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The apps that I need to install first, to start using the new pocket computer, are Firefox, Jota+, Huge Digital Clock and VLC.
These are the apps on my pocket computer (at the time of writing). Launchable apps only (with one or two exceptions); system infrastructure is not shown Many of the apps have annotations from the following list. Numbers in parens are the number of apps in each category.
The software that does voice chat.
AOSP SMS (text message) app. I use it.
SSH client.
To get started with JuiceSSH, hit Manage Connections, flip tabs to Identities, create one with these parameters:
Flip back to connections and create one, with these parameters:
Now it asks you for the password or key passphrase (unless saved). It connects. Use the volume keys to adjust the font size, or set the default in settings. [Oops, both are ignored!] Tap in the center to get the keyboard for control and arrow keys. Slide up or down to scroll back/forward. You can have multiple sessions: hit the down triangle to turn off the keyboard(s); hit the left-pointing triangle to return to the connections page. Open a different connection. Each one will have a notification, which you click on to switch to that session. To exit, exit from the shell or other command on the server, same as normal SSH.
Idiosyncrasies in session startup:
Retrieves and plays your voicemail with a GUI.
Visual Voicemail can play, delete or save messages, or reply by a voice call or by SMS. To play the message, to the right of the speaker icon is a triangle, which is a player control. Hit it. To delete, the top row has an icon of a garbage can.
You can also use their voicemail server by calling it: +1 805 637 7243. It is preconfigured; see Phone - Settings - Voicemail - Setup. The dialpad has a speed dial feature: long press on 1 which is preconfigured with this number. (And you can set numbers on other digits too.) No PIN is required if from your own phone. If from a landline, it wants the mobile phone number and the PIN. I'm not sure how, from a mobile phone, you could listen to someone else's voicemail.
When you have voicemail the notification light blinks green (but not during quiet hours). The card in the notification list has direct jumps to play voicemail, call back, or reply by SMS.
I saw a forum posting where an irate user travelling abroad got a lot of charges for calls to the voicemail number and didn't recognize what it was.
XMPP (Jabber) client. At first I was unable to connect to the server. These issues prevented connecting:
For LOS-19, Xabber has transformed into Xabber Beta. Probably the author is responding to a Play Store policy requiring the Android-12 API from all apps being installed on Android-12. Also see yaxim (next item).
XMPP client by Georg Lukas. I installed it in case I can't get Xabber to work, but with the XMPP server out of action I can't test either one. NEEDS WORK
Video conference app that's taken over the world.
File transfer client for SSH, FTP, etc. Procedure to import a file using SFTP:
Details about your cell connection, including which frequency band you are using and what the signal strength really is. This is impossible to find otherwise. For the most useful information, turn off Wi-Fi so the phone will turn on cellular data and log in to the APN server.
Details about your cell connection, including statistics and a map of towers. It wants to run in the background and crowdsource signal strengths; force-stop it if you need to save battery.
LTE Discovery and Network Cell Info Lite features supplement each other.
The AOSP e-mail app.
I exclusively use webmail on my home server, and I have de-emphasized GUI mail reader apps. One of my objections to Android mailer apps is that they save the headers locally, or at least index the mail locally, which may speed up searching but which takes a lot of local space. Another issue is, users tend to not maintain their moldy old locally stored e-mail: stuff that should be deleted is instead kept; stuff that legally should be retained isn't; and none of it is usefully indexed, so a subpoena involves the adversaries collecting and pawing through everything. E-mail should reside on the server and it should be organized, pruned, and backed up by a professional staff.
Weird, this app is not on the Pioneer. Not on the Barbet either. But I didn't delete it; it must have been decommitted.
My preferred web browser.
I want to export bookmarks in a standard format (HTML). Growl, Firefox (Mobile) can't do that. You're supposed to create a cloud account and sync with their server; then you could sync bookmarks (etc.) with all your mobile and desktop instances of Firefox.
