Hey all, hope everyone is well today and staying cool!

Lately I've been very interested in incremental mobile games, and also idle games. I'm not 100% on the terminology, but for whatever reason I've found myself enjoying games that simply make me wait. It's odd, I know, but I think it's related to a recent personal decision to distance myself from online apps; an oxymoron, I'm aware.

Anyway! Recommend your favorite incremental/idle apps please. I'm currently enjoying:

• Kittens Game

• Tiny Tower

• Pocket Trains

And.. that's it! If you have any recommendations yourself, let me know. Thanks in advance, and have a wonderful day.

PS: bonus points for outer space! I swear there's a space trading game that was mostly text-based, but the title escapes me.

PPS: Android!

Hey all, hope everyone is doing well today. I've been using a Pixel 6A for going on a year now, and I'm not very satisfied with my purchase. It's a decent enough phone, but it seems that the fingerprint reader doesn't work more than half of the time, and Google Assistant is about as reliable. It also just has a lot of weird little things that add up (for instance, plugging in the battery may not indicate that it's charging until you unlock the phone). Not to mention that I'm just not fond of the company these days, and I'd like to gradually ween myself off of their applications and such.

I actually upgraded to this phone from a Moto G6 plus (bought for >$200 via Amazon, compared to this $500 device), and I find myself wishing I hadn't hopped in the hot tub with it in my pocket that day.

With that said, what sort of alternatives do you fine people suggest? I'm not too concerned with specs (as long as it plays Pocket Trains, I'm happy lol), mostly battery life, Android, and sustainable company practices if that's still a thing in tech.

Currently looking at the Fairphone 4, but was wondering what else may be floating around out there. Thanks in advance, and have a great day.

I'm looking for input from the Tildes community about experiences with Android parental controls apps. My daughter is 8, but she rides the bus, so we want to make sure she has ways to contact us if something happens.

Other than that use case, I intend to limit her to offline content (audiobooks and music loaded directly on the phone) and some games.

The platform for this is an older phone (Android 9). I'm not averse to buying a newer phone if that makes the solutions workable, but I wanted to start with the "free" option.

I've installed Google Family Link on the phone. It does a nice job of restricting access to apps, setting time limits on individual apps, and filtering some content. The major limitation seems to be there's no way to restrict what numbers the phone can text or call with.

Bark seems to be the most visible alternative, and adds a lot of features for content monitoring social media, which is not really our use case. The main thing I'm looking for is an app that would let me administer the calling and texting features of the phone. I'm not opposed to paying for a service if that's what's needed.

Anybody have insights into tools? There's a ton of noise in the search results. Other solutions to the problem?

I'm looking for suggestions for a free, customizable minimalist launcher for my android smart phone. I am currently using indistractable, and while I like how it looks and the core functions, I don't like that I can't redirect certain apps, and it seems to have problems syncing my calendar. Ultimately, I'm not opposed to buying the premium version of this, but from my understanding that wouldn't provide the functionality I am looking for.

I did a little bit of researching and right now I'm looking at Lawnchair 2, Takan, and Olauncher as alluring alternatives. Does anyone have any experience with these, or any other recommendations? Primarily something that is entirely free, but if there is something that has a one time payment that really knocked your socks off I'd be open to that as well.

I just received an Unknown Tracker alert on my Pixel 7 running Android 14 beta 5 for an Apple air tag that was on my son in laws key chain as I had borrowed his car.

I heard this was coming but didn't expect it so soon!

Quite impressed with both the information given and the general advice and steps to take offered.

The first notification was "Tracker Travelling With You: Unknown Apple air tag detected. The owner can see your location."

Touching "more info" then shows a map of where the tracker has been with me and the option to make the tracker play a sound to help locate it, with a note that the owner won't know you've done that.

Then more advice and options:

• If you feel unsafe, get help.
• Get and save tracker info
• Disable the tracker (with a how-to guide on battery removal)

And a ”need more help" link.

As I said, I had heard about this coming but was pleasantly surprised at how good it was and the general advice and help offered up.

Nice seeing things like this done right.

