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This has been bothering me for quite a while, so I conjured a little story to help sooth my frustration.
Lets say my Android device is the new tenant of a nicely formated loft, this loft being 16gb of square space. To commemorate this new exciting space my device throws a house party. Most of the Apps he invites are pretty well behaved, but some start spilling drinks, then puking on the carpet, then having an orgy, then bukkake-ing the root directory. After discovering such acts, the device politely requests the disruptive guests force quit and leave. "I need more space on my phone." the device replied as each questioned on their way out. To his disbelief, NONE of the Apps cleaned up their mess! Even worse it seems some of the classier Apps, though more organized seem to have been influenced too. Unfortunately the device is forced to live with it, as the police force stopped responding to calls in his neighborhood. One man tries, but it always returns to a mess.
I hope that entertained someone.
i know exactly how you feel... there is at least 7 unused folders just wasting space on my phone. not to mention random mp3's hidden deep within my phone...
PhxkinMassacre said:
i know exactly how you feel... there is at least 7 unused folders just wasting space on my phone. not to mention random mp3's hidden deep within my phone...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope you understand about the unused folders and NOT the bukkake-ing!!
hello, nice story!
I won't say that I am even close to being a developer but I do develop some apps and the thing that I wan't to point out is that apps do not run when they are installed or uninstalled. It's not each application job to clear up the mess it may have created but package manager's which apparently leaves some files be just in case you would like to reinstall the app later(?)...
I would propose to look for a more efficient package manager or doorman/janitor for your loft
That's why I don't invite the guy whos only existence is to make farting noises!
Very good point. However, one thing I don't know is if uninstalling through the market cleans up the SD card better than using a third party mass uninstall app. Something you may want to experiment with.
Back at it again...
Here I am again, and I still don't flippin get it!
After reading some of your comments I realized my main point kind of got glazed over(no pun intended @Scudderb)
My big issue is that there's no hierarchy in place for this crap. In windows, program files are stored in the 'Program Files' directory. In Android (and I credit google and the developers for this sloppy BS) Apps are just throwing all their **** in with my stuff on the ROOT.
How is this acceptable. Seriously, HOW? And if its all cache files and/or temporary documents than WHY THE **** ISN'T ALL THIS CRAP BEING PUT INTO A TEMP/CACHE FOLDER.
I'm PISSED! Why does every app I install get to put their own folder on the ROOT WITH the FOLDERS and FILES that actually matter to me ex: like my music, pictures, movies, documents (OH and by the way, a lot of apps developers do a REALLY ****ty job with their NAMING CONVENTIONS so the folders being created may or may not even look related to the app that put it there!)
::end rant::
My apologies for the colorful language, folder structure and hierarchy are something I design as a web designer so when I see this crap going on in my phone like the inmates are running the asylum... I get angry.
Today I was cleaning up my SD card for the umteen'th time, and found that Foursquare was dumping its temp files directly onto the root of my directory. I blew my top and had to get it out of my system... so..
A MESSAGE TO ALL THE APPS PULLING THESE SHENANIGANS: GROW UP!
The problem here is that it's hard to do it right
For custom data, files are supposed to be saved into "/data/data/com.appname/blah" (that's from the top of my head, could differ slightly). That's the directory to use for data files, but there's one big issue with it: it's on the internal memory storage. We all know that internal memory on Android (without custom ROMs) is.. limited. That's probably why most devs are using SD for larger files.
There's also the "Android/data/com.package_name.blah/blah" directory on the SD card. This directory should be used by apps to store files into and is automatically deleted when the user removes the associated app (but only when you're running Froyo or greater).
The issue with this approach is that users (and developers too, when testing the app) will lose all their data when removing an old version of a specific app. Let's say there's a bug with the Market again and the app suddenly gets uninstalled. User will have to reinstall, result: data will be all gone. That's only one of the many doom scenarios.
I can't speak for other developers, but that's more or less the reason why I started to use a common directory outside of the preferred ones when I was doing apps. It's not a great situation, I fully agree. But would you rather have your data accidentally deleted?
