Database Users

PA + Joker + LMT + Apex: Some tips

I use rooted N4 with PA Rom and Joker kernel. Joker has given the biggest smile to my battery. And believe me, I have tried almost everything that's out there.
In Roms though, I have been on PA right since the beginning... I love the hybrid feature too much to leave it for any other rom.
So my personal prefs:
1. Extraaa Space: I use expanded mode. But I wanted the notifications to be seen easily. So I have two extra ways to pop up notifications from me (apart from in the pie):a) TabUI mode in PA: Multiple ways to have notifications is only supported in the Tablet UI mode.
b) Apex Launcher (Free): Set up a gesture for 'Show Notifications'.
c) I use LMT launcher for and extra added notification.​
2. Apex Launcher:I use 3 gestures: Swipe Up: Show Notifications
Swipe Down: Toggle Dock
Double Tap: App Drawer​And after these, I don't need the app drawer icon as well (as you can see in the first screenshot)
I have decresed the icon size of the dock items and drawer items as well. The icon pack is Holler wht.​
3. LMT:I did not want to use it since I already am using Pie. But LMT has some cool options. As you can see in the screenshot, my LMT pie is quite minimalistic: Button 1 is Notifications (Longpress-> Menu),
Button 2 is Back (Longpress -> Home), and
Button 3 is Recent Apps (Longpress -> Previous App)​
The main reason for me to install was the lack a quick back gesture in PA's Pie. With LMT, I simple swipe from the center of the right (or left) border activates button 2 (ie Back). It is the height of awesomeness. Though what I would love is Pie to have similar functionality, probably a swipe in the screen bottom for Back, but it may not go well with sweep2wake.
You can have many more buttons and settings on LMT. Try it!​
4. Dashclock widgetWell, it is already a heartthrob of many of us. But it lacks customization. We should have an option for the font sizes and control over which components we want to see in the side (only the icons) and which in the bottom scroll view (full text).
Anyways, it was too big for me, so I changed it's hybrid properties. I am using 220 dpi for the widget. I had to remove and reapply the widget after changing the settings.​
Note: Halo is another way to get notifications in PA, but I do not like it in it's current stage because of two major reasons:
1. Does not work fully with TabUI. In other modes, either I need to have a status bar, or rely only on Halo.
2. Relying on Halo solely does not serve my purpose, because when I come back to my phone after say a few hours, I need to see all my notifications at once without trying to swipe through the entire screen.
Hope you enjoyed the show (and tell!)

[Q] Recommend a 4.4 ROM with stock LG features? (e.g. knock on, etc)

Hi there,
Seeking some advice on a ROM. Hate the look of stock LG G2, just installed stock-like kitkat on my old GNex and saw the google experience launcher with transparent everything, DO WANT. However I'm afraid of losing some features of stock LG software. Maybe you guys can recommend some ROMs, or if it's best to stay stock to get all the features I want, recommend some mods that will give me all the ROM features I want?
Things I NEED
Knock On/ Knock Off (LG feature)
4.4 Stock "Look and Feel" (fonts, transparent bars all around, appearance of time and battery and notifications bar, black instead of white setting menu, etc, you get the picture)
Always listening on the home screen, possibly the lock-screen, pretty much anywhere I can have it all over the UI (as per 4.4, not LG)
Recent Apps button instead of a menu button (as per 4.4, not LG)
Open apps from the lockscreen with apps icons already visible when looking at lockscreen (not the style where you hold finger over lock icon to see a choice of apps in a circle, and then have to swipe a specific direction. I used to have that and didnt like it as much as I like LG stock way of actually showing icons without you touching anything, and you swipe the icons, not a lock towards the icons)
Circle battery type thing on status bar that shows percentage
Things I haven't tried/am not sure about but might want from stock LG software, and might not want to lose flashing to custom ROM
Better stock camera?
SmartShare from the gallery app? (says it uses wifi/bluetooth to stream content to other devices)
Beam/DNLA/I don't even remember what it's called or what app I found it in?
Quickremote
You tell me please? I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff I've yet to discover that I might want (are any of LG's apps e.g. notebook useful?)
Things that are cool but not really necessary
Themes and a ton of extra features -- used to use AOKP and they had a decent amount of extra feature, not too few like CM, not too many like other ROMs where my head just starts spinning from all the features
Other
I'd really prefer not to have to wipe all the time, CM's OTA update feature was awesssooome when I had CM on my GNex, but CM is a little feature-lite for me, I mean it was good though, that's just a minor complaint. But if there's something better fitting my criteria above I'll put up with having to wipe to flash updates of the same ROM in the future if its necessary. I just never understood why OEMs can push OTAs to people and never make them wipe, but for custom ROMs (updating new versions of same ROM) I have to re-set-up everything every time