For the past 5 years or so, Ive been using a Samsung J36v as my primary mobile phone. I mostly bought it in the wake of my CDMA based dumbphone being, effectively, bricked by verizon shutting down the 3G network in my area. It wasnt my first choice, but it was dirt cheap and served my needs well enough.

However, the last couple of months, the microphone has just... died. Got quieter and quieter, until now I need to plug in headphones in order for a person at the other end of a call to hear me, let alone understand me. I think I need a new phone.

While Im not a fan with the software side of my current phone (locked bootloader, loaded with bloatware from the factory), I rather liked the hardware, as it had a swappable battery (like, not just easily replaceable, but swappable with only ones fingernails), an sd card slot, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. All of these features are ones that I regularly use.

Because of this, anytime I look for a new phone, they just seem like an expensive downgrade. I dont care too much about the SOC performance so long as its reasonably modern and can be expected to be usable for 5ish years. (I dont do gaming, YT watching, etc. Just signal, discord, call, text, and gps navigation). The things I do care about is a user-replaceable battery (screws are fine, but no solvents or heat needed), the ability to install either stock android or lineage-os or /e os (to get rid of carrier bloat), an sd card slot and physical SIM card slot, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

However, I havent been able to find anything on the market like that. I tried the pinephone a year ago, and while Im a competent linux sysadmin, I was never able to even get MMS texting working reliably, and calls would not always be received while sleeping. Ive been reluctant to try other phones since then due to being afraid of spending money on something that wont work. At this point, its seriously affecting my mental health, as I go into a bit of a panic attack whenever Im reminded of the fact that my current phone is failing.

So Im asking for help. Ive compiled a ranking of the features I need/would like on a new phone, ranked from 'wont even consider a phone without it' to 'would be really nice to have, but I can still use it as a phone without it'.

Must haves (not an option without it)

• Needs to run some form of reduced-bloat android. I use signal and discord to communicate with my network, and while I could give up discord, only using it in the browser or desktop, I cannot give up signal.
• Needs to have a user replaceable battery. Doesnt need to be hot-swappable or anything like that (though that would be awesome), but needs to be replaceable without having to break the screen. (so, no requirement to break adhesives to replace the battery)
• needs to have a physical SIM card, and be carrier-unlocked. Me and my wife will be moving overseas in a year or so, and I will need to change carriers during that move.
• Must be able to use both USA and EU 4g bands. (for same reason as the SIM card)

Really, really nice to have

• Sd card slot. I dont stream music, and have a rather large collection of music on my home server. The storage space to sync that to the phone for offline playback would be a massive plus.
• capable of running a degoogled andriod version. While I could make do with stock google android (at least I wouldnt have the 'official nfl app' force-installed on me), it would be really nice if the phone was supported by either lineage-OS or /e OS.

Nice to have

• a 3.5mm headphone jack. I have trust issues with bluetooth, never had a BT device that worked reliably. I want to keep my copper wire headphones in use, and having to choose between charging the phone and using a DAC dongle doesnt really cut it.
• usb-c charging. Yah, usb-c is nice, but its actually less of a concern for me than the above categories. My micro-usb on my current phone has lasted 5 years, so I wouldnt be too fussed if my next phone used micro-usb.

I'm looking for suggestions. The Internet has become very small over the last 11 years. My go-to for the moments of downtime was RIF. I was able to consume all the little spaces with it since it was an infinite feed - that's a bit harder now. All sorts of apps are welcome, but I'm not looking for things that require high effort or attention span (unless they are worth it). Games are fine, but other apps that fill your time are very good - preferably SFW and audio-off! I use Android, so I prefer those, but our Apple brethren are also welcome to share.

I've seen some tutorials that suggest installing the Amazon app store and then using a workaround to sideload apks. There's also emulators like Bluestacks. I'm curious as to what people prefer and what apps they've found useful.

It seems like every game these days is just some idle clicker or some other lazy game that tries to peddle in app purchases.

Is there anything that actually is worth playing still, for someone that usually plays PC games?

