Can’t uninstall an app – app is device administrator & must be deactivated

So I installed an Camera blocking app on Android and after a while I tried to uninstall it. It kept coming back! I tried force stopping it, using few different ways to uninstall it – it kept coming back.

Turns out the reason is this app became a device administrator (to be fair, I got this warning when installing from play store) and I guess it refused to uninstall itself. I even went to Playstore to uninstall it from there but instad of Uninstall option there was a Deactivate button!

pressing Deactivate didnt do anything except show me a message : This app is a device administrator and must be deactivated before uninstalling. Thanks for nothing, google!

Sneaky app!

How do I enable or disable a device administrator app?

The solution on Android 10+ was to find it in Device Administrator settings and turn it off.

It really varies where this setting is on different phones. I could not find it myself on my phone so I just opened Settings and searched for “admin” then clicked on “Device admin apps” and sure enough, the app was there!

So I clicked on app name and then “Deactivate this device admin app” and then uninstaleld the app and it didn’t come back.

Note: Device administrator app setting can be found in various places in Settings. If you cant find it by search, open Settings then try one of these places:

  • Security & location > Advanced > Device admin apps.
  • Security > Advanced > Device admin apps.
  • Location and Security > Device Administrator
  • Security > Device administrators

Create a WiFi hotspot in Windows 7 and share Internet connection

If you don’t have WiFi router you can still share your internet connection via your PC. I was using connectify.me software and it did the job but it felt bulky,it disconnected at random times (free version) and my laptop fan was on full speed all the time,which was slowing down my PC. I was very surprised when I learned how easy it is to do it by yourself (on windows 7 at least). All you need to do is enter few commands and enable ICS and that’s it! What is great is that you can use this connection with your Nexus 7 or any other smartphone.

1. Click Start and type cmd, then right click cmd.exe and select “run as Administrator”:
cmd run as administrator

2. Run this command (I used “My net” as SSID and “elcoderino” as pass so replace it with your values)

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow "ssid=My net" "key=elcoderino" keyUsage=persistent

This will create “Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport adapter” and will also set up your hostednetwork. Now you need to enable Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) or Network Bridging for this new adapter (don’t worry, it is just few clicks. I enabled ICS connection but you can also bridge networks)

3. Now you simply start or stop new hosted network with these commands (please keep in mind that cmd.exe needs to be “run as administrator” – check step 1)

// to start hostednetwork type
netsh wlan start hostednetwork
// to stop hostednetwork type
netsh wlan stop hostednetwork 

and that’s it! You should now have a working WiFi hotspot! Try connecting with your smartphone or tablet. Why install or even pay for the software when you can have it with few simple steps?

Google Sync Turned Off on my Android! How do I turn on Google Sync?

Yesterday I noticed that all my Google services were not being synced on my Nexus 7 (Android 4.2.2) anymore. Emails were not automatically downloaded, Calendar,Chrome, contacts etc were not updating. On top of that I was getting weird “Sync was unsuccessful” (or something like that) messages on my PC’s browser. Sure enough – sync was turned off on my Android tablet. For some reason option “turn on sync” is not easily accessible or at least not where you would expect it. If you go to Settings -> accounts then you will only be able to manually sync those accounts but not turn it on.

To turn on auto sync you have to go to

Settings -> Data usage -> Menu (top right corner, 3 small squares) -> check Auto-sync data

Here is the screenshot of the Menu:
turn on google sync auto-sync

Fix the “no connection” in your Google Play / Market with date change

There are several reasons why you can get “No connection / Retry” error message in your Google Play or Market. Some are really a connection, wifi or 3G related and some aren’t. There is another reason that might give you this message and it is not really related to connection. This happened to me when I had Samsung Spica.  Wifi was on but I still got the “No connection / Retry” message. After trying nearly every “hack” solution, reinstalling Spicagenmod, downgrading Google Play to Market  etc I still got the same error. I only realized that the solution is much simpler after I opened Opera Mini that gave me this error :

Connection Failed : Verification of server certificate failed. Please check the date setting in your device

I went straight to Settings -> Date & Time  and it was set to year 2005! The reason why this happened is because Spica battery was really old and every time I turned the phone off the date reset itself to 2005. I changed date back to correct date and everything started working instantly – Google Play / Market and Opera. I wish I knew this before I spent few hours with every other fix possible.

As I mentioned there are many reasons why you can get “No connection / Retry”. If this doesn’t solve your problem then unfortunately it’s something different.