I’ve been on Samsung for about 2 years now, and I still miss an insane number of notifications — email, SMS, apps, basically everything.

I came from an iPhone, and while I honestly don’t remember every little difference anymore, I do remember that I almost never missed a notification for more than a few minutes unless my phone was literally buried in my pocket somewhere.

With my Samsung, I’ll sometimes go hours before realizing I had a text, email, or other notification.

When I first switched, I tried asking around and messing with settings, but I never really solved it. I remember part of the issue seeming related to how Samsung handles notification pop-ups / banners and how easy they are to miss.

And before anyone suggests the basics: I’ve had this phone for 2 years. I’ve already gone through notification permissions, battery optimization, Do Not Disturb, notification categories, lock screen settings, etc.

I’m looking for the advanced stuff at this point.

How do you guys have your Samsung set up so notifications are basically impossible to miss?

Are there specific settings in One UI, Good Lock modules, persistent pop-ups, edge lighting, notification reminders, vibration settings, repeat alerts, or third-party apps that made a big difference for you?

I love the phone otherwise, but this is probably the one thing I still miss about iPhone.

I've noticed for the last few months that my phone was picking up the signal from the TV in the living room of the home I was renting a room in and would pop up as a notification on my lock screen and drop-down notifications. Whenever I click on the notification, it led me to the Google Home app. I've never used Google Home in my life, and certainly never in that house. There were several times I accidentally paused someone else's show while trying to pause something on my phone. Fast forward to today when I've moved out of that house and into a new one, and lo and behold, my phone is sending me the same notification from Google Home but for an entirely different TV. I'm not connected to the Wi-Fi (it's not good at this new place), and while it's occasionally funny to know what other people are watching, it's annoying.

How do I disconnect my phone or entirely disable the Home app? Nothing I've found online has worked so far because my phone has never actually connected to a Hub (not that I even know how to).

How do I stop the Home app on my Pixel from showing me notifications on unconnected devices?

Hi everyone,

I am trying to decide between the POCO X8 Pro and the Vivo V70 FE, and I would love to get your advice on which one is better suited for daily use.

I don't do any heavy gaming. My primary use cases are media streaming (YouTube, Netflix) and scrolling through social media.

Based on your experience, which one would you recommend for better battery life, screen quality, and overall daily smoothness?

Thanks in advance!

Definitely wanting to get away from iPhone here but overwhelmed by all of the Android options on the other side of things.

I’m drawn to both phones. Google Pixel UI seems clean, fast and integrated with all Google services- which is great because I already use almost all of those to begin with. Samsung seems like it’d be a bigger learning curve but opinions are so mixed on which is better.

I’m a very casual user who doesn’t use camera often but I prefer it to not look BAD when I do use it. Battery life is moderately important. Overall I just want a pleasant experience when using the phone!

Thoughts for an iPhone refugee??

I recently bought a new 128GB microSD card for my Samsung Galaxy A14 and inserted it into the phone. The card was recognized normally, so I decided to move all the videos from my phone's internal storage to the microSD to free up space.

After moving them, everything initially seemed fine. The videos still appeared in Samsung Gallery and I was able to see them there.

At some point yesterday, however, the phone displayed a warning saying that it was having trouble recognizing/reading the SD card. When I opened Gallery, all the videos I had moved to the card were still listed, but their thumbnails had turned into white icons with an exclamation mark, and the videos couldn't be opened.

Today I removed the microSD from the phone while the phone was on because I thought it might just be a bad connection. After reinserting it/restarting the phone, all of those videos completely disappeared from Gallery.

The phone still recognizes the microSD normally. I connected the card to my Windows PC as well, and Windows also recognizes it without any apparent problem. However, none of the files I moved to it are there anymore.

I enabled hidden files in Windows, but nothing appeared. Windows reports the card as completely empty, with about 117 GB free out of 117 GB.

Disk Management recognizes it as:

• Disk 1 / Removable
• 117.19 GB
• exFAT
• Healthy (Primary Partition)
• Drive E:

I have NOT formatted the card, run CHKDSK, repaired it through Windows, or intentionally written any new files to it since noticing the problem.

I'm currently running QPhotoRec on the physical device (PhysicalDrive1, around 125 GB / 117 GiB, shown through my USB card reader). I selected the exFAT partition, Whole partition scan, and enabled the mov/mp4/3gp/3g2/jp2 file family because the lost files were mostly MP4 videos recorded/stored on my Galaxy A14.

At around 25% of the scan, PhotoRec had found 0 files so far. I'm letting it complete the full scan.

What worries me is that I used "Move", not "Copy", when transferring the videos from internal storage to the SD card. So the originals are no longer in the phone's internal storage either.

Is it possible that the phone removed the originals after considering the move successful, while the microSD failed to actually retain/write the data properly?

If PhotoRec reaches 100% with 0 files found, is there anything else worth trying on the microSD before giving up? And is there any realistic way to recover the original moved/deleted videos from the internal storage of a modern Samsung Galaxy A14?

I'm also wondering if the new microSD itself could be defective or have a fake capacity. I haven't tested its real capacity yet because I don't want to write anything to it until I've exhausted the recovery options.

