Database Info

[Q] Adding custom tab in app launcher

Hello there!
I've got a question about if it's possible to add a tab/section on the sense 3.0 app launcher.
There are already three tabs; "All apps", "Frequent" and "Downloaded". If I hold on one of them, I can re-arrange them, but is there a way to add my own so that I could put all of my games in one tab?
Sorry about my crappy explanation.

You can just rearrange them...
Not only in the drawer but also e.g. in the Music app...
Adding is not possible...
For organizing your apps in folders you have to put folders onto one of the seven home screens - either with HTCs standard folder feature or get one of the multiple app / folder organizer apps from the market...
I for example use "Auto App Organizer" which puts installed apps into predefined folders automatically. Pretty handy and you can manually override...
- mwie -

[GUIDE] MIUI v4 Beginner's Guide [WIP]

MIUI is not like other Android ROMs. It has a full UI overhaul and adds a bunch of extra customization. A lot of the really nice features that made Gingerbread MIUI nice have been incorporated into ICS, and even more incorporated into CM9/AOKP... but not all of them. This guide is going to gloss over the features that are now standard in ICS and focus mainly on MIUI specific features.
*These features are as of the most recent MIUI version, some may work in older versions, some may not*
Some things to start with, just some quick things that I do every first boot:
Enable root: Find the Permissions app, turn root switch to ON.
Turn off 3G download limit: Downloads app, menu > settings > turn off Data download prompt
Change battery display: Settings > Battery > Battery indicator style. My personal favorite is top-bar
Set long-press back button to kill app: Settings > Button > Long-press Back to kill app, and delay time underneath
Customize toggles: Settings > Status Bar: Choose full page/compact toggles, Customize position underneath.
There's some more cool features in those menus, I implore everyone to explore the settings app thoroughly.
MIUI Home
Where's the app drawer? Well, there isn't one. Installed applications are placed on your homescreen. There are some ways around this. One way is to put your apps in a folder and place that folder in your dock. Another way is to simply use another launcher such as Apex or Nova. Yet another way would be to use an app drawer app, such as AppDrawer.
Enough about what MIUI doesn't have, lets get into the cool aspects of the launcher:
The dock: You can have up to 6 icons in your dock, and as little as none, including folders. It auto-rearranges to fit your icons centered.
Two & Three finger pinch: Pinch the home screen with two fingers and you enter widget edit mode. Easily rearrange widgets and icons from page to page and customize MIUI widgets (more on that later). Pinch with three fingers and you enter the home page edit mode. Here you can add more screens, remove screens and rearrange them. One nice thing you can do when creating a new screen is to grab directly from the + logo to where you want that screen.
Multi-touch icon placement: Pick up an icon or widget with one finger, and you can slide pages with your other finger for easy page movement.
Widgets: MIUI has some really amazing looking widgets including 3 clocks, 3 picture frames, and a full size music widget. These widgets are made even more amazing by their ability to be themed. There's a bunch of widgets available for them through the theme manager. One really nice thing about these widgets is that they don't update when you're not on that homescreen. This saves battery life and RAM consumption.
Lockscreen
Custom MIUI lock screens can do almost anything. The stock lock screen can unlock normally, unlock to messaging, phone, or camera. You can double tap the lock icon to bring up music controls and a visualization, though this will be shown automatically if you have music playing. You can preview unread text messages and missed call callers by holding the lock icon.
Then there's two features that work regardless of what lockscreen you're using. You can hold the home button to turn on the flashlight if your phone has a flash, and you can hold the back button to unlock directly to camera (in recent builds this needs to be enabled in Settings > Button)
Theme Manager
Probably the best feature of MIUI is the Theme Manager.
You can apply themes like normal, or mix and match pieces of your themes together in the "Mix" section.
You can pick pieces of full themes to not apply picking the theme, then choosing the icon in the bottom left. Really like your icon pack? Uncheck "Icons" and hit apply, you get the rest of the theme, but keep whatever icons you had before.
You can save your mix & matched themes. From the Mix section, hit menu > Backup Theme
Themes go in /sdcard/MIUI/theme or you can select them from the File Explorer, or open Theme Manager and menu > Import from SD Card
Besides themes, the Theme Manager is also used to manage ringtones, notifications, and wallpapers.
Place ringtones and notification tones in /sdcard/MIUI/ringtone
Place wallpapers in /sdcard/MIUI/wallpaper
Permissions Manager
The Permissions Manager is split into three sections, root permissions, permissions, and auto-start
Upon installation of an apk off your sdcard, you get asked to grant individual permissions, set "I trust this app," or the default setting will ask you as the app asks for each permission.
The Autostart manager will stop apps from running when your phone boots.
Network Assistant
In the Network Assistant, you can set a maximum amount of traffic to be sent over 3G if you have a limited data plan. It will also tell you which apps are using the most data, and by pressing the button at the bottom of the Traffic Ranking screen, you can limit apps' internet usage. From there, you can also set the default settings of newly installed apps, useful if you want to set apps to only use data off wifi.
Visitor Mode & Access Control
These settings are hidden a little bit. To access them, go into Settings > Security & privacy > Privacy protection
Guarded mode is also known as visitor or guest mode. When visitor mode is on, call logs, notes, gallery data, and text messages are hidden and the launcher cannot enter edit mode. You can also set a password for leaving visitor mode.
Access control gives you the ability to password protect applications. The ability to hide the apps is currently missing but should show up in a later build.
Firewall (formerly Do Not Disturb)
Using the Firewall app, you can send unwanted callers directly to voicemail and reject text messages as well. It has a lot of customization including a whitelist or blacklist and keywords for blocking text messages.
App Killer
MIUI has a built in app killer. You can access it by holding the home icon. It looks similar to the stock ICS task switcher, but looks a little nicer. It functions the same way, you can slide apps away to remove them from memory. There's also a little brush icon in the bottom left for clearing all apps from memory. The little icon in the bottom right takes you to the Running Services settings menu for further control over your running apps.
Miscellaneous Features
A few scattered features between apps.
T9 Dialing: Using the keys on the dialer, you can spell out your contacts' name to find them. For instance, to find "John" you would dial 5646
Long press editing: In almost any MIUI app with a list, (dialer, messaging) you can long press an item to enter editing mode. Select as many items as you want and select one of the options that appears. These options vary from app to app, but all include a "delete" option.
Long press toggles: You can long-press any of the toggles to enter the settings menu for that toggle. For instance, if you long-press the wifi toggle, you go to wifi settings.
To be continued
I'll keep updating this as MIUI gets updated. Feel free to post some suggestions and features you think are cool.

