Holy shit Android 14 is really bad
Holy shit Android 14 is really bad
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?!
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
59Set 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.
33Set 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 ☹️
4Interesting, thanks
1It's supposed to, but on my Realme X3 it just does whatever it wants irrespective. Not Android 14 admittedly, but I have little faith that any future phone will behave in this regard.
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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
3Stop 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.
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Did they something in their recent API? How come OS van kill background apps if battery set to unrestricted?
2If the foreground apps need the resources (RAM, CPU) the OS will kill apps that are in the background. There used to be various things apps could do to reduce the risk of being killed, but these options have gradually been reduced in recent years.
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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?
24did 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.
11yeah, 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
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From another thread there seems to be animation/gestures issues if you use a third party launcher
11Yeah, 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.
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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.
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What are non-dismissable notifications? Or more specifically, why would I want those?
16Persistent 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.
12I 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.
5The app should resend reminders until it's completed. This doesn't seem like a big issue.
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It was a way for apps to run without risk of being killed while letting the user easily see that the app was running.
4I hated apps that did that. Never really worked anyway. Do your app properly for God's sake!
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I like the dismissible notifications though.
13They 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
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Those are improvements to me.
9I'm pretty sure that's the joke.
0Lol, no, not a joke. These are regressive changes
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why would you want non-dismissable notifications?
7One example would be always showing the current weather.
13Persistent 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.
7i 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?
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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
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you can just set the notif and ringer to the same thing the other 2 do suck tho
5mate, 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?!
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Permanently Deleted
2I use AOSP and it's there.
Sure, fair point, but some notifications are better persistent
It was always combined for me. In fact there used to be a switch to link or unlink them.
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I don't have a search bar on Graphene OS.
1Welcome to Android!
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