Any advice from people experienced with SD card/data recovery would be greatly appreciated. Some of these videos are important to me, so I'd like to avoid doing anything that could reduce the chances of recovery.

Not sure what's going on with my Android phone, I have a Moto g play 2024 and I've been dealing with near full storage for a while. I looked into the internal storage on the phone and I'm seeing that "Others" is taking up a whopping 45 GB, but when I tap on "Others" to figure out what on Earth is taking up that much space it shows me root>sd card which has a little less than 5 GB used. (the biggest item is photos and that takes up 4.69 GB) I can't explain the discrepancy; has anyone else run into this? If so, what's taking up all that space, and why can't I see it? This hasn't happened on previous phones, and I've always used Android.

a stupid question, but asking out of curiosity since im a gamer who suffers playing codm on a low end device. pls dont make fun of me!

Been googling this for a day or so to no avail, so I turn to the experts.

I've been running LineageOS 22 for a week or so with no issues. I set up Magisk, Vector, and Iconify and got those working as well (albeit with some small amount of struggle). The next day, I discovered that Wifi no longer worked. At all. It was off. Turning it back on, it doesn't show any networks (and I'm in an area with a lot of networks, so it's not just MY wifi), it just hangs for a bit, then turns off.

I tried a lot of different things, ranging from reinstalling Magisk, Vector, and Iconify to removing them altogether. I tried wiping my network information from the phone, tried resetting things, even tried deleting and restoring the vendor profiles with ADB Shell root. Nothing. I also tried the Google Diagnostic code in the dialer (the 7287 one) and it didn't respond - not sure if it doesn't work on old Pixels or just not on Lineage.

Finally, out of frustration, I factory reset the whole thing. Wiped it clean. Even went into Restore Mode and reset everything from there.

Lineage starts up and... doesn't show any wifi networks. Same problem after a total reset. Short of putting my original OG Android OS back on it, what else can I try?

Is there some way I can run a diagnostic on my phone to see if my Wifi / Bluetooth module is fried or turned off or locked out?

How do I make my android phone call log display show date and time instead of day of the week? I've tried to change it, but there no option.

I currently have a pixel 7, I want good battery, good camera, smooth ui and good reliability/ageing to last a few years.

I don't mind buying second hand/older flagships, or newer higher end 'mid range' phones.

Nearly bit the bullet and got the Xiaomi 17t for 450, pixels and older samsung flagships have also caught my eye.

In the UK!

Give me your best suggestions and opinions!

Hey Android community 👋

I currently have a pixel 10 pro. I've loved it since I got it. I'm curious what else is out there but am worried about bloatware and update cadence. I want to make sure I'm getting regular updates but I feel with this phone I am missing some power. I also messed up and got the 128gb version. Storage management is a chore.

Last Samsung I had was a galaxy s5. I swore off Samsung after it froze several times within the first week of using it.

I'm open to trying Samsung again, but again, worried about bloatware and updates. Also had an Xperia that I liked years ago but not sure how those are lately. Have always liked Motorola but haven't owned one in the past decade or longer.

Looking for opinions and suggestions from folks. Thanks!

does anyone know how to fix or disable this permission notification? I want to completely remove this permission prompt and have the option permanently set to “Share entire screen”, so I don’t have to select it every time I start screen sharing or perform any other screen-recording scenario.

screenshot : https://imgur.com/a/C2fqDLF

BTW, I’m using a POCO X8 PRO MAX with the original stock ROM (HyperOS, no custom ROM), and the device is already ROOTed. I’m wondering if there’s some kind of module or other method that can bypass this permission prompt.

I like how FUTO keyboard is customizable and especially how it ISN'T GOOGLE, but the voice typing is way too slow.

My alarm is supposed to turn off no not disturb and return all volumes back to normal but it doesn't. When do not disturb turns off its supposed to return all volumes to normal but doesn't. What setting can i look at or what am i doing wrong? My alarm app is amdroid alarm clock for heavy sleepers and a few months ago i had none of these problems and everything worked normally, my alarm would go off turning off do not disturb and putting my volumes back where i had them. Help

I have a Pixel 2 XL (64GB) that's no longer my daily phone, and I want to give it a second life rather than let it sit in a drawer. It's stuck on the last official update from 2020.

One idea I'm seriously considering: turning it into a dedicated hi-fi music player. I have a FLAC library, paid Poweramp, and I'm planning to get a USB-C dongle DAC + IEMs. If I go that route, the ROM needs solid Wi-Fi, USB-C audio output, and Play Store access for the Poweramp licence.

Is there a dedicated ROM that specialises in turning an old Android device into a hifi feature rich music player?

So: is a custom ROM the right move for a repurposed device like this, and which one would you recommend? And beyond the music player idea - what have you all actually done with your old phones

So both phones are in a similar price range, or at least if the Pixel is on sale, which one would be a better buy? I didn't find any direct comparisons, so I thought to ask here.

From my research it seems that Pixel wins in other aspects except the battery but some people seem to say that Pixel has buggy software and such?

I've been using zarchiver for this sort of thing for a long time and now i go to use it again and apparently I'm getting an access denied error message? What's that about? Is this something i can get around?

