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    Home Unlabelled Android Craigslist now has an Android app, and it's already down to two stars on Google Play

    Android Craigslist now has an Android app, and it's already down to two stars on Google Play

    December 06, 2019

    Android Craigslist now has an Android app, and it's already down to two stars on Google Play

    Craigslist now has an Android app, and it's already down to two stars on Google Play

    Posted: 05 Dec 2019 11:34 PM PST

    How I moved my Google presence from a GSuite account to a regular account

    Posted: 05 Dec 2019 12:26 PM PST

    You've probably read posts about how various Google services keep getting changed or deleted for GSuite users. This didn't sit well with me, considering at least some of its users are paying customers. In theory, we should get better treatment from Google, not worse. So over the course of a few hours, I moved the major parts of my entire Google existence going back 12 years from GSuite to a free, regular old Gmail account. I commented on a thread about this and someone asked me how I did it, so I thought I'd spell it out. I hoping to help folks and maybe discuss better ways to get it done.

    ​

    Foreword

    This is just what I did. Your mileage may vary. Do your due diligence before messing with important data. Don't delete anything until you know it's safely backed up or on the new account.

    Before starting, I want to point you to Google Takeout. I highly recommend using this service to download and save everything you can to somewhere safe. It takes forever, but makes parts of the process easier and at the very least, provides some peace of mind.

    ​

    Pros

    • Full Google Assistant and Google Home functionality.
    • Saves money if you pay for your GSuite account.
    • No risk that your employer will cut you off from your account.
    • Can leave Play Store app reviews.

    ​

    Cons

    • This is a lot of work.
    • You'll lose your search history, online reviews and Local Guide status, music play counts, and Google Assistant home control routines.
    • You'll lose your Google Rewards, but you can use them to buy a Play Store gift card, which might be better. You'll need it when you get around to reinstalling purchased apps.
    • I lost my $8/month Google Play Music rate, and now have to pay $12/month for YouTube Premium (which gives me GPM for free).
    • You might have to tell everyone a new email address, unless you keep the old one.

    ​

    Email

    I didn't want to just forward every email in my GSuite account to the new account. That would take forever, and be messy.

    Google doesn't provide an easy way to transfer your emails from a GSuite account to a regular email account, so I used Mozilla Thunderbird as an intermediate step. Add both of your accounts, and import your entire inbox into Thunderbird. Once the emails are read into Thunderbird, which took me two hours, you can right click on each folder and select "Copy to…" to send it to the other account. Very handy, and free.

    After that was done, I set up IMAP checking of the old account, which conveniently pulls emails over. I also added the GSuite account info to the regular Gmail account settings, so I can select which account I want to send emails from (since I haven't deleted my GSuite account yet).

    ​

    Contacts

    Use the Export function on the left of the page to save your contacts to a Google CSV file, swap to the new account, and import the file. I think you lose contact pictures in this process, so there might be a better way to do it.

    ​

    Calendar

    Settings > Import & Export to a file, swap to the new account, and import the file.

    ​

    Hangouts

    I'm one of the last remaining humans still using this utterly lame platform. Some conversations were priceless to me and I wanted to keep them, so Takeout made that pretty easy. Unfortunately, it saves your conversation as JSON files, which aren't easy to read or import elsewhere, so I used the free decoder found by Jay2K1... this tool was really helpful.

    I switched over to a better non-Google platform during the big migration, since there's no way to import Hangouts discussions from a new account.

    ​

    Photos

    I thought this was going to be the end of the world, but Google actually made transferring 10 years' worth of pictures pretty easy. Just share your pictures, albums, etc. to the new account and they'll show up in your new account. Once you see them all, select them all and do a "save to library" to make them yours on the new account. Beware: if you're like me and have a ton of photos on there, it takes a long time to populate. During the process, I was worried that dates and locations seemed to be wrong, but that all fixed itself by the time it was done. Just be patient.

