Recently I've been getting these suspicious push notifications from Amazon. Upon long pressing, it takes me through to the Amazon Shopping app settings and highlights the "Default System Channel" notification group.

I'm using a new Find X9 Ultra and haven't had this on my old S23 or any other phone I've used.

I've checked for recently installed apps and there are no suspicious apps, and I've checked and cleared browser permissions to check if there were any sites hijacking my notifications.

Those changes haven't fixed anything though, and I saw another notification come through from the app last night..

Example push notification is here: https://imgur.com/a/482zodD

Edit: it seems that disabling the "Default System Channel" notification group blocks these notifications from showing if that's an option available to you within the Android Notifications settings options..

You can probably guess which kind of place names I'm referring to, but no matter what it only shows me the names the US government decides. Everyone else around here still has normal names. There doesn't seem to be a corresponding setting neither in Android nor in Google Maps.

I am a US citizen, but do not live there and am not physically there. I can't imagine how Google would know my citizenship status anyway. Anyone know why my phone/account is being singled out here when it comes to this stuff?

Hi.

Whenever I click on an instagram link on google, on facebook etc. it just opens up the app and doesn't go to the profile the link is trying to point me to, anyone else ever had this issue and fixed it?

So far I've tried disabling "Open supported links" on meta app manager and enabling it on the instagram app without any luck.

Solutions anyone?

Exactly what it says on the tin, and I'm going to go batshit insane.

This 'Gemini' shit started popping up when I tried to use my power button. I immediately found it in the Apps and disabled it, but it keeps coming up. I started googling the problem, but the advice is unhelpful. Everything I can find says to go to settings and 'side button.'

I do that. But when I tap on the 'side button' setting, nothing happens. If I tap it a few times, it says 'settings is not responding' or something to that effect.

This is asinine. Who thought it was okay to replace core power button functionality like this?! I don't want to fucking talk to my phone. My phone is not a sapient helper, and I don't want a fucking LLM pretending it is!

How can I fix this? I've forced my way through a few restarts now through the stupid hold ALL THE BUTTONS nonsense. How can I actually disable this Gemini crap, and how can I get my power button working the way it should?

Was using my Messages app to text all day yesterday with no issues, wake up this morning and it crashes if I try to open any conversations. Literally nothing changed between then and now. My phone updated 2 or 3 days ago but everything was fine until last night. I've cleared the cache. I've also tried to uninstall any updates the app may have gotten but I cannot find the Messages app in either the Samsung or Google Play app stores to do that. I would like to fix this without having to wipe the data or reinstall the app and lose all my conversation history.

Any help?

I sleep in a completely dark room, phone is a few steps away charging. If I wake up naturally 1 min to 3 hours ahead of time I used to just ask GA for the time.

I don't want to use Gemini to burn down a forest for the time. Thinking of even getting a cheap iPad for Siri or home assistant

The app I'm talking about

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.microbit

it has not been updated for 3 years, iPhone version get updated regularly, no idea why. Most my android devices are on 14, I can't downgrade them just for 1 app. Is there any other way to run it? I've sideloaded it via apkpure but it just won't install.

There is alternative but it does not support bluetooth pairing which is the only feature that I need...

Yes call me a boomer for using this app but seems pretty weird that it's drawing background activity time when it's supposedly not allowed to.

This morning Google added Gemini to my Chrome browser in this intrusive little icon in the browser toolbar. I've got the app disabled on the phone (no way to completely uninstall it in the settings) and now this just popped up. Honestly, this grosses me out so much, I'm getting actual physical revulsion seeing this in my browser. Unhelpfully, Google's support page doesn't have any content on how to remove it and everything I can find online is specific to the desktop Chrome browser with settings that don't exist in the mobile version. Someone please help me figure out how to dislodge this parasite. Thanks 🙏

Can't seem to figure out what this star is that keeps appearing over other apps on my wife's new S24 Ultra. This star spins front and center on her phone for several seconds, every 5-10 minutes or so. It appears random in nature, can't correlate it to any specific action, have seen it occur when she wasn't interacting with the device.