If anyone knows a good way to get around this issue, I'd love to know more about it...
orly
Thanks for the reply @Stripeymilk
I can think of multiple solutions:
#1 Development community adopts a universal directory for files deemed 'User' or 'Save' data that should be stored for future use. (or Google creates this for developers)
#2 Development community adopts the practice of allowing users to pick the directory users want to store an apps data in. (prompt at app's first start)
#3 Store files/data in the cloud.
#4 Users dump trash in the lobbys/living-rooms of developer's and see how quickly they find a solution.
#5 USE THE "Android/data/com.package_name.blah/" FOLDER WHEN ALL YOU'RE REALLY DOING IS STORING CACHE/TEMP FILES!!!
BOTTOM LINE: Its not hard to do it right, Its just hard to get people to do it.
You make it sound so easy
1) I'm all for it, but Google needs to put its weight behind an approach like that because otherwise people will say "I like /Data better than /data or /Mydata or /MyData". It's a bit like coding conventions: everyone wants to be different.
2) Good for techy people, not so good for "normal" users. Could make it easier with a small "file manager", but that's too much work for indie devs. Could be a nice idea for a new open source project though.
3) Great idea, could actually work if the associated account would be created automatically (like in Cut the Rope for Android with Scoreloop), but:
- The backup functionality in Android for storing data in the cloud is available for API level 8 and greater, making it of not so much use when you're targeting API level 5 or 6 and greater. Could be fixed by using something like Google Storage combined with Jets3t instead, but that would be useless for apps written in C++, like many games are.
- Cloud storage isn't free. Developers can't pay for that as it would be too expensive. If every Android user would've gotten free cloud storage from Google it could be a nice alternative, but (yeah, there's always a but) most current users don't have that.
4) If you're prepared to send your trash by plane to another country, go for it!
5) Agreed. Useful for temp data.
I'm not trying to make it sound easy, believe me I know how it isn't. I'm trying to make it sound simple, because really.. it is...
In response:
1) I agree and this is exactly what I mean by the real hard part is getting people to do it. This requires widespread endorsement by developers big and small - that this is a 'best practice' that should be adhered to. I think the gate swings both ways though.
example: Twitter didn't invent hash tags, their users did, and with its widespread adoption, Twitter adopted/implemented it too.
2) Another good point, though this process can be curated to drive the user in the right direction (holding their hand). The XBOX 360 does this for every game you play, the first thing it does is ask you which storage device you want to use for game saves.
example: in combination with solution # 1, the default folder the app saves to could be '/data/theAppsName' and the prompt could say "This app saves files to your SD CARD in '/data/theAppName'. Would you like to choose a new location?" [Yes] [No] [?]. The [Yes] option brings up a simple file manager, the [No] option uses that location, the [?] option brings up an easy to understand write up on what its asking and why its asking it.
3) We'll get there eventually, my point really was if you've got the resources, why not. Its a solution better than #1 and #2
4) I plan on sending human clones to create trash individually and exponentially
5) AMIRITE~!
In all seriousness though, thank you @Stripeymilk for taking the time to go in depth and have a conversation about this. I seriously think it doesn't take an act of Godogle to solve this (to what I beleive) is a big issue!
I can't agree more with you.
As developer (Windows, iSeries) I try to make my programs as structured and readable as possible. The same goes for the files and folders used used by the programs, but sadly, even with all the available resources, some people (colleagues) make a complete mess of it, cause "that's not/less important", as long as the program does what it's intended to do ...
It's all about the resources and people using them the right way!
Cool, didn't know about the hash tags on Twitter
Well, we're on a great site here with developers on it. If everyone here would adhere to the same standard, it could at least be a nice push to make the Android SD card world a better place.
What's the directory we're going to settle on? Any pros and cons?
Hi.
I'm wondering if anyone knows a good app that alerts you like "You've got mail" "Incoming message."
If you've ever owned iPhone, I think you'd know what I'm looking for when I say "Crystal Voice." This was such a great app. Nice voice and professional.
I suppose it's possible to repackage the sound files from Crystal Voice and make it into a sound set for Android instead, but I'm not smart enough to do that lol.
I'd appreciate any input on this. I'm more and more loving my Android
GT
If I'm not mistaken Vlingo is a good alternative.
Sent from my illmatic Inspire 4G / Desire HD
Thanks for the tip. It looks like an interesting program.