    ​

    Google Play Music

    Before I tell you what I did, you should look into the app Soundiiz I mention below. I didn't know about it when I transferred my GPM collection, and I wish I did.

    I have an extensive music library on Google Play Music, so this was a huge concern for me. Doing this the hard way meant making a long list of artists, songs, and albums in my collection and individually adding them into the new account. Screw that.

    The Share functionality was very useful for this. For each playlist, I shared it to the new account. Swap to the new account, accept the share, select all, and do an "add to library."

    But what about several thousand songs in my library that weren't in playlists? I certainly didn't want to select thousands of songs and individually share them over, so I made new playlists that contains my entire music collection. For example, I made a playlist with all of the songs I'd given a thumbs up, so those would be preserved. A complication is that Google only allows 500 songs in a playlist, so I had to make like 12 new playlists. It was a pain in the ass, but it got the job done.

    Another complication is uploaded music. Back in the day, I had to upload a lot of music to GPM because it didn't exist in their library. Today, not one song wasn't available in GPM. This took a while, but I went through my entire collection and took note of everything I had uploaded, then added each song to my library. If you have uploaded music that isn't in the GPM library, you might look into whether Google Takeout will download them, then swap accounts and re-upload them.

    ​

    YouTube

    This one was tough without help. I don't have a lot of uploaded videos, so that part was easy: just upload the originals to the new account. If you don't have the originals, Google Takeout will download them from the old account for you. Sure, I lost views and comments, but that's a bonus in my opinion. Clearly, if you're a content provider, this part might be a deal-breaker.

    Playlists and subscriptions were a different story. To transfer playlists, I used app called Soundiiz, which is $4.50/month, to transfer playlists from the old account to the new one. I used that service for a few hours and then cancelled the service. It was well worth the five bucks.

    There's no way to transfer subscriptions, so I had to manually enter those. I opened two windows side-by-side and went down the list. I have about 20, so it really only took about 5 minutes to search for a provider and click the subscribe button.

    ​

    YouTube Music

    This service is such a train wreck that I almost didn't bother. The aforementioned Soundiiz app transferred my songs from one account to the other, but a decent number of them showed up on the new account as videos of live performances or covers by crappy bands. I attribute this to the YTM library being much, much smaller than the Google Play Music library, so it had no choice than to downgrade to whatever video it could find. Beware: you'll have to spend some time deleting these misidentifications, because some of them are really, really bad.

    ​

    Maps

    You'll have to set up home and work locations in your new account… no big deal. For saved locations, you can use the Share function to send them to your new account, and manually save each one. I only had half a dozen, so this was easy for me. If you have a lot of them, I haven't tried this but you can probably make a map of all of them and share the entire map.

    ​

    Keep lists

    Keep lists are shareable, but if you delete them on the original account, they get deleted on all shared accounts. You can copy and paste from one note to another, but that is a lot of work. An easy way to do this is share each list to your new account, then switch to your new account and they'll all be there waiting for you. Select each one and choose Make a Copy, and that list will belong to you. You can delete the old list at this point.

    ​

    Web Passwords

    You can export your web site passwords stored in Chrome by going to Menu > Settings > Passwords > dot menu to the right of "Saved Passwords" > Export Passwords. After you switch to your new account, you can import from that file back into Chrome with Menu > Settings > Import Bookmarks and Settings and select Bookmarks HTML file from the pulldown.

    ​

    Bookmarks

    I saved off my bookmarks to a file using Google Takeout. Most web browsers have an import/export functionality. I'm dumb and use Chrome, so I used Settings > Bookmarks > Bookmark Manager > dot menu > Export to save them to a file.After you switch to your new account, you can import from that file back into Chrome with Menu > Settings > Import Bookmarks and Settings > navigate to saved file.

    ​

    2FA

    To the best of my knowledge, Google Authenticate doesn't provide any means to switch to new accounts, or any backup capability. You'll have to turn off 2FA for each account and reconnect it on your new account.

