App Manager v3.0.2 Stable

This release contains a number of bug fixes.

- Removed dark theme hacks for the WebView in the help page
- Fixed loading dynamic colours in the splash screen
- Fixed shortcut creation issues in some launchers
- Prevented a crash in the ADB mode which used to occur on attempting to fetch application data size
- Prevented a nasty crash used to occur when an activity is needed to be recreated.

Full Changelog: v3.0.1...v3.0.2

App Manager is participating in Hacktoberfest 2022

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.com/

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

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 shall decide if this should be part of this event or not.
- The PR must contain a new feature, or a major fix or feature improvement. Minor fixes and/or feature improvements may 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, unimportant UI changes.
- Spammers will be blocked indefinitely from both the event and the projects.

Participating projects
This year, you will be able to contribute to a number of projects maintained by me:
1. https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager
2. https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/SetEdit
3. https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/BatteryChargeLimiter
4. https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/android-debloat-list

Note
In App Manager, translations are managed via Weblate. So, we cannot accept any PR containing translations, but in the other projects such PRs are accepted.

Take this moment to contribute to your favourite projects and get recognition at the same time!

GitHub discussion

Captive Portal Controller v1.0.0

Control how Android detects captive portal.

NOTE: In many OEM provided ROMs, it is NOT a privacy feature because these ROMs are able to bypass captive portal settings.

Features
- Enable/disable captive portal detection
- Set captive portal servers (with presets from GrapheneOS, Kuketz and Google)
- A quick setting tile to toggle captive portal detection
- Less than 100KB app as you don't need to use it frequently.

Source code: https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/CaptivePortalController

Why this app is needed?

Android performs connectivity checks for two purposes:
1. To check whether the device connected to the Internet
2. to handle captive portals.

Android does this by sending out request to a remote server that is supposed to be run all the time. This remote server, after receiving a request, generate a 204 message (i.e. empty message) which lets the device know that you’re connected to the Internet. This seems legit in plainsight. However, sending this message means the remote server receives your IP address and user agent, and this request is made all through the day! If this is not enough for you, this request is always sent to the remote server using your network, thereby, bypassing the VPN that you may have been using. And the best of all, this request is sent to our good(?) friend, Google. The well known big brother organisation with a lot of evil activities including but not limited to the military-led covert operations in the middle east, it appears, is capable of tracking you day and night via connectivity checks. Mullvad developers have requested an option to disable this check which is, of course, refused by Google.

This app attempts to provide a solution by offering you a few alternative options:
1. Disable connectivity checks completely (also disables captive portal detection as a byproduct)
2. Keep connectivity checks enabled but with different providers

We suggest that you do both for maximum safety, that is,
- Disable captive portal detection (enable it only when you need via the Quick Setting tile or the app)
- Configure four servers (only one server before Android Oreo/8)

We have also supplied presets (including Google’s in case you want to go back to it). To use them, start typing http in the URL fields in the app.

This app is mostly feature-complete. However, I might still have to work on a thing or two.

References
1. https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2022/10/10/android-leaks-connectivity-check-traffic/
2. https://grapheneos.org/faq#default-connections
3. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/250529027
4. https://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-279447

Captive Portal Controller v1.1.0

- UI improvements
- Option to set user agent (Android 8+)
- Fixed support for Android 7.1 and earlier
- Improved documentations
- Updated target SDK to 33

Full Changelog: https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/CaptivePortalController/compare/v1.0.1...v1.1.0

App Manager v3.0.3 Stable

This release contains a number of fixes for the backup/restore feature.

- Backup metadata version updated to 4
- Use 128 bit tag size for AES encryption
- Fixed encryption/decryption for AES 128
- Fixed an issue with saving the PGP encrypted files
- Fixed crashing if a storage media does not have a label

Full Changelog: https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager/compare/v3.0.2...v3.0.3

Great! Telegram has put my username (@MuntashirAkon) at its auction page without a warning. So, if you receive any random requests for money or crypto from that username, know that it's because of how greedy Pavel Durov has become (or he was always like this?). When he announced this scamming platform, a record number of people disliked it and what he did afterwards is something you don't expect even from the Zuck himself: He disabled reactions on his page.

#unstable #alpha #release
App Manager v3.1.0-alpha02

New features
- Added support for v3.1 signing scheme
- Export APKS using the new APKS specification. This is still in pre-alpha stage.
- New language: Romanian
- Replaced enable/disable with freeze/unfreeze
Freeze/unfreeze can be customised to disable, suspend or hide the applications instead of only disabling it. The colour codes used for disabling is used for freezing.
- Added freeze/unfreeze toggle shortcut in the App Info tab
Long clicking on the freeze or unfreeze buttons in the App Info tab opens a dialog where how the shortcut shall work apart from freezing/unfreezing can be configured. If a shortcut already exists, the existing shortcut shall be updated.
It offers the following options:
1. Open application after unfreezing it
2. Open application (requires 1 to be enabled) but without an entry in Recents
3. Refreeze the application when the phone is locked.

