App Manager v2.6.2 Stable

This patch release contains critical bug fixes for the back up/restore feature.

- [Feature] Added new batch operation: clear cache
- [Feature] Back up permission flags (restoring is not currently possible)
- [Feature] Display permission flags on long clicking on a supported permission item
- [Feature] Improved uses features tab: Unavailable features have light-red color, unavailable but required features have dark-red color
- [Feature] Updated focusability in some pages to improve keyboard/remote navigation
- [Feature] Updated libraries and trackers
- [Fix] Added backward compatibility for ADB over TCP
- [Fix] Fixed filter out in log viewer
- [Fix] Fixed MIUI-specific app ops issue in Android 11
- [Fix] Fixed relative path issue in back up/restore
- [Fix] Fixed returning the wrong manifest if the APK has multiple manifests
- [Fix] Added workaround for Android KeyStore bug in older Android versions
- [Crash] Display error message instead of crashing in the activity interceptor page
- [Crash] Fixed random crashes in the app info page
- [Crash] On trying to uninstall an app in Android Lollipop
- [Crash] When configuring RSA encryption or signing info
- [Crash] When a package has changed but the executor has been shutdown
- [Crash] When a package has changed after exiting its app info page
- [Crash] NPE on running apps page

Note: Aurora Store 4.0.6 reverted promotional apps, therefore, the support has been re-added. Only 4.0.5 is unsupported.

Introducing App Manager Community

Certain features offered by App Manager could be very useful if the experienced users shared their configurations and tips which would allow a new user or a complete newbie to get started quickly. Currently, this is very limited because we do not have any dedicated forum nor any central repository where the information may be readily available. We do have a documentations site, but it is understandable that many users do not actually read them. So, we concluded that involving users is the best approach to solve these problems. In future, we may also add the option to interact with the repositories in App Manager so that users can access these configurations directly in the app.

Currently, the repositories are hosted at GitHub: https://github.com/AMCommunity. However, we've planned to extend this to GitLab and Codeberg in the future.

The repositories
Currently, there are three repositories:
- Exported Rules: App specific rules exported using App Manager's export function
- Profiles: Exported profiles from App Manager
- Tips & Tricks: Tips and tricks on App Manager

How to contribute
Contributing instructions are available in the readme file of each repository.

Additionally, if you are interested in becoming a member of the community, you can add a comment here.

Official F-Droid Client users only.

App Manager v2.6.2 has now been released on F-Droid. Due to a bug on the official F-Droid client, you might not be able to see this in the update page if you also have IzzyOnDroid repository. Please, update manually by searching for App Manager using the search button.

Announcing the Discontinuation of Metro.

You may be already aware that Metro hasn’t been receiving update for some time. I’ve already made some changes but didn’t get the time to provide an update. So, you may get another (and the final) update soon.

Why I started it in first place?
Retro Music is the best open source (but non-libre) music player for Android with many features and screens, and an app that I used occasionally. Therefore, I thought it would be nice to put it on F-Droid by making it truly open source. So, I did it.

What went wrong?
Retro Music or Phonograph or any other forks of Phonograph, or any open source music app for Android relies on Android Media Store, which has many limitations, and the false-positive ratio seems to be ever on the increase (in fact, most of the music files I have in my phone aren’t recognized by the stupid Media Store). This situation is very familiar to the Poweramp users, which, unlike these music players, does not rely on Media Store. As a developer, my purpose of developing an open source app is to use it on my device in a regular basis, and Retro/Metro isn’t something I can use because of this limitation. So, I was very disappointed, and my disappointment led to the discontinuation of the app.

What’s the future of open source music player for Android?
Personally, I don’t see any future right now. Of course, there are many open source music players available to date, but every app I’ve ever tested relies on Media Store which is a deal-breaker. So, for me, Poweramp is currently the best option. However, in the future, I might work on an app that wouldn’t rely on Media Store, but the chances are very remote unless I see interests from other developers and contributors, because massive projects like this cannot be succeeded without massive collaboration. If you are such a developer or contributor, you can send me an email at muntashirakon-at-riseup-dot-net specifying your field of interests i.e., a developer should have previous working knowledge of Java, C/C++ and JNI and other contributions should be purely on marketing and finance. DO NOT bother me unless you fall in any of this category.

