On Wed, 10 Jan 2024 09:17:08 -0500, Newyana2 wrote:

I found an interesting aspect of the NetGuard settings. If I
enable blocking System I can see over 100 apps, most of which
don't have meaningful names. Some are just things like comp.android.abcde.934.

It would be interesting to find a master list of those.

Below is the best way to find that "master list of those".
But first, in Android, it's more realistic to talk of "packages" than apps.

One way I can tell if someone is clueless about Android (which is almost everyone, so that's not a dig at you) is I ask them how to do exactly what
you just did. How do you get a list of all the packages installed.

Most people will tell you they use the app drawer aspect of Android, or
even mayb what you did with NetGuard - but what you need is a package
manager (also called an app manager). They're *designed* for that.

Having tested almost all the package managers out there, I can assure you
that they give different answers so that's another issue that people who
don't know Android can't understand. It's like having two clocks.

The best package manager in all ways possible is this one though. https://muntashirakon.github.io/AppManager/en/

Remember when I said there are three ways to get an app for the most part?
(1) Google Play Store (requires account but that's what Aurora does)
(2) F-Droid (package can be downloaded from your Windows PC)
(3) Scattered about (package can be downloaded from your Windows PC)

This app manager is not on (1) but it's on both (2) and on (3). https://muntashirakon.github.io/AppManager/en/#subsec:binary-distribution-sources

Specifically download this into your Windows archive
C:\android apks\system utilities\package managers\.
(2) https://f-droid.org/packages/io.github.muntashirakon.AppManager/
https://f-droid.org/repo/io.github.muntashirakon.AppManager_427.apk
Name: io.github.muntashirakon.AppManager_427.apk
Size: 16349876 bytes (15 MiB)
SHA256: 12454AAE1084046F4B5A25B9C2DAF8607A17333008600AAD122F3D78391AB347

This Swiss Army Knife package manager is also located "scattered about".
(3) https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager/releases
https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager/releases/download/v3.1.4/AppManager_v3.1.4.apk
Name: AppManager_v3.1.4.apk
Size: 16451220 bytes (15 MiB)
SHA256: 73180A8FE8D1D9F6B88D1A4DDFD030B2DB127B8FDC8017E6478C326860E06055

I'd wget the later version onto your PC & then move it over to Android.
(You can install from the PC *directly* onto Android - but that's too much
for you right now - so just copy the APK from Windows to Android.)

There is no better package manager than this one, where it also comes with
an installer that you can use instead of the Android package installer.

By the way, you know how, in Windows, when you doubleclick on a file with a
new extension that Windows asks if you ALWAYS want to open with this app?

In Windows, you might often say "always open with this app", but in Android
you never want to say that. You want to always say "just this one time".

There are reasons for that but just take it now as my helpful advice.

I've blocked nearly all from online access and Firefox
still gets through. Phone calls still work. Nice.

Glad you like NetGuard. The developer also wrote the Fair Email GMail replacement app. You use that on Android if you have a Google mail account. https://github.com/M66B/FairEmail

To underscore what I explained to you prior which is there are
fundamentally three ways to get apps on Android, which are
(1) Google (which APK pure gets, as does aurora & others)
(2) F-Droid (all open source apps - some of which are on the play store)
(3) Everywhere else (github being one, but also the developer's web sites)

Look at where the developer puts FairEmail. https://github.com/M66B/FairEmail?tab=readme-ov-file#downloads

| NetGuard avoids root I think by impersonating a VPN which I've never
really
| understood - but I hope it doesn't prevent you from using another VPN?
|

Not sure, but the explanation seems to say that they have
to use the VPN service to get a man-in-the-middle hook into
network calls, but that it's not actually working via VPN.
The only catch, apparently, is that you'd have to disable
NetGuard if you want to actually use a VPN. So, yes.
It does prevent a concurrent VPN.

Thanks for confirming what I had mentioned to you which is it kind of "impersonates" a VPN, which is fine except if you want to use VPN.

I don't know, offhand, of any other VPN impersonators, but I've run into
them in the past - I just don't remember which packages they were.

If you're root, I think you don't have that issue of using up your
allocation of 1 VPN but NetGuard is designed for non-rooted phones.

| Do you agree that this is exactly the same method that Windows uses?
|
Apparently. Except that I'm adept at storage and backup on Windows,
while managing files on Android is a new adventure.

