Here's how things are looking on the horizon:
PadLock will be receiving an update which brings some visual bug fixes with the Floating Action Button(s), a more robust database reset feature, other general bugfixes, and the ability to display an optional "password hint" on the lock screen. The password hint will be entered via a mini FAB that will appear on screen once the user creates a lock password. Once the hint is set, the user can view it on the lock screen by enabling the hint (on a per prompt basis).
The next release will also bring some visual styling to the lock dialog, which will pop out more and be easier to quickly glean information from. It will also bring some improvements to the "Additional Info" option on the Lock Screen.
Power Manager will bring more robust handling of Doze on Marshmallow devices. Because Doze is such a powerful feature, Power Manager will be configured in such a way that regardless of what other radios Power Manager is handling, if Doze will be expected to run in a given situation, Doze will take priority over all other radios. This means that Power Manager will forgo turning off the device Wifi and in exchange, will only handle Doze. The Android system will then take over and manage device radio's automatically, providing the same benefits as Power Manager would normally with even more power savings.
Doze can also be configured to turn off the sensors on the device so that upon entering Doze mode, the device will not wake out of Doze mode upon being moved or other actions. The device will awake from Doze mode normally once you begin using it again. The device can also be configured to always enter Doze (even when charging) and never enter Doze mode if you so require.
SoftGlow will be updated as well to follow a new backend system where instead of basic screen tinting around the time of day, SoftGlow will read from the current light in your area. If the room you are in is dark for example, SoftGlow will activate, even if it is high noon. This change will be breaking and will bump the minimum supported level for SoftGlow, but it will maintain API 16 compatibility with a backwards compatible implementation of the old time based system.
Pasterino will be getting looked at to see what can be done with the issue of pasting into WebViews (which are not accessible by accessibility services...) to allow you to paste into fields in applications like Amazon and Google Chrome automatically.
ZapTorch will be getting looked at to see if it is feasible to add a partial wakelock to catch button keypress events even while the screen is off. If this is estimated to have too large of a battery impact, this feature will not be added, or will be added under an EXPERIMENTAL tag.
Home Button is still in maintenance mode, QuickSwitch may be looked at for a full reworking.
========================
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=========================
Sunday, July 31, 2016
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Power Manager can toggle mobile data on API 21+
As the title says, in the most recent git commit for Power Manager, it is now able to manage Mobile Data on devices running Lollipop and up.
For those who are unaware, when Android Lollipop was released it removed the ability for applications to toggle the current state of the device's mobile data. This meant that for a two year period, Power Manager was unable to automatically manage the mobile data on devices running the newest Android.
Power Manager is now able to toggle the mobile data on all supported devices from API 16 (JellyBean) all the way to API 24 (Nougat). No root required.
When you launch the application and navigate to the mobile data page on a device running Lollipop and above, you will be shown a dialog box which instructs you how to enable mobile data toggles on Power Manager.
tl;dr You will need access to a machine which has adb installed. Connect your device with Power Manager installed to your machine and run the following command:
Close and re-open Power Manager and you should be able to now toggle mobile data on your Lollipop and up device.
Oh and by the way, Power Manager can now force Doze mode on Marshmallow using a similar command as above, but granting a different permission:
adb -d shell pm grant com.pyamsoft.powermanager android.permission.DUMP
See the Data and Settings pages in the Power Manager application for more info.
The Power Manager update is being processed in the store now and should go live in a couple of hours. Stay tuned!
========================
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=========================
For those who are unaware, when Android Lollipop was released it removed the ability for applications to toggle the current state of the device's mobile data. This meant that for a two year period, Power Manager was unable to automatically manage the mobile data on devices running the newest Android.
Power Manager is now able to toggle the mobile data on all supported devices from API 16 (JellyBean) all the way to API 24 (Nougat). No root required.
When you launch the application and navigate to the mobile data page on a device running Lollipop and above, you will be shown a dialog box which instructs you how to enable mobile data toggles on Power Manager.
tl;dr You will need access to a machine which has adb installed. Connect your device with Power Manager installed to your machine and run the following command:
adb -d shell pm grant com.pyamsoft.powermanager android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS
Close and re-open Power Manager and you should be able to now toggle mobile data on your Lollipop and up device.
Oh and by the way, Power Manager can now force Doze mode on Marshmallow using a similar command as above, but granting a different permission:
adb -d shell pm grant com.pyamsoft.powermanager android.permission.DUMP
See the Data and Settings pages in the Power Manager application for more info.