I'm an old troglodyte. See this post in support.mozilla.org, OP jaelle (2015-06-04). The respondent gives a procedure to locate the browser.db file and do a SQLite query, create an Excel spreadsheet, and extract a HTML-ish file.
Instead I'm going to just save and restore the whole file. The pathname (starting from the root) is: /data/data/org.mozilla.firefox/files/mozilla/xxxxxxxx.default/browser.db (where xxxx is a random identifier). Actually there are a lot of related files which I'm going to save and restore as a unit.
Cut and paste is a lot less error-prone than copying weird pathnames and random identifiers by eyeball. So rather than doing this in a local terminal like VX ConnectBot has, start Dropbear and start a remote session.
I chickened out and reconfigured Firefox anew. The currently most
convenient way to transfer bookmarks (not including opening a Mozilla sync
account): On the old phone, long press on a bookmark (in the order you want
them to appear on the new phone). Pick Share via Barcode Scanner.
QR code appears. Start Barcode Scanner on the new phone and move the
phone to see the QR code. It shows the URL and a list of actions.
Hit Open Browser
. When it's loaded the
page, hit the dotdotdot menu and then the star (add bookmark). Quickly
hit Options-Edit, or flip to bookmarks, long press on the new bookmark, and
pick edit. Shorten the page title and/or jigger the URL, if needed.
Again long press on the bookmark and pick Pin Site (if it's to be pinned).
I still haven't figured out how to control the order of pinned icons.
This is the LOS improved web browser, based on the AOSP app, also
called Browser
, which is Google's Chrome (or Chromium?) adapted for
mobile devices. I've tested it a little and it's been fine in a
lightweight way.
The Google App
. Its visible aspect is a direct jump to the
Google search page. But this app is huge, and is verified to open the
microphone when the launcher has focus. A microphone icon pops up in the
status bar. Obviously it's for Google Assistant. Turn this off in
Settings - Apps & Notifications - Advanced - Permission Manager -
Microphone - Google.
Jimc avoids activating weaselly entanglements with Google by only using the search page on the web, and by not using Google Assistant, which does the major part of its job by sending your requests to Google's cloud servers to be interpreted, and whatever else Google does with this information.
Voice interface to the Google App, q.v. for why I don't use it.
Firefox has taken an aversion to file:// URLs as the home page, so I installed this webserver, sending to localhost only, port 8080. The Settings page is found from the hamburger (3 lines) in the upper left corner, You need to stop the server before changing settings.
Map navigation by Google
A plug-in for Google Maps to get a panoramic view from any place on any street in urban areas. To turn it on: Long press on the map where you want to look, resulting in a dropped pin. Click on a different location to adjust its placement. There will be a photo and information panel at the bottom of the screen. Scroll down to a narrow photo with a circle arrow in the lower left corner. Click on it (the icon? or anywhere in the picture?) You are now in street view.
Left-right finger motion rotates the point of view. Up-down finger motion pitches the look direction up or down. Turn so you are facing in the direction you want to move and click above/beyond the motion arrow, to move to approximately where you touched. You can also back up. Look for the street name; not always visible. To exit, use the main back button or the left arrow in the upper left corner of the screen.
Maps your route when walking or running, with your speed and timing. See the GPS note and Battery Optimization note.
View a satellite image of anywhere on Earth (unless interdicted).
Originally Google Sky Map but donated
by Google. No ads.
Displays your GPS location and a whole lot more useful stuff. Also, record a location and use the app to navigate back to it. The best way to exit is the main back button; from the home button it goes down to a picture-in-picture view. Coming with this are:
See the GPS note.
See the GPS note for why this app is useful. GPS Locker constantly holds open a connection to the location provider, Thus you know in advance that GPS is not going to work, or you save a lot of time to reinit, if the app that GPS Locker is helping closes the link when not actively getting locations. Quit from GPS Locker when you know GPS is no longer needed.
Advance warning of an earthquake. See the Battery Optimization and Do Not Disturb notes.
