Samsung Phones SmartView Application Bug

Fixing Problems With Samsung Phone SmartView Application

By Strictly-Software 

I have a Samsung Galaxy S8 mobile phone and recently I have had issues with the inbuilt SmartView application that allows you to mirror the screen of your phone to nearby devices such as Televisions, Rokus, Chromecasts and other Wifi enabled devices.

You access the app by using the swipe down settings panel at the top of the phone. It's on the second page accessed by swiping left and it's in the top right hand corner. See the below screenshot of my settings panel.

Whilst many applications that let you play videos have a "Play with external device" option that allows you to select the useful app AllCast before the device to then show the video on, some apps don't have a Chromecast beam square or option to play on an external device. 

This is where mirroring your screen is useful as you can just mirror yours phones screen to a TV and anything you do on the phone is then shown on the TV. The downside is that you can't use the phone or other apps whilst mirroring without your TV showing that app. However if you can use AllCast 
you can play a TV show, film or video from your phone on your TV but still use your phone to access other apps or make calls.

Up until last week everything worked fine, I could select SmartView and the apps little loading icon spins before local devices are shown to pick from. In my lounge I can pick from my Samsung 4k TV or the Chromecast device attached to it. This also allows me to beam videos from apps like YouTube that I don't want to mirror my phones screen to, or apps like sporting apps that don't have options to use AllCast to beam with.

In another room I have a Panasonic TV which also has a Roku attached and both could be used by AllCast or my phone to mirror to.The SmartView app used to be able to pick all 4 devices up and I could choose which TV or device to mirror my phone to.

However for some reason as I was watching a football game by mirroring my screen so the app could show the game on a big screen I left my pad. The connection was disconnected but when I came back I tried to use SmartView to re-connect it to my TV, but no devices were shown as available. In fact it didn't even look like it was scanning the room to find any devices to play to. Nothing was spinning in the corner and only the About Us and Contact us options were shown.

I filed numerous bug reports using Samsung's useful Members app and I had a reply that told me to go into System Settings, Applications, Select Show System Apps, choose SmartView then clear its cache. I did this but it didn't fix anything.

However tonight I came across a fix. I had to turn developer options on. You do this by going into Settings then About Phone and in there select Software Information before clicking on the Build Number about 7 times and it will give you the Developer Options.

In there you scroll down to Networking and turn on the option called "Wireless Display Certification"..

I then went into SmartView and it started spinning again, however a new panel appeared at the bottom with numerous WiFi connection options that I just ignored.

I then just scrolled to the bottom of these options and there appeared my selection of devices, in this case my TV and Chromecast.

And on choosing one, once again my phones screen was now mirrored to my TV.

I have no idea why this worked or what stopped SmartView from working in the first place but by doing my own debugging and playing around with the networking options I managed to solve what Samsung Tech Support couldn't. 

Hopefully this fix may help other Samsung phone users who have the same issue as me.

By Strictly-Software

© 2020 Strictly-Software

Update to the Twitter Hash Tag Scanner Application

This is just a note to anyone who has already bought or thinking of buying my Twitter Hash Tag Scanner application from my www.strictly-software.com site.

I have just updated the code so that it gets round the new Twitter follower blocking actions they have implemented. If you have purchased it you might have noticed lately that you were getting the value 0 for all the accounts followers. This is because Twitter had changed the format of their source code.

The new version should get round this change and return correct follower counts.

If you have already purchased the application (and I know if you have from my list of payments) then you can request a new version for free.

Otherwise feel free to pay the small fee of £10 to obtain such a brilliant SEO and Social Media analysis application from my website: http://www.strictly-software.com/applications/twitter-hash-tag-hunter.

Twitter Hash Tag Scanner SEO Application

Introducing the first version of my Twitter Hash Tag Scanner Application

The Strictly HashTag Hunter is a Windows form application that allows you to find the most relevant HashTags and Twitter accounts for a variety of specified search terms and keywords.

This application is ideal for people who have just created a Twitter account and want to analyse their own site specific keywords to find #HashTags they should be following or using themselves.

For instance you might have a blog or site that uses an AutoBlogging tool like my Strictly TweetBot Wordpress Plugin and you might want to set up various AutoTweets with relevant HashTags that are related to certain keywords and content snippets.

This tool also helps you find the most important Twitter accounts that you should be following as it analyses those people that are using the keywords or sentences that you enter on Twitter at that point in time to find the most popular HashTags related to those words as well as the accounts that are using them the most.

Obviously the time of day you run your scan will affect the results as different people Tweet at different times of the day but you will see from the results which Twitter accounts have the most followers and therefore worth following for your own account.

The primary aim of this tool is to help you save time trying to work out which #HashTags to use for your own Tweets as well as working out which @accounts to follow for your own Twitter account.

The Strictly Twitter Hash Tag Hunter is built as a windows application that runs on your own desktop and it hooks into Twitters API to obtain the results. It is perfect for SEO and Social Media analysts as well as people with a new Twitter account who don't know which hash tags and accounts they should be following to make an impact on the social scene.

