So a couple days into my N5 experience, and I've discovered the change in APIs that break cloud texting connectivity.
I've read that the functionality may be restored through a root app. Are there any out there already? This is pretty much the only way I text at work.
Related
I flash a sh*t ton of roms, and a problem I revisit every once in a while, is the apparent inability to backup/restore JUST the stuff in Accounts and Sync, and settings of those accounts. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say it sucks to have to re-enter 15+ different account names/passwords/etc every time I flash a rom(which is quite frequently), So why is it when I search for a solution, I find responses that belong over in an Apple Discussions forum(aka no solutions, just rhetoric).
To backup/restore my Apps and App settings, I use RomToolBox Pro>App Manager>Backup app + data + market links. This works very well, and saves a lot of time, as opposed to restoring from the market, and still needing to go back in and set up the apps. I can backup/restore individual apps, with or without the settings. I can't help but think a backup solution similar to this, only for accounts, must be out there.
There is an option in RomToolBox Pro>App Manager>Backup misc.data to backup Accounts, but I've never gotten it to work worth a ****. I've seen several forums over the years with people asking this same question, and being told that Titanium Backup can backup the Accounts and Sync Settings, but no one ever bothers to explain any further.
Though I can't remember the last time I was without root access, a plus would be to find a solution that didn't require it. Thanks for any help, And I hope if you're reading this years from now, this is the end of your fruitless search.
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
Since almost everything I do is on a tablet or desktop I had no idea when I was asked this question recently. So I started looking and found nothing that did not hook into Android contracts which sync online or the database is not protected from any app searching it.
So I'm asking the community. What is the best dialer and contacts app for Android.
Something that does not..
Connect to the internet for number lookup or sync
Does not use the Android contacts database or at least encrypts anything it saves there
Zero internet access preferred.
nutpants said:
Since almost everything I do is on a tablet or desktop I had no idea when I was asked this question recently. So I started looking and found nothing that did not hook into Android contracts which sync online or the database is not protected from any app searching it.
So I'm asking the community. What is the best dialer and contacts app for Android.
Something that does not..
Connect to the internet for number lookup or sync
Does not use the Android contacts database or at least encrypts anything it saves there
Zero internet access preferred.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it's not exactly what you were looking for but I used to use Flock Sync (from Open Whisper Sys) on my private phone, unfortunately they have stopped development but as it was open source you should be able to find the apk and as you can set up your own server it should still work, though don't know about new nougat ROM's.
Original press release
https://whispersystems.org/blog/flock/
There is also at least one alternative called Cucumber Sync or maybe consider Owncloud or similar?
However apps like Flock are not much use if you are trying to keep all your contacts private from the likes of Google or the state as most of your friends will just sync YOUR details to Google/Apple/etc, furthermore the likes of Google could quickly make a fairly accurate assumption that you would know some other contacts that did also use apps like Flock as they would be able to easily build a network of each of those Flock users contacts 99% of which did sync, pick out common contacts with you and make an assumption you probably know the other Flock user. And of course as soon as you make a phone call or send a msg, email etc your network provider and others would be able to tell you are in contact, so not much use if you are trying to hid from the big boys! That said it does offer another layer of security/privacy in normal scenarios ......
On Pixel phones, there's a new backup and restore option which includes sms.
Even though I have Android 7.1 on my Nexus 5X, I don't have this feature. It seems to be a Pixel exclusive for now. However, it should be possible to replicate it somehow I think. Could this be part of Google Play services - or Google Drive, where we lately saw some new backup options in the hamburger menu and settings menu? I'm not rooted, but I still have my hopes up this piece of functionality could be activated on other phones. Did someone look into this?
As an example, we have a backup solution for call history and blocked numbers. It's been there for a few Android versions. The sms functionality seems to be very similar to those. Can't someone find out if it's done through Drive, Play services or some system component, and then begin experimenting?
Otherwise, if we can't replicate the Pixel functionality, then could something similar be built using the Google Drive app data backup? Sms backup apps typically have a solution of their own, such as file export, Gmail import or creating a folder in Google Drive. But what if my sms messages could be backed up as app data instead (from a homemade app, released to the play store for this purpose), using the Google Drive app data backup tool? Could someone write an app for that? Or are there limitations, perhaps the sms container on the phone can't be reached in that way?
I'm curious about what you have to say about this!
EDIT:
To clarify, I know there are many good backup solutions out there. What I'm asking for, is to have that task done as natively as possible in the OS. That's why I'm curious about the things above! Cheers
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.