Hi,
I've been experimenting with removing low quality technology time from my day to day to improve well being and simply make more time for other things! I find it easy to end up on youtube or browsing for hours aimlessly.. especially when I am burnt out after a days work.
I previously put my laptop and cellphone in the garage and that worked fairly well but also cut me off from phone calls which was the trade off. I found this great, especially if I did it the night before.
The main sources of distraction I see are a result of Data. If I don't have data I can't browse, I also can't go on YouTube. Yet I still have the benefit of using maps (offline), journaling, evernote (offline), photos, alarm clock, music player.
I've tracked my time on my cell phone weekly and I think I waste somewhere between 9 - 18 hours browsing or watching youtube. My issue isn't the time, but the fact that none of that left a mark on me as something I loved doing.. and that I think is a sign of life truly lost!
I thought if I put my SIM into a non-smart phone I can still call and text and use my smart phone for all the benefits I listed above. My only concern is WiFi... having a simple on-off switch on wifi makes it too easy to use. Do you have any idea of how I create more barriers to WiFi?
For my laptop I've uninstalled the wifi driver and keep it on my screen in a zip file for re-installation if needed. (it's too much work if I'm lazy... and yes this does work.
My goal is to increase the barriers to doing the lazy short term gratifying activities (which I don't enjoy but do out of shear habit) and to make it easier to do the things I value- friends, family, cooking, reading, ect... I find I enjoy these activities once I get into them, it's just the initial barrier.
I don't know if I am the only one that has these thoughts, if you do and have ideas for solutions please share!
Thanks.
Format your system partition by using a custom recovery
I have a custom recovery installed already, what would that let me do?
Hi,
Apologies if this is in the wrong thread category.
I'd like to permanently remove internet access from either a whole phone or from selected apps. This would create a dumbphone with a touchscreen. This is to tackle a net addiction, yet leave me with the capability of communicating with family via SMS. Existing dumbphones don't have touchscreens and often cause me excruciating pain to use, because of a condition I suffer from called fibromyalgia, which mimics the symptoms of RSI. Autocomplete on touchscreen phones reduces the number & intensity of finger-touches I need to make to type an SMS and are thus relatively freeing.
Would anyone know how this could be done, please? I rooted a phone once or twice but am not capable of following any instructions which require judgement. Please don't take more than a couple of minutes over this because there's a strong chance any advice will go over my head.
With thanks in advance for your thoughts
Jonathan
joanthan75 said:
Hi,
Apologies if this is in the wrong thread category.
I'd like to permanently remove internet access from either a whole phone or from selected apps. This would create a dumbphone with a touchscreen. This is to tackle a net addiction, yet leave me with the capability of communicating with family via SMS. Existing dumbphones don't have touchscreens and often cause me excruciating pain to use, because of a condition I suffer from called fibromyalgia, which mimics the symptoms of RSI. Autocomplete on touchscreen phones reduces the number & intensity of finger-touches I need to make to type an SMS and are thus relatively freeing.
Would anyone know how this could be done, please? I rooted a phone once or twice but am not capable of following any instructions which require judgement. Please don't take more than a couple of minutes over this because there's a strong chance any advice will go over my head.
With thanks in advance for your thoughts
Jonathan
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Root your phone based on your past experience.
Install Xposed Installer app.
Install xposed framework by clicking install button in the app.
After a few minutes, your phone would ask for permission to reboot.
Reboot it.
It will take around 10 minutes or more to reboot.
Open the Xposed Installer app and click the menu icon on top left of the screen.
Select Downloads.
Search for XFirewall and install it.
Reboot.
Open XFirewall.
Select which apps you want to have net connectivity.
OR
You can try any other normal firewall app if you think it to be better than XFirewall
Augustoandro said:
Search for XFirewall and install it.
Reboot.
Open XFirewall.
Select which apps you want to have net connectivity.
OR
You can try any other normal firewall app if you think it to be better than XFirewall
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks Augusto! Much appreciated.
Do you or does anyone on here please know of any firewall apps which allow the user to commit to a period (24 hours, a week, a year, permanently) without network access? Unfortunately without this kind of restriction I can't trust myself to stay off the web. Five minutes reading the news or Twitter always turns into five hours.
Thanks
Hello,
I have recently bought a watch with Wear OS 2. I quite like it, but I am missing one nice feature from competition watches. I am blind. Apple watch and some other specialised devices can tell you time by certain vibration patterns. e.g. 5:30 am - 5 short vibrations, then pause, then 3 short vibrations... etc. I am thinking about creating something with Tasker, but this would require connection to the phone all the time.
