

$ cd /var/www/owncloud
$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data *
$ sudo chmod -R 755 *

OCC Status
The occ tool is great in helping to debug this situation. You need to run it was the www-data user and that is described below.

$ cd /var/www/owncloud
$ sudo -u www-data bash -c './occ status'

Error message from occ status:

ownCloud or one of the apps require upgrade – only a limited number of commands are available

[OC\HintException]
Missing memcache class \OC\Memcache\APCu for local cache

Memory Cache
If you remember in a previous post about Owncloud 8.1 Security and Setup warnings, we default with memory cache issues. Well, we need to do it once again since the first time was not enough.

$ sudo vim /etc/php5/cli/php.ini

Add the 2nd statement to your php.ini after the 1st statement, which should already be in the file.

opcache.enable_cli=1
apc.enable_cli=1

Restart Server
This process is going to be a little weird so check the sources below for how gobstopper figured it out. I added a final maintenance:mode --off to get the server back up along with two occ upgrade because nsrosenqvist said the second one always works. Crazy right!

$ sudo -u www-data ./occ maintenance:mode --off
$ sudo -u www-data ./occ upgrade
$ sudo -u www-data ./occ upgrade
$ sudo -u www-data ./occ maintenance:repair
$ sudo -u www-data ./occ maintenance:mode --off

Error between 1st and 2nd occ upgrades:

Symfony\Component\Routing\Exception\RouteNotFoundException: Unable to generate a URL for the named route “contacts_index” as such route does not exist.
Update failed

Re-enable Apps:
As always, you now can visit your webpage but you will need to re-enable the apps since they all got disabled. I actually got the upgrade dialog on the website again, but decide to run the upgrade through the following command and it worked.

$ sudo -u www-data ./occ upgrade

Sources:

Posted in How-To, Nextcloud/OwnCloud | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

CyanogenMod for Amazon Kindle

Posted on 2015-10-25 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

I have an Amazon Kindle and wanted to install CyanogenMod on it. The full installation took about 10 hours because of lack luster instructions. I detail below the steps that are outdated to save you time. Below is my experience.

You need to determine the type of Kindle that you have. The “About” settings does not tell you but you can determine based on the serial number.

CyanogenMod has a Wiki page search to find the device you have. This was mine for Kindle’s Otter.

The instructions are very Windows based and not good for Linux. They are also dated since the Kindle Fire 1st Gen is now a dated device. I had to do this installation in Windows 10. The most annoying part is getting the drivers correct and having to restart your PC to disable driver authentication.

Setting up your Windows 10 box is important because you will need ADB and the Java SDK to continue. This will take a while to download and install.

The instructions provide Option 1 and 2 for installing Kindle Fire Drivers. I found that #1 is easier but #2 is better. I went with #1, but if you go with #2, in Android Studio, select Configure>SDK Manager and then pick at the bottom to open a standalone SDK Manager. Follow the instructions.

When rooting your device, save your work before restarting. To download Saferoot, the link for the file is at the end of the first post. Plug your phone in before launching install.bat. Wait for the SuperSU message to appear asking for root. (THAT WAS AWESOME!) Restart phone. Disconnect the file transfer and see if SuperSU needs to be updated. Renable the file transfer and continue the .bat Do all of this before continuing.

You have to do the manual installation of fastboot. I could not get the automatic installation of the recovery and bootloader to work. The script is old and websites it tries to download files from are broken, along with other parts of the .bat are not update for newer drivers.

Download the One Zip Kindle.Fire.fastboot.Files.zip but download the updated TWRP for the Kindle, the “blaze” one. When running the recovery steps in the manual, replace the old TWRP with the new one. Why? The TWRP in that zip file will not install CM 11. It does not have all the functions. You need a newer TWRP to successfully install CM 11.

Something I learned is that fastboot is different than ADB. Your ADB devices commands will not return results. If fastboot is not recognizing your device, turn off the Kindle (hold the power button for many seconds), plug in the USB cord to your computer and Kindle, and then power on the Kindle. When you get FireFireFire installed, the device will initially boot into fastboot, which is nice.