A lot of this stuff has been addressed already. Most ROMs have knock on built in, but not knock off. The work around is downloading an app that turns the screen off, and using a gesture control in another app (such as Nova Launcher) to double tap the home screen to turn the screen off. Though personally, I just have screen off set to my nav ring so I can access it from any page I'm on.
There's a flashable install here on the forums some where for Quick Remote. Works fine on AOSP ROMs.
As for 4.4 stuff, I have no idea.
Sent from CAMACHO, my Verizon G2 (VS980) running PAC ROM 4.3.

get an Iphone

Vepaot said:
Though personally, I just have screen off set to my nav ring so I can access it from any page I'm on.
How did you do that? I nowhere find a setting to change anything in the navigation ring.
Sent from my LG-V500 using Tapatalk 4
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

The Good and Bad LG Software Features

This is a thread for those coming from an AOSP ROM like Vanilla Android or CyanogenMod or even from other OEM overlays like Sense. What would you say are the good and LG features?
For me, good:
Heads up display implantation of incoming calls when screen is on that ensures you don't break your workflow.
Little hovering window to show a call is in loudspeaker in the background with the time on it
Though almost standardised, having call controls in the notification drawer
Bad:
Auto expanded notifications
Unable to disable the clips tray
Unable to remove toggles from within the drawer
Battery percentage being to the left of the battery
Unable to customise lockscreen
Implementation of software navigation keys breaks functions like hiding the keyboard
Customisation of the share intent with everything being ticked all the time

I only had my phone for half a day, but already some software feature I really like:
"Clip Tray" (Multi-clipboard).
Double-knock to wake and go to sleep (I don't use knock-code, haven't tried it yet)
And something I really don't like:
Keyboard sluggishness. When I type (using flow), it's always 1 or 2 words behind... I'm going to replace it quickly with Google keyboard or SwiftKey

Protagoras said:
I only had my phone for half a day, but already some software feature I really like:
"Clip Tray" (Multi-clipboard).
Double-knock to wake and go to sleep (I don't use knock-code, haven't tried it yet)
And something I really don't like:
Keyboard sluggishness. When I type (using flow), it's always 1 or 2 words behind... I'm going to replace it quickly with Google keyboard or SwiftKey
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agree with you about the keyboard... I hate it. I was using s4 with keyboard ported from s5. Is sluggish and i keep typing space more often..
Sent from my LG-D855 using XDA Free mobile app

I've noticed that the keyboard is sluggish with more than one language selected.

I really like the keyboard. Haven't tried swipe input on it yet. Overall i'm really impressed by the UI. Its got great flat icons, beautiful selection of wallpapers and lots of options to customise.
Knock on and knock code are great. Clip tray is a very useful feature and the popup reply notifications for the messaging app are really handy and have stopped me from using Hangouts as my main SMS app.
The downsides so far are no search on server within the email app and no option to show the weather on the smart notice widget without turning on GPS. Also for some reason LG took out the wireless storage feature from the G2 which was very useful. They should have kept it.

Bad:
When adding contacts, the default option is to add to "Phone" with no way of changing it.
Oversharpening of text. More obvious on certain fonts with black text on white background.
Camera options are way too limited.
Overall I'm quite happy with the software. Looks pretty good and some of the added features are quite useful.

[SystemUI] Status Bar/Notification Drawer issues after modifications

Greetings people,
As TW Lollipop has landed, most of the devs have been trying to brew ROMs for the people, and unfortunately there is no control as what MODS should be included, i have found it terribly difficult to choose a ROM as it didnt feel normal to use mods that made no sense (or at least have a minority audience).
Particularly,what annoys me a lot, is dealing with the mods that change the visual space available, now there is no need to blame devs here at all, but rather Sammy should be here to blame for just trying to make a normal UI into a complex useless UI in to their own, and they have effed it up with the new Notifications Drawer.
While i noticed a lot of devs have found options/parameters to change the view of the notification drawer, a lot of ROMs include a very annoying feature called Quicklaunch, however im pretty sure a lot of people like it. While Quicklaunch in my personal opinion sucks, it looks way better compared to S-Finder and Quick Launch buttons. I personally lack any kind programming/scripting skills, but luckily, thanks to a nice dev called @alfaroolg with a similar taste, he brewed it for me straight away.
This is what i planned on seeing:
Remove S-Finder and Quick Connect
Remove 3minit Quicklaunch
Remove the Brightness Bar
Currently, im on @g00h s Note 4 Port, which makes me believe that the Brightness Bar is not removable anymore as i could not find the setting on either the Display settings or Notification Panel editor, HOWEVER, the brightness bar disappears if under 5% battery so you cant push the brightness up, and to my surprise, found out sammy screwed up adopting to the Lollipop rules.
This is how it looks without S-Finder/QuickConnect and Quicklaunch: First Pic
This is what happens with the same configuration, under 5% battery after the Brightness Bar disappears: Second Pic
And to my surprise, if there are any Notifications going on, things return well: Third Pic
Is this a general issue Sammy mustve skipped? quite an eye catcher. Also, the area where the brightness bar disappears, usually Notifications get the place, and the first Notification is not Swipeable, i end up clicking the notification rather then removing it, and it can result in very unpleasant moments.