Hi all. On my Pixel phone I have the accessibility option for font size and display size turned up a notch or two but noticed that not all of the text in Tildes adheres to this. Some front page topic text is bigger, some of them remain small.

Is this something that can be quickly tested and fixed if it's a bug? It might drive poor sighted people away from the site.

I'm assuming it's not me, as my Pixel 7 is quite new .... but I am on the Android beta program.

Can anyone else try and see if it's a localised issue or more global?

I can post screen shots of needed but not sure what image sharing sites you prefer to use in here!

Edit:

Fixed with a chrome flag....

the text-scaling is being replaced by the "Accessibility Page Zoom" feature (currently hidden behind the feature flag in chrome://flags)

Hi
Android Mozilla browsers with access to about:config.
Examples are...
Firefox Beta
and
Firefox Nightly

Back in the day there were lots of config tweaks for PC Firefox.
But there's not much config information about Android Firefox.

I found these two posts on Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/11shvus/fixing_performance_problems_in_firefox_on_android/

https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/1278zp5/improving_performance_in_firefox_android_part_ii/

Does anybody here have other about:config suggestions?

The Verge, Washington Post, CNET, Engadget reviews

RIP to my Pixel Fold: Dead after four days

Haven't had time to go through all the reviews but as it's a major new device from Google I thought there might be some interest here.

For most of my life, I've been a hobbyist programmer. From Qbasic to Python and JavaScript. I've always wanted to create an Android app, really just for me, just to do it. It's a bucket list thing.

Can you give me a book or a website guide that is up to date and complete but not 100,000 pages long that could help me get it done? A book would be preferred! I just want to cross this off my list!

Hi all, first post so hope I do it right.

I just read the Tasker post and thought I'd post a question/request here about it.

On my old Samsung S21 I wrote a simple Tasker script that detected a change in volume on one of the sliders, eg Media, and then adjusted the others, IE System, Notification and Call, to match with a little check, ie %VOLM neq %VOLR.

It worked fine in my Samsung but goes all over the place on my new Pixel!

Has anyone else seen this or can post something that works on Pixels? Or maybe my scripts need some work!

The trigger is variable set, IE VOLM, and the actions are to set the other 3 volumes to VOLM if they are not already set to that. And I have 4 of those, one for each variable.

And advice appreciated!

I just recently joined Tildes (absolutely loving it so far, by the way) and also recently left Reddit.

r/Tasker will probably be the hardest for me to let go of since I'm an avid Tasker fan/user, so I'm just trying to gauge the audience for that type of discussion and topics here on Tildes.

I'm not as big of a power user in phone automation as I would like to become but I'm fairly savvy and am learning more all the time.

To set the stage, I've always been a fan of non-nonsense reliable phones. My cellular usage started with a Nokia brick, moved on to a few Motorolo flip phones, then entered the Blackberry world as soon as data service become available in my area. With the demise of RIM, I went o a Moto X, made a misstep in to the Samsung world, then to a Pixel, a Pixel 3XL, and now a Pixel 7 Pro.

I only made the jump to the 7 Pro due to the 3XL starting to show it's age. The charging part wouldn't always connect, the battery would barely make it through the day, and the case was starting to fall apart. Of within three days of removing the case I dropped the phone, cracking the glass back....

The 7 Pro is awful to hold, without a case. I was waiting a week for the Spigen Liquid Air case to show up, and during the time I hated using the phone. The camera bulge felt awkward and sharp, the surfaces were slippery and the phone would slide around. The rounded edges of the screen would produce phantom taps, just all around a bad experience. Now that I've added the case though, it feels a whole lot better.

The user experience has been fairly good, thought not without some annoying bugs. I did the migration from my old Pixel to my new one, and while it did a reasonably job, preserving the launcher layout etc, the app installation process was strange. Google Play tried to install all the apps, but was stalled. I had to tap on each app to manually install them, they were just sitting there "Pending...", whether I was on battery or charger, WiFi or mobile. Once everything installed, and I added my accounts, it was fine, and now apps auto-update.