I was unable to follow the instructions to override Do Not Disturb and to suppress Battery Optimization, because Settings (and I think system logic) has changed too much since the instructions were written. ShakeAlertLA isn't listed as emitting either interrupting sounds or text. I wish there were some way to test this app.
The world standard in audio-video players.
It can record audio, as in voice notes, or record the screen, not just screenshots, but in theory it can record your awesome fight sequence against some monster. This is the LOS improved version of the AOSP app. Android has had the voice recorder since Android-2.
Measures sound intensity and spectrum. For adjusting the loudness of speakers with objective data vs. human fallibility.
LOS app for tweaking your audio. I've actually never tried it.
LineageOS music player app. I use VLC.
Excellent ad-free camera app, which I prefer. It's working on LOS-19. This app has features up the kazoo, documented in the help page, most of which I will never use. But competitors (stock app and LOS Snap) are very user friendly, meaning user limited, and important items are missing like focus targeting, face detection and telling you which camera is being used.
How to use the wide angle (119°) camera: By default the volume keys control zooming; when you press them the screen will show the digital zoom level. When it's less than 1.0 the program will switch to the wide angle camera. To pack into the frame everything that the camera is seeing, turn it all the way down, which is about 0.65. To return to the normal field of view (78° camera), zoom in so it's 1.0 or above. You can check which camera is in use by putting your finger over one or the other camera: the outboard one is normal while the one closer to the center is wide angle.
LOS improved version of AOSP camera app. It does pretty well on LOS-19, but see criticisms under Open Camera.
AOSP photo displayer. (I use it.)
For reference, here's the (current) procedure to export all the photos from the phone (old or new) to a desktop machine (Jacinth).
Streams out what your camera(s) and mic are seeing/hearing. Main use case: baby monitor.
Photo editor. I should get familiar with this.
It is, or was in 2012, a product of Autodesk Inc.
Seeing Steve Jobs demonstrate the photo editing software that comes
with the iPad 3, my wife bought an iPad on the spot. We've noticed that
many posted photos could really use simple photo editing: specifically
cropping and straightening
. I reviewed the photo editors available
for Android. The free ones mostly are very aggressively ad supported,
with full-page ads popping up at random, plus incessant begging for a
five star rating. Pixlr is the one I picked. I haven't used it a lot
yet, but it looks like it has the features I want.
Tidbit from Open Camera: turn on Levelling Mode and it will use the accelerometer to rotate the image so vertical lines are parallel to the picture edges.
Alarm clock for use in the dark of night. Formerly I used (and liked) Night Clock (neddashfox.com), but with current Android versions I had a lot of trouble getting it to play my favorite music track for the alarm. The new one has generally the same features but can play my wakeup music.
AOSP clock app, mainly useful as a screen widget.
Simple count-down or count-up timer. See the Battery Optimization note.
Formerly I used (and liked) Kitchen Timer (com.leinardi.kitchentimer) but it seems to have disappeared.
My wife and I were visiting our son, and each of us was cooking a dish. They had both timers in action. So I downloaded Kitchen Timer on the spot and had my own timer.
It displays the GPS or NTP time and the phone's time (and their difference). It can set the time if the phone is rooted, and it can do this on a schedule. Accompanying app: Smart Time Sync TZ Data. See the GPS note.
PIM is a little more complicated than it looks: there are contact and calendar providers (from AOSP) which make these tables available to all the apps, e.g. phone, e-mail, cLock, notifier. Then there are user interfaces which display the contacts or events and let you search for, create or edit them. And there are connectors, which communicate with a cloud server and synchronize between the versions of the tables on the phone and in the cloud. I use ownCloud on my own server.
Connector for vEvents (calendar events). Paid license, no ads.
ownCloud's new version is successfully installed, and CalDAV Sync can successfully sync the calendar to/from it.
Connector for vCards (contacts). Paid license, no ads.
ownCloud's new version is successfully installed, and CardDAV Sync can successfully sync contacts to/from it.
Displays the calendar(s). This is my preferred calendar app. It's from Tapir Labs. Paid license.
