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Help Two apps that won't restart

markdoc

markdoc

Android Expert
I use a text expander with a few apps. Mainly my email app, Aquamail and my note app, EasyNotes. The text expander is basically a app that creates macros. I can type the 4 letters "asig" and get:
Dr. Mark W. Helfand
Pixel 6 Pro
Android 13.0
I've tried a few different apps and only two work with my email app. Unfortunately,I have the same problem with both of them. Whenever I restart my phone, the text expander apps don't restart on their own. I have to go into my Phone's settings under Accessibility and turn off that setting and turn it back on. I've checked their battery settings and they both are set to "Unrestricted". Also they both have permission to Auto start.
Does anyone have any ideas why they won't restart? The developers have no idea either.
I would appreciate any ideas you may have.
Thanks
 
That's a lot of work you're putting your phone thru just to clear cache. Does your phone have a device care setting? On my phone, I can clear out cache under the memory setting.
 
ocnbrze said:
That's a lot of work you're putting your phone thru just to clear cache. Does your phone have a device care setting? On my phone, I can clear out cache under the memory setting.
Click to expand...
I have the Pixel 6 Pro and I can't find any cache clearing settings. (And I've used it's search function within the settings and Developer Options) But it doesn't matter.
I use a great app called 1 Tap Cleaner. It is one of my "must have" apps. I use my phone for everything. I have almost stopped using my laptop. (It's a long story) I have over 200 apps on my phone and 1 Tap goes thru each app clearing it's cache. It takes less than a minute. Restarting the phone clears out the phones memory and I clear out the recently used app list too. That uses a lot of memory and Android doesn't do a great job of managing it. When using Chrome on the net, I get black boxes where videos should be. The messages said it was due to insufficient memory. When I clear the Recently Used App list, the videos appear. Since I've started my morning routine, I have less issues all around.
 
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Dannydet said:
What memory intensive calendar app are you using?
Click to expand...
I use Pimlical. IMO it's the best one out. I've been using it since my Palm Pilot days. I also beta test it and have an excellent rapport with the programmer. I have a need for alarmed events due to my memory issues. And it handles them beautifully. It can be as basic or as complex as you want. You can use it right after installation then slowly modify the over 100 settings. Here's part of today's page, all of which can be modified to suite your needs.
Screenshot_20221130-083908.png
Support is excellent too.
No, I don't get paid for selling it, I truly love the app.
 
Regularly cleaning caches is completely unnecessary on modern Android versions, and can in fact be detrimental to performance, stability, and battery life since all of your apps will have to rebuild their cache each time they're used. The whole point of a cache is to avoid that.

I'm a power user also with 200+ apps on my phone, and I regularly use several very intensive applications. I haven't used any cleaner apps since the Android 2.x days. I suspect yours is causing more harm than good. I also never manually clear the recents list. That's not going to kill any misbehaving apps which are draining your battery in the background, and most apps will automatically restart in the background anyway.

If you've got specific apps which are having problems, sure, clear their cache and force stop them as troubleshooting steps - but blanket killing/clearing everything is a habit you should get out of.
 
codesplice said:
Regularly cleaning caches is completely unnecessary on modern Android versions, and can in fact be detrimental to performance, stability, and battery life since all of your apps will have to rebuild their cache each time they're used. The whole point of a cache is to avoid that.

I'm a power user also with 200+ apps on my phone, and I regularly use several very intensive applications. I haven't used any cleaner apps since the Android 2.x days. I suspect yours is causing more harm than good. I also never manually clear the recents list. That's not going to kill any misbehaving apps which are draining your battery in the background, and most apps will automatically restart in the background anyway.

If you've got specific apps which are having problems, sure, clear their cache and force stop them as troubleshooting steps - but blanket killing/clearing everything is a habit you should get out of.[/QUOTE
Click to expand...

Thanks for your information, it is appreciated. I will try force stopping Chrome instead of clearing the Recently Used App List.
Now if you can help with the apps not restarting ...
They also stop working on their own sometimes and turning off & on their Accessibility restarts them.

Thanks again
 
Which text expanding app(s) are you using?

Do they still fail to start automatically following a reboot if you don't run your cleaner app first?

Does manually opening the app restore its functionality or is toggling its Accessibility permission the only thing that works?
 
codesplice said:
Which text expanding app(s) are you using?

Do they still fail to start automatically following a reboot if you don't run your cleaner app first?

Does manually opening the app restore its functionality or is toggling its Accessibility permission the only thing that works?
Click to expand...

I have tried 4 or five different ones. The two that actually work for me are Texpand and Octopus Typing. They both have the same issue if I just restart my phone without all the other stuff. And yes, only switching their Accessibility setting off & on gets them working again. Support for Texpand isn't great but I'm working with the Octopus Typing developer to try to remedy the issues. He has duplicated my issues on his Android 13 phone so I know it isn't only on my phone. I say issues because the apps have another issue with my email app, Aquamail. I was told that Aquamail doesn't use standard text handling and when I use an expander, all the rtf in the email is removed along with any inserted photos. Texpand recently fixed that but they don't reply to my emails. I'm not sure if it was an accident or intentional.
 
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I seem to recall that Google changed a lot of Accessibility policies for Android 13 to cut down on apps which were abusing those privileges. I wonder if there are some further tweaks that the developers will need to do to make sure that their apps will continue to function.

I don't use any text expansion apps (I've found that defining shortcuts in the personal dictionary directly in Gboard covers my use case without needing any external tools), but I do use a few other apps that tie in to the Accessibility API - most notably my password manager, Bitwarden. I haven't noticed it stopping working after a while (or following a reboot) so wonder if it's using a different piece of the API or something.

It's encouraging that the Octopus Typing developer was able to reproduce the issue. Hopefully that means they'll be able to find and implement a fix.
 
codesplice said:
I seem to recall that Google changed a lot of Accessibility policies for Android 13 to cut down on apps which were abusing those privileges. I wonder if there are some further tweaks that the developers will need to do to make sure that their apps will continue to function.

I don't use any text expansion apps (I've found that defining shortcuts in the personal dictionary directly in Gboard covers my use case without needing any external tools), but I do use a few other apps that tie in to the Accessibility API - most notably my password manager, Bitwarden. I haven't noticed it stopping working after a while (or following a reboot) so wonder if it's using a different piece of the API or something.

It's encouraging that the Octopus Typing developer was able to reproduce the issue. Hopefully that means they'll be able to find and implement a fix.
Click to expand...

My password app, Roboform, also uses Accessibility along with 9 others. On my phone, each app's information has settings under Permissions. One being "run at startup". Unfortunately, even with that Permission "on", Texpand doesn't restart. I also use the Google keyboard but because of what I do, I need more than Google keyboard can provide. I used to use Smart Keyboard Pro and that had the text expander in it. I got so use to it, that it is very difficult to do without it.
 
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