I know this is a disappointing news, but this is the reality.

App Manager v2.6.3 Stable

This patch release contains bug fixes for ADB mode and back up/restore.

- [1-Click Ops] Fixed missing applications
- [ADB] Eliminated the need for entering a KeyStore password. For the first time at startup or every time data is cleared from App Manager, a new Keystore password will be generated and the user will be asked to note down the password
- [App Details] Display process name in the components tabs, fixed displaying duplicate permissions
- [App Info] Display warning if App Manager is being disabled, fixed freezing on pressing refresh
- [Backup] Fixed extracting tar files backed up before v2.5.23
- [Batch Ops] Merged enable/disable apps and clear cache/data
- [Installer] Added fallback method for checking signing keys and fixed various crashes
- [Interceptor] Added camera actions
- [Main] Cancel selection on pressing the back button if the selection mode is active
- [Running Apps] Fixed displaying apps running in another processes, filtering issues and returning empty list on quick refresh
- Added support for opening apps via ACTION_SEND i.e. file sharing
- Fixed random crashes during and after app initialization
- Fixed “select all” button behaviour to select only the currently filtered items instead of all items
- Fixed day/night theming issues in various places

F-Droid users only.

App Manager v2.6.3 is now available on F-Droid. Make sure to restart your device after updating the app.

App Manager v2.6.4 Stable

This patch release contains bug fixes and feature improvements for the app installer and activity interceptor. This also fixes the caching issues where the files were erroneously cached in the “files” directory instead of the “cache” directory.

- [1-Click Ops] Added “trim caches from all apps” option
- [Activity Interceptor] Added options to copy/paste intents, added fields to insert identifier (Android Q+), class and package name, allowed opening intent via root, added two new extra types: Array of URI and List of URI
- [App Details] Enabled opening non-exported activity via Activity Interceptor (via root), included “View in Settings” as a horizontal button if root/ADB is not available, improved “running apps” dialog
- [Docs] Open docs URL if Android WebView is unavailable
- [Installer] Added support for installing multiple apps at the same time via the share option in any file manager, added option to block trackers after installing an app, enabled downgrading in no-root mode, improved loading dialog, displays app info icon when installation is completed
- [Log Viewer] Fixed log recording widget and other crashes
- [Locale] Fixed punctuation issues in French
- [Main] Enabled running apps filter in non-root mode, fixed freezing issue,
- [Running Apps] Fixed detecting running apps
- [Scanner] Prevent deleting APK files which aren't cached in the scanner page, display a footnote for second degree trackers in tracker details dialog
- [Settings] Sorted app list by the app label (or app name) in the app installer selection dialog, added option to run installer always in the background, added the option to limit the number of parallel operations (useful for low-end devices)

Full list of changes: v2.6.3...v2.6.4

App Manager is participating in Hacktoberfest 2021!

Existing and new contributors are welcome to participate in this year's Hacktoberfest!

You can find the event details and rules in the official site here: https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com

You can register here: https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/register

Our rules:
- Rules described in the contributing guidelines must be followed.
- Solve any issues marked with hacktoberfest. If you have a new idea, create an issue first. We will decide if this should be part of this event or not.
- The PR must contain a new feature, or a major fix or feature improvements. Minor fixes and/or feature improvements will be merged but they won't be part of the event. Minor fixes include fixing simple logical errors, UI, localisation or grammatical issues, and minor feature improvements include adding useless words/sentences in documentations or app strings, useless UI changes.
- Spammers will be blocked permanently.

Issue: A comprehensive list of applications that cannot be fully backed up or restored using App Manager

App Manager's backup system is designed in such as way that it can back up or restore any ordinary apps without issues. However, now and then, a few apps do not work as expected, especially the ones that utilise Android KeyStore. As a result, it might be useful to create a database of apps which cannot be backed up or restored using App Manager and even if they can, what caveats a user might look for.

