I'm wondering if anyone here might be able to help me with this.

We've bought a Amazon Echo Dot for my Grandma who's no longer able to see very well. The idea was to connect it to her Smart TV so that she would be able to navigate it using voice commands rather than the remote (which she can't see).

I've been able to add the TV as a device on the Alexa app, however I'm unable to get Alexa to carry out any commands on the TV - change the channel, open an app etc.

I believe that what I need to do is connect the TV to the Echo Dot via Bluetooth. Is this correct? Is it functionally a different thing than having something as a device in the app? Currently when I go to the TV under devices and click to manage linked Alexa devices, the Echo Dot is greyed out because it's already paired with a device (presumably the iPad where I've downloaded the app as there are no other devices connected).

If the lack of bluetooth connection is the issue, I'll need to buy a Bluetooth transmitter for the TV has it doesn't have bluetooth capability. So I just wanted to see if anyone had any advice for me before I invest in another piece of tech.

I haven’t touched reddit since the APIcalyspe. I’m planning to delete my account but haven’t gotten around to it yet. I was a heavy Apollo user on iOS but never subscribed to it for its push notification service, instead I kept the official reddit app installed and the only thing I used it for were its notifications. I still have both apps installed.

Anyway, I was surprised to see one pop up yesterday, especially since it wasn’t connected to my user activity (a new private message or reply to an old comment of mine or something). The notification was just an ad. More specifically, it was promoting some trending post on the site that had “>12,000 upvotes.” In many many years of having the app installed I’ve never seen that before. Is it new?

Reddit’s had a mildly antagonist relationship with its users for ages, but it feels like they are REALLY intensifying things now. I’m glad I got off the train when I did. And sorry for making yet another post about reddit, I think we’re all getting tired of harping on it here.

Hey Tildes,

I am wondering if anyone has any recommendations for a way to transcribe voice memos on iOS/macOS.

I want to take up a weekly/daily/whatever journal, however, I felt it may be good for me to use the voice memos feature on my iPhone as I go on longer daily walks and I always have my phone on me. However, going back to look at old voice memos can be rather time consuming rather than just reading/skimming through a text version.

The app can be paid or free. I am hoping to be able to export into multiple file types as well that I could open on any device I really want.

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.

I have way too many bookmarks. Currently, I use firefox's bookmark manager to categorize my bookmarks within folders, and to assign tags. However, I'm looking for alternate solutions. I am not a fan of online services where you need an account, personally. Curious if anyone knows of any offline software to store your bookmarks, that you have found useful?

Tbh I was thinking of just throwing together some web page that I can just host myself, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel. That said, I hate depending on more and more software, as none of this stuff lasts forever.

I'm open to other software that could be used for this purpose, not just something devoted to storing bookmarks. Ideally something that is simple, and just allows you to visually categorize into folders. Tags are a huge plus.

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.

This is my first Tildes post and I'll remove it if needed!

I recently dumped some photos from an old cell phone on to an old windows 10 laptop to be stored on an external hard drive.

The phone is a 4 year old Galaxy with 128g onboard storage.

The laptop is an HP running windows 10 and is a notebook-like machine with about 30g total hard drive, the max usable is like 4 or 5 gigs after the OS etc.

At the time of transferring files, I found it quicker to use the available 2.5 gigs I had to put pictures directly on the laptop and then transfer them from there to the external hard drive.

Here is my problem:

2 folders, from separate camping trips, totalling about 380 photos and a few videos are stuck on the desktop and are claiming to take up 4.02 terabytes and thus cannot be moved.

I did notice the file type .heic is not recognized by windows 10, but all my other photos (several thousand,) are the same file type and take up a normal amount of space.

These individual photos in question are claiming to be around 7 to 8 gigs each.

There's not 4 TB between the phone(128g,) laptop(30g,) and the external drive(3tb.)

So the pictures are stuck on this laptop which is only acting as a surrogate computer while I'm building a real desktop PC.