Noob guide to Android

Android can do a lot for you-but you have to know where to begin. Compared to the iPhone's cut-and-dried interface, the Android operating system gives you ample room for customization and control. Here's a step-by-step guide to making the most of your Android phone's many features.
The Desktop
The first thing you'll notice about Android is that its desktop differs somewhat from those on other smartphone platforms. You have a lot of freedom to customize the Android desktop-and you aren't limited to four simple rows of perfectly aligned square icons. As a result, you can customize the Android desktop to reflect your interests, and you can make it as full and dynamic as you like.
The Android desktop is composed of multiple homescreen panels. Depending on the version of Android that your phone uses and on whether your device has a specialized overlay such as MotoBlur, you may have five to seven home-screen panels.
When you power up your phone for the first time, you'll see the main homescreen panel. This panel is typically centered, and you can access additional panels on either side of the main one by swiping your finger left or right. What goes on the homescreens is up to you. You can fill the space with any combination of shortcuts, widgets, and folders.
As you'd expect, short-cuts are small icons that let you load apps or other functions on your phone; they function much like the ones you see on a PC desktop. You can set a shortcut to do anything from opening a program to linking to a specific Web page to initiating a phone call.
To add a shortcut, simply press and hold your finger on any open space on your home screen, and select Shortcuts from the resulting pop-up menu. From there, select Applications (to add an app), or Direct dial or Direct message (to create a shortcut for calling or texting a friend), or Bookmark (to open a Web page), or Directions (to activate turn-by-turn navigation to a specific destination).
Widgets are dynamic programs that operate directly on your homescreen. They can perform any number of functions-giving you the latest weather, for example, or letting you play music from either your personal collection or from the Internet. Should you want more, you can download additional widgets from the Android Market.
To add a widget, press and hold your finger on an open space, as you would to create a shortcut (above). This time, though, select the Widgets option from the pop-up menu. Even if you haven't downloaded anything from the Android Market, you should have a handful of options built into your phone. Start by adding the Power Control widget; it creates a handy dandy one-touch toggle control for you phone's Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, data syncing, and screen brightness.
Folders are a good way to keep your content organized while simultaneously expanding your homescreen space. A folder lets you group multiple shortcuts in a single space. When you tap on a folder, a box pops up showing all of the shortcut icons inside that folder. You can fill one folder with one-touch dialing shortcuts to all of your favorite contacts, and another, perhaps, with various phone-number lookup utilities. Folders help you add many useful things to your homescreens without eating up a lot of space.
To add one, press and hold your finger on an open space. Select Folders, and then New Folders. Then drag and drop as many shortcuts into the folder as you wish. To give it a custom name, tap the folder once to open it, and then hold your finger along the top bar until the Rename folder dialog box appears on your screen. To move any shortcut, widget, or folder, simply touch and hold your finger to it. After a couple of seconds, it will seem to lift up from the screen. You can then drag it anywhere, including to another panel and drop it wherever you like. As you drag and drop, you'll also see a trash symbol at the bottom-center of the screen; slide any icon down onto the trash symbol to remove it from the homescreen altogether.
Getting Around
Android phones have four standard keys: a Back button, a Menu button, a Home button, and a Search button. These keys will help you navigate through your phone more easily, no matter what program or process you're running.
Pressing the Back key takes you back one step to whatever you were doing prior to the beginning of your current step. It works in Web navigation, e-mail navigation, or navigation to a previously open program.
Pressing the Menu key brings up a list of options relevant to the area of the phone you're currently using. When you press it on the homescreen, it permits you to access your phone's settings and other customization options.
The Home key has two functions: If you press it once, it takes you back to your home screen. If you press and hold it, it allows you to multitask and switch to other programs you've recently used.
Pressing the Search key produces different results depending on where you are in Android at the time. From your home screen, it brings up a Quick Search Box that you can use to search the Web and your phone at the same time (Android will return the most relevant results from either domain as you type). From within an app, the Search key typically starts a search specific to that program-enabling you to search exclusively within your e-mail, for example, or within your contacts list.
The App Launcher
You can always find all of your apps in the app launcher. To open the launcher, simply tap the square icon at the bottom of the screen. The launcher looks different depending on what version of Android you have, and whether or not your phone has a custom overlay.
Within the app launcher, you can tap any app's icon to run the program, or press and hold it to drag it directly onto the home screen as a shortcut.
Notifications
Android's notification panel puts incoming information at your fingertips, no matter what you're doing. Notifications can come from many different places: e-mail, voicemail, text messaging, even social network and news applications. When you get a new notification, an icon will appear at the top-left of your screen. You can pull down the panel to see detailed information about the notification and then take action if you wish.
Check the settings of various applications to see what kind of notifications they offer, and then customize them to work for you.

