#SMS Apps for Android

[coffeeedyke]

Does anyone else fucking HATE when apps change their STUPID INTERFACE with NO WARNING!!!!! A pox and plague and curse to all apps who do this. Making apps softer, rounder, reducing the information you can see, just changing things around for no point?? Or changing the gestures and motions you have to do to get from one screen to another.

[scarecrowgoat]

notion fell off so bad man, you add AI to something and it starts working like shit

[kuldeep7417]

Does Android have SMS messages

SMS messages" stands for "Short Message Service messages." They are a form of text messaging commonly used on mobile phones, including Android devices. Here's a brief definition:

SMS Messages: SMS messages, often referred to simply as "text messages," are short text-based communications sent between mobile devices over cellular networks. They are typically limited to 160 characters per message, although modern smartphones and networks support concatenating multiple SMS messages to form longer texts.

Key Characteristics of SMS Messages:

Text-Based Communication: SMS messages consist of plain text and do not typically include multimedia content such as images or videos.

Widely Supported: SMS is a universal messaging service supported by virtually all mobile devices and networks worldwide.

Reliability: SMS messages are highly reliable, with delivery confirmation mechanisms ensuring messages reach their intended recipients.

Basic Functionality: While lacking some features found in newer messaging protocols like SMS remains popular for its simplicity, ubiquity, and cross-platform compatibility.

On Android devices:

Android smartphones come equipped with a default messaging app, such as Google Messages, that allows users to send and receive SMS messages.

Users can compose new android have SMS messages, reply to received messages, and manage their text message conversations through the messaging app.

SMS messages can be sent to and received from other mobile devices, regardless of the recipient's device type or mobile network.

Overall, SMS messages are a foundational component of mobile communication, providing a quick, convenient, and widely accessible means of exchanging text-based messages between mobile users.

[changes]

Tuesday, March 4th, 2025

🌟 New

Content Label and mature content visibility settings have now been consolidated into simpler single “Show mature content” and “Blur mature content” settings on the web and in the Android app (settings set on the web will be reflected in the iOS app.)

A new “Include posts from your communities” setting is now available in��your Dashboard settings.

Communities you have muted will now appear dimmed in the sidebar on the web.

Community admins and moderators can now see all individual reports for each piece of reported content in their community.

We now support uploading videos in the AV1 format.

Two-factor Authentication via SMS is no longer available for anyone not already enrolled. If you are currently using SMS for Two-Factor Authentication, it will continue to work until disabled. Overall, we recommend switching to app-based authentication (if you have not already), which is supported by most password managers as well as dedicated apps.

🛠 Fixed

Embedded Instagram photos no longer have a play button.

Reporting a post to staff, via the moderation dialog in the mod queue, was broken. This is now fixed.

🚧 Ongoing

No ongoing incidents to speak of right now.

🌱 Upcoming

No upcoming launches to announce today.

Experiencing an issue? Check for Known Issues and file a Support Request if you have something new. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with other users.

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[ms-demeanor]

Genuine question, if Apple sucks and Google sucks, what phone do I get? Like, I'm a proponent of Fuck Google, but I have an Android cause I'm a bigger proponent of Fuck Apple, and I don't really have a great way to reconcile these feelings of conflict

I address this a bit in the degoogling pamphlet; iphones are genuinely better for privacy and I think the phone side of apple is less terribly reprehensible than the computer side if for no other reason than market forces prevent them from gouging quite as excessively. If you own an android your best bet is to turn off location data (everyone should be doing this for all of their devices anyway) uninstall as many apps as possible, force stop or disable as many apps as possible, deny every possible permission it is possible to deny, and never use your phone for sensitive work.

Your other option is to look into linux phones, which are out there, but don't have the same kind of app ecosystem or broad support as ios or android.

And the thing that I really think everyone should do that nobody actually likes hearing is to stop using your phone as anything but a phone. They can't track your data if you don't use it. I recognize that people need phones now in a way they didn't in the past (2fa is a huge part of this; people are either using SMS or apps to verify and that means it's not as easily dismissed as a necessity as it was 10 years ago) but there's a huge part of me that's like "I want to replace my smartphone with a jitterbug."

If you can't actually replace your smartphone with a jitterbug you can at least pretend that it isn't anything but a phone with a few limited extra tools.