A tasks app that comes with CalDAV Sync. A task list is basically a calendar but displayed differently.
LOS improvement on the AOSP calendar app.
AOSP contacts app. This is the one I actually use. My only complaint is, if contacts are in categories already (per the CATEGORIES field in vCard version 3.0 (RFC 6350) or 4.0 (RFC 6350)), the app can restrict to a category, but I can't figure out how to add a category to a vCard.
Export procedure (import is very similar):
contacts\ (1).vcfand you will want to fix the filename using a file manager program.
Delete ancient calendar events.
ownCloud is a server program, that you run on your own net (or you can pay them for hosting), which gives read-write access to shared files and PIM information, plus streaming media (readonly), and a cool light-duty website generator. There is a web interface to view and edit all this content. You are expected to have on your phone connectors that will provide the PIM content to consumers: calendar and contact apps, phone, messaging, etc. CalDAV Sync and CardDAV Sync are doing this job for me.
This app is for using shared files from ownCloud. It doesn't have an in-app GUI for calendar, contacts, media, etc.
When specifying the server on the initial page, give the complete
toplevel URL:
https://hostname:port/owncloud
(I have mine on a port-based virtual host. Most but not all people put
it in a subdir rather than in the host's root.) If the server (various
brands) is properly configured, service discovery URLs will reveal the
internal directories to your contact list and calendar.
If service discovery doesn't work, on ownCloud's web interface the contacts and calendar pages will give you a URL to put in your connector. For contacts, in the left panel hit Settings. Next to Contacts hit the dotdotdot icon, then Link. Select the URL text that appears. For the calendar, hit Settings and select the URL in Primary Caldav Address. It ends in /dav/ and at least for CardDAV Sync you can truncate the contacts URL also at /dav/, omitting the subdirectories and the 36 byte GUID.
Here are some things you can do with the ownCloud app, which I had to hunt for:
Nextcloud is a fork of ownCloud. A lot of former ownCloud users have switched to it but this isn't the forum for a comparison.
A collection of card games: Klondike (draw 1 or 3), Freecell, Spider Solitaire. Ad supported, on the selection screen but not during game play. My favorite is Freecell. Alternative name that appears in some contexts: Solitaire Classic. There are a lot of similar apps with similar names, included an updated one from CandyMobile.
Sudoku game. Over 20000 curated variants; has zigzag regions and several other variants.
A different Sudoku game with different challenges. It has only conventional square Sudoku. The games are randomly generated, so you have an unlimited number of them, but they do not have the devilish traps that a human designer can throw at you, unless by chance.
This version of Sudokyuu uses a prior Android API, before 12L, and so is not available in the Play Store. I got the APK from the developer's site; it's stored on the phone in my homedir.
Text editor; I have a paid license for this called Jota PRO-KEY. I wrote a HTML document of 90k words (6 bytes/word counting blanks and format effectors) using Jota+.
Scientific and engineering calculator with unit conversion. It imitates one of the old Hewlett-Packard calculators with RPN (but can be configured for infix also).
Simple 4 function calculator (infix). In CyanogenMod-10 the AOSP app was enhanced with transcendental functions and graphics. It went missing in LOS-17.1 but is back in LOS-19.
One of the major proprietary e-book formats. The app can also display PDF. I won't actually move any files; it wants to download the content anew from the cloud.
Reads and generates QR codes. Specifically you can use it to share with someone (either direction) a web URL, a vCard (contact page), a vEvent (calendar item), a geographic URI, or a Wi-Fi network password.
This is an evolved version of the first Bible app I got. American Standard Version (ASV), Vulgate (and lots more) are available for free, and Chinese Standard Version costs money (I didn't get it).
File manager with lots of features.
AOSP file manager. It's limited to subdirs of /storage/emulated/0. You can do basic actions on the files including sending by Bluetooth.
Tricorder emulation, sensor exerciser, avoiding legal issues with the name.
