No combined notification+ringer volume control? No non-dismissable notifications? No disabling of the bottom search bar? fair point this is launcher issue What the fuck is that shit?!
Sounds like a job for LineageOS!
What are non-dismissable notifications? Or more specifically, why would I want those?
It was a way for apps to run without risk of being killed while letting the user easily see that the app was running.
That sounds like a weird way to get around battery optimizations without having to ask the user to explicitly do that for this app? I mean there is a mechanic for that already via disabling battery optimizations, far as I understand it.
Showing a notification doesn’t “evade” battery optimization - as battery optimization is completely independent of Android’s memory management.
Showing a notification allows Android’s memory management to better assess what apps to kill using a weights system, based on whether they are in the foreground or background, if any of the app’s overlays/notifications are visible to the user, and exactly how visible they are.
Battery optimization will kill any non-system app based on how frequently it is used, dependent on its overall background CPU usage, regardless of whether the app is showing a notification or not.
Persistent notification for some ongoing processes, such as downloads, torrenting clients, VPN services, all sorts of synchronisation, weather, DND, bedtime mode, battery monitors etc.
I in particular liked to use it with Tasks.org client for non-dismissable reminders, so that they stayed in the notifications bar until I mark them done. This way I would never accidentally dismiss a reminder for a chore until I specifically completed it.
I in particular liked to use it with Tasks.org client for non-dismissable reminders, so that they stayed in the notifications bar until I mark them done. This way I would never accidentally dismiss a reminder for a chore until I specifically completed it.
This right here. Exact same use case.
What I’ve started doing is setting them to re-trigger at random if they’ve been swiped away. At least then if I accidentally dismiss it, it’ll come back in a little while.
Since Android 10 the OS has really gone downhill IMO.
IIRC they have also been ripping out workarounds that people use to keep their apps open, so expect things like Syncthing/OpenVPN/Element/Termux etc to no longer be able to survive in the background - I believe the non dismissable notifications are a part of that too. To me this also means apps using their own push services are now being forced into a position where they’ll need to consider Google Cloud Messaging.
The OpenVPN one is pretty poor because unless you have it set to be always-on, Android can kill it freely now, then completely bypass your VPN preference because “it’s not working”
These new changes in A14 kind of show everything wrong with having an ad company in charge of a mobile OS
Did they something in their recent API? How come OS van kill background apps if battery set to unrestricted?
Set the battery usage of your essential apps to Unrestricted and your persistence problem is solved. Android has vastly improved its security by cutting off the workarounds shady (and legit) apps have used to persist. Some of these improvement are from GrapheneOS devs hardening the AOSP pipeline and increasing everyone’s privacy. You mention VPN apps getting neutered. I’ve never experienced Wireguard getting killed by Android and I use that app nearly continuously. I also use Syncthing all day. Setting its battery use to unrestricted keeps it working just fine. I use the app’s internal options to disable syncing when my battery tapers off. The hacky workarounds you speak of to maintain persistence on A14 should be killed off to improve everyone’s privacy.
Set the battery usage of your essential apps to Unrestricted and your persistence problem is solved
The background app battery usage feature (otherwise known as “allow background activity”, “battery care”, or “Adaptive battery”) is a different feature to what I’m talking about here sadly AFAICT, and doesn’t affect the relative importance weight of apps when Android’s memory management is looking for things to kill.
The only thing that the background app battery usage restriction does is stop “inactive” apps from running in the background if they are using up a lot of CPU time, and if the app is not being interacted with frequently: either directly by the user, indirectly via Google Cloud Messaging, or by another app on the device. From what I can tell, it’s completely separate to Android’s memory management and solely exists to extend battery life.
Android has vastly improved its security by cutting off the workarounds shady (and legit) apps have used to persist.
Shady apps already persist using Google (Firebase) Cloud Messaging, and this change does not impact them. Even if they are killed by the separate background battery app usage feature, a simple push message typically brings these back.
The hacky workarounds you speak of to maintain persistence on A14 should be killed off to improve everyone’s privacy.
I wouldn’t exactly categorize this as a hacky workaround, since it follows the documented relative app importance weights used by Android’s memory management. Users can even bypass this themselves by swiping on the persistent notification, and hiding those types of app notifications.
If anything IMO it forces apps to be less transparent about their activity, since they cannot communicate to the user that they are running
If I’m wrong about the background battery app feature’s seemingly lack of impact on Android’s memory management please do let me know - I’ve yet to come across anything suggesting it does ☹️
I’m all for apps communicating what they are doing with notifications. I’m not interested in an app maintaining persistence merely by having a notification. I understand the notifications are silence-able on a granular level per app. I just prefer the actual pop-up from recent Android that says an app is requesting to do something tasking at all times on my device. If it throws a notification (to tell me what its actually doing), I’m all for that too. If I trust the app: I’ll probably silence that granular notification.
and yet plenty of stuff still runs in the background for me, eating my battery when I don’t need it to be in the background
I like the dismissible notifications though.
They had a very specific and useful purpose: notify of ongoing processes. Some apps using them wrong sucked, I agree, but since we have already got a lot of customisation for notifications on a per-app basis then perhaps this should be a customizable thing as well
Oh yes, having customisability for this would be the most ideal situation.
No combined notification+ringer volume control? No non-dismissable notifications?
both of those can be seen as a plus for some people, also you always can change the launcher to one without bottom search bar, did people forgot how to customize their android?
did people forgot how to customize their android?
Sadly yes. It’s especially evident to me whenever LineageOS is mentioned as THE way to install a non-standard OS. Not that long ago there were dozens of options for each device and Cyanogenmod (the grandpa of LineageOS) was just one of them, albeit a quite large one.
From another thread there seems to be animation/gestures issues if you use a third party launcher
Yeah, unfortunately been a thing since the gesture navigation was implemented. Somewhat recently I’ve gone back to the three button navigation so I could use Nova but I’m using Pie navigation so I can have the swiping to go back and also gives me some customisability to do some additional actions while swiping.
There used to be an extra switch for linked or unlinked notification+ringer volume. You could use whatever work for you. Now they force you to use separate, which I believe is worse in every way.
Yeah, you can change the launcher, but unfortunately no Android 14 launcher supports smooth gesture navigation or Quickswitch module.
