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?!
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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?
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
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 ☹️
What are non-dismissable notifications? Or more specifically, why would I want those?
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.