Would someone take this as an interesting project? Or maybe would someone give me a helping hand in developing this? I am a programmer but never programmed for Android unfortunately.
what would be your preferred way of activating the vibration?
i'm thinking about an empty watchface which could, whenever it's activated either by gesture or button, start the time pattern.
also please let me know how exactly such a vibration pattern would best look like. (first hours then minutes, ok. what about 11:34 ? also seconds are not needed i guess?)
I might do a quick app
I really like this idea because the watchface would be sooo battery friendly
btw: any idea for a good name? I think I would go for "time feel watchface" if no one's got a better idea
if everything goes right, I will have a first test version by tomorrow
update: basic watchface running. gonna implement vibration pattern tomorrow.
need info:
-i assume it's no problem that the watchface is always black, this is to save as much battery as possible
-any symbol maybe for blindness i could use for the icon / watchface preview?
-should the vibration pattern start again if you touch the screen?
----I find this problematic because screen usually is only on for a few seconds, maybe i have to let it stay on as long as the pattern is running and it would go to standby immediatly after that... so i'm not quite sure how to handle this
-is a 24 hour mode needed or should it even be default?
Hi, thanks for your response. Yes this is aimed at blind people specifically, I am blind my self. Yes blind people use smart watches, mostly from Apple, but there are also some users of Android Wear OS.
wow I read your reply just now and it seems cool. I have a few points:
A watch face is an interesting idea, but for example I would prefer it to be just an app which even does not launch a screen, does the vibration and exits. I use information I have on my watch face, I use screenreader to read info about upcoming events, battery etc. You may ask why do I need this vibration way of telling time when I can read it from the watch face? Well it is more discrete and does not bother surroundings. I could assign a specific gesture in the screenreader which would launch the app and do vibrations.
Honestly, I am probably the only Wear OS user in Czech Republic and I have to get connected with other blind people to get their opinions.
I think 12 hour format should be OK so far.
so basically you just need an app that vibrates the time when launched?
for example 5:33 x x x x x pause x x x pause x x x?
then i need to rethink that. but that should be even easier
Yes, for me this would be enough. Ideally if the app would do it without displaying any window so that the screenreader does not read anything. Is that possible? I am sorry I did not clarify this at the begining.
As to how to do vibrations:
I imagine this schema:
1 - one short vibration
2 - two short vibrations
3 - three short vibrations,
4 - four short vibrations,
5 - one long vibration
6 - one long vibration, short pause, one short vibration
...
9 - one long viberation, short pause, four short vibrations
0 - long vibration, short pause, long vibration
e.g.
10:56 - short vibration, long pause, long vibration, short pause, long vibration, long pause, long vibration, long pause, long vibration, short pause, short vibration
here's a first prototype.
do you know how to install apk to your watch? you need to enable ADB and WiFi Debugging to install wireless over ADB
let me know what you think. is it too fast?
i know it's not perfect, for example you need to exit the app to relaunch the pattern. i can fix that - can i let the app run the pattern and immediately exit? so you wouldn't need to exit manually everytime
Hello, you are amazing! So fast! Thank you very much. I tried the app.I have few questions:
1. Vibrations are quite fast. Could you make it a bit slower? Let's say that the long pause among numbers could be 1 second?
2. Could you make it so that the app does not open any window? That after launching the icon everything happens in the background?
3. Will this work also on phones or only on watch?
Thank you so much. If you don't mind, I would like to spread the word about this among other Wear OS users.
1. sure. i actually use two different long pause durations: one between the digits and one between hours/minutes
---i need to do this because leading zeros are ignored. i could also do leading zeros so you always have 4 digits and pause can be constant, but imho that's not as efficient
2. In this new version the window exits after launch, I hope that's fine. also fixes not working on second launch and makes the app not stay in RAM.
3. This version is only for Wear OS, but I could copy it to an android app.
Of course you can spread this app however you like. when it's done I can attempt to publish it to the play store.
please check this new version. is it still too fast?
also 12 a.m. seems to be treated as "0". should i change this?
new version with fixed 12 a.m.
if you are fine with this state i'm going to finish it and publish it to play store
Wow thanks, this look very well. I still have a problem with the app creating a window. The problem is that when the window is created and closed again, the screenreader reacts to that - in this case after closing the app window it reads info about previously opened window or a watch face. That is a bit problematic as my idea was to not make any sound at all, so that one can check for the time discretely.