Posted in Android, CyanogenMod, How-To | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Offline Multimedia on your Android Phone

Posted on 2015-10-03 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

When going on a road trip or just commuting daily, data plans and data connections are limited. Assuming you will always have access to 3G, 4G, or Wi-Fi is standard in urban areas but uncommon in tunnels or in the country. These are my recommendations for apps I use on Android to entertainment myself when commuting or taking road trips.

News

I like the ease of RSS pushing updated content to me. Feedly is a great RSS combiner and its interface is great but it does not download content offline. That is where gReader is the best. Through its preferences, you can have gReader sync both ways with Feedly while is automatically downloads the articles you want with images for your offline access. It will delete the articles when you are done.

Music

Both Amazon Music and Google Play Music let you download legal music to your device. Amazon will let Prime members add Prime music (songs, artists, playlists) to their Library and then download it. They also allow uploading 100 songs to the Amazon Music Library for free. I have not used Google Play Music but I know that users can upload more of their own music for free and then can download that music via downloading albums.

Video

Amazon Instant Video now lets Prime users download content TV shows and Movies from their collection. I have found the HBO shows are fun to watch.

TubeMate is for downloading YouTube videos. Use this with Feedly/gReader to get your videos instead of subscribing and being emailed. The downloads are quick and easy and you can select the quality of the videos you want.

Flud for torrents.

GPS

HERE is seemingly the best way to download maps for offline navigation. I believe it is inferior to Google Maps but downloading the maps for offline access lets you search for restaurants and businesses when you have limited Internet connection. Keeping some maps on your phone for emergencies is also a good practice.

Posted in Android, Android Apps, How-To | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Results of the “Android without Google” Experiment

Posted on 2015-08-29 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

I am back to using Google Play Services (Google for short) on my CyanogenMod phone. You can read from my previous post how to use a phone without Google! I lasted a few weeks without Google on my Android but after a while, having no Google gets annoying. Luckily, installing gapps gives you the bare minimum of Google Apps, so no bloatware! These are the reasons I had to cave and switch back:

Transportation: Uber and Lyft require Google. Their apps will not even start.

Google Maps: HERE is a very formidable replacement. It will sometimes bring you to the wrong side of the street for your destination, but at least you are nearby. Its public transportation (specifically NYC subways) made it unreliable. I would reference Google Maps through my phone’s browser.

Hangouts: If your friends use Hangouts, then Xabber is an okay replacement, until they start to use Group Chats or send you Stickers or Pictures. Xabber is only good for sending text with one person.

Google Play Store: I used multiple App Stores like Amazon App Store, F-Droid, SlideMe, Mobogenie, and apk4fun. With a combination of all of them, you can get most of the apps you used with Google.

  1. Some may be broken because they require Google Play Services.
  2. Some will be older versions. For example, I could not get the most recent versions of the StageFright Detector by Zimperium or MyTix for NJ Transit.
  3. Apps you purchased will not be available on the other app marketplaces.

YouTube: Watching a video as a flash video through the phone’s browser gets boring and tiring very quickly.

OK Google: Being able to talk to your phone to get quick answers is actually important and better than typing. Also, speaking and letting Google transcode your voice into text is so nice for text messaging.

Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, etc: Since I use OwnCloud and can use IMAP to get Gmail, these apps were not the reasons I returned to Google but they are probably the major reasons why people cannot switch!

Posted in Android, CyanogenMod, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

OwnCloud 8.1 Security & Setup warnings

Posted on 2015-08-01 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

In the Admin console, you might see Security and Setup Warnings after upgrading to OwnCloud 8.1. Here is how I removed the two I saw.

Strict-Transport-Securty HTTP Header

The “Strict-Transport-Security” HTTP header is not configured to least “15768000” seconds. For enhanced security we recommend enabling HSTS as described in our security tips.