Shows a lot of arcane data about the phone, including a realtime sensor readout. But the readout in GPS Status is better, in my opinion.
VPN client using IPSec, key agreement by IKEv2. Tested and
working
. However, something weird has happened to the server
software, and the previously working configuration now gives it a segfault.
So actual encrypted communication has not been demonstrated.
The better OpenVPN client, compared to OpenVPN Connect.
Coincident with the LOS-19 installation, issues surfaced with the trust chain for Let's Encrypt certificates, which ended at DST Root CA X3 which expired on 2021-09-30 (8 months ago). (When did the problems start? Why was an expired cross-signing root cert included in the installed trust chain? How did it function for 8 months and die just now? All are off topic in this document.) Once I got the trust chain anchored at ISRG Root X1 (self signed), a lot of TLS issues cleared up including with the VPNs.
With other network issues out of the way, OpenVPN for Android connects and gives connectivity to the internal net, plus the global Internet through the VPN. The OpenVPN client successfully configures the DNS server that the partner pushes out.
Setup notes: Need to use the up to date ovpn files. On 1194 on LTE, the phone has an IPv6 address and the connection uses it. Tests were done on LTE (from the wild side) and Wi-Fi (from the internal net), on ports 1194/udp (preferred) and 443/tcp (for weaselly hotel Wi-Fi that blocks everything but 80 and 443).
This table shows outcomes for OpenVPN for Android on the Barbet connecting to, and via, the various possibilities: all successful.
honoraryport.
| Port/Side | Works? | Svr/Wild | Svr/Local | Leaves |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1194/Cell | Yes | 1447 443C 80C | 80 | 80 443X |
| 1194/Wi-Fi | Yes | 1447 443C 80 | 80 | 80 443X |
| 443/Cell | Yes | 1447 443C 80 | 80 | 80 443X |
| 443/Wi-Fi | Yes | 1447 443C 80 | 80 | 80 443X |
| ipsec/Cell | ||||
| ipsec/Wi-Fi |
A new VPN tunnel using ED25519 PKI, ChaCha20Poly1305 symmetric crypto, and drastically reduced complexity and resources.
Sends DNS queries to the server you specify. Requires root to do this.
Manages Bluetooth connections.
OBEX client/server. It was a little hard to figure out how to make it work. My results:
This is a SSH server based on Dropbear. System paths and permissions have changed since LOS-18.1/Android-11, and I needed to set it up again.
Handy command lines:
How to set up SSHFP DNS records for Selen: On first use, SimpleSSH
creates a new host key, or you can restore it in your Dropbear files from
backup. But the key is in some format that OpenSSH ssh-keygen does not
recognize. To work around this, use OpenSSH on a Linux host to connect
to Selen, and confirm adding its public key to ~/.ssh/known_hosts.
Extract the resulting public key to a separate file, let's call it
selen.pub. Edit off the hostname, start with the algo (ecdsa in this
case). Now execute:
ssh-keygen -r selen.cft.ca.us. -f selen.pub > selen.sshfp
I inserted the resulting SSHFP record in hostdata.db and installed
in DNS, and it induces SSH clients to believe in Dropbear's host key.
Working replacement for Wifi Analyzer (farproc) (note different capitalization) which was unable to do the channel scan. Ad supported.
Initially I thought it wasn't able to do a scan in the 5GHz ISM band (802.11ac). But there are so many channels in this band that a scan takes a long time. Be patient.
Hurricane Electric's quirky package of network tools like ping.
Mobile app for the Domoticz home automation portal. The server
software is back version because the proprietary Z-Wave driver has been
kicked off the FOSS project, and the Android app will only show the front
page (with 1 device on it), not the all devices
page. I've got to
switch over to OpenHAB.
Mobile app for the Ring security and home automation product suite. Requires setup with the Ring password.
Honeywell thermostat app. Requires setup with the Honeywell password. Normally I don't let apps save my password(s), but in this case there's no chance that I will remember the password, so I've allowed it into the app's database.
Control app for the Roomba vacuum cleaner.