Screen 1 shows how you enter one or more search terms that you want to find information for. These terms can be anything but if you are looking to utilise this tool with my Strictly TweetBot Wordpress Plugin then you should be looking to find the #HashTags and @Accounts to follow on Twitter related to the key terms your website is based on.

For example if you were running a site about Horse Racing and wanted to find out which Twitter @Accounts to follow and which #HashTags to use in your Tweets you would enter a number of search terms like so:

Horse Racing
Kempton Park
fromthestables.com
Free Racing Tips 

Enter each keyword or search term on it's own line.

Once you have entered each term on it's own line you click the "Search" button and the Scanner gets to work analysing your keywords and finding related Twitter information.

For each search term and keyword it will scan the Twitter API for those words looking for the most popular #hashtags that are related to those keywords.

It will also find the Twitter accounts that make the most use of these terms before ordering the accounts by the number of followers each account has and the hash tags by the number of times they are referenced by those accounts.

On completing the Scan

Screen 2 shows the most popular hash tags found for the search terms that were entered.

The most popular hash tags found for the entered search terms and keywords.

Screen 3 shows the most followed Twitter accounts that used the terms you searched for.

The most followed Twitter accounts for the entered search terms and keywords.

Following Accounts or Hash Tags

Once the Twitter Scan has completed and you have looked at the results you can simply click on the Account or Twitter Link column value to open up the desired URL in your default browser.

Screen 4 shows you selecting the desired Account you want to examine on Twitter.

Selecting an account to examine


Screen 5 shows the http://twitter.com page opening in your browser where you can decide whether or not the account or hash tag is worth following.

Viewing the account in Twitter and following them


If you are already logged into Twitter at the time then it's just a simple matter of clicking the "Follow" button in the top right of the screen and your own Twitter account will now be following the account you opened.


About the Twitter Hash Tag Scanner Application

The application is a multi-threaded standalone executable Windows application and it has been built with users and Twitter in mind so that the Twitter API is not overloaded and abused and that you can continue to get all the information you need from their service.

A progress bar keeps you updated with the amount of scans it has carried out as well as the number of accounts and hashtags it has already found matching your search terms.

If for whatever reason Twitter blocks your requests (for example if you were hammering their API with dozens of search terms in one scan) then the application will slow down the amount of the requests it makes and increase the delays between requests. It also has some built in methods for bypassing certain blocking methods as well as the ability to access the information from other sources.

I am hoping to expand this tool over the years and I have had great feedback from both novice users who have found it very useful in deciding who to follow when they first start to use Twitter as well as SEO experts who utilise social media and Twitter all the time for marketing purposes.

As an introductory offer I am offering this application for the same price as a small donation of only £10.00 and you can buy this application from my application order page.

Tune Up Utilities 2010

Tune Up Utilities 2010

I don't usually promote products other than the odd Google advert and in reality that seems to be a waste of time considering I make literally pennies. However one of the products that I do admit to liking and help advertise is the TuneUp Utilities application which takes the best features of all the other clean up and performance tuning apps that are available and puts them into one nice easy to use interface.

You have all the features that other tune up tools such as CCleaner, Comodo and Defraggler have and a lot more. It also combines network and browser optimisations that well known plugins such as FireTune use as well as TCP/IP optimisers such as the DrTCP. It also puts all the important windows configuration options that manage memory, errors, start ups, background processes, programs, display settings and a whole lot more into the same application which means you should never really need another tune up utility once this has been installed.

A break down of some of the features:

• Disk Defragmenter
• Disk Cleaner
• Registry Cleaner
• Memory optimiser
• TCP / IP optimiser
• Internet Browser optimiser
• File Shredder
• Program manager (add / remove programs, shortcuts, start ups etc)
• Windows Settings manager
• Process manager
• One Click maintenance
• Maintenance Scheduler

It also has some features to increase your computers security, manage network traffic and important computer configuration options that can help improve performance. In fact it seems to have wrapped up all the important settings that you would ever need or want to change in a very nice user interface.

If you don't want to spend time going through the many levels of available settings there is the easy option of "One Click maintenance" that will check your system for potential issues and then offer solutions in an easy to understand dialog.

Another feature I quite like, which is probably more to do with the name than any perceived benefit it may give is "Turbo Mode". This is a big round button that you can press when you want a performance boost and it basically just ensures that the process your working on at the time gets the necessary resources and disables CPU and memory hogging processes such as disk de-fragmentation.

The price of the application is £29.99 but you can install it on up to 3 computers and this is a small price to pay for the convenience of having every feature wrapped up in one easy to use interface.

If you are looking for a program that can aid your PC's performance then I would suggest taking a look at Tune Up Utilities first but if you are not interested in paying for your tools and are willing to spend the time tweaking your settings manually then have a read of the following articles which discuss PC, Network and browser optimisation techniques:

http://blog.strictly-software.com/search?q=PC+tuning