Hi! I’m swapping my daily android phone for the nth time today and going through my set-up “check-list”. As apps are updating/installing, I thought I’d check in with the hive-mind, what are you all doing to make the process easier? Maybe you know of a way to self-host some sort of android profile server? I’ll post my process + list of goals & gripes below and if you have any tips or suggestions about what I can do better, I’d love to hear them!!
Current Process
- flash clean rom
- walk through the setup process
- enable developer mode + adb
- go through default app list disabling/uninstalling crap i don’t want
- use ‘fdroidcl’ to install all my fdroid apps
- adb push a gpg private key to import into OpenKeychain
- generate a ssh keypair in Password Store, put public key on my server via ConnectBot, clone passwords repo
- log into firefox sync
- log into joplin
- configure fairmail
- configure davx
- log in to google account
- download play store apps I was missing
- go through apps one by one, logging in to accounts + doing configuration
- deal with fucking whatsapp
- hold old phone + new phone side by side and made sure i got everything
Goals & Gripes
App Installation
fdroidcl helps a LOT here, i can have a list of my minimal required packages - password management solution, browser, and notes get installed and it solves a lot of bootstrapping problems for me. I never need to do the dance of opening chrome, downloading fdroid, giving chrome install permissions, installing fdroid, etc.
that said, it is /slow/ and obviously limited to installing apps from fdroid repositories. maybe the slowness i can solve with self-hosting an fdroid repo, but i’m still stuck with having to install a bunch of apps manually either through aurora store, or play store.
App configuration
If i could push in arbitrary app configurations i would be sooooo happy. certain apps have config export/import, like my launcher, but that’s far from all of them. i’ve tried a number of “backup” options, like Titanium, but obviously they don’t work without root and don’t always work /with/ root, especially going across devices. I’ve vaguely considered using Appium for this but … ehhhh.
De-googling
Okay, so I can probably solve the apk problem somehow… I can solve the contacts sync… but I really like android auto, and that’s a non-starter without a system google account afaik.
i’ve never once managed to successfully move whatsapp to another device and not lose my chat history. it starts restoring from a backup, fails, and kicks me into being logged in without any chance of a restore.
Edit: oh and if you have any suggestion that’d make me not hate re-pairing wearos watch… 🥺
Oh nice a nicely-formatted list of reasons I don’t switch phones more frequently than once every 5 years: I loathe setting them up as specifically as I want them to behave
It’s not just the initial setup either. You spend those 5 years tweaking the phone continuously. It’s hard to let go of something that’s been chiseled to perfection and start all over again.
Yeah, my list would end up being longer than some novels. Also, software churn makes it an ever evolving process, so having a list where half of it is wrong by the next time I need it seems less than ideal.