The instructions provided in their Harden Security Documentation is good but here is a little more.

Add the following snippet of code to the file /etc/apache2/sites-available/owncloud-ssl.conf within this bracket <VirtualHost your.domain:443>

  • Header always add Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000; includeSubDomains; preload"

Restart your apache2 server. If you get a parsing error, you need to enable Headers. Run the following in a command line:

  • a2enmod headers

 Memory Cache #1

No memory cache has been configured. To enhance your performance please configure a memcache if available. Further information can be found in our documentation.

According to the documentation, you need to install APCu and enable it. Funny thing is that getting the correct version of APCu was confusing. You need to uninstall the old version and then install the newer version. Follow the instruction on this github issue. As of now, you should use the 4.0.6 version of APCu.

Following the OwnCloud documentation now, add to /var/www/owncloud/config/config.php the follow option:

  • 'memcache.local' => '\OC\Memcache\APCu',

Restart apache2 and you are good to go with no more warnings!

Memory Cache #2

APCu below version 4.0.6 is installed, for stability and performance reasons we recommend to update to a newer APCu version.

This means you need to follow the instructions in Memory Cache #1. Uninstall the older version of APCu and install version 4.0.6 or newer.

Sources

Posted in How-To, Nextcloud/OwnCloud | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

OwnCloud files not showing up on website

Posted on 2015-07-26 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

I went to my OwnCloud website after installing some apps and no files were showing. My desktop sync was also erroring. My Android app though could view/download/upload files. I tested through a WebDAV connection and that worked too, so at least my files were safe!

I am not sure what app was causing the issue or if it was a combination of things since I tried many methods, but the last attempts to fix it was by disabling all the apps that were not essential. Here are the ones that I disabled and then bam! It worked!

  • user_webdavauth
  • storagecharts2
  • galleryplus

So, if that does not work, continue by doing these advanced steps. I did these before the final steps above but I think it was an app that was messing OwnCloud up.

  1. Look at your log file for clues
    1. /var/www/owncloud/data/owncloud.log
  2. Stop Apache server before doing work
    1. sudo service apache2 stop
  3. Rescan files as the www-data user
    1. sudo su -c "/var/www/owncloud/occ files:scan --all" -s /bin/bash www-data
  4. If you get an error with the database being malformed, clear the cache (continue).
  5. Make a copy of the owncloud.db
    1. sudo cp /var/www/owncloud/data/owncloud.db /var/www/owncloud/data/owncloud.db_original
  6. Install sqlite3 to view the database
    1. sudo aptitude install sqlite3
  7. Clear cache
    1. sqlite3 /var/www/owncloud/data/owncloud.db 'DELETE FROM oc_filecache;'
  8. Start Apache server and test
    1. sudo service apache2 start
  9. If that does not work, try some maintenance steps…
  10. Stop Apache server before doing work
    1. sudo service apache2 stop
  11. Go to your OwnCloud directory
    1. cd /var/www/owncloud
  12. Run file cleanup
    1.  sudo su -c "php ./occ files:cleanup" -s /bin/bash www-data
  13. Run maintenance repair
    1. sudo su -c "php ./occ maintenance:repair" -s /bin/bash www-data
  14. Start Apache server and test
    1. sudo service apache2 start

Let me know in the comments if this helped you out!

Sources

Posted in How-To, Nextcloud/OwnCloud | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Android without Google

Posted on 2015-07-26 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

Android phones and Google are meant for each other, but not all relationships that are “meant to be” work out. I was able to divorce Google from my Android phone but it was a tough and soul-searching process. Having Google makes things so much easier and better, but with determination, you can do it!

Android OS

You need to figure out what open-source Android operating system you will use. The stock Android OS that comes with your phone will no doubt have Google on it. I recommend:

  • CyanogenMod – supports many devices and I really like it. When following the install instructions, it will mention flashing a google apk. Ignore doing that since it will install Google!
  • Replicant – more open source that CyanogenMod.