(Also this is my "the boomers are right about..." thing: everyone should uninstall navigation applications and go back to reading maps and pre-planning their route to their destination)

[amalgamasreal]

Updated Personal Infosec Post

Been awhile since I've had one of these posts part deus: but I figure with all that's going on in the world it's time to make another one and get some stuff out there for people. A lot of the information I'm going to go over you can find here:

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/

So if you'd like to just click the link and ignore the rest of the post that's fine, I strongly recommend checking out the Privacy Guides. Browsers: There's a number to go with but for this post going forward I'm going to recommend Firefox. I know that the Privacy Guides lists Brave and Safari as possible options but Brave is Chrome based now and Safari has ties to Apple. Mullvad is also an option but that's for your more experienced users so I'll leave that up to them to work out. Browser Extensions:

uBlock Origin: content blocker that blocks ads, trackers, and fingerprinting scripts. Notable for being the only ad blocker that still works on Youtube.

Privacy Badger: Content blocker that specifically blocks trackers and fingerprinting scripts. This one will catch things that uBlock doesn't catch but does not work for ads.

Facebook Container: "but I don't have facebook" you might say. Doesn't matter, Meta/Facebook still has trackers out there in EVERYTHING and this containerizes them off away from everything else.

Bitwarden: Password vaulting software, don't trust the password saving features of your browsers, this has multiple layers of security to prevent your passwords from being stolen.

ClearURLs: Allows you to copy and paste URL's without any trackers attached to them.

VPN: Note: VPN software doesn't make you anonymous, no matter what your favorite youtuber tells you, but it does make it harder for your data to be tracked and it makes it less open for whatever public network you're presently connected to.

Mozilla VPN: If you get the annual subscription it's ~$60/year and it comes with an extension that you can install into Firefox.

Mullvad VPN: Is a fast and inexpensive VPN with a serious focus on transparency and security. They have been in operation since 2009. Mullvad is based in Sweden and offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for payment methods that allow it.

Email Provider: Note: By now you've probably realized that Gmail, Outlook, and basically all of the major "free" e-mail service providers are scraping your e-mail data to use for ad data. There are more secure services that can get you away from that but if you'd like the same storage levels you have on Gmail/Ol utlook.com you'll need to pay.

Tuta: Secure, end-to-end encrypted, been around a very long time, and offers a free option up to 1gb.

Mailbox.org: Is an email service with a focus on being secure, ad-free, and privately powered by 100% eco-friendly energy. They have been in operation since 2014. Mailbox.org is based in Berlin, Germany. Accounts start with up to 2GB storage, which can be upgraded as needed.

Email Client:

Thunderbird: a free, open-source, cross-platform email, newsgroup, news feed, and chat (XMPP, IRC, Matrix) client developed by the Thunderbird community, and previously by the Mozilla Foundation.

FairMail (Android Only): minimal, open-source email app which uses open standards (IMAP, SMTP, OpenPGP), has several out of the box privacy features, and minimizes data and battery usage.

Cloud Storage:

Tresorit: Encrypted cloud storage owned by the national postal service of Switzerland. Received MULTIPLE awards for their security stats.

Peergos: decentralized and open-source, allows for you to set up your own cloud storage, but will require a certain level of expertise.

Microsoft Office Replacements:

LibreOffice: free and open-source, updates regularly, and has the majority of the same functions as base level Microsoft Office.

OnlyOffice: cloud-based, free

FreeOffice: Personal licenses are free, probably the closest to a fully office suite replacement.

Chat Clients: Note: As you've heard SMS and even WhatsApp and some other popular chat clients are basically open season right now. These are a couple of options to replace those. Note2: Signal has had some reports of security flaws, the service it was built on was originally built for the US Government, and it is based within the CONUS thus is susceptible to US subpoenas. Take that as you will.

Signal: Provides IM and calling securely and encrypted, has multiple layers of data hardening to prevent intrusion and exfil of data.

Molly (Android OS only): Alternative client to Signal. Routes communications through the TOR Network.

Briar: Encrypted IM client that connects to other clients through the TOR Network, can also chat via wifi or bluetooth.

SimpleX: Truly anonymous account creation, fully encrypted end to end, available for Android and iOS.

Now for the last bit, I know that the majority of people are on Windows or macOS, but if you can get on Linux I would strongly recommend it. pop_OS, Ubuntu, and Mint are super easy distros to use and install. They all have very easy to follow instructions on how to install them on your PC and if you'd like to just test them out all you need is a thumb drive to boot off of to run in demo mode. For more secure distributions for the more advanced users the options are: Whonix, Tails (Live USB only), and Qubes OS.

