Create an Android Ringtone Picker Using the Ringtonemanager Class

[Wrichik Basu]

In this article, I will show you how to create a ringtone picker using the RingtoneManager class in Android. You will be able to get the list of tones, display them as RadioButton and let the user pick one tone from the list.
I expect you to have a basic knowledge of programming in Android. You should already have set up Android Studio and all the essential components required to build an Android app.
All code in this article will be in Java and not Kotlin.
An introduction to the RingtoneManager class:
Let’s say you are designing an alarm clock app, and you want the user to choose the alarm tone. Android comes with a set of tones that you can display to the user for this purpose. Tones in Android can be classified into a ringtone, alarm tone, and notification tone categories. Android comes with the RingtoneManager class so that you can access these tones.
In order to show the list of tones under...

Continue reading...

 

[Swamp Thing]

May I suggest an Insights tutorial aimed at people who would like to get started with Android programming (assuming they have some prior programming on other platforms). What are the dev toolkits available, and which ones are the easiest to get started with?

Just as an example, MIT App Inventor is easy to learn and is surprisingly versatile for a "toy" system -- but where should I go next if I want to use Android features that aren't exposed in its environment?

I think many people would have toyed with the idea of making a small utility for their own use. E.g. -- what would be required if I want to make a mini-app that would add the battery charge percentage to the screen-saver?

 

[Wrichik Basu]

May I suggest an Insights tutorial aimed at people who would like to get started with Android programming (assuming they have some prior programming on other platforms).

Good idea, but it cannot be one tutorial; if I write all the basics of Android in one article, it would become as long as LHC's technical design report.

One thing that kills the enthusiasm to some extent is that there is already a huge number of tutorials available on the net that will help you to get started with Android.

The biggest problem when one starts programming in Android is to set up Android Studio. If you have previously worked with Intellij IDEA and Gradle, then you will face lesser problems, but for someone going from NetBeans environment, it would be a big jump.

Anyways, thanks for the suggestion; I will surely look into it.

 

[Wrichik Basu]

I added some code to the article. A ringtone picker is incomplete if it does not play the tone you choose. Therefore, I added a media player to the activity.

 

[Swamp Thing]

Is it possible for a standard Android app (one built on the regular dev tools) to turn on and turn off the charging current? And if so, would it work without rooting the device?

 

[Wrichik Basu]

Is it possible for a standard Android app (one built on the regular dev tools) to turn on and turn off the charging current? And if so, would it work without rooting the device?

Unfortunately Android does not provide any standard way of controlling charge current. All you can do is read the battery status (charging/discharging), battery health, and charge percentage, and for these Android provides the BatteryManager class, and three broadcasts: ACTION_BATTERY_CHANGED, ACTION_BATTERY_LOW and ACTION_BATTERY_OKAY.

Even if your phone is rooted, there is no standard way of doing this, because rooting itself is considered non-standard by the Android devs. There are Magisk modules that can control charge by modifying the firmware.