Google Play Store

The first obstacle is having no place to download apps from! What good is an Android device without apps! There are a few good places to get apps from. Go to each of their websites, download the app store’s apk, and install them.

  • F-Droid is an app store that only has open-source apps. You should look for anything you need from here first.
  • Amazon App Store is the second most popular Android app store after Google Play. Having it will give you a good majority of the apps that Google offers.
  • Slide Me seems to have the rest of the apps you will need. I am not exactly sure how they get their apps (developers contribute or they copy the apks).
  • apk4fun is not an App Store that you can download onto your phone, but a website where you can go to get basically any apk you would ever want.

Warning – If you paid for an app on the Google Play store, you will not be able to get it from another app store without paying for it again.

Google Play Services

Google Play Services is integrated into all of Google’s main apps. Without it, you won’t be able to run your main Google apps. So do not try to download Google Hangouts from apk4fun.com and expect it to work! Here are some apps though will not run without Google Play Services.

  • Snapchat
  • Ride Scout
  • Uber (stuck on splash screen) (8/8)
  • Authy (errors but will work)
  • Meetup (errors but will work) (added 8/1)
  • Runkeeper (Map functionality for tracking distances) (8/8)
  • Google’s Android Apps

Google location services

This hidden gem is so integrated into Android that you might not even know you used it. Google’s servers know where Wi-Fi networks and Cellular Networks are so without GPS, they can approximate your location. This is great for weather apps know your location to provide a weather forecast. Without Google location services, you will need to rely solely on your phone’s GPS, which is useless when indoors. This means your weather app might think you are in Nevada or Germany when you are actually in NJ. Also getting an accurate GPS signal seems to take longer when relying on just GPS.

Google Cloud Messaging

(Added 8/1) Many apps rely on GCM to push updates from their servers to their apps running on your phone. Without GCM, some apps will have broken functionality and will only get updates when you open them. Buyer beware.

Gmail and Google Inbox

The Gmail and Google Inbox apps are very clean and nice to use. If you have a gmail account though switching entirely from it will be difficult since people will still email you at it! Switching to another email account is another problem but

  • K9-Mail is a great open-source email app. You can set it up to read your Gmail through IMAP along with the other email accounts you have while you transition away from Gmail. (Download from F-Droid)

Hangouts – Messaging

Google’s messaging protocol is slick and it integrates well with SMS too. If your friends are used to contacting you on Hangouts, like Gmail, you can abandon the app but moving away from the service is tougher.

Hangouts – Video Calls

Google’s messaging protocol also comes with an easy to use video calling that the above apps do not support. You will need to either do video calls from your computer or get your friends to download the below replacements.

Note – I have only tested Facebook Messenger.

Google Calendar

Great online calendar (that in my opinion has not been updated in a while). The Google Calendar app has been updated and is decent but not as good as some of the alternatives.

  • Stock Calendar App
  • DAVDroid – App to sync calendar to your device (OwnCloud required) (F-Droid)
  • Business Calendar 2 (Amazon App Store) (Free but can pay to upgrade)

Note – lose Public Google Calendars like Sports Teams and imported Calendar

Google Tasks

Google Tasks is a simple program but is popular because it is so well integrated with Google Calendar.

  • Tasks – Not many features. Use if you typical have only a few tasks to do at a time. (OwnCloud Required) (F-Droid)
  • TickTick – Clean, fast, amazing sync, and super powerful to-do list (Amazon App Store)
  • Wunderlist – Close second to TickTick but falls behind in being clunky and a buggy sync (Amazon App Store)

Google Keep

A simple app that now seamlessly syncs across devices and allows sharing. I really liked it because of its simplicity.

Google Maps

The best navigation app is Google Maps but other apps are close and you can live without Google Maps.

  • HERE is very refined. You can download maps offline and different voices. (Amazon App Store)
  • OSMAnd~ is open source but was not that good when I tested it. (F-Droid)
  • Waze is a social GPS that will get you where you need to go while helping you avoid tickets from the police. It is owned by Google though but can run without Google Play Services. (Amazon App Store)

Chrome for Android

Great app but easily replaced. Switch to whatever your desktop browser is to take advantage of bookmark syncing.