Notifications are acting a bit funny with Reddit is Fun, although that won't be an issue for much longer :-(. If I get notified of Mod Mail and a Message in RiF, tapping the notification message does nothing. This worked fine on the 3XL. I've also had one spontaneous reboot, and one night where the phone was plugged in, but decided not to charge. Lots of people complained about heat issues, which was a problem for me on the 3XL, but only in extreme cases. After sitting out in full sun with the 7 Pro, I'd say it is about the same, possibly a bit better regarding it's overheating. Many people also reported that the phone would feel warm/hot in their hands for the first few days as it "learned" your behavior. Never experienced that. Battery life and (lack of) heat levels have remained the same.

I am looking for a wi-fi tablet for singing from pdf sheet music on a shared Google Drive. The phone is too small of a screen.

In the past, tablets at this price are often junk, already end-of-life, and run so badly they are unusable (balky when simply scrolling). So, I am still using paper for now, afraid to buy yet another disappointing piece of junk despite not needing anything high end.

Any suggestions?

I'm getting on a 5 hour flight later today. I've got my Android phone (S22 Ultra) and cheap Android tablet (Lenovo P11 G2) with me. What are some of your favourite games you'd recommend to pass the time?

Because I'll be on a plane they'll have to playable without an internet connection. I also don't have any controllers with me, so would prefer games with decent touch controls. I'm open to any genre, but I particularly like RPGs. Thank you in advance!

If this is against the rules, I'm sorry and I'll take it down immediately. I just found it easier to use an app instead of going to the website every time I want to check out Tildes. I didn't actually make it myself, I just used this website: https://gonative.io, so if this gets taken down you can just use that link to make one for personal use. It's on Google Drive so I think it automatically gets scanned for viruses if you're worried about that.

Here is the link to the APK: https://goo.gl/Ynu4c7

I know a lot of people have been asking for an app, if just for a home screen/app drawer icon, so I cobbled together a small WebView wrapper that installs on your phone as an app.

It's for Android only (sorry iOS users) and probably will receive very little support, since I'm not an Android developer! In fact, this is just a fork of the vastly more capable woheller69's gptAssist, ported over to support Tildes and with some limiting functionality removed. Absolutely check out some of their stuff! My app and the original gptAssist are both licensed under the GPLv3. If anyone would like to contribute, please do! In fact, if you're an Android dev, feel free to fork and make it much better.

I absolutely appreciate the design philosophy of the Tildes devs and think that a WebView wrapper is a good compromise between having an app and using the thoughtfully-built website. If you're anything like me, you just like being able to tap on an icon to get to where you're going. I put this together with that in mind.

After 11 years of life, Google Authenticator has added cloud backups for OTP keys in version 6.0.

Google Security Blog: Google Authenticator now supports Google Account synchronization

This is surprising news to me, because historically Authenticator had no way to backup keys by design. Here's a 2017 quote from a Google engineer who maintains Authenticator:

There is by design NO account backups in any of the apps. ^[source]

This design choice always made sense to me, as the point of 2FA is that you've got (1) something you know, and (2) something you have. The second factor should be tied to a physical device. If you lose the physical device, the second factor should be gone, and you'll need to use one of those 10-ish backup codes that we all definitely keep somewhere safe. I'm quite befuddled that Google is reversing this design choice and walking back their previously strong, security-centric design for the sake of user convenience in the case of a lost phone. I used to advise my friends and family to choose Google Authenticator over Authy for this specific reason.

If you want further reading, here's a PCWorld article with an altogether different tone than Google's announcement: Google Authenticator’s long-awaited cloud 2FA feature carries hidden risk

I know very little about Linux but have a good overall level of technical aptitude.

I have a device called an eDrumin 10 which uses an app to change the internal settings. https://www.audiofront.net/downloads.php I would like to use the control app from a tablet, but would prefer not to buy a ipad if I don't need to. Would it be possible to run the Linux version from an Android tablet?

I'm spending time at a new city and Google Maps is shit for walking. It's hard to say exactly what's wrong with it, everything feels wrong. Car centric logic just doesn't work for walking I guess (yes I'm using the walking mode). It feels bad, unreliable, and I'm lost all the time. Yesterday I ended up 2 hours away from my destination and had to call an Uber (big humiliation!). Walking is my preferable way of urban exploration and I hate talking to strangers.