The Power Manager update is being processed in the store now and should go live in a couple of hours. Stay tuned!
========================
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=========================
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Finally
So updates.
Power Manager version 6 is out. Consider this to be a softer release than usual, as I wanted to push out all of the bugfixes even if the application did not have all the features I wanted it to. This is in aggressively active development and will be improved considerably in the coming weeks.
PadLock has been updated to fix some bugs as well as add the ability to remove the full database when it is cleared.
ZapTorch has been updated to fix some bugs.
Pasterino has been updated to fix some bugs.
Home Button has been updated to fix some bugs.
All of the applications come with an optional display banner. This is, I suppose in essence, an advertisement. But this does not use any Ad SDK, but rather just displays an easily dismissed banner displaying other pyamsoft applications. These will not show all the time, and can be easily dismissed.
Because I promised no advertisements ever, these banners can be disabled by simply toggling a switch in the application settings. If you don't want to see them, you won't have to. Sorry.
But hey, at least you can learn about the other applications I work on if you are not following here as often.
========================
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=========================
Power Manager version 6 is out. Consider this to be a softer release than usual, as I wanted to push out all of the bugfixes even if the application did not have all the features I wanted it to. This is in aggressively active development and will be improved considerably in the coming weeks.
PadLock has been updated to fix some bugs as well as add the ability to remove the full database when it is cleared.
ZapTorch has been updated to fix some bugs.
Pasterino has been updated to fix some bugs.
Home Button has been updated to fix some bugs.
All of the applications come with an optional display banner. This is, I suppose in essence, an advertisement. But this does not use any Ad SDK, but rather just displays an easily dismissed banner displaying other pyamsoft applications. These will not show all the time, and can be easily dismissed.
Because I promised no advertisements ever, these banners can be disabled by simply toggling a switch in the application settings. If you don't want to see them, you won't have to. Sorry.
But hey, at least you can learn about the other applications I work on if you are not following here as often.
========================
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=========================
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Script updates
pstate-frequency update has been released which bumps the stable version to the new 3.4.0.
This release is mainly bugfixing and code cleanups, bringing hopefully more POSIX compatible shell script and less bashisms.
steam-wrapper has also been updated to handle some new libraries which may be stale on non Ubuntu 12.04 systems, and has been redesigned to be hopefully POSIX compatible including the removing of many bashisms in the code. Do note that this release removes support for long options passed to the wrapper on the command line and slightly changes the syntax of the configuration file.
Both releases are admittedly small and the user should not notice too many differences.
update-hosts has been updated to address a small issue which leaks a line into the final hosts file. git-ssh has been updated to address an issue regarding the parsing of SSH command line options.
Power Manager update is coming along smoothly, perhaps later this week I'll be ready for an open beta. Once bugs are ironed out, version 6 will release.
========================
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=========================
This release is mainly bugfixing and code cleanups, bringing hopefully more POSIX compatible shell script and less bashisms.
steam-wrapper has also been updated to handle some new libraries which may be stale on non Ubuntu 12.04 systems, and has been redesigned to be hopefully POSIX compatible including the removing of many bashisms in the code. Do note that this release removes support for long options passed to the wrapper on the command line and slightly changes the syntax of the configuration file.
Both releases are admittedly small and the user should not notice too many differences.
update-hosts has been updated to address a small issue which leaks a line into the final hosts file. git-ssh has been updated to address an issue regarding the parsing of SSH command line options.
Power Manager update is coming along smoothly, perhaps later this week I'll be ready for an open beta. Once bugs are ironed out, version 6 will release.
========================
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=========================
Monday, July 18, 2016
PadLock 1.5.0 released
An update has just been released to PadLock which addresses the following:
- Fixes a number of crashes that would only surface on devices below Lollipop. These related to lock screen closing crashes and crashes when loading Vector images.
- Adds support for periodic device re-checking to lock the screen. When enabled, PadLock will queue up re-check jobs. These re-check jobs will fire once the unlock time has elapsed. When the re-check job fires, PadLock will check what the currently active window is. If it is a window in an application that is meant to be locked, PadLock will automatically lock the device again. This allows devices to be periodically re-secured if this kind of security is desired by the user. This options is disabled by default and can be changed in the Settings page.
Power Manager is coming along nicely and I hope to release an open beta for the application in about a week or so. Stay tuned if you're interested in that!
========================
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=========================
- Fixes a number of crashes that would only surface on devices below Lollipop. These related to lock screen closing crashes and crashes when loading Vector images.