Unfortunately, I'd rather keep my phone light and don't want to install a heavy program like that for my small purpose.
I ended up just doing it myself. In case, anyone is interested, here is what I did.
1. I extracted the sound files I wanted from iPhone (in this case, Crystal Voice). You can get whatever sound files you want.
2. Convert them into mp3 files.
3. Put them on your phone's sdcard
4. Use Root Explorer (or other softwares) to move them into desired directories:
System/Media/Audio/Notifications
System/Media/Audio/Ringtones
System/Media/Audio/UI
I think it's supposed to work then, but I had some trouble with the sound files not showing up, so I took the following steps.
5. Use ADB to change ownership of the files. "chown root.root filename"
6. Set permission to same as other stock sound files (you can easily check and compare through Root Explorer)
7. Restart your phone.
*In order to make some of those changes, you need to make sure to put your phone in debug mode. When you use ADB and use "su," make sure you have Superuser app running then choose allow.
*For UI files: For UI file, you need to rename your custom sound file to the exact same name and replace it.
Why should you bother?
lol, maybe you don't need to, but here are my reasons:
- I don't want to install 3rd party software because I want to keep my phone light. If I keep relying on 3rd party softwares, soon I'll be clogging my phone with too much stuff, slowing it down eventually and taking up space.
- With this method, the sound files become part of the ROM itself. This means, I can make a backup of this ROM, and whenever I do restore, I don't need to reset the sounds because they will be there as default sounds already set.
- Just for the fun and learning purpose. I'm new to Android, so it's good for me to experiment and learn tricks
I hope this is helpful to some people. If anyone want the sound files from Crystal Voice, let me know. I can share them with you.
GT
I would greately appreciate it if you could send me the sound files from Crystal Voice?
dudewitdashoes said:
I would greately appreciate it if you could send me the sound files from Crystal Voice?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sure. I might as well make it available here for others too rather than responding to each request.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UDCBZSA8
Some notes!
- I didn't make them. Crystal Voice is a free sound theme in iPhone. The credit goes to its author. I merely converted them to make them compatible with Android.
- You have to manually replace the files. Chown may not be neccesary as some sound files worked without that step.
- ACCESS GRANTED: I really love this unlock voice. HOWEVER, it turns out that Android uses the same sound for when you submit things on the internet (e.g. when you click on search) and when you pull or dismiss the keyboard. In other words, your phone will say "Access granted" many times. I gave up on using this sound because that's just annoying and weird. (Instead, I am using a Lion's roar sound, which is cool for both unlocking and browsing experience). I suggest you find your favorite sound for it too (maybe a puppy? lol).
I hope this is helpful,
GT
Has anyone had a look at touchstudio? You can program some codes using it that access a lot of the phone's stuff.
Any developer/hacker wanna take a look at it and maybe see what dll allows access and stuff?
I've seen it. But I've seen nothing that has access to something cool. What are you referring to?
I don't think that TouchStudio has more access to the whole system than other apps. Because anything that you program in the app gets just displayed on the "wall" (or whatever that thing is called )...
And if there are interesting parts in this app MS has locked down these parts for sure...
I just downloaded this as it looks interesting and I'm hoping to learn a bit more about coding. Has anyone used it much? Is there any way to actually effectively use the codes that you create? It doesn't appear like theres a way to export the actions to your homescreen or anything to make them useable, aside from going into the touchscreen app and then running it. Is this just because its the beta version, or is it really just supposed to be for fun/learning?
This is a two part question
I have the A700 and, frankly, I love it to pieces
1. I have a problem with app text size.. Most of the apps have teeny-tiny text that I can't read. The talk-back affects my ability to scrll up and down so text-to-speech is not an option. Is there anything to be done to control app text size?
