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

Do You Want Multiple Wickr Accounts?

How to get another Wickr Account To Work

By Strictly-Software

If you are like me you might have an Android phone with Wickr the encrypted chat app installed on it.

However if you have been blocked by someone, locked out, forgotten your password or just want another Wickr account it's not easy as Wickr is tied to your Google account and device and if you try and install it from Google Play Store on a different device it will just say "Already Installed". 

You have to either remove the app from your phone and start again or use a different phone with a different Google Account linked to it as Google Play always knows what devices you have installed and which apps are on it.

I tried the obvious route first, use an Android Emulator such as NOX, and then created a new Google Account and Email address and then went to the PlayStore to download Wickr. The only thing was the link was broken and it kept sending me to an error page.

I tried downloading the APK file from a site I searched for Wickr Download APK, but even after installing it, it got to the 99% of "encrypting your device" e.g my NOX Emulator on Windows 8.1, and just hung forever.

Therefore I couldn't get the emulator to work. I could have installed another one but whats the point of slowing down a PC with multiple Android emulators just to watch free TV from Navisport etc?

Therefore I actually did a search for "Download Wickr For Windows 8.1" and all I got were help articles telling me to download further emulators and then install from Google Play. This was obviously a no go.

Therefore I actually tried the following which did work on Windows 8.1 from this link.

The Windows 10 link is the first one on the left. The rest are APK, Mac and IOS files.

To install on a Windows 8.1 machine do the following, without the need for an Android Emulator.

1. Create a new Google Account, username, password, add it to the 12 you already have.
2. Log out of any Google account you might be in e.g especially if you are using Chrome.
3. Go to this link https://pro-download.wickr.com/#/version/pro
4. Select "Windows - For use with Windows 10"  and download the application.
5. Install the MSI file called WickrMe-5.4.3.msi.
6. It may take a while but it should start to install, even on Windows 8.1.
7. Once installed, create a new Wickr account and username.
8. Find your old contacts and start chatting from your laptop or PC.

The direct download link can be found here if you click here.

It works for me, so it should work for you, don't spend hours trying to getting your emulator to install an APK file that just hangs. Try the Windows 10 Desktop MSI file first.

By Strictly-Software