- Adds support for periodic device re-checking to lock the screen. When enabled, PadLock will queue up re-check jobs. These re-check jobs will fire once the unlock time has elapsed. When the re-check job fires, PadLock will check what the currently active window is. If it is a window in an application that is meant to be locked, PadLock will automatically lock the device again. This allows devices to be periodically re-secured if this kind of security is desired by the user. This options is disabled by default and can be changed in the Settings page.
Power Manager is coming along nicely and I hope to release an open beta for the application in about a week or so. Stay tuned if you're interested in that!
========================
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=========================
Saturday, July 16, 2016
Trimming the fat
Power Manager and PadLock both implement a Job Scheduler which uses GCMNetworkManager to handle queuing on API <21.
When one attempts to use the Job Scheduler, it pulls in the permission to access the Internet and the network state, even if the Internet is not actually used by Power Manager or PadLock.
To make sure that no unnecessary permissions are required to run pyamsoft applications, Power Manager and PadLock both explicitly remove the GoogleApiActivity and the Internet permissions from the manifest so that both applications will not have the ability to access the Internet.
This does pose a potential problem, if library code attempts to access the network it will fail without the Internet or network permission. So far, testing does not indicate any area that should cause the application to crash due to this. However, do note that in exchange for increased privacy when using the application, it may crash randomly due to network permission errors.
Submit bug reports should it happen, thanks!
========================
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=========================
When one attempts to use the Job Scheduler, it pulls in the permission to access the Internet and the network state, even if the Internet is not actually used by Power Manager or PadLock.
To make sure that no unnecessary permissions are required to run pyamsoft applications, Power Manager and PadLock both explicitly remove the GoogleApiActivity and the Internet permissions from the manifest so that both applications will not have the ability to access the Internet.
This does pose a potential problem, if library code attempts to access the network it will fail without the Internet or network permission. So far, testing does not indicate any area that should cause the application to crash due to this. However, do note that in exchange for increased privacy when using the application, it may crash randomly due to network permission errors.
Submit bug reports should it happen, thanks!
========================
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=========================
Supporting Jelly Bean
Jelly Bean, API 16 is old. The last update of Jelly Bean was released way back in 2013, and its starting to show its age.
Jelly Bean is supported on all pyamsoft applications that can afford it, this means Power Manager, SoftGlow, and PadLock for example. However, the need for new features has pushed applications like Pasterino and ZapTorch into the realm of supporting only a minimum of KitKat (19).
Due to some recent events, there is no longer any user testing done on Jellybean (16). While applications that support Jelly Bean should "work" there will be little to no support for the issues that may be Jelly Bean specific.
In fact, I am looking to move the minimum supported for all of the modern pyamsoft applications up to a minimum API of at least KitKat (19). Assuming that progress continues as it always does, this will not be in the near future, but it will be coming some day.
========================
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=========================
Jelly Bean is supported on all pyamsoft applications that can afford it, this means Power Manager, SoftGlow, and PadLock for example. However, the need for new features has pushed applications like Pasterino and ZapTorch into the realm of supporting only a minimum of KitKat (19).
Due to some recent events, there is no longer any user testing done on Jellybean (16). While applications that support Jelly Bean should "work" there will be little to no support for the issues that may be Jelly Bean specific.
In fact, I am looking to move the minimum supported for all of the modern pyamsoft applications up to a minimum API of at least KitKat (19). Assuming that progress continues as it always does, this will not be in the near future, but it will be coming some day.
========================
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Send me an email at: pyam.soft@gmail.com
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=========================
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Script updates
update-hosts, git-ssh, and pstate-frequency have all received updates which fix a couple of bugs but more importantly bring clean POSIX compatability to all of the scripts.
The script should now properly run on systems like Debian and Ubuntu which default the sh to dash, which originally had issues because it did not respect the local option used in each of the scripts.
They should also, technically run on non-Linux systems as well (except for maybe pstate-frequency which requires Linux).
I'm still learning shell script, but with each of these updates I think I'm progressing along quite nicely.
========================
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=========================
The script should now properly run on systems like Debian and Ubuntu which default the sh to dash, which originally had issues because it did not respect the local option used in each of the scripts.
They should also, technically run on non-Linux systems as well (except for maybe pstate-frequency which requires Linux).
I'm still learning shell script, but with each of these updates I think I'm progressing along quite nicely.
========================
Follow pyamsoft around the Web for updates and announcements about the newest applications!
Like what I do?
Send me an email at: pyam.soft@gmail.com
Or find me online at: https://pyamsoft.blogspot.com
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=========================
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