    I use Authy for 2-factor authentication, for exactly this reason; Authy allows you to change email addresses. It's a process that you should take very seriously, but it's straight-forward and doesn't take too long. Everything transferred with no issues.

    ​

    Apps

    This was a bitter pill to swallow because I had a lot of paid apps accumulated over the years. I could live without many of them, but a few are super important to me and had to be purchased again. For free apps, I opened two browser windows, one with each account logged into the Play Store, and manually went down the list. I use a lot of apps, but this was pretty easy and only took about half an hour to search for each one and tell it to install. For paid apps, like I said, you're just going to have to buy them again. I didn't bother contacting the app authors; they're under no obligation to help us out, but you might be able to convince them.

    ​

    Google Drive files

    I have about 50 files on my Google Drive. I used the Share function to move these over. It was pretty easy because you can share entire folders. Once they're accessible on your new account, right click and select Make a Copy. That will make the file belong to your new account and you can delete the old one. This should work for all Google Docs and Sheets documents you have online.

    ​

    Google Voice voicemails

    You can associate your GV number with a new Google account, but you can't bring your saved voicemails or SMS messages with you. I used Google Takeout to download them all for safe keeping before I initiated the swap to the new account. There's no way to upload them to GV once it's linked to the new account, so I just keep them on a hard drive now.

    submitted by /u/bigray327
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    Microsoft wants everyone to follow its lead with its new mobile design

    Posted: 06 Dec 2019 01:07 AM PST

    Lead of Google’s messaging efforts, Justin Uberti, is joining Google Stadia

    Posted: 05 Dec 2019 12:47 PM PST

    Android Auto tests two new UIs for Google Assistant, launcher customization and weather are live (APK Teardown)

    Posted: 05 Dec 2019 09:11 AM PST

    Pixel Tips confirms 'Cards & Passes,' auto Call Screen, more [APK Insight] - 9to5Google

    Posted: 05 Dec 2019 10:43 AM PST

    Opera for Android v55 brings Dark Theme for the web, quick tab switching, and more

    Posted: 05 Dec 2019 12:32 PM PST

    Pixel 4XL Review : where we accept, it's actually a decent phone // JuanBagnell

    Posted: 06 Dec 2019 03:34 AM PST

    [MKBHD] Testing Real 5G: Part 2!

    Posted: 05 Dec 2019 06:40 AM PST

    P2XL -> Note 10+ don't know what to keep!

    Posted: 05 Dec 2019 07:51 AM PST

    Nothing wrong with my pixel, but I was able to get the Note 10+ for $680 on Black Friday so I said why not..

    Overall I love the Note.. it seems just as fast and smooth as pixel, battery life seems fine and the display is VERY refreshing after living with the sub-par pixel 2 xl display for over 2 years..

    But this camera on the Note 10 is... Strange.. some shots look great, little warmer than Pixel but other are just terribly soft and lack so much detail. I don't take much pictures but man I have a hard time justifying leaving my amazing 2 year old camera..

    This display though and over all physical feel of the Note is so good.

    Any one else have similar thoughts? Is the Note camera really that bad? DXO Mark rates it higher than the Pixel but I question that severely..

    submitted by /u/thedonutman
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    Ring Master is an app that can vibrate first and gradually ring for phone calls

    Posted: 05 Dec 2019 05:15 AM PST

    Fast Android Q delivery to Sony Xperia 1!

    Posted: 04 Dec 2019 09:04 PM PST

    Just received Android Q update on my Sony Xperia 1 (Proof). Sony promised to release the update in its official roadmap to Xperia 1 and 5 as early as December 2019, but I personally didn't expect to be that early!

    Xperia 5 should follow soon, then Xperia 10, 10 Plus, XZ2, XZ2 Compact, XZ2 Premium and XZ3 are expected to receive the upgrade early 2020 onwards.

    submitted by /u/qatrium
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