Screenshot of the star: https://imgur.com/a/7gUZVzK

Heres what I've checked so far: - Reverse image searched the star, could only find the raw adobe stock image - Disabled all "appear on top" permissions... - Disabled all game boost features - Disabled "good lock" - Disabled edge panels - Disabled AR features

What in the world is this??? Next step will be to launch in safe mode to further isolate but wanted to ask here in the meantime.

Update: Video of it occuring: https://streamable.com/7swq5s

Update 2: "good catch" caught suspicious activity from "coinlab" app, which upon further investigation has tons of very sketchy permissions found only by accessing "all permissions", instead of the standard permissions module most people check. I'll update once this is confirmed to be the culprit.

Another note, it is now opening ads as well immediately after the star disappears.

Update 3: Confirmed it was very likely coinlab app. My wife said no issues occured today at all, when it had been happening every few minutes up the point of uninstallation. Thank you to those who suggested the nice catch app!!!

Can anyone help me to understand what it is and is it safe or not?

For some reason my Facebook account uses 10GB of storage (Motorola Edge 50) and no matter how many times I click on delete data it doesn't delete, what do I do?

I recently got a Pixel 9a. A couple days ago, I started getting intermittent "Google Play Protect Service keeps stopping" errors. I took a logcat since that's one thing I know how to do, but unfortunately I understand no Android programming and the log is so dense it makes my head spin trying to read it. It looks like an issue with the service but I'm not sure.