On a personal note I use Arch Linux, but I WOULD NOT recommend this be anyone's first distro as it requires at least a base level understanding of Linux and liberal use of the Arch Linux Wiki. If you game through Steam their Proton emulator in compatibility mode works wonders, I'm presently playing a major studio game that released in 2024 with no Linux support on it and once I got my drivers installed it's looked great. There are some learning curves to get around, but the benefit of the Linux community is that there's always people out there willing to help. I hope some of this information helps you and look out for yourself, it's starting to look scarier than normal out there.

[regexkind]

I usually do not recommend apps because I hate things that look like advertisements, but I recently took a long journey down the road of "I want to backup an SMS conversation with tens of thousands of messages" and ran into so many roadblocks and pitfalls that I wanted to share the only thing that seems to have worked. I am also sort of hoping that people with more Android chops will say something like "oh you missed officially-supported option XYZ" or something like that.

1. Google will backup your SMS but unless you pay for Google One, your MMS will be lost—so all the photos etc in the thread are gone.

2. Moreover what is in Google One will not be downloadable into a format that you control. The only option is to port to a new phone.

3. Moreover even if you use Google Takeout to try to download that archive from Google One, the result is busted and doesn't include said media.

4. Many of the other apps have a "free trial" that is so hampered that you cannot actually make a single archive.

5. The app I found will export a massive XML file to one of several filesharing services—Google Drive, Dropbox, and Onedrive—as well as a local backup that can presumably be ported over USB. The app has an associated web viewer, which has problems with loading all the videos and pictures in a long text chain, presumably because it is trying to cram the entire thing into the DOM. If you unselect loading those, you can "click to load" them afterwards, and this works, although it can cause the scrolling to get lost.

6. However, the fact that it's an XML file means you can do SAX parsing of it, even though there could be 100MB videos in the "data" attribute of some of the tags (!). I've already been experimenting with doing that—written a little parser that sends everything to an SQLite3 database.

7. The format of the dump seems to be. "smses" is the root tag pair, and within it are tags of type "sms" and "mms". "mms" can contain two children, "parts" and "addrs". A "parts" tag can contain multiple "part"s which contain the "meat" including the "data" attributes, which seems to be where all my pics and videos have gone. An "addrs" tag contains "addr"s that seem to be just participating conversationalists. There's a hell of a lot of metadata stored in the attributes, not all of which I have deciphered beyond the datatype of each field.

8. I think I want to actually do the whole SQLite3 song-and-dance and just dump pictures and videos to some static folders. Then you could write a small local webserver to deliver a properly scrollable and searchable version. But right now, having a backup that I can save to a USB or several is really comforting.

[mitarbeiter]

Updates

🌟 Neu

Die Sichtbarkeitseinstellungen für Inhalte mit Content Label und für nicht jugendfreie Inhalte sind jetzt im Web und in der Android-App in „Nicht jugendfreie Inhalte anzeigen“ und „Nicht jugendfreie Inhalte unkenntlich machen“ zusammengefasst (die im Web festgelegten Einstellungen werden in der iOS-App übernommen). Die lokalisierte Version kommt in Kürze!

Die neue Einstellung „Einträge aus deinen Communitys einbeziehen“ ist jetzt in deinen Dashboard-Einstellungen (EN) verfügbar.

Communitys, die du stummgeschaltet hast, werden nun in der Seitenleiste im Web ausgegraut angezeigt.

Community-Admins und -Mods können jeden einzelnen Bericht für gemeldete Inhalte in ihrer Community einsehen.

Das Hochladen von Videos im AV1-Format wird jetzt unterstützt.

Die Zwei-Faktor-Authentifizierung per SMS ist für nicht registrierte Unser:innen nicht mehr verfügbar. Wenn du derzeit SMS für die Zwei-Faktor-Authentifizierung verwendest, funktioniert dies weiterhin, bis die Funktion deaktiviert wird. Insgesamt empfehlen wir den Wechsel zur appbasierten Authentifizierung (falls noch nicht geschehen) – diese wird von den meisten Passwort-Managern (EN) sowie dedizierten Apps (EN) unterstützt.

🛠 Behobene Bugs

Eingebettete Instagram-Fotos haben keinen Play-Button mehr.

Die Meldung eines Eintrags über das Moderationsdialogfeld in der Moderationswarteschleife hat nicht funktioniert. Dieser Fehler wurde behoben.

🚧 Baustelle

Derzeit keine nennenswerten Vorfälle.

🌱 Demnächst

Keine bevorstehenden Launches.

Tritt ein Fehler auf? Sieh mal bei den bekannten Problemen nach oder kontaktiere den Support und wir melden uns so schnell es geht!