Google Drive and Photos

The online editing of files is rather impressive. Storing them into the cloud makes everything easier. Try these alternatives.

YouTube

This is a tough one to replace since YouTube videos are just so much fun.

Google Play Movies & TV

You have to pay for your shows so not free like other options, but there are alternatives.

Google Play Music

A newer app that is getting much better but in a crowded market of music apps, you have your options:

Google Play Newsstand and Books

I never used these so I thought they were just bloat-ware. With not using them, here is what I would recommend to replace them:

Google App

Google’s search engine is the best. Most do not come close but if you want to sacrifice efficiency for privacy, try these:

Google Voice Search

I miss talking to my phone and it understanding what I was saying to incredible accuracy. I have not found a replacement yet that can do what Google Voice.

  • Using keyboard. 😦

Chromecast

If you have a Chromecast, no Google means no more Chromecast, making the device useless. I do not know if other devices that support Chromecast-like-screen-sharing will still work.

  • Use an old phone as a Chromecast remote
  • Use another streaming Device (Like an XBox, PS4, Wii, Roku or Amazon Fire Stick)

Google Wallet

Luckily there are so many worthy apps in sending money to friends that Google Wallet is just one of the players instead of the player. Alternatives:

  • Venmo (Amazon App Store)
  • PayPal – App was not compatible with my LG G3(Amazon App Store)
  • Bitcoin – If you use Bitcoin, you will probably know your own app to use.

Google Tracks

This is an underpowered app anyways, so any fitness tracking GPS will do fine to replace it. Here are a few:

Google Camera

This is a nice camera but you can just use your

  • Stock Camera App

Google+

If you used this social network, that is interesting. Anyways, you can use these:

Hidden Google Products

Google has acquired companies that may not require Google Play Services but are still owned by Google. Some of the notable ones:

Notes

When presenting the apps to download, I presented them from open-source to closed-source to Google source. I gave links to the Amazon App store before SlideMe because I feel the Amazon App is more well supported and more secure than SlideMe. If you prefer SlideMe, search that app store for your apps.

Full disclosure – I work for Amazon.

Sources

Posted in Android Apps, CyanogenMod, How-To, LG G3, Nextcloud/OwnCloud | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Audio Jack Crisis

Posted on 2015-07-22 by commoner4

Not many can say that the tip of their headphone’s audio jack has broken off from the body/sleeve of the audio jack and is deeply lodged into their iPad. However those that can could relate with the panic and fright that I felt when that happened to me. Laugh while you can but this problem has occurred to many other headphone users. The solution (which I learned from browsing many Apple Forums) is to fill the cavity where the tip had broken with a drop of super glue and plug the audio jack back into the iPad.  After ten seconds (conduct a countdown for dramatic effect), pull out the audio jack and the tip should come out with the jack. There hasn’t been any damage to the iPad and it works just fine with any pair of headphones. This solution should be compatible with most devices. If you still want to use the broken headphones, consider buying an audio jack extender. Links to the Apple Forum and audio jack extender are below.

Sources

Posted in Hardware, How-To | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Root access with CyanogenMod

Posted on 2015-07-19 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

When you install CyanogenMod now, it will seem as if you do not have root access. You actually do but CyanogenMod has turned that off. I was surprised and started trying to root my phone. Luckily, nothing bad happened but you do not need to do this!

Enable developer options by:

  1. Going to Settings
  2. Select About Phone
  3. Tap Build Phone multiple times
  4. Return to the Settings menu and select Developer Options
  5. Select Root Access and give your Apps and ADB root access!

You can try to install SuperSU but CyanogenMod has Privacy Guard to manage your SU requests.

That is a safe and fun way to root your phone running CyanogenMod safely.

Sources

Posted in Android, CyanogenMod, How-To | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment