Senior security writer uses adb shell command he doesn’t understand to do something to a package he doesn’t know is or isn’t on his phone.

Uh. OK.

Anyway.

I have 2 devices one on android 13 and one on grapheneos. Neither has Gemini.

To check for Gemini:

adb shell pm list packages bard

and since I don’t know if it’s a regular apk or not:

adb shell pm list packages --apex-only bard

To be super sure, I also checked using shell commands device_config list and getprop, and grep for strings including: gemini, bard, smart, ai, model, and personal(ize/ation)

eg adb shell device_config list | grep --color -i smart

The simplest and most generic solution is to go into the settings app and to your apps settings.

Select the app you want to prevent from opening.

Towards the bottom you should see something like “open.by default.”

Not sure exactly which version of android changed the options, but if you tap that it will either give the newer option of °in the app °in the browser

In the browser should keep the app from opening.

I find the new language is much less clear on what these do vs :

The older default links settings was to not allow app to open. Ask. Or allow.

You might also find a setting in the browser itself along similar lines of ‘allow links to open out of browser’ , ‘keep links in browser’,‘open link in app’ etc.

Also, if you like, you can also allow other preferred apps to open those links Eg:

And for more info :

https://support.google.com/android/search?q=open+by+default

Rant away!

I, too, dislike that snap as well.

Canonical are doing some not cool things these days.

Good thing mint has lmde as their backup plan.

I really enjoy graphene and the separate user profiles with no google integration.

If a google app, or something from play store is needed they’ve developed a compatability layer and sandbox for play services and store.

It’s a lot of security toggles and permissions.

But not having Google sucking your data at every level of the OS is great.

Wirh the isolated profiles, you can still have a fully googled system which you can fully lockdown at anytime, while having a pure aosp high security profile.

It’s fdroid and Izzy/codeberg and ironfox and termux and a few other repos on main.

I don’t do snap/insta/meta/etc and have no need for apps that drain my soul, anyway.

Anyway, yeah, google fucking sucks.

Using unapproved polish is against the tos and we have issued a DMCA (the C is for chair) notice of violation.

Your chair has been locked.

If you wish to unlock your chair, go fuck yourself. Pay us for another one.

Sincerely,

Go fuck yourself.

When you receive the notification you should be able to long press on it to show the options for that specific notification.

Usually, there are 2 larger horizontal options: default, and silent.

Below and to the left you might find the text: turn off notifications.

To the top right corner of the notification you should find a settings icon. If you tap that it should bring up the options for that specific notification.

I wonder who that benefits?

Hmmm. Oh . that’s weird. My phone just

Praise glorious leader Putin.

Yes. Ironfox, Firefox. Some browsers do use webview, most don’t. It’s a separate app.

However, while you’re at it, use an spp like Activity Launcher to access hidden apps and settings.

Like being able to stop webview from doing A LOT by accessing the web view dev tools.

You can set it to overlay a yellowish tint on anything that uses webview so you know what is actually using it.

Termux can.

You can run a full GUI install of the distro of your choice and even vnc or rtp into it.

A bit tedious to set up, but follow the docs and it is no problem.

Haven is pretty neat in that it can be sound or motion activated.

I’ve used it in the past and it is definitely simple and comes from the guardian project (they used to be the tor repo folk)

However, it hasn’t seen an update in 4 years, so, it may have some issues(?) with newer os.

Haven: Keep Watch (Protect personal spaces and possessions without compromising privacy) https://f-droid.org/packages/org.havenapp.main/

Try an app like activity manager to locate now hidden setting

https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/com.activitymanager/

Check in settings and in call services (com.android.phone) for a setting g like phone info or testing. No need for codes

How many Mooches per Truss?

Good thing I never use mine to sign up for any ‘free’ services.

Trying various methods without adb/shizuku give:

Exception occurred while executing ‘night’:
java.lang.SecurityException: getNightModeCustomType requires MODIFY_DAY_NIGHT_MODE permission

cmd uimode gives the options but executing any options ends in error.

Anything beyond that is beyond me.