[Q] Custom quick settings tiles (as in slimroms): How do you get those?

Hello,
I'm using Slimkat 4.4.4.8269 since its release. It has a neat feature called the custom tiles which is the feature that keeps me on that rom because I was unable to find a similar function in another ROM.
The Slimroms custom tiles basically lets you set unlimited "custom" tiles in the quicksettings which you can set with apps, os functions or whatever. They take a second action for a long press and they can cycle through multiple apps on that one tiles.
This is basically a quickstarter for apps. The thing that makes this marvelous is actually that opening an app doesn't get that app into the foreground, that statusbar stays in the foreground such that I can open a second and third, etc. app through very few taps.
An example what I use this for: My worst but not rare case here:
Navigation+speedcam warner+mozilla stumbler(wifi and cell existance to gps mapper)+openwlanmap.org (wifi to gps mapper)+openbmap.org (wifi and cell to gps mapper).
The best approach is to use a directory on the homescreen, if my launcher supported it. This way i don't have to search in the app drawer.
So I would open the directory, start app 1, press home screen, start app 2 and so on.
Until i started the 5 apps, I have done (swipes and presses+ app-open-taps combined) 15 actions.
Using custom tiles as slimkat offers it in the status bar I swipe to open the quick settings and then open my apps, 1 swipe+5 taps=6 actions.
This is for me much faster and allows me to pay much less attention to my phone while starting what I want.
However, I would like to update to Lollipop or M, anyways, go with CM most likely but that feature isn't there. I found out that the GravityBox with the xposed framework offers some kind of similar features but it only features 2 custom apps, currently I have a bit more than 20 in my status bar.
I could use "Tasker" for this approach as well, but actually that configuration is rather weird and static to one action/app (condition) which I first have to fulfill. That approach fails if one of the apps is already started and I only want to start one app especially if that meets Taskers condition. I end up using the app drawer and search for my app.
This post pretty much covers the configuration and outcome of the custom tile in Slimroms in two pictures:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5/orig-development/rom-slimkat-hammerhead-stable-5-0-t2511512/post51495728#post51495728
Have you seen any other ROM with decent updates (that seems to be only CM for the hlte at the point of writing) or way to accomplish something similar? It doesn't need to be in the statusbar, even though that is quite easy to access.
Parts of my post I took from my post to a CM feature request at JIRA:
https://jira.cyanogenmod.org/browse/CYAN-2227?jql=text%20~%20%22custom%20tiles%22
Thanks in advance!

Try Layers, http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s4/themes-apps/systemui-overlays-5-0-t3025183

Thanks for the reply. I think layers is some sort of theming app overlaying the normal icons with other colors. This is something new to me and interesting, but not what I wanted in this thread.
I found something that goes a bit in that direction: Hangars. It displays some appbar in the notification area. Upon opening an app the area disappears and I would have to open the notification area again. Still better than the homelauncher and its folders.
Something I tested previously going into the same direction is the PIE control as well as some sidelaunchers like omnirom and such. Still the custom tiles allow a faster operation.

If anyone is interested in those, you could vote for this as well:
https://jira.cyanogenmod.org/browse/CYAN-2227, It enclosed this feature.
From time to time I changed to CM or something like it, but return very quickly to my custom quick tiles as they are irreplacible and other roms waste time and I can hardly operate them blindly like slimkat.

Just heads up, Google finally may have thought those tiles to be useful and they were added in Marshmallow. You can only go there using the System UI tuner (google for it, if you don't know what it is. You'll need another app to configure those nicely, like custom quick settings. Due a bug you can't add more than 18 tiles in total, but if you like it and don't need more go ahead. Right now I have 40+ and they're in color.
So far I can't think of changing from the lovely slimkat.