2. I was goofing around with the Barcode scanner and I got somthing with small print as well as a bar code and I get the printed part in the scanner square. What I saw blew me away. The print was very legible and got an idea. If you could expand that magnified area to fill the screen and do away with the red scan line, you could have a very good reading device for persons with low vision. Even better, if you could route it through the Android browser, you could set it up "darkfield"; White on black. Those of you have have ever done microscopy know about the "darkfield microscope" designed to make things easy on the eyes for long-period use, not to mention using the browswers zoom command. This would duplicate the action of the current low-vision reading device known as the CCD/TV which, the last I was sure of cost $US1200 and am told is down to $US700. I contacted the creator of the Barcode Scanner app and he said that it was open-source. If what I have suggested could be done; expand the veiwing field to full screen and removing the red scan line this would make the A700 a very good low-vision reading device at about 65$ of the price of a CCD/TV
Could someone adapt the Barcode Sanccer program to expand the viewing/magnifying area to the full screen and eliminte the rad scan line?
Hi Space Patroller,
1. There are two ways to accomplish resizing the text:
1.1: Go to Settings > Accessibility and tick the Large text box. If that isn't big enough, or just not right, try 2.
1.2: Go to Settings > Display and tap on the Font size button. There you'll find the four options: Small, Normal (default), Large, Huge.
2.
I contacted the creator of the Barcode Scanner app and he said that it was open-source.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is quite the easy answer. I don't think the developer wanted to actually implement it or he just didn't have time.
To edit the source, you have to have some knowledge about the coding/scripting language. It's not something a regular "customer" could do.
I couldn't do it either, so you might want to create a new topic in either one of those:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=565
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=524
Maybe there are people with the particular knowledge who could accomplish what you want. Though removing the red line wouldn't be a huge problem for people with a little knowledge about the language.
Low Vision Iconia
I have already tried the methoids you mentioned. 1. They don't make that much of s size difference 2. The don't control the app text size in most cases. I got BigFont and that helps somewhat but not with app text
I quite agree about knwing the code and the creator really did not want to be involved I put it here beccause I was told to put all questions in the "general" forum
I am talking here about severe visual disability like not being aable to get a driver's license severe. Are you sure it is all right for met to post my question in those forums? I do not wish to give offense, but if this were done it would bring this cost of reading devices down by at least half
Space Patroller said:
I have already tried the methoids you mentioned. 1. They don't make that much of s size difference 2. The don't control the app text size in most cases. I got BigFont and that helps somewhat but not with app text
I quite agree about knwing the code and the creator really did not want to be involved I put it here beccause I was told to put all questions in the "general" forum
I am talking here about severe visual disability like not being aable to get a driver's license severe. Are you sure it is all right for met to post my question in those forums? I do not wish to give offense, but if this were done it would bring this cost of reading devices down by at least half
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could also try to ajust the LCD Density. The LCD Density changes the whole resolution of your tablet, which makes everything looks bigger or smaller (texts, but also buttons in apps or games).
You'll need, however, require root permissions in order to do that.
There are two ways:
1. Manually: Download a file browser which is capable of viewing the root of the tablet. Root Explorer will do that for you, but it's shareware. There are other free apps out there which can do the same thing, but Root Explorer is able to edit files. You can also try AndroZip and then edit files with Documents To Go 3.0.
Navigate to /system/. Search for the file default.prop. Edit the file and search for lcd_density = 240 (which is the default). Change it to a higher value. I'm not quite sure which values are valid, because it'll also affect the Google Play Store compatibility checker. I think 320 is a valid value. You can also play a little with it, but you have to reboot the tablet every time you change the value.
2. Automatically (On The Fly ajustable, won't survive reboot ): Download LCDDensity for Root and check it out, haven't been able to get my hands on the app yet.
I think it's okay to post a question in one of these forums, you should edit the question a little though. You should mention the severe vision disability and then that you would want anyone to look into the app because it is open source; With of course the two things you want different. Though I really want to help you with that, I don't have the programming knowledge. I'm not sure if anyone is willing to help you out with something "complicated" like that, because people willing to do stuff that include changes like those are hard to find.
Space Patroller said:
This is a two part question
I have the A700 and, frankly, I love it to pieces
1. I have a problem with app text size.. Most of the apps have teeny-tiny text that I can't read. The talk-back affects my ability to scrll up and down so text-to-speech is not an option. Is there anything to be done to control app text size?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, I don't know if you updated already to JB, I did, and as a novelty there's an option to extend the apps' visualization to fill all of the screen's real estate, afterwards the text gets bigger. A new "enlarge-stretch" icon appears near the clock in the navbar in (almost) every open app. But maybe you already found out by now
I have played around with android since Eclair, and I am disappointed with the weight (and general sluggishness, but that's not the point of this topic) that everything has gotten to take. (ie: Facebook went from ~10Mb to 242Mb, Kindle weighs 150mb etc).