Du hast Feedback für uns? Schau regelmäßig in die Updates und diskutiere mit der Community.

Du findest Tumblr Hammer und möchtest uns direkt mit etwas Geld unterstützen? Hol dir das Unterstützer:innen-Abzeichen aus dem TumblrMart!

[goddess-sareena]

WANNA SEE MORE OF THESE?

GOOD, BUT I wanna see some ca$h before I waste my time to please your fetish. If you're not willing to pay even the slightest amount of ca$h for these soles, I hereby make you an offer you'd have to be stupid to reject: a list of apps, extensions, programs and sites which generate passive income and by using my links / codes to sign-up for these and start using them, we both profit (you get a starter gift, I get a % of your income as a bonus with no deduction on your part) - if I see that my effort is being valued at least in the form of you not rejecting these profitable offers, I'll get back to posting stuff more regularly, otherwise I might delete my Tumblr entirely as it'd seems a complete waste of time; so here's the list:

Apps (Android)

Browser

Browser extensions

SMS (text messages)

↑ HERE YOU MUST ENTER THE CODE '' A70RM475 '' DURING REGISTRATION TO GET A BONUS OF $0.98

↑ HERE YOU MUST ENTER THE CODE '' 0NC61ZV4 '' DURING REGISTRATION TO GET A BONUS OF 0.25€

↑ HERE YOU MUST ENTER THE CODE '' mtVjLy8X '' DURING REGISTRATION

[medewerkers]

Wijzigingen

🌟Nieuw

De instellingen voor contentlabels en zichtbaarheid van content voor volwassenen zijn samengevoegd in de overzichtelijke instellingen ‘Content voor volwassenen weergeven’ en ‘Content voor volwassenen vervagen’ op het web en in de Android-app (instellingen voor het web worden doorgezet naar de iOS-app.)

Er is een nieuwe functie ‘Berichten van je community's opnemen’ beschikbaar in je dashboardinstellingen.

Community’s die je hebt gedempt worden nu gedimd in de zijbalk op het web weergegeven.

Beheerders en moderators van community’s hebben nu toegang tot alle individuele meldingen voor alle gemelde content in hun community.

Je kunt nu video’s in de AV1-indeling uploaden.

Multifactorauthenticatie via sms is niet langer beschikbaar voor gebruikers die niet zijn aangemeld. Als je op dit moment sms voor multifactorauthenticatie gebruikt, blijft dit werken totdat je het uitschakelt. Over het algemeen raden we aan om over te schakelen naar authenticatie op app-basis (als je dit nog niet hebt gedaan). Dit wordt ondersteund door de meeste wachtwoordmanagers (EN) en speciale authenticatie-apps (EN).

🛠️ Fixes

Opgenomen Instagram-foto’s hebben geen afspeelknop meer.

Het melden van een bericht aan de medewerkers via het moderatiescherm in de mod-wachtrij was stuk. Nu niet meer.

🚧 Nog mee bezig

Alles loopt momenteel op rolletjes.

🌱 Binnenkort

We hebben momenteel niets nieuws te melden.

Heb je een probleem? Dien een supportverzoek in (bij voorkeur in het Engels), dan nemen we zo snel mogelijk contact met je op!

Wil je feedback over iets geven? Ga dan naar onze Work in Progress-blog en ga in gesprek met de community.

Wil je Tumblr rechtstreeks met een bijdrage steunen? Bekijk dan de nieuwe Abonneebadge in TumblrMart!

[lostaff]

Ch-ch-changes

🌟 Novità

Le impostazioni di visibilità relative all'etichetta contenuti e ai contenuti per adulti sono ora state consolidate in impostazioni più semplici: "Mostra contenuti per adulti" e "Offusca contenuti per adulti" sia sul web che nell'app Android (le impostazioni sul web si rifletteranno anche nell'app iOS).

È ora disponibile una nuova impostazione "Includi post dalle tue Community" nelle impostazioni della dashboard.

Le Community che hai silenziato ora appariranno scolorite nella barra laterale sul web.

Gli amministratori e i moderatori delle Community possono ora vedere tutti i report individuali per ogni contenuto segnalato nella loro Community.

Ora supportiamo il caricamento di video nel formato AV1.

L'autenticazione a due fattori tramite SMS non è più disponibile per chi non è già registrato. Se stai attualmente utilizzando SMS per l'autenticazione a due fattori, continuerà a funzionare fino a quando non verrà disabilitata. In generale, consigliamo di passare all'autenticazione basata su app (se non l'hai già fatto) che è supportata dalla maggior parte dei gestori di password (pagina in inglese) e dalle app dedicate (pagina in inglese ).