Manager and installer from Google's app store, from Google Apps.
Whole Foods store app, use to authenticate for Amazon Prime discounts.
Medical records access and telemedicine video conference. It doesn't allow Bitwarden to fill in the password. Open Bitwarden, find the my.uclahealth.org record, view it, copy the password, (iconify Bitwarden), start MyChart, and paste into the password field. It's set to remember the user ID.
Pay with your phone and send cash.
If you can pass SafetyCheck.
Needs work. With the coronavirus there's no longer
any opportunity to test it. With the Galaxy S5 I once bought a sweet
potato at Whole Foods for $2.71, and also bought paid licenses for several
apps.
Password manager app. You also need the browser plugin. Both of these can fill in loginIDs and passwords, and can also launch password protected apps or web pages.
Properties of isotopes. Replaces Wallet Cards
(good).
Properties of the chemical elements. Replaces Periodic Droid which is no longer available.
How to survive various unfortunate situations with no Internet connection.
Signals you if you were near a registered COVID emitter. Testing this is hard because it requires you to find such a pariah and get near them. It's not all that useful because few emitters are registered and also have the app running.
Full 104 key keyboard. But the keys are closer together so you have to be careful when typing. There are several layouts; change to match what you're trying to type.
How to pick one or the other keyboard: First enable the ones you want to be selectable, like this: Settings-System-Language&Input-Virtual Keyboard-Manage Keyboards: Turn on/off the ones you do/don't want in the management menu. (Google Voice Typing is on by default and I turned it off.) Then in an app that uses the keyboard, look at the right edge of the main button bar (just below the keyboard) for the keyboard icon. Click. From the radio buttons, pick the keyboard you want.
This is live wallpaper, i.e. instead of a static photo it generates a
moving image of drifting spots. The original Phase Beam is gone, but this
one is similar. The default blue and magenta color scheme is called
Candy
for some reason.
To pick a wallpaper: in the background of the launcher (home screen),
long press, and in the resulting menu pick Styles & Wallpapers. Scroll
down and find category boxes for My Photos, On-Device Wallpapers, and Live
Wallpapers. Click on a category. Click on a specific wallpaper. A sample
view will appear, with the title and a button Set Wallpaper
. Click
on that. It asks if you want to put it on the launcher, lock screen, or
both. Done.
In the upgrade from LOS-16 to 17.1 (Android 10 Quiche
to 11
Rhubarb
) (2020-05-04), GPS became unreliable, that is, it often
would lose its connection and would take a long time to re-acquire the
satellites, in all GPS-using apps (GPS Status, Google Maps,
JogTracker…). gpslocker helped this. Jimc
speculates that somebody became more picky about low signals and less
accurate data. In LOS-19 and Android-12L Strudel
, GPS seems back
to its normal self.
Several apps have processes that run in the background, e.g. to receive push notifications or to keep track of the location by GPS, The battery manager kills such processes if it judges that they aren't contributing to the user experience. To exempt particular apps from being killed, open Settings-Apps-See All Apps-(name of app)-Battery; change to Unrestricted.
SIGNUKE: a nuclear war is in progress. Cannot be caught or
ignored.
Some apps have a legitimate reason to notify you even if
Do Not Disturb
mode is set. The procedure to allow the override
goes like this, for older Android versions (believed to have disappeared
in Android-9 Pie
).
Settings-Apps&Notifications-Notifications (1st item)-Advanced-Do Not
Disturb,
To configure Do Not Disturb in Android-12L Strudel
:
Here's a
comprehensive guide to Do Not Disturb by Ajaay on Nerds Chalk
(2022-02-08). Start with
Settings-Notifications-Do Not Disturb-Apps-Add Apps-(name of app).
Turn on the notification categories you want to see/hear, or Allow All
Notifications.
If you want to get bloinked, open Settings-Sound-Do Not Disturb, and follow a similar procedure. In at least some cases, the card for the previously enabled app will be duplicated here, already enabled.
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