this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Android

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49
Holy shit Android 14 is really bad (szmer.info)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info to c/android@lemdro.id
37 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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?!

top 37 comments
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[–] lemann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 37 points 8 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] ililiililiililiilili@lemm.ee 19 points 8 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] lemann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 8 months ago

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 ☹️

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 8 months ago

Interesting, thanks

[–] mnglw 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] stown@sedd.it 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Stop downloading all those free-to-play-pay-to-win games. Basically any app that is advertised for but free to use is going to maximize the amount of data they harvest and the number of "notifications"(ads) they send you.

[–] mnglw 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

hahaha I have 0 games on my phone, I run grapheneos and I do not run any app I do not explicitly trust, but thanks for assuming. pretty much any app I open keeps running unless I close it myself. This includes anything from firefox to aosp camera etc etc

[–] stown@sedd.it 1 points 8 months ago

Yeah, I run Graphene as well and don't have the same issue you complain about so I'm not sure what you're doing differently.

[–] maniel@lemmy.ml 19 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

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?

[–] TheEntity@kbin.social 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] maniel@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 months ago

yeah, but i'm talking about such minor things like using non stock launcher, custom keyboard etc., anyway custom roms are harder now, OEMs make unlocking bootloader harder, also developing is harder itself with non snapdragon SoCs

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 8 months ago

From another thread there seems to be animation/gestures issues if you use a third party launcher

https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/9337804

[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 2 points 8 months ago

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.

[–] evident5051@lemm.ee 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I like the dismissible notifications though.

[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] evident5051@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Oh yes, having customisability for this would be the most ideal situation.

[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 2 points 8 months ago

Especially since Android 12 or 13 all app notifications require a permission in the first place

[–] ReversalHatchery 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

That was the case already, and google is dismantling exactly that. You could just disable the undismissable notifications and that's it

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 8 months ago (3 children)

why would you want non-dismissable notifications?

[–] singularity@lemmy.ml 7 points 8 months ago

One example would be always showing the current weather.

[–] jherazob@kbin.social 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Persistent apps running in the background. One constant complaint many have is background apps that should be left alone killed by battery-saving stuff. One of the ways to prevent this from happening that devs have used is persistent notifications. Killing this option fucks up lots of apps that are supposed to run in the background. I guess i'll stay away from Android 14 for now.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 8 months ago

i just go into the app i want to save and select unrestricted instead of optimized if i don't want it to go to sleep.

wasn't the notification thing an exploit anyway?

[–] ChristianWS@lemmy.eco.br 1 points 8 months ago

Some apps have useful information that you can glance using the notification, like Tasker or those Battery monitoring apps. Dismissing those notifications is a pain in the ass for users that use them

[–] kib48@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

you can just set the notif and ringer to the same thing the other 2 do suck tho

[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

mate, I am fully aware I can do that, but then I am say at work, where it gets loud at times, and therefore wish to have the ringer and notifications call a bit louder than at home. Not only do I have to do that with two different settings, I can't even achieve that using volume buttons and sound panel, but rather have to specifically go to Settings>Sound each time. it's fucking regressive.

And I know some people prefer to have the ringer call loudly and notifications notify silently, but the point is this used to be customisable! It was a switch between linked volume or separate and it worked fine for years. Why enshittify a perfectly well working thing?!

[–] kib48@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

that's really weird, it's in the little sound panel for me

I'm using a Pixel, maybe your manufacturer implemented it wrong for some reason

[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I only have Media (shows by default), Ring and Alarm (after expanding) in there. But then again, I'm running a custom rom, based on LineageOS, based on AOSP

[–] kib48@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago

oh, didn't know Lineage got to 14 yet from what I remember Lineage has its own custom sound panel that's different from the little bottom popup on Pixel you could submit a bug report for it here

[–] ReversalHatchery 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Afaik Lineage supports setting profiles, like on really old phones there was a work profile, street profile and whatever to change the volume according to that. Did you try that out?

[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I know about it but this doesn't really fix the issue because, yet again, that's merely a solution for a repeatable scenario

[–] ReversalHatchery 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I see.

What do you think about modding your phone? I remember that back then, for android 6 there was an xposed module that allowed changing whether the notification and ringer volume is unified.
That same module probably wouldn't work for your phone, but maybe the way it was doing it still works, and can be transplanted to a new one.

[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I am very much for modding my phone, because I do so. There's plenty possible solutions to this problem, however this post is not about not being able to bind ringer and notification volume, but rather Android enshittyfying in general

[–] ReversalHatchery 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, that's true. Can't disagree with that. I remember when I decided I'll never upgrade to 7. It has only went downhill since then..

[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 1 points 8 months ago

I would argue that peak android in general was 11

[–] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 8 months ago

Welcome to Android!

[–] Longmactoppedup@aussie.zone 1 points 8 months ago

I don't have a search bar on Graphene OS.