Would it be possible to not display any window at all? Maybe running as a service which would be waiting for the launcher icon to be pressed? I am not good at Android internals so maybe it is a stupid idea.
krecoun said:
Wow thanks, this look very well. I still have a problem with the app creating a window. The problem is that when the window is created and closed again, the screenreader reacts to that - in this case after closing the app window it reads info about previously opened window or a watch face. That is a bit problematic as my idea was to not make any sound at all, so that one can check for the time discretely.
Would it be possible to not display any window at all? Maybe running as a service which would be waiting for the launcher icon to be pressed? I am not good at Android internals so maybe it is a stupid idea.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
now I understand the problem. I need to look into this later. but I guess that's doable.
update: I tried to replicate your problem. I enabled talkback and started the app. only thing I can hear is a click when launching the app. is that what you are talking about? If so, I don't think that can be prevented as it's caused by the launch of the app.
-sorry, I didn't read correctly. so the problem is that it starts reading the previous app. that's a problem. I didn't find an easy way to fix this - as far as I read you cannot launch an app without starting an activity. at least not with an app. maybe i could make the watch sleep after launching? or you can find a solution with tasker or something similar
Hypothetic idea:
Let's say that the app would be running as a service after start. I don't know if this is possible in Wear OS.
1. After clicking the launcher icon, check if the service is already running.
2. If not, launch it. You can display even a window and close it, well while launching the service we probably won't avoid that but that's acceptable.
3. If yes, don't show anything but send some intend / activity / however it is called in Android to the running service which will do the vibration.
Is it doable?
the thing is afaik an app launch always needs to launch an activity.
if i'm wrong i hope someone corrects me
How about this?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2704084/how-to-launch-an-activity-without-a-ui
krecoun said:
How about this?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2704084/how-to-launch-an-activity-without-a-ui
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it says you can have an app that's a service only, which starts on boot an can receive intents. but how do you call it? you need to activate something. you could maybe do it as a compilation, but as I see it it's not possible by launching an app.
I see two easy solutions:
-let the app run in an empty window
or
-let the device go to standby after vibration
update: I looked into this a bit more. I guess my solutions would not work. an app can't send the device to sleep and if I show an activity the screenreader always reads the app name...
so I can't help you any further. maybe someone else can
Hi, sorry for looong delay. I must say that I am using your app quite successfully. Sometimes it talks but mostly it does not and vibrations work as expected. Great work. Maybe you could release this app into Playstore, some other blind people could benefit from that or make more suggestions.
krecoun said:
Hi, sorry for looong delay. I must say that I am using your app quite successfully. Sometimes it talks but mostly it does not and vibrations work as expected. Great work. Maybe you could release this app into Playstore, some other blind people could benefit from that or make more suggestions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your feedback, i'm glad you like it.
I find myself running it from time to time, just to see if I can feel the time
I'm gonna try to publish it when I find time. I'm currently starting work at a different project.
Just came across this thread. Very interesting project!
I, myself, am not blind, but I like the direction this is going! I am going to try it out!
Have you published this to the Play store as of yet? This could be good! ??
Yeh, this is a unique app concept for many!
sorry, for not responding in almost a year.
best would be to bake this function into the os, or make it activate by gesture... wouldn't this be awesome? telling time without ears and eyes, just by a movement...
I just remembered this app and thought i might finish it and add it to play store.
HOPEfully this weekend
Hey there guys, I have a question first and foremost.
If an app updates daily, is there any way to make an app still be able to be updated online daily, while also having the functions to work while you are offline?
There are many people that travel, and don't have internet or phone service while they are commuting or waiting for someone or something, relaxing at home, at a campground in the wilderness, or underground in the subway, or maybe even up high on a mountain.
If there is a way to make this work, I would like to know what you guys and gals would suggest on what to do to get this started.
Some of the requirements of my hypothetical project would be as follows;
Needs to retain the Daily Update Feature so that the app can withdraw from the Happy Colour Server.
Has to have some working code workaround where a certain allotment of storage space can be used to store the app data (including the scrolling and entering the Picture that you want to color and complete) on a device.
(Currently, you can scroll the app for a little while and the coloring options will appear, but when clicking on a selection, it is not able to load.
That's pretty much the jist of it.. if you guys can give me suggestions or even remark on if this can be done, that would be great. I know that it would take some work, but if it seems like its plausible, we can see where this thing goes as a team and maybe make it a paid project really depends on how much work would need to be done.
Thanks to those of you that have read this and really looking forward to hearing your ideas and thoughts.
-MCrandall