No combined notification+ringer volume control? No non-dismissable notifications? No disabling of the bottom search bar? fair point this is launcher issue What the fuck is that shit?!
Since Android 10 the OS has really gone downhill IMO.
IIRC they have also been ripping out workarounds that people use to keep their apps open, so expect things like Syncthing/OpenVPN/Element/Termux etc to no longer be able to survive in the background - I believe the non dismissable notifications are a part of that too. To me this also means apps using their own push services are now being forced into a position where they'll need to consider Google Cloud Messaging.
The OpenVPN one is pretty poor because unless you have it set to be always-on, Android can kill it freely now, then completely bypass your VPN preference because "it's not working"
These new changes in A14 kind of show everything wrong with having an ad company in charge of a mobile OS
Set the battery usage of your essential apps to Unrestricted and your persistence problem is solved. Android has vastly improved its security by cutting off the workarounds shady (and legit) apps have used to persist. Some of these improvement are from GrapheneOS devs hardening the AOSP pipeline and increasing everyone's privacy. You mention VPN apps getting neutered. I've never experienced Wireguard getting killed by Android and I use that app nearly continuously. I also use Syncthing all day. Setting its battery use to unrestricted keeps it working just fine. I use the app's internal options to disable syncing when my battery tapers off. The hacky workarounds you speak of to maintain persistence on A14 should be killed off to improve everyone's privacy.
Set the battery usage of your essential apps to Unrestricted and your persistence problem is solved
The background app battery usage feature (otherwise known as "allow background activity", "battery care", or "Adaptive battery") is a different feature to what I'm talking about here sadly AFAICT, and doesn't affect the relative importance weight of apps when Android's memory management is looking for things to kill.
The only thing that the background app battery usage restriction does is stop "inactive" apps from running in the background if they are using up a lot of CPU time, and if the app is not being interacted with frequently: either directly by the user, indirectly via Google Cloud Messaging, or by another app on the device. From what I can tell, it's completely separate to Android's memory management and solely exists to extend battery life.
Android has vastly improved its security by cutting off the workarounds shady (and legit) apps have used to persist.
Shady apps already persist using Google (Firebase) Cloud Messaging, and this change does not impact them. Even if they are killed by the separate background battery app usage feature, a simple push message typically brings these back.
The hacky workarounds you speak of to maintain persistence on A14 should be killed off to improve everyone's privacy.
I wouldn't exactly categorize this as a hacky workaround, since it follows the documented relative app importance weights used by Android's memory management. Users can even bypass this themselves by swiping on the persistent notification, and hiding those types of app notifications.
If anything IMO it forces apps to be less transparent about their activity, since they cannot communicate to the user that they are running
If I'm wrong about the background battery app feature's seemingly lack of impact on Android's memory management please do let me know - I've yet to come across anything suggesting it does ☹️
No combined notification+ringer volume control? No non-dismissable notifications?
both of those can be seen as a plus for some people, also you always can change the launcher to one without bottom search bar, did people forgot how to customize their android?
From another thread there seems to be animation/gestures issues if you use a third party launcher
https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/9337804
There used to be an extra switch for linked or unlinked notification+ringer volume. You could use whatever work for you. Now they force you to use separate, which I believe is worse in every way.
Yeah, you can change the launcher, but unfortunately no Android 14 launcher supports smooth gesture navigation or Quickswitch module.
They had a very specific and useful purpose: notify of ongoing processes. Some apps using them wrong sucked, I agree, but since we have already got a lot of customisation for notifications on a per-app basis then perhaps this should be a customizable thing as well
Oh yes, having customisability for this would be the most ideal situation.
Especially since Android 12 or 13 all app notifications require a permission in the first place
I don't have a search bar on Graphene OS. *removed externally hosted image*
you can just set the notif and ringer to the same thing the other 2 do suck tho
mate, I am fully aware I can do that, but then I am say at work, where it gets loud at times, and therefore wish to have the ringer and notifications call a bit louder than at home. Not only do I have to do that with two different settings, I can't even achieve that using volume buttons and sound panel, but rather have to specifically go to Settings>Sound each time. it's fucking regressive.
And I know some people prefer to have the ringer call loudly and notifications notify silently, but the point is this used to be customisable! It was a switch between linked volume or separate and it worked fine for years. Why enshittify a perfectly well working thing?!
that's really weird, it's in the little sound panel for me
I'm using a Pixel, maybe your manufacturer implemented it wrong for some reason
I only have Media (shows by default), Ring and Alarm (after expanding) in there. But then again, I'm running a custom rom, based on LineageOS, based on AOSP
oh, didn't know Lineage got to 14 yet from what I remember Lineage has its own custom sound panel that's different from the little bottom popup on Pixel you could submit a bug report for it here