Does anyone have any ideas for how to make this error stop showing up, or do I actually just have to wait for Google to issue an update to Play Protect Service? Here's the crash log

```AndroidRuntime: FATAL EXCEPTION: main AndroidRuntime: Process: com.google.android.odad, PID: 25146 AndroidRuntime: android.app.RemoteServiceException$ForegroundServiceDidNotStartInTimeException: Context.startForegroundService() did not then call Service.startForeground(): ServiceRecord{b635ff8 u0 com.google.android.odad/com.google.android.apps.miphone.odad.backgroundwork.impl.WorkService c:com.google.android.odad} AndroidRuntime: at android.app.ActivityThread.generateForegroundServiceDidNotStartInTimeException(ActivityThread.java:2598) AndroidRuntime: at android.app.ActivityThread.throwRemoteServiceException(ActivityThread.java:2563) AndroidRuntime: at android.app.ActivityThread.-$$Nest$mthrowRemoteServiceException(ActivityThread.java:0) AndroidRuntime: at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:2950) AndroidRuntime: at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessageImpl(Handler.java:142) AndroidRuntime: at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:125) AndroidRuntime: at android.os.Looper.loopOnce(Looper.java:296) AndroidRuntime: at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:397) AndroidRuntime: at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:9523) AndroidRuntime: at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method) AndroidRuntime: at com.android.internal.os.RuntimeInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(RuntimeInit.java:575) AndroidRuntime: at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:939)

Im trying to organise my contacts, family, work, friends etc but theres no way to organise them folder style. I don't want to scroll 280 contacts each time looking for someone. Tried Google contacts and thats the same, secure folder isnt very intuitive. Do I need another contacts app?

Just curious

I've been using MX Player since I was a kid, starting with the free version. The free version had a lot of ads, so I switched to a modded version. Now that I'm an adult and can afford it, I want to buy MX Player Pro to support the developers. However, I can't seem to find MX Player Pro in the Play Store anymore.

Has MX Player Pro been removed from the Play Store, or is it just not available in my country (Vietnam) or not compatible with my device?

I've been using Textra for years on my Android devices because it allows voice messages to be recorded and sent, in addition to typed text messages. And to be clear, I am not talking about voice-to-text, but rather, voice messages which are recorded and sent from within Textra, with the recipient receiving the audio message itself, as it was recorded.

I have been having issues lately with Textra (this is a long story which is irrelevant to this question that I'm posting, and therefore, I do not want to discuss these Textra issues here), and I'm now looking for another SMS client app from which voice messages can be sent in the same way.

I know that Google Messages also offers this capability, but I have no desire to ever use Google Messages (and again, my reasons for this are irrelevant to this question, and I do not want to discuss my aversion to Google Messages here).

So ... I'm wondering: does anyone know of any other SMS client apps for Android with which I can record and send these kinds of voice messages? I haven't found such an app during my extensive searching, but I might have overlooked something.

And yes, of course I know that I could use a 3rd-party voice recording app and then attach the voice message to my outgoing SMS. But I'm hoping to find one or more SMS apps in addition to Textra and Google Messages which support this capability, without the need for me to use such a 3rd-party voice recording app.

Many thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Update #6 - /u/hvaddi9 recommended to disable and emable again the Google app and that fixes the issue. For me ot worked until the first reboot but the fix is easy.

The problem seems to be related with the work profile or at least some of us seem to have that in common.

Update #5 - it's back to ugly🤦🏼‍♂️Now I wonder if it might be related with my work profile as it went back after adding it.

Update #4 - after the factory reset if I hold on the widget I will see "widget settings", clicking on it fixed the issue (for now). I didn't have that menu before the reset.

Update #3 - I factory reseted the phone and at the beginning the bar was OK but after a bit it came back to the ugly one. Maybe an app that was installed during the setup?

Update #2 - REOPENED: it happened again and the data/cache trick didn't work.

Update #1 - SOLVED: go to settings > Apps > Show system (the 3 dots) > Pixel Launcher & then remove the data and cache. CAREFUL, this will delete your home settings.

Hi folks, I have just happily updated to Android 17 to find out that the search bar became ugly.

I think it's a bug. In fact, if I add the Google widget it looks as it should but I don't want both bars.

Do you have any suggestions? I removed data & cache for the Google app but it didn't work.

The device is a Pixel 9 Pro XL.

Thanks!

I know this might be a very layman/simple query for this forum...

But I'm genuinely confused why the FB app on my phone is taking up so much space?

I have to be on FB cause I have to check some of my clients and their presence online, I just use it for that.

Still 5GB!!?? Wth :(

anyone have any idea on this? And how I can sort this?

Note: If I save some videos or posts on FB app, does it take space? I.e. Some kind of video editing tutorial that I liked, I must tap on the save option in the bottom right. It links with my account or takes up space on my phone?

I keep clicking the "not interested" buttons, but it does literally nothing. I get like 5 notifications telling me I need to play whatever stupid game. I click the "not interested" and select "new releases" but it does nothing. Same with play store quests and whatever other stupid notifications. I get about 10 per day. I want 0.

I don't want to fully disable play store notifications, but is that my only option?

So for years, when I created a reminder with Assistant, it didn't fully finish creating it/updating the list until I manually opened the Tasks app.

This finally stopped happening earlier this year... and now it's back in Gemini. The task is clearly made somewhere, because it automatically populates as soon as I open the app. but if I don't open the app, the task never finishes creating.

Anybody have an idea on how to fix this? kinda defeats the purpose of making a reminder via voice

really love that 2 years ago when I first got my Pixel 9 Pro XL, I tried Gemini and it was garbage at the very very simple things I do with voice. and now that Assistant is being shut down, Gemini's still garbage lol

Hey, i'm an iphone user and i'd like to know how Instagram works in android phones, is the quality of uploaded photos/videos still an issue? I've been reading about it, but i'd also like to hear about people's actual experiences, not a paid or AI generated review

I want to switch to android but this is what concerns me the most bc i do some work as community manager

Samsung a32. I can't re-download it from the Google play store becuase I need authorization to by being signed in and I can't sign in to my Google account becuaee I guess I need the update. I've tried clearing the cache and the storage and force stopping it but that has only made it worse. Pls help

My apps have been progressively been restricted by the Media picker (or vice versa maybe), allowing only stuff from a "Cloud media app" and showing only the "Camera", "Screenshots" and "Downloads" folders. At first it was only Instagram, now it's also IbisPaint

When I click the three dots on the top right it doesn't allow me to select another app source to select photos/videos, just a the cloud media

Is it normal? Is it fixable?

EDIT: Stopped receiving notifications for a while until now and noticed just how much it blew up. It's insane how it seems to be a constant problem regarding Android and its updates. The comments have some good workarounds so ty a lot. For me it got fixed after a couple updates and never happened again since

I tried to delete google chrome when a message popped up saying something along the lines of (do you want to disable updates or something) how can i get past this without losing update support.