But, maybe this can help if you want to do the real programming stuff I can’t

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44170028/android-how-to-detect-if-night-mode-is-on-when-using-appcompatdelegate-mode-ni#44170179

Another thing I think might be needed is to add a line to reload termux.properties I created an alias because the command is so long. trs=termux-reload-settings

*edit: it was late and I was throwing ideas. I made a solution that actually works in another comment.

I’m thinking you could have separate color profiles with a script that to change the file using symbolic link?

(I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m a figure it out as I go type, but maybe it’ll work. Please help!)

You’d need something like shizuku (allows shell operation permission) or root to be able to read the system dark mode status.

Using shizuku you could call it by

rish -c 'cmd uimode night'

Which would show

Night mode: yes / no

If you did that you could us an if statement (I don’t really know how to write that out confidently at the moment)

And use that fuction to change the symbolic link to the color.properties file instead of the at a specific time I used below.

So you keep 2 (or more) color profiles in separate files and call those locations to link to based on time of day / uimode.

You could put the script in the .boot (to automatically start) or .shortcut (to start with the widget) Or maybe add the command to run the script in the termux bash_bashrc or profile file to have it execute on each session launch.

#!/bin/sh

at 1200 #noon

ln -sf [/path/to/new_file] ~/.termux/color.properties

at 1900 #7pm

ln -sf [/path/to/new_file] ~/.termux/color.properties

I use shizuku which allows for shell and hidden api access forother apps. That can be used to deny permission to other apps.

App-ops by the same Dev has a clipboard monitor that notifies every time an app tries to access.

It also allows per app denial

A dictionary I found from the future has this entry:

Google: the once not evil garage-based company that inspired hope in the dream that information wants to be free that decided to redeem its principals and innovative spirit to enrich a few cunts, invade the privacy of everyone, and enshitify the internet. Near its end it fed into the shareholder zeitgeist while completely ignoring the needs and wants of the users.

Wow! Amazing! My dreams have come true.

I will continue to never use chrome.

Also, if you have a VPN with/or DNS blocking capabilities, you can find the API endpoints here

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/googleapis/googleapis/refs/heads/master/api-index-v1.json

Search for generativelanguage

Giving money to google is the barrier for me.

It does.

You can also install all the different versions/forks of FF for android for more separation. (Nightly, mull, tor, etc)

You could also use termux and set up something like tinyproxy to route specific sites to the various proxies.

Something like invizible has an outbound socks proxy setting so you could use that to send all traffic to your local http/socks proxy.

A lot of browsers have plugins like foxyproxy that will let you set global (per browser) or site/wildcard proxies.

1 Invizible Pro
https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/pan.alexander.tordnscrypt.stable/

2 RethinkDNS
https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/com.celzero.bravedns/

3 Singbox
https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/io.nekohasekai.sfa/

They can all be used together or separately as proxies or VPN.

1 and 2 allow for per app routing, blocking, firewall, etc. depending on mode(VPN or proxy)

3 allows to set up local or remote proxies, tunnels, etc.

Not sure what the real difference or benefit is here, but my phone app (google, but not pixel) already labels calls as “likely fraud” or “likely spam”.

You would have to answer the call for this to be useful, no?

It will always be 1993 for vr.

It will always be the future.

It will always suck.

Oh no!

Where am I going to play solitaire now???!!!

Nice. Thanks for the info.

If this is the one you’re referring to, they have a bunch of other no internet required, no ads, privacy friendly, foss apps.

~~https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/Simple-Gallery~~

~~https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools~~

Don’t use these.

That’s, uh, pretty fucking ironic.

“These unredacted documents prove that TikTok knows exactly what it’s doing to our kids – and the rot goes all the way to the top,” the group wrote on X.

Ironic.

These seem ok.:

From fdroid/neo:

https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/com.github.warren_bank.mock_location

https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/cl.coders.faketraveler/

Edit: I don’t live in Washington DC.

So, I guess it does the trick.

Out of curiosity, have you tried setting your mobile browser to Desktop mode to view the page?

https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/com.simplemobiletools.notes.pro/

This and others by simple are exactly that.

Notes. Gallery.Dialer. keyboard. Clock.

No ads. Absolutely zero unnecessary permissions. No telemetry or sneaky internet connections.