I can keep this laptop forever, even though I'd rather donate it or something, but one of these folders has pictures from the last camping trip with my brother before he took his own life last year, I'd really like to keep them archived and backed up.

Any ideas? Anyone have a similar experience? Thank you for reading and thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Again, I'll delete this post if it's inappropriate.

Cheers.

EDIT: I just realized while proof reading this, that if I can update the codecs where windows can view the files, I could screenshot the photos, but that still leaves me at a loss for the videos.
I miss his goofy laugh, and want to preserve it for his son also.

I tried out Sync for Lemmy. Loved it, but I was not a fan of the tracking for ads and the price to get rid of that being $20. Anyone tried the free open source Lemmy apps? I used to use RedReader for Reddit, so I don't mind it being a bit worse than something like Sync.

I recently switch browsers from Safari to Orion after many, many years. I imported all of my bookmarks and then realized that I couldn't remember the last time I went through them to see what was still useful (or even around).

I also realized that I don't save a ton of bookmarks anymore as I keep all of my browsing history available and search through that.

How often do you all go through your bookmarks/favorites?

What are those programs that you used back in the day (or even recently!) that you look back on fondly and think about how they once were-- or worse, programs that seemed to have just up and disappeared?

What made me think of this question, for me, was Opera. It had everything: browsing, RSS, and torrenting all in one browser. However, a lot of sites loved to break in it since it was the least supported and I eventually moved to Firefox (then Chrome, then Firefox...). Looking at the browser now-- and unsure if I'm just picky or its a case of enshittification, or both-- I'm just "meh."

Hi everyone, I'm quite new to working the cross-server world of the Fediverse. Is there a way to search the Fediverse in one place, instead of just my server / instance?

For example, being able to search for #cats in not just my Mastodon server / instance, but on the others as well? And if it can search Lemmy and others as well, that would be AMAZING.

Hey Reddit enthusiasts! Revanced has recently extended its support to some of the most popular Reddit apps out there. The list of supported apps now includes Boost, Infinity, rif is fun, Relay, and Sync.

For those who are new to Revanced, this means you can patch these existing apps with your own oauth-client-id, allowing you to continue enjoying them seamlessly.

Quick tutorial:

1. Go to https://www.reddit.com/prefs/apps in your web browser.
2. Create a new app by giving it a name of your choice.
3. Tick the "Installed App" option and fill in the redirect URI field. The specific URI depends on the app you're using. For example, for rif, the URI would be redditisfun://auth. You can find the required redirect URI in the app's corresponding section on GitHub.
4. Copy the client ID string that appears for the app you just created.
5. Create a text document named "reddit_client_id_revanced.txt" and place it in the root directory of your phone's storage (e.g., /storage/emulated/0/<file here>). Paste the client ID into this document.
6. Install the latest version of ReVanced Manager on your device.
7. Open the Patcher tab in ReVanced Manager and select your app.
8. In the Patches section, enable the "Change OAuth Client ID" patch.
9. Apply the patch and install the modified app (Note: If you already have the app installed, you may need to delete it first and then click Install once ReVanced finishes creating the new APK.)

Following these steps will help you navigate through the process of obtaining a private client ID and applying the necessary patches to enjoy Reddit using ReVanced.

Guides with screenshots:

1. https://gist.github.com/decipher3114/4423a2671dc3ce4401025b737d5c89f4

2. https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1wHvqQwCYdJrQg4BKlGIVDLksPN0KpOnJWniT6PbZSrI (Thanks to @kobew50 on Discord)

If you encounter any difficulties during the process,head over to ReVanced Discord server to seek assistance.

Reddit applications that have available patches or modified versions.

➡️ Platform: Android 🤖

➡️ Platform: iOS 🍎

*Shout-out to WefWef - a Lemmy client not only inspired by Apollo, but which is aiming for feature parity. (GitHub)