AMS Notifications - becoming a pain in the backside.

[DavidR]

I have a high pain threshold for popups/etc., but recently there are two that are driving me bonkers.

1.  Scan completed, see what we have found (or words to that effect).  This really is nothing more than a marketing push.  If AMS runs a scan, if it found something I would expect it to alert immediately if there was a detection.  Otherwise has it really found anything at all.

2.  I keep getting bugged to clear junk, now I suppose that would be reasonable if there was a load of junk (but what is defined as junk).  But I'm getting hassled to remove 12MB of junk which is infinitesimal when compared to the amount of RAM, I just swipe it away from the notifications. 

This can go on for days still at 12MB and I had a massive jump to 13MB the other day and I ignored it yet again.  Today I got another notification and it was back to 12MB, but I do get annoyed by this death by a thousand notifications.  Even more so I will never remove junk unless I have detailed information on what this junk is.

Since I haven't allowed AMS to proceed with the junk removal to find out if it will tell me what that junk is or will it just get rid of it.

I have been using Avast for windows for over 14 years and AMS from not long after it was first released.

[Tereza V.]

Does disabling these two help?
1. AMS Menu > Settings > Notifications & alerts > Realtime protection > Scan complete popups
2. AMS Menu > Settings > Notifications & alerts > Performance > Safe Clean

[DavidR]

Thanks fir that.
1.  I had previously considered switching that off but wondered if it might also stop alerts.

2.  I have now done that, but noticed that it stated 'Notifies you if 50+ MB of junk are found on your device.'  As I mentioned I had been getting notifications of 12 and 13MB previously and today 17MB.  That is well below the 50MB threshold mentioned in the AMS settings.

In theory I shouldn't have been getting these notifications to start with ?

Not only that I had been into the Android Settings and removed some Apps I hadn't used in some time along with some data files.  So I was somewhat surprised to find AMS reporting 17MB of junk, this also made me wonder just what is classified as junk.

[Tereza V.]

Oh, you're right, sorry for not realizing the discrepancy.
Let me check with developers after the weekend.
I will also ask them for an exact definition of "junk" in terms of AMS. As far as I know, it concerns mainly cache files.

[DavidR]

Thank you.

[Tereza V.]

Hi again.

1. Disabling "Scan complete popups" will not prevent the important alerts - if the app finds something harmful, you will get the nice large popup to warn you of the danger. You can test it by downloading this harmless app (virus test):
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.androidantivirus.testvirus

2. It was confirmed to me that these notifications should only appear when the junk exceeds 50MB. Could you please test, whether the same issue happens in the latest Beta version of the app (to find out more about Beta testing, please read the FAQ article: goo.gl/Wr16je) and let me know the result? Then we shall proceed.

3. What is junk in AMS:
- app cache
- advertisement cache
- used installation files
If you tap on "Clean junk", let the analysis complete and than tap "Safe clean", you will see what exactly AMS wants to remove (i.e. how many MB every of the items has)

[DavidR]

I will have a look into this, although I have taken part in the avast for windows beta testing in the past, I'm not so keep in the AMS beta on my phone.  Mainly as my desktop system is much more bullet proof in the way of a backup and recovery strategy and I don't feel that confident on my android 8.1.0 - Nexus 6p phone.