🛠 Correzioni

Le foto di Instagram incorporate non hanno più il pulsante di riproduzione.

Segnalare un post allo staff tramite il dialogo di moderazione nella coda moderatori non funzionava. Questo, ora, è stato corretto.

🚧 In corso

Al momento non ci sono incidenti in corso di cui parlare.

🌱 In arrivo

Oggi non ci sono lanci in programma da annunciare.

Hai riscontrato un problema? Invia una richiesta di assistenza e ti risponderemo il prima possibile!

Vuoi condividere il tuo feedback su qualcosa? Dai un’occhiata al nostro blog Work in Progress e avvia una discussione con la Community.

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[mclqren]

what apps/websites do you use for your smaus? i love them sm!!

thank you sm for this! i'll leave below the resources i use :)

INSTRAGRAM

i use picsart to make the posts itself with the pictures, and then pinterest/instagram to find said images!

for the stories, i just find an image and go on the instagram app and make a story there, and save it to my cr!

TWITTER

i use tweetgen to make all of the tweets/replies

MESSAGES

i use memimessage for the imessages (i have no clue if it's available for android users or not) - the app is slightly glitchy but it does the job!

hope this is helpful - let me know if i've missed anything you want to know about! 💗💗

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

ARIIIII HI HELLO HEY !!! i got a bit busy (i hate assessments) but I'm back and I will soon read all the things I added to my tbr that you posted !! soooo excited hehe :3 I wanted to ask how you guys are playing phanpara.... i also want to see all the fun stuff and play.. ☹☹ manifesting the banners for you so you get them easily <333 - ❄ anon

❄️ ANON MY LOVE !! welcome back!!!! :3 i hope your assessments went well…. i’m proud of you for working hard 🫂🫂🫂 AND PLS don’t feel any pressure w the tbr, my fics will always be here when you have the time !!! <3333

BUT YES . phanpara ….. i’m not gonna lie to you anon getting it downloaded on ios was a whole trial of will but 😭😭 it’s actually. fairly simple. it’s easier on android (you just need to download a bunch of apps to emulate it!!) but on ios you need to manually change your appstore region to japan. and then download a vpn app. the biggest downside w ios is that there aren’t really any good translator apps!! :(( on android you can get bubble translate which lets you translate on screen text really easily…. but you won’t get anything like that on ios. so you won’t understand what the characters are saying (unless you take screenshots and throw them into an image translator)….

buuut if you’re still fine with that!! (assuming you have ios and not android)…. then i’ll leave the instructions down below :33 i’ll try to make them as clear as possible but just ask if you have any more questions!! i’d love to help!!! phanpara is sm fun…

ok so . here are all the steps !!

1) make a new appstore account!!

this step is easy :3 … i don’t. remember how i did it tho. pretty sure you just go to the appstore browser page?? or something.., and then you obv just need to add a name and a functional email address!

when you’ve made a new account, make sure that your ios is logged into it . just go to settings -> click your profile -> click on the appstore icon -> log out from your usual account and log in on the new one!! then you just need to press ”show account” to go to the next step.

2) change your region to japan!!

this is the complicated step. it’s not really that complicated though it just took me a while to figure it out 😭😭 you can use this site for reference if my descriptions confuse you lol

when you try to change your region to japan, you’ll be forced to add your name and your address. you can use your normal name (assuming it’s made up of english letters), but you’ll need to generate a jp address!! it’s actually kinda easy. this is the website i used!! it lists all the information you need in the correct order, so just . copy and paste into the settings . (i believe you’ll need to choose the prefecture manually, so just look at the prefecture name on the website and match it with the options ios gives you!!) street name, prefecture, city, zip code, phone number… etcetc. this may or may not be an illegal process but if you’re a gacha enjoyer i’m assuming you like living life on the edge.

you’ll also get the option to add a payment method, but you should be able to skip it by choosing the option at the bottom. this is important because otherwise it won’t let you change your region (unless you happen to have a japanese credit card hanging around)….

when you’ve entered all the necessary information, click the blue text in the top right corner to move on!! if you’ve done everything correctly you should be taken to the jp appstore :3

3) download phanpara + ovpnspider!!