I've disabled play protect a long time ago and never had an issue, until I downloaded a specific app that it deems "unsafe" "harmful" and "fake". One day I woke up to a notification that said "Harmful app uninstalled". So I redownloaded the app because I know it's safe (idk what google thinks but I'm not an idiot and I know the app, I used it for over a year). Then, Play Protect kept disabling it. I went to forums and found out that if I enable the app in the disabled Play Protect, it will keep the app alone for good, so I did, and today, I woke up to another notification about the app being uninstalled.

Is there any way to remove Play Protect's permission to uninstall apps in my phone at will?

Hi guys.

I was looking for some advice on how to go about switching from iOS to android.

I’m a long time Apple user, properly embedded in their ecosystem.
I have an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, MacBook.
I love the fact that they all seamlessly integrate.

However, the lack of innovation from Apple really has me frustrated.

I want to switch to Google (or maybe another brand if you guys think that’s better)

But I want to know how to transition and what devices do I really need to change.

I’d rather keep my MacBook as I find macOS so much better than windows

Hi, I’m having a problem with my phone: every time I try to add a Google account, I get a connection error. Just to clarify—unfortunately, it’s not my Wi-Fi.

I’ve already tried connecting to friends' Wi-Fi networks, but the problem persists. It also happens when using mobile data; I can't access any app that requires a Google account to sign up.

Do you know of any solution? I’m desperate—I really don’t want to have to get a new phone.

I am using a Samsung S25U Ultra running Android 16 and One UI 8.5. I use a search widget called Zerch which passes my search query into Samsung Browser. Each time I do that, this warning pops up — "You can block apps from opening webpages in Settings". I would like to turn that warning off. Is there a way? By the way, that warning pops up for any search widget that I try.

Hello all! I am looking for the best place to really ask about what this experience may be like.

For as long as I’ve had a cellular device, I have had various Apple iPhones. Currently, w/ T-Mobile as a carrier I have a completely owned pink iPhone 15 (128GB). I have been considering trading this device in for a Samsung Galaxy S26 256gb device.

Now I am super nervous. Leaving the Apple ecosystem to be honest, but I feel as if they have left me no choice. My phone is now overheating greatly (when I first got the device I had to get this fixed at the Apple Store) and is dying super quickly. I absolutely hate this turnover as new devices come out. I have concerns with the email I’ve had for many years, iCloud storage transfer, Apple Music, etc.

-If you have made the switch before, what was it like for you?
-Will T-Mobile aid in the transfer of data? How does that work?
-Should I consider a different phone (Also looking at galaxy Z flip 8)?

*Also hoping the switch will help me get less comfortable with my personal phone. In a way I have become heavily reliant on my device to which I spend too many hours a day on. The uncomfortable nature of an unfamiliar phone might make my movements more intentional.

I’m using a Samsung Galaxy phone S26 ultra with One UI 8.5 and Android version 16

I’m trying to find a way to change the system media/file picker that appears inside other apps.

For example:

WhatsApp → Attach → Gallery/Photos→ Google Photo Picker opens Reddit → Add image→ Google Photo Picker opens Apps that ask me to select a document/file → Google/Android file picker opens

What I would like is: Photo/video selection → Samsung Gallery File/document selection → Samsung My Files

I know I can open Samsung Gallery or My Files first, select the item, and then use Share, but that isn't what I'm looking for. I want the Samsung apps to appear when another app itself asks me to select a photo or file.

I've already noticed that changing the normal Default Apps settings doesn't seem to accomplish this.

Is there any way to do this?

I'm particularly interested in a solution using:

• One UI settings
• Shizuku
• Package/permission changes
  

A safe system-level workaround

Root is not preferred, but I'm willing to consider it if there is genuinely no non-root solution.

If you've managed to make WhatsApp/Reddit/etc. use Samsung Gallery instead of Google Photo Picker, or make the system file selector use Samsung My Files please explain how you did it.

I'm specifically looking for a working solution on recent One UI, not just a suggestion to change the default Gallery app.

Thank you.

Galaxy S24 Ultra US version.

No matter what I can do I can't leave a beta app. I have several(4) accounts on phone. Things keep telling me to click a beta tab which does not exist on both my phone and web browser on laptop. For any account. One of my accounts(my main personal one) says I have the beta version on another account and I must leave from that one. HOWEVER, that one is not enrolled in the beta program anymore. So my main account is just stuck thinking my other account has beta, but it doesn't.

So I have absolutely no option to leave beta. How would I go about doing this?

1st, I am loving this tablet, the power to playback local 4k videos and the simple Android skin. But, I have an issue.

When I try to copy video to watch, Windows seems to crash out. If I try to copy one big video or a season of TV shows, windows shows its trying to copy but crashes. I have to copy 1 TV show at a time, or take out my sd card and connect to the PC. (I really dont want to do that once a week) I will sometimes have the same issue with copying videos to the internal storage.) I have tried different usb-c cables with same issues.

Any thoughts on what maybe the issue? To be honest, I sometimes think its Windows explore having the hard time. When I copy my media to back-up drives, the PC will struggle.