Root What root apps/mods make sense specifically for Nexus 6

[electricpete]

Thanks to help from scaryalien and Rxpert83, my Nexus 6 is newly rooted.

There are a couple of things I'm thinking about doing that are specifically related to the Nexus 6. Here's what comes to mind:

1 - Unbelievably, the N6 has no Miracast support. I see my elderly Mom in a home every day, and Miracasting to her TV is the easiest way (other than showing her my phone screen) that I can show her things from the outside world like photos from relatives, funny news stories etc. I use chromecast at my own home, but chromecast requires router with internet connection (chromecast can't use data), which she doesn't have, so Mircast is the only option. Thankfully, it appears there are some modifications that can be made for rooted users to solve it (details here)

2 - I miss the the ability to use the home button on my S4 to wake the screen. Using the power button is tougher, especially with the tiny button next to volume on N6..somewhat hidden by my case. But with root there are more options...I'm going to be checking those out.

3 - Very large screen makes one-handed use difficult. I'll bet there are some mods that toggle shrinking of the screen (for example towards lower right hand corner) for one-handed use.

4 - Back button is on the left which creates tswo problems. 4A - it's the opposite side of where I'm used to. 4B - that makes "back" hard to reach for one-handed use by right-handed person. I might swap back button over to RHS if I can find a mod to do that.

Have you done any root-related customizations to compensate/adjust the built-in features of Nexus 6 that don't suit you?

 

[electricpete]

Gravitybox (an xposed module) is a fantastic way to tweak many aspects of your phone with little effort (like creating your own custom rom but much less effort).

To give you a flavor of some of the things that can be done, here's a video of the gravitybox tweaks on my phone (they are mostly in the realm of improved functionality / usability, rather than theming)

So that's what I've done with my phone...still interested to hear what you guys are doing

 

[jj14x]

For me, adblock is the only "change" I did
I'm good with the N6 for everything else

 

[electricpete]

Yeah, I hear you. Ad blockers can make a big difference.

I found another tweak very relevant for Nexus 6:

5 - Fix the sound. Have you noticed that when anything plays on the alarm stream or ringer stream, it is very soft for the first two seconds (regardless of any other app settings)? And possibly some notification sounds that don't come through right? You can fix that easily by commenting out (#) a few lines in the file system/vendor/etc/audio_effects.conf as listed in the first post and also the additional three lines mentioned by duoXIV about the 6th post:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/nex...ntative-fix-messenger-whatsapp-t3272992/page3
I used root explorer to move it to downloads. Then edited it with ES File Explorer editor. Then moved it back with root exploerer and fixed permissions to rw-r--r-- with root explorer.

Reboot and voila, it's fixed!
I still use slowly-increasing alarm volume in the stock alarm app but it's more customizeable.
Also I won't lose those first two seconds responding to a phone call because I didn't hear it when it started.​

A quick update on the other things I mentioned:

1 - Unbelievably, the N6 has no Miracast support. I see my elderly Mom in a home every day, and Miracasting to her TV is the easiest way (other than showing her my phone screen) that I can show her things from the outside world like photos from relatives, funny news stories etc. I use chromecast at my own home, but chromecast requires router with internet connection (chromecast can't use data), which she doesn't have, so Mircast is the only option. Thankfully, it appears there are some modifications that can be made for rooted users to solve it (details here)

Miracast is now working for me using methods from the link. The only problem is it takes awhile to connect. Sometimes I have to reboot the miracast to get it to connect. Once connected everything works fine... have used it for hours. No problems until the next time I try to connect.

2 - I miss the the ability to use the home button on my S4 to wake the screen. Using the power button is tougher, especially with the tiny button next to volume on N6..somewhat hidden by my case. But with root there are more options...I'm going to be checking those out.

Fixed that with build.prop tweak. Now I can double tap to wake (build.prop) and double tap to sleep (gravity box). Much less fumbling for buttons.

3 - Very large screen makes one-handed use difficult. I'll bet there are some mods that toggle shrinking of the screen (for example towards lower right hand corner) for one-handed use.

Haven't done this. It's not high on my list anymore now that I've had a chance to use the device I can manage well-enough one-handed for most things.

4 - Back button is on the left which creates tswo problems. 4A - it's the opposite side of where I'm used to. 4B - that makes "back" hard to reach for one-handed use by right-handed person. I might swap back button over to RHS if I can find a mod to do that.

Fixed that in gravitybox (did I mention that's open source?... great module). And I did a lot more tweaking of those nav keys to add two more buttons (app launcher and menu buttons on the outside with the three standard buttons on the middle) and to map double-tap and long-press actions for each of those buttons (see video above)
​

 

[electricpete]

5 - Fix the sound. Have you noticed that when anything plays on the alarm stream or ringer stream, it is very soft for the first two seconds (regardless of any other app settings)? And possibly some notification sounds that don't come through right? You can fix that easily by commenting out (#) a few lines in the file system/vendor/etc/audio_effects.conf as listed in the first post and also the additional three lines mentioned by duoXIV about the 6th post:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/nex...ntative-fix-messenger-whatsapp-t3272992/page3
I used root explorer to move it to downloads. Then edited it with ES File Explorer editor. Then moved it back with root exploerer and fixed permissions to rw-r--r-- with root explorer.

Reboot and voila, it's fixed!
I still use slowly-increasing alarm volume in the stock alarm app but it's more customizeable.
Also I won't lose those first two seconds responding to a phone call because I didn't hear it when it started.

This appears to be fixed in the June update MOB30M. The offending lines are no longer present in the file system/vendor/etc/audio_effects.conf and testing reveals sound works the way I want (notification, alarm, ringer come on full strength immediately).