Android Navigation: Up vs Back
Android has two distinct navigation guidelines as opposed to iOS. Getting them right is nuanced.
Android uncaught exception handler and ANR
While trying to install a custom exception handler to catch uncaught exceptions (crashes), I ended up writing
What’s the best alternative to Google Play Music and Google Podcasts…
Google Play Music was great. Apart from one missing feature about the inability to upload music from the phone to the Google Play Music library, I had no other complaints. Then it was forcefully shut down.
Android: Catching NDK crashes
On Android catching Java exceptions is easy via UncaughtExceptionHandler. Catching NDK crashes is a bit more convoluted. Since the native stack is probably corrupted, you want the crash handler to run on a separate process. Also, since the system might […]
Dealing with phone numbers in contact book
If you are building an app that uses the user’s contact book then their certain gotchas to avoid. Telephone country codes are prefix-free If a country has a country code “+91”, then no other country will get a country code […]
Troubleshooting Android Emulator: “Emulator: Process finished with exit code 1”
Emulator: Process finished with exit code 1 You opened AVD Manager in Android Studio and tried to start an AVD, you got “Emulator: Process finished with exit code 1”. Following are the steps to debug this Find out the name […]
Android: Using “Die with me” app without killing the phone’s battery
Die with me is a chat app which can be used only when the phone’s battery is below 5%. Here is a fun way to use the app without draining your phone’s battery. Connect the phone via ADB or start Android […]
Circle CI vs Travis CI
Update: As of Mar 2022, I recommend everyone to use GitHub Actions I maintain a somewhat popular Android developer tool (adb-enhanced). The tool is written in Python, supporting both Python 2 and 3. Testing the tool requires both Python runtime […]
Android Security: Don’t leave WebView debugging enabled in production
WebView debugging can be enabled via “WebView.setWebContentsDebuggingEnabled(true)”. Leaving WebView debugging enabled in production Android apps is a bad idea. Anyone who gets hold of the unlocked phone can access the app’s data forever.
Android: Fragment related pitfalls and how to avoid them
Don’t use platform fragments (android.app.Fragment), they have been deprecated and can trigger version-specific bugs. Use the support library fragments (android.support.v4.app.Fragment) instead. A Fragment is created explicitly via your code or recreated implicitly by the FragmentManager. The FragmentManager can only recreate […]