[Q] App that creates Android shortcuts to keyboard shortcuts?

Hi Guys,
Can anyone tell me of an Android app that can create Android Shortcuts (Like Contact, Direct Dial ... ) but for actual keyboard shortcuts (like Back, Undo, Home, Copy Paste)?
Let me tell you the reason behind this:
I find that these days, with screen size increasing, we need a more customizable virtual navigation bar to put to the right of the screen, because when holding a bigger fablet, you will only have 1 finger free, and that is the thumb finger, and it points up... it is uncomfortable to point it down to the base of the screen where the navigation bar usually is. Now most apps like this are too simple, and they just stick to the screen, you can't hide them on full screen apps, and you can't add custom shortcuts. And you get that awful and idiotic error "screen overlay detected". It's not like that is an efficient security measure, apps can override that. Android, just make the settings menu temporarily remove any screen overlay !
Anyway, I’m diverging. I have found 2 apps, that if combined would be perfect for that: Meteor Swipe and Menu Button.
Menu Button because it has one of the best shortcut system I have seen (back, home, menu, copy paste, media control), very customizable, but Meteor Swipe has a much better interface, with swipe to change pages and leather skin background.
If I could add Menu Button shortcuts on Meteor Swipe, that would be perfect, but I already talked to the developer, and he is not planning on adding more shortcuts, because it would be too complicated.
But the Developer of Menu Button did a very smart thing: it uses the app as a keyboard, and this allows him to use keyboard shortcuts.
Do you have any ideas for me?
Kind regards,
Daniel

Hidden Notification Log?

Hey Guys
I have Action Launcher installed on my Galaxy S8 (Running Oreo with Samsung Experience 9) and I found a shortcut widget to a notification log. Doing a quick Google search it seems like Samsung doesn't offer this feature natively. From what I can tell, you have to have Action Launcher installed in order to access the shortcut but I'll try to give as much detail as possible to recreate it with other means.
1. While in Action Launcher, long press and select widgets
2. Long press Activities (Should be at the top with the Action Launcher logo) and place it on your homescreen
3. The Activities page should open, scroll down to settings and expand it
4. Scroll a ways down to Notification Log and select it
5. There should now be a settings icon labeled Notification Log on homescreen
There are a bunch of other useful shortcuts in this Activities menu, they appear to be paths that exist in each app that lead to specific functions or menus. Some of them don't actually do anything if you set them as widgets.
Note: The text under Notification Log is:
.Settings$NotificationStationActivity
if that helps. I leave it to the far more capable community to describe what I've actually stumbled on.

runbcov said:
Hey Guys
I have Action Launcher installed on my Galaxy S8 (Running Oreo with Samsung Experience 9) and I found a shortcut widget to a notification log. Doing a quick Google search it seems like Samsung doesn't offer this feature natively. From what I can tell, you have to have Action Launcher installed in order to access the shortcut but I'll try to give as much detail as possible to recreate it with other means.
1. While in Action Launcher, long press and select widgets
2. Long press Activities (Should be at the top with the Action Launcher logo) and place it on your homescreen
3. The Activities page should open, scroll down to settings and expand it
4. Scroll a ways down to Notification Log and select it
5. There should now be a settings icon labeled Notification Log on homescreen
There are a bunch of other useful shortcuts in this Activities menu, they appear to be paths that exist in each app that lead to specific functions or menus. Some of them don't actually do anything if you set them as widgets.
Note: The text under Notification Log is:
.Settings$NotificationStationActivity
if that helps. I leave it to the far more capable community to describe what I've actually stumbled on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You chose the wrong section. This is the section for mods and themes

My apologies, which thread would this be best fit for? (Just so I don't get it wrong)