now you’re almost done!!! downloading phanpara should be easy, just search for it in the appstore and. well. download it. when i did this i had to click through some ios popup page..??? but just . click your way through it. trial and error. until it lets you download the app <33

while phanpara is loading, download ovpnspider!! this one is super easy and doesn’t take up much space at all. when it’s finished downloading, just go into the app, go to the ”jp” folder and connect to one of the vpns!! the status has to be ”alive”, but any of them should work :3

4) play phanpara !!

now you should be good to go <33 the only issue is that the vpn can be a little difficult sometimes. phanpara might take a bit to load, and throw you out if the vpn disconnects, but as long as you just exit the app and change the vpn there shouldn’t be any issues. could be a little bothersome sometimes but you get used to it quickly!! just make sure that you’re connected to a vpn, enter phanpara, and play :33 for me it takes up roughly 5gbs of space, so make sure your phone can handle it!!

aaaaand that’s it <333 i’m sorry if this is just. gibberish 😭😭 or if i’m making it sound more complicated than it is …. and pls let me know if it works for you!!! i’d love to be friends in game if you make an account :33 then you’ll be able to use my gojo in battle … hehehe ……..

[putschki1969]

Hello Sarah,

I'm so sorry for the multiple posts, but I have some good news!

The first one is that I might have found a way around SKIYAKI's region issue with the sms verification, which (guess what) was also a problem for me. 😅

You need a good VPN that works on mobile devices through an app (nord VPN, express VPN, etc.) I connected to Tokyo and attempted the SMS verification through the SKIYAKI app and it worked!

The 2nd is I managed to become a member of Keiko's FC! After all these countless attempts and failures, perseverance finally paid off!

Some tips for those who want to become a member and may run through similar issues:

At step 2.2 -2.3 where I got stuck and couldn't receive the email to proceed. I tackled it by using a VPN and incognito tab on an android mobile device (on pc this didn't work) in order to get around the possible region lock.

For the name, I just followed your advice for the closest instance of it in Katakana. After I receive the membership ID, I will follow the tip of the fellow fan hkrwa to edit my name.

Be careful as the Lawson ticket registration is extremely case sensitive. A single space after the name can cause an error.

Then, it was the address issue. At that point, I thought of asking tenso support if I had made a mistake at the address step since I couldn't make their tutorial work.

After a couple back and forth e-mails with them (they thought I was trying to get a ticket 😑), they sent me an email with what to place at the address fields and... IT WORKED!!! 🥳🎉

This is what they sent:

City [足立区千住曙町]

Street address [４２－４]

Apartment name and room number [ＴＳ１３３０８２５　転送コム]

Maybe the width I used was wrong 🤔

For payment for both FCs I used my Revolut, which worked fine.

Anyway, my apologies for the long post and spamming your ask corner with posts all these days! I hope the above can be of help to fellow fans!

YAY!!! So happy it all worked out eventually. Thanks for the tip regarding the SKIYAKI SMS verification. I will try this method to register my new smartphone so I don't always have to bring my old one with me to Wakana's concerts. It was slowly becoming a hassle because the old phone required constant charging. I think it should be fine with my Surfshark VPN. *fingers crossed*

It's been so long since I registered my Keiko FC membership but maybe I struggled with similar issues. I don't remember T_T By now, I am almost used to constant errors when I first try to register on a Japanese site. It's always a lot of trial and error so I've learned to be patient and to try many different options. But it's honestly a case by case matter so there are no universal tips that I can give.

Thank you for providing all this info about your personal experience. I am sure it can be useful to people who want to join Keiko's fan club.

[bittersweetbark]

Just spent 3 hours searching for an app solution for my mother being able to easily let my mobile phone ring/talk to me (so I can get up in the night when she needs to get to the toilet) and - in case anyone is interested - I think this might work:

Slide2Talk Android app

It has a big button for her to push and my phone doesn't have to be running the whole night for it to work (like baby monitor apps). She'll have to talk in order to wake me up, it doesn't ring, and I hope she can remember that.

My first solution was the speed dial on the regular phone but she somehow doesn't manage to hold the key long enough, it doesn't work.

Other solutions work via SMS which would require a second phone card (she has a tablet).

Google "Find my phone" would work great but the "let it ring" command is a written line between others, no button, and she wouldn't be able to understand what she needs to press.

If anyone wants an idea for an app to program that apparently doesn't exist like that: Nothing but a huge button on the screen, sending a ringtone to another device, not using cell phone functions, only wifi/same network/bluetooth.

(There's a "find my device" app on F-Droid but it requires me to "host my own server, easy-peasy, just do that" gods I hate those GitHub people. I'm aware I'm talking to some of them right now but I'll pretend you're better than that.)