I am just putting this as a word of warning for anyone as silly as me ;o)
It is pretty irritating having the Gtalk service running all the time, but on removing it, by deleting the apks from the system/app folder, I discovered that both the gmail app and the market seem to be dependent on it
you can disable the auto login from within the google talk app itself
i would seem it is best left alone
I made a similar mistake deleting the internal SMS app since I used Handcent. It screwed up the SMS database such that a record or outgoing messages was no longer kept. It was weird.
Pretty good list of what the internal apps do and whether or not you should delete 'em.
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php/Barebones
Related
Personally I think the contacts provider (and other providers)in Android is a huge security risk. Every app and it's brother wants full access to your contacts so they can mine them for usable information. This can be just to add easy links to friends or to spam them with advertisements or offers to identity theft.
I've started using a pim manager that does not access Androids contact provider, calendar provider , tasks or other providers in it's operations.(And I really wish it was open source)
I have already removed the Google sync apks from my device and have removed contacts, calendar in the past. But not the providers.
It might cause some badly written apps to crash.
But I can't forsee any other serious problems.
Ideas? Thoughts?
Honestly sounds like a good idea..
Myself I decided to go for a while without any gapps and any other "store" installed on my phone.
My contacts are imported from a .vcf file which i update manually when needed.
I also have installed AFWall+ and i blocked the internet access to pretty much all the other apps including the system ones.. (everything i could get away with basically )
This could be a solution as well but it's rudimentary one at the moment.
nutpants said:
Personally I think the contacts provider (and other providers)in Android is a huge security risk. Every app and it's brother wants full access to your contacts so they can mine them for usable information. This can be just to add easy links to friends or to spam them with advertisements or offers to identity theft.
I've started using a pim manager that does not access Androids contact provider, calendar provider , tasks or other providers in it's operations.(And I really wish it was open source)
I have already removed the Google sync apks from my device and have removed contacts, calendar in the past. But not the providers.
It might cause some badly written apps to crash.
But I can't forsee any other serious problems.
Ideas? Thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I already don't have Google apps on my device.
Everything blocked with afwall+ using profiles so things only get net when I'm using them on the net.
Fdroid is where I get 90% of my software and from the internet for much of the other 10%
I have a old phone with nothing on it personal at all. Which has play store for the 3 or 4 paid apps I need, it does updates for them and a few free ones. I copy the apks over to my daily driver.
I constantly hound developers on play store to support offline devices and not to implement features that break the app when there is no internet. Even app I don't use lol.
(I have 2 tablets and far too many old phones.only two devices are online(some are local lan only))
Someone should start a offline foundation. But being online it might be ridiculous..
I too removed contacts by using /system/app mover from f-droid. It was unintended as I wanted them as a user application but they wouldn't work like this and the icon vanished, that was fine with me for a long time. The other day I wanted contacts for signal (and telegram also won't work without them). I restored the application files from a backup,
For reference in /system/app/ the missing files were
SecContacts.apk
SecContactsProvider.apk
Other contacts programs like Simple Contacts can't run without a system permission called com.android.contacts and without those files in /system/app the permission doesn't get created at boot. The result being that no contact creation is possible.
What I would really like is a modified version of the system app that passes contacts data to the calling program depending on individual contact entry permissions with regard to each calling app; one list for telegram, another for signal etc. I gather that recent android versions above 6.0.0 have functionality to check calling application certificates so something along these lines should be possible. For earlier versions it might be necessary to switch between multiple contacts databases before starting the messaging app and also removing it from the autoboot list.
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/permissions/defining
In the Google Messages app, there are options to either "archive" or "delete" conversations. It looks like archiving them doesn't really do anything to the system SMS data and just hides them from the main screen in this particular app (ex. but other SMS apps will still see them as normal texts, and any SMS backup apps will still back them up normally). Deleting conversations, on the other hand, looks like it does just that and once deleted, they're gone and not available for other apps.
This is all based on just a quick test I did, so I was wondering if someone else could confirm I'm understanding this correctly. It would be nice to archive a bunch of my older conversations so I don't have to see them every day, but I don't really want to delete them. It looks like Messages will do exactly what I want, but I want to be sure so I don't end up permanently deleting things.
Also, does Google Messages back up my texts to my Google account? It's hard to keep track of which Google app does what with each specific "type" of message (ex. Hangouts, Allo, Messages, etc.)
Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk
akksnv said:
In the Google Messages app, there are options to either "archive" or "delete" conversations. It looks like archiving them doesn't really do anything to the system SMS data and just hides them from the main screen in this particular app (ex. but other SMS apps will still see them as normal texts, and any SMS backup apps will still back them up normally). Deleting conversations, on the other hand, looks like it does just that and once deleted, they're gone and not available for other apps.
This is all based on just a quick test I did, so I was wondering if someone else could confirm I'm understanding this correctly. It would be nice to archive a bunch of my older conversations so I don't have to see them every day, but I don't really want to delete them. It looks like Messages will do exactly what I want, but I want to be sure so I don't end up permanently deleting things.
Also, does Google Messages back up my texts to my Google account? It's hard to keep track of which Google app does what with each specific "type" of message (ex. Hangouts, Allo, Messages, etc.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The conclusion gathered from your quick tests are correct. Archiving a conversation just hides it within Google Messenger only. But it'll still be visible to any other SMS app you have installed.
Deleting though, deletes it for all your installed messaging apps. So don't delete the ones you want to keep. Archive them instead.
Google Messenger doesn't offer any kind of backup functionality (the last time I checked).
It's the Hangouts app that offers syncing to your Google account so you can have all your messages available on multiple platforms.
Freewander10 said:
The conclusion gathered from your quick tests are correct. Archiving a conversation just hides it within Google Messenger only. But it'll still be visible to any other SMS app you have installed.
Deleting though, deletes it for all your installed messaging apps. So don't delete the ones you want to keep. Archive them instead.
Google Messenger doesn't offer any kind of backup functionality (the last time I checked).
It's the Hangouts app that offers syncing to your Google account so you can have all your messages available on multiple platforms.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry for the (very) late reply, but I just wanted to say thanks for your feedback, that's what I was hoping to hear
Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk
Hi,
I am looking for a simple way to manage the contacts on my Lineage 15 (Oreo) phone. Adding contacts is easy enough, but when I want to delete something, the mess starts. Trying to delete via the stock contacts app gets me messages of read-only entries and hide-only options. This sucks. I've read about people having to log in somewhere online to try and take control again of their run-away contact data. Seriously? I don't even have a gmail account, and my phone doesn't run any Google apps either. Still, it seems like I am not allowed to treat local data in a local manner.
I guess what I'm looking for is a way to delete a single contact in a single step. I don't want to have to delete three or four times, regular contacts, Whatsapp, Telegram etc. - if I entered it in one step, I want to delete it in one step. Isn't there an app for this? Or alternatively, is there an alternative contact app that I can use instead of the stock contact app and that will give me actual control over MY contacts on MY phone?
Thanks!
A few times a week, my phone will cache the Facebook Messenger photos, and whenever it does they appear in my photo storage apps. I seem to be the only one having this problem as I can't find a permanent fix. Here is what I have attempted so far:
1) Manually deleted all folders containing an image of a Facebook Messenger sticker.
2) Uninstalled all Facebook Messenger stickers. It lets me uninstall all stickers except for the "Pusheen" and "Meep" stickers.
3) Added ".nomedia" folders to the "storage\android\data\com.facebook.orca\files\stickers" and "storage\android\data\com.facebook.pages.app\files\stickers" file locations.
4) Cleared my Facebook Messenger cache and data.
Adding the ".nomedia" folders seems to temporarily work, but somehow they always end up being deleted and the images will make another appearance in my photo storage apps. It seems to happen randomly, as well, as sometimes the "Pusheen" and "Meep" stickers from the Messenger app will appear and other times a bunch of random stickers from the Pages app will appear. The annoyance is compounded by the fact that each sticker is stored in its own individual folder, so when they do reappear there is always at least 30+ new device folders in my photo storage app. So, is there any way to just completely stop the Facebook Messenger and Pages apps from caching these stickers I've literally never used?! Do I have to uninstall the stickers in my Facebook settings somewhere? I don't care what it is, I just want a solution. I have never had this problem until I purchased the OnePlus 6 almost 2 months ago..
Did you switch from iOS?
I get that too, but in the regular gallery app as well. Any cached images from any app shows up, included cached ad videos.