Most people put their download in what seems natural to them:
%UserProfile%\Downloads\.

What I do is save all Android APKs to an archival location.
The name of that location doesn't matter but it's usually a NAS.
E:\android apks\system utilities\firewalls\20230105_NetGuard-v2.327-release.APK

The reason for the date is that you have no control over how Android
package names sort, especially when you have a dozen files of the same
package over the years from a variety of sites using different conventions.

With the date, you can always sort by the file you downloaded the latest.
(Yes, you can also use the Windows "last modified" date field for that.)

|| I know of debuggers which dig into an msi file to tell you what it's
doing
| but I don't know of any apps that will re-create that msi of you lose it.
|

No. But one can save copies. I generally save copies of
installers and back them up. Webpages are not dependable.

You seem experienced in installers and how they're written where Android
has one huge differientator that almost nobody knows and in fact, it's
another question I ask of people to see if they know anything about it.

Android *always* has the original installer saved onto your phone.
I said *always*. Even for the pre-installed system apps. Everything.

Years after you set up an Android phone, you can easily sit at a Windows PC
and copy every single installer APKs to archive them onto Windows.

I don't want to go too deep but the problem is that nobody does that for
good reasons, which is they're all called the same name of "base.apk".

While you can script like crazy to rename the hundreds of "base.apk"
package names back to the original, it's too much work given you simply
save every installer that you downloaded, at the time you wget it.

How do you do that?
Many ways.

I'll just summarize one way for each method:
(1) APKs on Google Play (let aurora save them automatically upon install)
(2) APKs on F-Droid (download them with a web browser or wget or curl)
(3) APKS scattered about (same as with F-Droid)

One note is that most people would use the F-Droid app on Android to get F-Droid packages but I think that's just about the worst way to do it.

For one, the F-Droid app was recently replaced by F-Droid Basic but I
wouldn't even use that. I would just use a web browser or wget on a PC.

|
| You sit at your computer, let's assume it's a Windows computer for now.
| You run a Google/DDG/Metager search to find the name of an app you like.
|

That's also how I find Windows software.

Of course. The search engines are robust on the PC. On Android, the main
search engine people use (the Google Play Store) is the worst you can use.

It's like trying to find where someone lives by asking a real estate agent
who is trying to sell you something to help you find that friend of yours.

You might find something but it's far more likely to require an account, be
not free, be full of advertisements and with added in-app purchases.

But if you must use Android to find apps, you will remember me forever if
you install this search app - which almost nobody on Android knows about. https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-6-0-app-finder-the-most-advanced-search-engine-for-android-apps.4578809/

Though it's a slow
process and a lot of people out there don't know what they're
talking about. I found programs like Audacity and Avidemux that
way, but not without an afternoon of searching and testing. The
best options are rarely the most well known.

You can't beat audacity for audio editing where it used to be you had to
add fmpeg or lame but luckily the US & European patents finally expired.

Video editing on the PC is more confusing where I mostly prefer ShotCut. https://www.shotcutapp.com/download/

But the list of media editors that I've downloaded over the years make my
head spin, but mostly because I don't do media creation and editing tasks.