What I want is a simple compass that tells me "go to that general direction and you'll get there". No map, no street names. Just an arrow and a linear distance (like, in a straight line). Like a videogame. Without foreknowledge, street names are just confusing and unnecessary. I can handle the route myself.

Does such an app exists?

I've been enjoying Legends of Runeterra for the last couple of years. It's a collectible card game with really nice art and voice work. I'm not a very competitive person, but I put up with the deckbuilding and competitive bits because I enjoyed the gameplay.

About a year ago Riot added a new PvE mode where instead of playing against humans, you play against increasingly difficult AI decks. Every few wins you get your choice of 3 random passive abilities, some of which can dramatically increase the power of your deck for the rest of the run--kind of a roguelike twist on the CCG formula. This has completely spoiled me--I enjoy it far more than LoR's base gameplay. Unfortunately, despite the popularity of the new mode, Riot made the inexplicable decision to give it only token support, focusing instead on PvP.

I've mostly run out of content for the new game mode, and I'm wondering if another game has something that will scratch the same itch. I'm looking for PvE games with deep gameplay and good production values that aren't too fast-paced or actiony. Bonus points if the game gets new content occasionally. Extra bonus points if it has a good story. Any of y'all have a favorite?

Starting on Thursday night, Twitter cut off API access for some of the biggest third party clients.

From The Verge:

It’s hard to tell whether the third-party client outage is due to the API. Attempting certain calls from my individual Twitter developer account seemed to work, while Twitter’s own API explorer tool is currently broken.

It definitely seems like it is on purpose. For it to last this long without any update definitely makes it feel like it was done on purpose. Many developers' apps have started showing up as "suspended". In looking at my own account, I can see that both Tweetbot and Fenix are gone from my list of connected apps.

The Icon Factory (makers of Twitteriffic) have a blog post about it as well.

The complete silence from Twitter is completely baffling. Burning more than a decade of working with developers overnight seems incredibly stupid. As Paul Hadad, one of the makers of Tweetbot said:

Even during the darkest Twitter 1.0 days they were pretty open about what they were doing. I remember getting a call prior to the 4 quadrants token limit where they explained what was going to happen and answered questions. I wasn't happy but at least felt there was respect.

(apologies if this isn't the correct place to ask, I'm just a bit out of ideas)
(content warning for abusive parents)

I have a friend who's abusive parents track her location using the stalkerware app life360.

she currently runs graphene os (android 13) on a pixel 7 pro.

in my past android experience there are plenty apps that can spoof your location via developer settings. however they all crash on android 13 (or at least on graphene..)

see below (none of these work, and they also crash on my android 13 phone, but they have worked for me in the past on like android 9):
https://github.com/mcastillof/FakeTraveler
https://github.com/wesaphzt/privatelocation
https://github.com/warren-bank/Android-Mock-Location
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lexa.fakegps&gl=US

if there are no functioning apps that will do this. do you know any other solutions? on other android roms or with root with magisk / xposed? obviously this is less secure than graphene os but the current problem is her parents more than anything else.

we r also considering a secondary phone just for the stalkerware which can be opportunistically left in innocent places. or just killing the life360 app on occasion when needed. or just letting the phone die when it needs to. But not sure how obvious this might be to the abusers. any insight is appreciated.

(suggestions like "leave her parents" are good but far easier said than done and while it will eventually happen its not feasible at the moment. That being said if you can provide detail suggestions are welcome)

Thanks :)

I've been slowly more frustrated by the Spotify client updates particularly on android and short of getting all my music offline which I'd like to do eventually I want an alternative client that isn't going to change the layout constantly and make listening to the music I want to listen to any more difficult than it should be.

I'd also like to filter out podcasts if possible because I have my way of listening to podcasts and spotify filling my home screen with them isn't going to make me any more likely to use them. Especially if they keep fucking pushing podcast episodes featuring deceased family members just to ruin my morning.