Deconstructing One UI – Mapping the Screen Interception and Telemetry inside the Samsung Browser

Anyone that that personally knows me also knows I have a slight obsession with battery life optimisations and services running on my devices.

Recently an update to the Samsung browser version 30.0.0.63 (Android) brought about several glaringly obvious issues that impacted my usage and consumed significant battery.

The first issue was in video playback; when ever I would play a video through the browser the audio and video frames would be out of sync. Watching videos with anyone talking their words were out of sync to the video by a few milliseconds this became annoying quickly.
The next issue would be that every few minutes the video would stutter; to be clear here it would briefly pause for a second and then resume, when it resumed it trigger the videos playback overlay. This too quickly grew tedious.
Manual tapping the screen during playback which normally brings up the playback controls would also make the video briefly freeze and stutter.

I did the obvious and attempted to search online about this new release and determine if others were experiencing similar issues I found little of any relevance.

This is article although somewhat long winded explores and exposes a significant tracking services it includes many examples taken straight from my device logs.

Tasker plugin for Transcribable

This article demonstrates Transcribable’s Tasker plugin integration found in Transcribable v1.12.04 from open testing branch. It’s a preview for several new core function one of which allows integration in to Tasker. The integration allows users to send or retrieve text to Transcribable.

Termux: Using Rish ADB with DUMPSYS to determine the running state for a package

In this article we cover how to use Termux in combination with Rish to get extended properties about a package such as the last visible package, is a specific package visible; this could be use to trigger additional actions from Tasker when the running state chanages.

Prompting the installation for your Wear OS companion app from your Android app

The following function is a example on how to use a RemoteActivityHelper to trigger connected Wear OS devices to open the Play Store at a desired package. This allows both the app author to increase exposure to their companion app but also allow the user to more easily access the companion applications.

WeDroid a Python 3 based weather assistant

Introducing WeDroid a Python based weather assistant. Originally a weather reporting script that returned the current weather status in a short message form. It was written right after the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain’s release (9 years ago) and was heavily influenced by the iDroid weather reports that Venom Snake would receive in-game. These reports would indicate drastic changes like sandstorms, rain, or the weather clearing.

WeDroid provides a method to generate messages in a similar style for real-world weather events based on your location (if desired).

It features additional enhancements for Termux and Tasker on Android devices.

Tasker: Using Termux to manage application states with Rish ADB

This article demonstrates how to use Termux in combination with Tasker and Rish to manage application states; this allows users to enable or disable built-in applications directly from the device (when configured).

Termux, Shizuku and Rish configuration for Android 14

First ensure that you have everything ready:

Exported the two Shizuku files: rish & rish_shizuku.dex to a storage location that can be read by Termux.
- Open Shizuku > Use Shizuku in terminal apps > Export files > Select location
Termux is configured to access external storage use the following command: termux-setup-storage

Tasker – Automation examples with the Flipper Zero

This post continues from our last entry on how to utilise Intents within Tasker for Android and builds on those examples to demonstrate how to automate functionality on the Flipper Zero.

The examples featured on this page will demonstrate functions such as: the ability to automatically connect to the Flipper Zero, to trigger the playback for files from the Flipper via a task with Tasker.

Tasker – How to utilise Intents

Disabling Digital Wellbeing on Android 13

The Digital wellbeing application from Google is baked in to Google derived Android 13 devices. If you don’t like the idea of your device usage data being even more closely monitored and disguised as being good for you this brief article will show you how to remove it without root.