Technical answers from my Stack Overflow history, with source links and licenses.
Showing 30 of 268 answers
Exported May 9, 2026
You can use an unconditional loop: You can also look into tools like inotifywait or fsmon depending on what you are trying to accomplish. You can also install busybox for Android which contains the watch command.
You can query MediaStore for a directory size on internal storage. This is much faster than a recursive method getting the length of each file in a directory. You must have READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission granted....
So, what should I do to use a theme from different package resource? You shouldn't do this for many reasons. I wrote a simple project that shows that it is indeed possible as long as the package contains the resources...
If I understand your question correctly, you have an Activity named Preferences which extends PreferenceActivity . You also have a Fragment that has registered an OnSharedPreferenceChangeListener . You need to update...
Here is an example of creating a database in your cache directory: All you need to do is pass the absolute path as the name parameter in the constructor. Tested just to make sure it was created in...
I created the following shell script name it pullsharedprefs.sh (or whatever you want) and from terminal run the command: shared_prefs will be pulled to the current working directory and named...
INSTALL_FAIL_DEXOPT usually has to do with the limit placed on classes.dex. On anything pre-ICS dexopt will fail on anything over 5 MB. Recent versions of Android use an 8 or 16 MB buffer. Check the size of classes.dex...
This answer is similar to some answers above. However, I feel that it would be beneficial because, unlike other answers, this will remove any extra commas or whitespace and handles abbreviation.
You can change the EdgeEffect color of a ListView or GridView using reflection. Copy the following static factory methods into your project and use setEdgeGlowColor(yourListView, yourAwesomeColor); :
Android Arsenal has every library that I know of that attempts to backport the ripple effect. Here is a list of all RippleEffect libraries: https://android-arsenal.com/tag/167
The code here let's me believe, that there should be a setOverscan method inside the IWindowManager$Stub but there isn't. Am I doing something wrong or is it just not possible to do what I want to do the way I try to do...
Unfortunately, there is no way to set the menu item icon color's tint using a theme or style. You need a method to check if the MenuItem is visible on the ActionBar or in the overflow menu. Both the native and support...
As mentioned in the issue tracker, a temporary workaround is to add the following to the root build.gradle script: See: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/68021152#comment12
Shorter than the other answers: Is it better? I'm not sure. As long as it works and you understand it, I don't see a reason to change it.
You will need to create the directories for each directory entry in the ZIP archive. Here is a method I wrote and use that will keep the directory structure:
As CommonsWare pointed out in the comments, it would be better to use a static String[] of all the dangerous permissions than get a list of them using PackageManager . You can use the following method to get a list of...
You are calling getResources() before the super.onCreate(Bundle) is called. You must call getResources() after onCreate() . Move your code to onCreate or onStart :
Files in /data are not readable by the shell user. You need to use the run-as command, which will work as long as the debug build is installed. You can check if the file exists: To copy the file to your PC, you will...
What is the correct method to get current foreground process and prevent false positives? UsageStatsManager is the only official API to get the current running app ( see #50 ). Using getRunningTasks(int maxNum) ,...
You should use Crashlytics Marc from Crashlytics here. If the app crashes without an active network connection, the report will still be caught! We always send crash reports on launch when there's an active connection....
You can use ActivityManager.getRunningServices(int maxNum) : The documentation states that this is not intended for production. I haven't done much testing with it either. If it doesn't meet your requirements leave a...
You are most likely loading very large images which can lead to an OutOfMemoryError . You can resize the Bitmap and keep the aspect ratio. Example of getting the width and height of a bitmap without loading it into...
This will get the Toolbar / ActionBar when using the native ActionBar , your own Toolbar from appcompat, or the native Toolbar on Lollipop:
The answer from Jon Willis works great. This is an improvement to his answer. First, create a new class that implements View.OnFocusChangeListener : Next, set the listener on your SearchView :
You can only execute /system/bin/input as the root or shell user; this will not work in an app. The command should not start with "adb shell" when running from the app. To run the command as root: You should also check...
You can change the EdgeEffect color of a ScrollView with some reflection:
It is deprecated because Android moved to fragment-based activities. Calling findPreference(CharSequence) will still work in higher API levels. You are just encouraged to use fragments instead of a PreferenceActivity ....
There is no public API to do this. You can however use some dirty reflection to create your symbolic link. I just tested the following code and it worked for me: A quick Google search showed this answer if you don't...