Farcebook
Farcebook and tweaker want to run your life
trsix said:
Farcebook and tweaker want to run your life
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, if you run knockoff apps like that, you deserve whatever you get. Plus maybe you should get some help. I'm suspicious that you're tweaked out of your mind right now.
Still Happening
I forgot about this thread because it hadn't happened for a while, but today when I went into my Gallery app after taking a photo I noticed it happened again.
I have posted photos of what it looks like, and as you can see it is very annoying. The ".nomedia" folder trick didn't work this time, either. I understand Facebook sucks, but I have been using Android phones since the Note 3 and I've never had this problem before. So, it has to be something with OnePlus's settings... There really should be a way to turn this off. One thing I've noticed this time is that the date in the albums is much earlier than when the pictures actually appear in my Gallery app. I have no idea why that would be the case.
If no one can provide me an answer here, then maybe I'll take it to OnePlus's customer service and they can give me an answer that I can forward to everyone... I doubt it, though, as their customer service is usually pretty awful and I seem to know more about their phones than they do.
You're supposed to create a .nomedia file, not folder.
Ah hah!
Techno-Freak said:
You're supposed to create a .nomedia file, not folder.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ahh, that makes sense. That's what I did this time, hopefully it'll be a permanent fix.
With Android 11, Google seems to have taken yet another step in the "making Android increasingly painful to use" direction by disabling the ability for device-only contacts to be available via the standard Contacts Provider. Because of this, I have to use Google-stored contacts on my Android 11 device in order for these contacts to be available to my apps. Otherwise, my apps don't see any contacts.
I have a rooted Android 11 device, and I'm hoping that there is some way that I could disable the standard Contacts Provider service and that I could then install an alternate, custom Contacts Provider service which knows how to access device-only contacts, and which knows how to make these contacts available to all apps that need contacts ... and which never will try to store my contacts on any of Google's servers nor anywhere else in the cloud.
Is it possible to disable Android's standard Contacts Provider service? And does such a 3rd-party Contacts Provider service exist?
Thank you in advance for any thoughts and suggestions.
Well, I think I found a solution to the issue that I'm trying to solve. And it doesn't require any new Contacts Provider service to be installed, after all.
First of all, I made sure that contacts syncing is turned off.
Next, I installed the "True Phone" contacts and phone manager app from the play store and made it my default phone app.
Then, I used that program to make a local backup of my contacts, which is one of its capabilities.
Following that, I froze the Contacts app, but I kept the Contacts Storage app active. I checked the permissions for the Contacts Storage app, and I see now that it has no network-related permssions. So apparently, it just looks at the local contacts database, and some other piece of software is what actually syncs Google's cloud-based contacts data with the local database. And by turning off contacts sync-ing, it seems like I have indeed disabled that process.
Then, I went from my desktop computer to http://contacts.google.com with the same login credentials that are associated with my Android device. I then permanently deleted all of the contacts there.
(I rebooted my Android device between each of these steps and also after the final step.)
Now, my SMS and phone apps still see the contacts info in my local database. And I can manage the local contacts backup and restore via that True Phone app.
There are probably other phone/contacts apps which also could be used for this. But True Phone works well enough for me.
So ... it turns out that no OS surgery is needed to mess with the contacts nor to install an alternate Contacts Provider service.
PS: And I now have learned something. I was asking about a "Contacts Provider service", but I now realize that the standard Contacts Storage app itself seems to be the "Contacts Provider".
And because I found out that this app does not even have network permissions, it seems clear that this app simply gets contacts from the locally stored sqlite contacts database, and therefore, I don't need to replace this app with anything else.
And so all I needed to do was disable contacts sync-ing, because that is what would sync contacts between Google's cloud and the local contacts database.
How long were you playing with it to get to this point? Fun times...
Cloud apps can be little terrors, the only one I use is Gmail. It's never been breached by malware in over 15 years. Lol, Outlook not so much so.
blackhawk said:
How long were you playing with it to get to this point? Fun times...
Cloud apps can be little terrors, the only one I use is Gmail. It's never been breached by malware in over 15 years. Lol, Outlook not so much so.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It took me around a day of on-and-off playing around sessions to figure this all out ... with some input from a few other helpful souls.
I agree about cloud-based services. I don't even use gmail. I run my own email server, so I use that to manage all my email accounts. I manage my own web servers and my own DNS servers, as well.
It's more work for me to manage those things, but I don't mind, and I actually enjoy that work, most of the time.