apowerrec https://www.apowersoft.com/record-all-screen
artweaver https://www.artweaver.de/en/download/artweaverfree
audacity http://www.audacityteam.org/download/windows
avconv https://sourceforge.net/projects/avconv
avicodec http://avicodec.free.fr
avisynth http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Main_Page
avisynth2 https://sourceforge.net/projects/avisynth2/files/latest/download blender https://www.blender.org
camstudio https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/camstudio.html
cartoonist http://www.vicman.net/cartoonist/ v1.3
codecinstaller http://www.jockersoft.com/downloads/CodecInstaller/setup_CodecInstaller_full.exe
cole2kcodecs http://www.cole2k.net
cs2 https://www.techspot.com/downloads/4948-adobe-creative-suite-free.html cutescreenrec http://www.videotool.net/screen-recorder-free-version.htm cutescreenrecorder
http://www.videotool.net/screen-recorder-free-version.htm
debutvideocapture https://www.nchsoftware.com/capture/index.html
draftsight https://www.3ds.com/products-services/draftsight-cad-software/free-download dvdvideosoft https://www.dvdvideosoft.com/products/dvd/Free-Screen-Video-Recorder.htm
ezvid https://www.ezvid.com
faststone http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDownload.htm
ffmpeg/lame https://lame.buanzo.org/
fotor https://www.fotor.com/windows/index.html
fotosketcher http://fotosketcher.com/download-fotosketcher
freecadweb https://www.freecadweb.org
gfie http://www.greenfishsoftware.org/gfie.php
ghostscript https://www.ghostscript.com/download/gsdnld.html
gimp https://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/v2.4/windows
greenshot http://getgreenshot.org/downloads
gspot http://gspot.headbands.com
handbrake https://handbrake.fr
iavidemux https://sourceforge.net/projects/avidemux/files/latest/download
icofx https://www.icofx.ro/downloads.html
id3tageditor http://id3tageditor.com
inkscape https://inkscape.org/en
irfanview https://www.fosshub.com/IrfanView.html
ispring https://www.ispringsolutions.com/ispring-free-cam
jsprep http://www.jsware.net/jsware/pprep.php5
klitecodecs http://www.codecguide.com/download_k-lite_codec_pack_full.htm mediainfo https://sourceforge.net/projects/mediainfo/files/latest/download
mpc http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm
mupdf https://www.ghostscript.com/download/mupdfdnld.html
oxelon http://www.oxelon.com/media_converter.html
paintnet https://www.getpaint.net/download.html
paintstar https://sites.google.com/site/wangzhenzhou
pdfcreator http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator
pdfexchangeviewer
https://www.neowin.net/news/pdf-xchange-viewer-25-build-2142
pdfsam https://pdfsam.org
pdftk https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-server
photodemon https://github.com/tannerhelland/PhotoDemon
photopad https://www.nchsoftware.com/photoeditor
phototoolkit http://www.vicman.net/phototoolkit/index.htm
pinta https://pinta-project.com/pintaproject/pinta/releases
posterazor https://sourceforge.net/projects/posterazor
psp5 http://www.oldversion.com/windows/download/paint-shop-pro-5-01
shotcut https://www.shotcutapp.com/download
sketchup https://www.sketchup.com
sumatra https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/download-free-pdf-viewer.html
super http://www.videohelp.com/tools/SUPER/old-versions
totallyfreeconverter http://www.sabsoft.com/TotallyFreeConverter.htm videoinspector https://kcsoftwares.com/files/videoinspector_lite.exe
virtualdub https://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualdub/files/virtualdub-win
vlc https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.php
xpdf http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf

(That's just a grep of one of my files so I see that it's filled with PDF editors amongst the video and audio editing). Again, it's Shotcut for me.

| You can download those APKs with a web browser on Windows and save them.
| Then you copy the APKs over to Android and tap on them to install them.
|

Funny. I would have thought that option was for people
like me who don't know Android well. I do dislike the Lilliputian
screen with every action that I need to take. It's a very
clever design overall, but made for 12" high elves who have
never known the efficiency of context menus.

I don't do anything tapping on the Android phone unless I'm off my LAN.
If I'm on my LAN, all the phone tapping is done on the Windows PC.

At the risk of giving you too much information, if you learn how to set
this up, you will never touch your phone while you're at home at your desk. https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy/blob/master/doc/windows.md https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy/releases/tag/v2.3.1
Name: scrcpy-win64-v2.3.1.zip
Size: 6048800 bytes (5907 KiB)
SHA256: F1F78AC98214078425804E524A1BED515B9D4B8A05B78D210A4CED2B910B262D

How big is your PC monitor?
That's how big your Android phone will be.

How big is your PC keyboard?
That's how big your Android keyboard will be.

How big is your PC mouse?
That's how big your Android finger will be.

How big is your Windows clipboard?
That's how big your Android clipboard will be.

How big are your PC speakers?
That's how big your Android speakers will be.

You'll need sndcpy for audio, but don't go there yet until you have scrcpy working. There are many tutorials out there so I won't delve further.

If you're not operating your Android phone from your PC,
then you don't know how to use your Android phone. :-)

Thank you for your time with this.

You seem like someone who knows a lot about Windows which turns out is
perfect for Android as the best way to use Android is from Windows.

You also seem to care about privacy which is why I suggested the apps that
I did because each of them is the best in their class to maintain privacy.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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