Purpose
1. User can easily look for an app by either its package name (and label) to find potential problems. It is necessary that we also cover all the apps that are known to work. But this will be stored in a separate list (because we don't need it for other usage).
2. Bundle the list with App Manager in the future so that the user can be warned. By default, backing up apps with KeyStore is disabled, but in the future this could be replaced by this list so that a user may not need to be well-known about the KeyStore business.
3. Most importantly, understand the error pattern and fix them if possible.

How it will work
For portability as well as readability, each package name will have a separate JSON file with the format package-name.json. This file will contain stable version information only. The definition of stable is different here. Stable-ness of a version is defined by the following criteria (all have to be matched):
1. It's not a minor release. The definition of minor release varies from app to app, and it's left to the user to decide which is which. An example could be Poweramp v2 and Poweramp v3. Two are the major releases, and their features vary a lot. Restoring v2 is easier than restoring v3. But the restoring process is consistent on both releases i.e. the method of restoring any version of v3 is the same.
2. The method of restoring the release is the same as the previously documented version.
3. Restoring didn't work in the previous versions but it is working now.

JSON schema
Will be updated later on. In general, the JSON schema should be well structured, informative and localised (so that users of other language can understand the instructions too). In order to reduce burden on the translators, stresses shall be put on creating keywords and possibly, an optional app and version-specific summary. Another challenge would be detecting version xxx or later for an app that uses special code such as the popular Google versioning.

Location of repository and files
The repository will be located under the organisation @amcommunity and (since I cannot afford a dynamic website or a domain,) a static website will be generated based on the json files and will be available as a subdomain under GitHub.

Purpose of this issue
To discuss what the JSON would contain to plan for a JSON schema. It is also my intention to create a JSON rule generator so that novice user can easily report issues in the repository.

Any users or testers who are actively trying back up/restore feature of App Manager are welcome to comment here. Thanks.

For developers.

Many of you have tried to use FuzzyWuzzy/JavaWuzzy for fuzzy string matching which is unusable in most projects (even in GPL-3.0 ones) due to its license (GPL-2.0-only). There’s a better library written in C++ called RapidFuzz-CPP with MIT license. I am working on a new project called RapidFuzz-Android which is basically a wrapper around this project (Apache-2.0 licensed). Though I named it Android, it can be build for other platforms too (see the README file). The purpose of the project is to provide a permissive-licensed fuzzy string matching library for Java using a faster way by utilizing the efficiency of JNI as well as add fuzzy searching capabilities in App Manager’s search engine.

App Manager v2.6.5 Stable

This patch release contains new features as well as several bug fixes for Android 12.

- [1-Click Ops] Fixed displaying apps from other users.
- [App Details] Enabled advanced options for disabling components in the components tabs. The options will be displayed if you long click on the block/unblock button.
- [App Details] Fixed displaying the details of an app without a valid signature.
- [App Usage] Display usage for all the configured apps.
- [Android 12] Fixed crash while installing apps.
- [Android 12] Fixed displaying SSAID, app ops.
- [Backup] Fixed crash if the backup filename contains colons.
- [Device Info] Display user ID alongside user name.
- [Help Page] Fixed crash if no WebView is available.
- [Main] Replaced check boxes and radio buttons with chips in the list options.
- [Profile] Fixed displaying apps from other users.
- [Remote Server] Fixed crash if IPv6 addresses are disabled.
- [Scanner] Detect native libraries and trackers.
- [Scanner] Fixed scanning split APK files.
- [Settings] Added an option to select default blocking method. Located at Settings > Rules > Default blocking method.

Full list of changes: v2.6.4...v2.6.5

Apologies for the late release. I was very ill this month and was unable to even look at my laptop’s screen.

App Manager v2.6.5.1 Stable

This update provides fixes for a few critical errors or crashes happened due to porting issues in v2.6.5.

- [App Details] Fixed crash on clicking on the scanner button.
- [Installer] Display detailed error or status message after trying to install the app (if available).
- [Installer] Fixed crash if the installer activity is closed forcefully with an on-going foreground installation.
- [Manifest Viewer] Fixed crash on opening any APK files.