I understand that some of it is because of new features, but I gather that aside from the general ****ty idea that 'phones are getting faster and have more space therefore let's use that up', a lot of the weight comes from multiple drawables, libs, and entire portions of apps are written in order to adress the humongous variety of android devices with one small .apk . Maybe some of the weight is used to store additional hidden cache content so that stuff loads faster [I'm talking about 'app' size, not user data and cache] , but it's hard for me to believe that a simple bookstore would weigh double as full scale apps like MS office, photo editing apps or other very complex apps.
Which brings me to my point:
Is there a way to clean up app content (and system, while we're at it) so as to free up some space?
Obviously it would be a root app , but the old Cydia app called 'iCleaner' which did exactly what I'm suggesting worked miracles. It removed drawables and incompatible libraries meant for other resolutions/devices (say, non-retina iPhones, iPad, 4" iPhone 5, if you had an iPhone 4) when an app had the right ones, and only kept the closest when there wasn't. Then it would remove most useless junk (no one needs 42 languages!), and the adequate translations in every app, and some other iPhone-only junk which I can easily linken to 8 F**** GB /SYSTEM ON SAMSUNG PHONES.
Apps were instantly faster because it would free up part of the RAM, and weighed around 25% less (even more after iPad Retina got out). I know that on high-end phones it does not matter a lot, but on general principle it seems to make more sense.
And people can always update back to stock apps when they like because hey, it looks as though no one ever implemented that sweet Jelly Bean feature of incremental updates to decrease download data!
Slightly getting off-topic, but if such an app did exist (or one of you angels at xda wanted to make one) it would be great that it also allowed to choose which bloatware to kill off on stock ROMs, aroma-style.
Thank you a lot for the attention, and keep me updated!
erclalle said:
I have played around with android since Eclair, and I am disappointed with the weight (and general sluggishness, but that's not the point of this topic) that everything has gotten to take. (ie: Facebook went from ~10Mb to 242Mb, Kindle weighs 150mb etc).
I understand that some of it is because of new features, but I gather that aside from the general ****ty idea that 'phones are getting faster and have more space therefore let's use that up', a lot of the weight comes from multiple drawables, libs, and entire portions of apps are written in order to adress the humongous variety of android devices with one small .apk . Maybe some of the weight is used to store additional hidden cache content so that stuff loads faster [I'm talking about 'app' size, not user data and cache] , but it's hard for me to believe that a simple bookstore would weigh double as full scale apps like MS office, photo editing apps or other very complex apps.
Which brings me to my point:
Is there a way to clean up app content (and system, while we're at it) so as to free up some space?
Obviously it would be a root app , but the old Cydia app called 'iCleaner' which did exactly what I'm suggesting worked miracles. It removed drawables and incompatible libraries meant for other resolutions/devices (say, non-retina iPhones, iPad, 4" iPhone 5, if you had an iPhone 4) when an app had the right ones, and only kept the closest when there wasn't. Then it would remove most useless junk (no one needs 42 languages!), and the adequate translations in every app, and some other iPhone-only junk which I can easily linken to 8 F**** GB /SYSTEM ON SAMSUNG PHONES.
Apps were instantly faster because it would free up part of the RAM, and weighed around 25% less (even more after iPad Retina got out). I know that on high-end phones it does not matter a lot, but on general principle it seems to make more sense.
And people can always update back to stock apps when they like because hey, it looks as though no one ever implemented that sweet Jelly Bean feature of incremental updates to decrease download data!
Slightly getting off-topic, but if such an app did exist (or one of you angels at xda wanted to make one) it would be great that it also allowed to choose which bloatware to kill off on stock ROMs, aroma-style.
Thank you a lot for the attention, and keep me updated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello,
I don't think there's any such app which could clean the bloatware but there are scripts over the forums (some of them device specific)flashable via custom recovery.
-Vatsal