Starting in August, installing APKs from unverified developers will require a new procedure called Advanced Flow. It involves enabling developer mode, rebooting the device, and waiting 24 hours with biometric verification. After that, you choose: allow the APK installation for 7 days or indefinitely. The procedure is a one-time process and applies to all versions of Android. Will the 24-hour wait stop you from installing APKs outside the store?

I just updated my 2025 Moto G Stylus 5G to Android 16 only to discover the only feature I updated for doesn't work on my device thanks to Qualcomm.

Over the years I've tested out pretty much all the Android keyboards, but swipe typing always kept me on GBoard, even though GBoard did not support voice typing for anything except Google, so I had to switch keyboards for that. Recently I learned that HeliBoard has support for gesture typing with the Google library. But I couldn't find any instructions on where to get the necessary files or how to do it. Well, someone posted a link to the file elsewhere so I'll [share it here](https://github.com/erkserkserks/openboard/blob/46fdf2b550035ca69299ce312fa158e7ade36967/app/src/main/jniLibs/arm64-v8a/libjni_latinimegoogle.so). And it works! Extremely well. I can also pin a button for voice typing and then select Transcribro for that (which uses OpenAI Whisper locally and works super well. Another gripe I had with GBoard was the cursor moves way too fast when swiping on the space bar. Not so with Heliboard. You can also swipe backwards from the backspace key and it will highlight text and then delete it when you let go.

Trust me, I push Signal _hard_ and even donate to it monthly. As I'm sure many of you know, there are always a few contacts who unfortunately refuse to use it. In this case: do you prefer to use insecure SMS in something like QUIK SMS or Fossify Messages, or do you prefer to bite the Google bullet to get end-to-end encrypted messages (even if the metadata isn't encrypted)? I can see good arguments for both sides, so I am curious what Lemmy's take is.

If you haven't seen this yet, Google is planning to require mandatory developer identity verification for all Android apps, including apps distributed outside the Play Store, taking effect September 2026. This affects every independent and open source Android developer directly. This is not just about the Play Store. After September 2026, on any certified Android device, applications from unverified developers will be blocked by default. The only proposed bypass, the "advanced flow", exists only as a blog post and has not appeared in any beta, dev preview, or canary release. No one outside Google has seen it. The community has been fighting back at keepandroidopen.org: - Read the full breakdown of what this means - Sign the open letter (organisations only) - Contact your national regulators — contacts listed by country on the site - Add the countdown banner to your project September 2026 is closer than it looks. The time to push back is now.

I'm using e/os and I want to be sure that, when connected to my local network, my local dns server is used, however, no matter what I do, my phone always use google's one. Is there any way to fix this?

Quote from Proton VPN: > Google has known about a bug that breaks VPN apps for 7 months, leaving users exposed with no warning or error, just a VPN app that stopped working in the background. > > If you're using ANY VPN on Android, you can help us by getting Google's attention to fix it. > > We first reported this bug to Google in September 2025. > > Others like Mullvad and Wireguard reported it even earlier, in August. > > Google's response? "I don't see anything unusual." > > The bug corrupts Android's network stack at the system level after a VPN update, causing users to blame their VPN provider. > > Restarting the app doesn't help, with the only fix being a full device reboot or VPN app reinstall, something which most users never figure out. > > This affects several VPN providers on Android 16, and only Google has the access to diagnose it properly. > > After 7 months of waiting, we're now asking publicly: Google, when are you fixing this? > > Issue Tracker Links: > > https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/441315112 > > https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/4474331

Screenshots:  and Gesture navigation is now enabled by default

Link to the app: <https://f-droid.org/packages/com.jksalcedo.librefind/>

Trying to remove the FRP on my phone, but so far just able to get it to load google.com cannot sign in, or install any apps. https://i.imgur.com/Pa1pRkR.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/AHXKLAy.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/U9vnMII.jpeg Any tips

Back in the day - rooting Android phones and installing custom ROMs were such a big part of Android. I remember so well using titanium backup and Greenify and Cyanogenmod and the list goes on. Is it still necessary to root in 2023 though? I have been on vanilla Android without root access for the past couple of years and at this point most root features have made it into the vanilla Android OS. What are your thoughts?

I don't know what it is with this display, but I've never experienced something like this despite owning multiple amoled and oled phones. The whites are blindingly white even at low brightness. On a more balanced image, the displays seems not bright enough even at max. Since text is often white, it hurts to read text. And outside, the display is barely readable. Am I the only one having difficulty with this display? I used to have an iPhone 13 Pro Max and a Note9 before this phone, both running always at full brightness too. Now I don't venture above 20% indoors.

I'm having trouble finding a good WiFi or Bluetooth walkie app. Both of them on f droid are too old to run on android 16

I've posted on here a long time ago about [RTranslator](https://github.com/niedev/RTranslator), which is a phenomenal, real-time translation app for conversations. It's a beautifully designed app that allows for on-device transcription and translation. RTranslator has a few different modes that make it great for bilingual conversations. It can do simple text translations very well, like a handful of other apps. I actually use [this one](https://github.com/DavidVentura/offline-translator) for that purpose because it has system context menus and OCR for image translation. Where RTranslator really shines is in translating live conversations. When it first came out a couple years ago, it felt like sci-fi. You can set it up to walkie-talkie mode, and the phone will automatically detect multiple speakers, identify the language they're speaking, and translate to the other language. If you have TTS enabled on your phone, you can even hear the other half of the conversation (more on that in a moment). The really amazing feature is if you have translator installed on two separate devices, then you can communicate with each other over Bluetooth. Even with your phone in your pocket, you can easily have a complete conversation with another person. Did I mention that it does all of this without *any* internet? When you first set up the app, you'll have to access the internet to download language models, but after that, it never goes online. The file size and processing power might be heavy on older or cheaper phones, but runs smoothly and easily on modern phones (I have a Pixel 7, which is hardly bleeding edge). I like things that happen on-device for privacy purposes, but it's also immediately practical for something like this. If you need on the spot translation, there's a good chance you're traveling and may not have access to reliable (or free) internet. Most Android devices have built-in text-to-speech (TTS). So after you've installed RTranslator and selected your languages to download, then you're good to go. If you're using an alternative OS (like graphene, which I use), then you'll have to select one yourself. Note: I think that Google's TTS also works on device without an internet connection, but I'm not 100% sure. That's where [SherpaTTS](https://github.com/woheller69/ttsEngine) comes in. Like the translator, Sherpa will need some space on your device and uses some processing power (although, the footprint is much smaller). It takes a little bit of time to set up, but most of that time is choosing your selected voice. There are literally hundreds of models to choose from.  You can set it up as your system default TTS, and then select it through the menu or during setup in RTranslator. Now you have modern, offline, live translation almost instantaneously. Both apps are easy to set up and walk you through the process pretty quickly. *All software here mentioned is open source. Some of the models used by this software might be derived from proprietary sources, but the models themselves are considered open source. Nobody asked me to do this, but I like sharing great open source software. Projects like these don't have an advertising budget, and rely on word of mouth.* [RTranslator On GitHub](https://github.com/niedev/RTranslator) [SherpaTTS on F-Droid](https://f-droid.org/de/packages/org.woheller69.ttsengine/) [SherpaTTS on OpenApk](https://www.openapk.net/ttsengine/org.woheller69.ttsengine/) [SherpaTTS on GitHub](https://github.com/woheller69/ttsEngine)

(also see https://www.androidauthority.com/kiwi-browser-shutting-down-3519510/ ) A while ago Mull/Mulch (and DivestOS) died, and now this.. I wonder what I'll use now.

I've been using it for a while now on my Pixel and I gotta say it's actually really useful, you can copy text from anywhere, even apps that normally won't let you (both intentionally blocked and unintentionally) copy/select text And the easy "translate what's on my screen" functionality has been really good on Lemmy when I come across the random German memes lmao The actual search function also comes in handy when I want to reverse search an image from an app, but the app won't let me save it. It's nice to skip a step or 2. That being said, since it's actually good I now expect it to be nerfed and/or abandoned in about 6 months

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21184378 >The longevity of Android updates has always been a problem, but one that’s been getting better with time. Google has, behind the scenes, introduced some big changes for Android manufacturers that will make it easier for more Android phones to offer support for up to 7 years, just like Pixel.

Wanted: * large screen * good battery life * great camera * long device lifetime, i.e. repairability, software and security updates, swappable battery, ... * enough RAM (8GB) and built-in storage (256GB) * SD card slot and 3.5mm won't hurt (but we use wireless headphones all the time) The competition are (from my POV): * Samsung S23+ (or similar) * Motorola Edge 40 Pro (or similar) * Google Pixel 8 Pro I ruled out all other vendors due to disappointing update promises. Motorola with 4 years security updates promised (out of which the first year has already passed if the model is not brand new) is the minimum. All phones are stretching the budget; must be really good to justify the expense. Benchmark for "great" is better than the previous generation (S10).

> Google Messages gets a new animation for sending and receiving messages, making your conversations more delightful. Check it out!

> After previewing last October, Google Wallet will soon let supervised kids access NFC tap-to-pay on Android phones...

> Google appears to be preparing support for "time zone change" notifications on Android which may end up coming with Android 16.

This is my first post on here, and the title tells it all, I have debloated my phone but I kinda wanna go the extra mile. And if there is no custom rom or way to install roms I might sell my Galaxy for something else (like a pixel 5 or something.) Or maybe a Thinkpad.

I just connected to my home Wi-Fi and got the notification, "Google play has switched off your Wi-Fi." It hasn't done this before, but after a while it connected again with no complaints. First question: Why? Second question: How to prevent it from doing that again? I don't like it that "Snoople" can choose that my home Wi-Fi should not be used. They have no right to making that decision. **Network details.** I have pi-hole running as a DNS with a lot of block-lists active (haven't added a new one since 2021) All are up to date. Wi-Fi uses WPA3, and up to date.

Previously this would be OnePlus, but it looks like their newest phones aren't rootable. I used to have a Xiaomi phone for this also, are they still good? Ik you can root smartphones from a lot of brands but I'm looking for one that has good ROM support and doesn't try all kinds of tricks / to prevent you from unlocking the bootloader

> The Google Play Store has a Nearby Share-powered method for sending apps on your device to others, but this is now going away...

> Starting on June 24, Google will start showing your movie and TV reviews, as well as Search notes, in a public profile.

cross-posted from: https://thelemmy.club/post/45174889 > Reddit post by Jeff Gadway: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClicksPhone/comments/1rg082s/clicks_communicator_coming_in_azerty_qwertz/

> The Google Play Store has a Nearby Share-powered method for sending apps on your device to others, but this is now going away...

Hi everyone. You can easily add a website shortcut to the home screen through a browser ("add to home screen"). However, if I change browser or if I need to clear the browser data, these links disappear. Maybe I'm using too unstable of a browser, but I'm tired of having to recreate my shortcuts. Is there any way of adding a website shortcut to the home screen in a browser-agnostic way?