Backup
- Backup metadata version updated to 4
- Use 128 bit tag size for AES encryption
- Fixed encryption/decryption for AES 128
- Fixed a crash if no backup is selected but restore is clicked
- Fixed an issue with saving the PGP encrypted files
- Fixed crashing if a storage media does not have a label

App Details page
- Display invalid native libraries in the Shared libs tab
- Replaced block/unblock button with material switch
- Display failure message instead of crashing if a service cannot be launched from the Services tab
- Fixed a crash on specifying an invalid icon resource in the edit shortcut dialog
- Fixed crashes in the Shared Libs tab
- Fixed shortcut creation issues in some launchers
- Prevented a crash in the ADB mode which used to occur on attempting to fetch application data size

Installer page
- Ensured all the installation confirmation notifications are different in no-root mode
- Fixed a rare crash used to occur due to the accidental closing of the installer page

Main page
- Fixed sorting when a profile is selected in the list options
- Fixed displaying backup volume unavailable messages when /sdcard/AppManager was inaccessible or unavailable

Running Apps page
- Added searching by package name
- Enabled advanced searching
- Fixed double scrollbars
- Fixed crashes in no-root mode while checking for RUN_IN_BACKGROUND

UI
- Migrated to Material 3-style preferences
- Prevented closing multi-selection panel after starting an operation
- Replaced MD2 (Material Design 2) switches with M3 (Material 3) switches
- Fixed icon theming issues in Android 12
- Fixed loading dynamic colours in the splash screen
- Fixed applying the pure black theme on some devices

Others
- Check whether Binder transaction is supported in root mode before initiating a connection
Certain superuser implementations did not enable communications through Binder (that, is binder transactions) from user applications. A check has been added to ensure that the currently used superuser supports such communications before attempting to create a remote service.
- Display inferred mode of operation in the crash logs
- Handle multiple users including work profile in no-root mode
Apps in the work profile can be opened in the App Details page. They can also be launched, uninstalled, and the corresponding settings page can also be opened in no-root mode.
- Fall back to ADB if root mode is not supported
If App Manager cannot connect using root, root itself is used to start ADB over TCP and connect to it. This is also useful for certain rooting solutions which do not support Binder transactions.
- Fall back to root mode while reading the APK file
Some applications erroneously provide private files that aren't accessible to any installer other than the system ones. Therefore, root mode is used to read those files if available.
- Handled the Internet permission in Graphene OS
- Removed dark theme hacks for the WebView in the help page
- Replaced SLF4J dependency with Android compatible classes
- Updated trackers and libraries
- Prevented a nasty crash used to occur when an activity is needed to be recreated
- [Profile page] Fixed crashes in the log viewer tab
- [Scanner page] Fixed a rare crash used to occur when the activity is accidentally closed

Full Changelog: https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager/compare/v3.1.0-alpha01...v3.1.0-alpha02

Funding App Manager, 2023

Background
All the projects I work on are hobby projects. However, with a growing number of users and requests since its release in May 2020, App Manager has become more than a hobby project. It currently has 219,000 lines of code (38,000 new lines since January 2022) and roughly 4,400 commits among which some 2,600 commits are my own. It is packed with so many features that one cannot count all of them, but at the same time, it is designed in such a way that most features are invisible to the users unless they look carefully. This design makes App Manager complex yet free from clutter. Most importantly, it offers a modern user interface based on latest technologies such as Material 3 and supports a wide range of devices (from Android Lollipop to Android 12) including Android tablets and TV. It also provides an extensive documentation (in a website and within the app) with support for a few languages. This is why, within the 2 years of its existence, it has been downloaded over 80,000 times (53,000 more since January 2022) from GitHub (in addition to how many times it has been downloaded from F-Droid, IzzyOnDroid, or other unofficial channels) despite it being completely absent from the mainstream app stores such as Google Play Store, and no advertisements. Thanks to the translators, it has also been translated or is actively being translated into 33 languages.

With more users comes more responsibilities as the number of issues and feature requests is ever on the increase. Those who are following the project from the start know that there used to be a support group on Telegram which was discontinued, as it quickly grew to be unmanageable for me (it was re-continued but with more strict rules). Besides, with such a large codebase, more capable hardware are required to develop, emulate and test the application in various ways to ensure it functions properly. As I have mentioned in the README page in GitHub or the donation section elsewhere, App Manager does not support donation, it only supports funding. This is due to fact that short-term donations do not ensure the longevity of a project. With that in mind, I have since been looking for long-term funding by contacting institutes and foundations, but so far (and considering the fact that we’re living in a difficult situation due to COVID-19 and subsequent war), I have yet to secure any long-term funding, which is becoming increasingly necessary to sustain the project. So, I have decided to restart the funding campaign for App Manager. The purpose of the campaign is to ensure the longevity of the project by ensuring a fixed funding.

The campaign will last from 24 December 2022 to 30 March 2023 (roughly 3 months). This is different from the regular donations in the sense that I expect people to donate however much they can within this time frame. Since this campaign runs for 3 months, recurring donations are also possible for at least two months. Unlike the last campaign, the campaign will run on both Open Collective where you can contribute using PayPal, bank accounts, credit/debit cards or cryptocurrencies and Patreon. See the FAQ below for details.

Summary
Campaign duration: 24 December 2022 to 30 March 2023 (~3 months)
Target amount: $6,000
Campaign website: https://opencollective.com/app-manager
Available payment methods: PayPal, Bank accounts, credit/debit cards, cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, BCH, LTC and many more)
Direct links: Normal Donation - Cryptocurrency Donation - Patreon
Contact
- Email: muntashirakon [at] riseup [dot] net
- GitHub: https://github.com/MuntashirAkon
- Twitter: @Muntashir/@AppManagerNews

Please convey this information to others who might be interested in funding App Manager.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. Can I donate anonymously? Open Collective supports guest donations where you can use a temporary email in the email section.
2. Where will the funding be spent? The funding will be spent on buying new hardware, a domain, increasing my focus on open source projects in general by getting rid of other commitments, sending small gifts to the contributors and so on. Open Collective has an updates section where you will be able to see how the funding are being spent.
3. Would you accept recurring donations after the campaign? If the campaign goes well, I will accept any donations for App Manager. In any case, you can still donate me via my page on Open Collective.
4. I want to provide funding from my organisation. Can I contribute here? Yes, you can. However, if you are willing to contribute a large sum of money, you might want to contact me first.
5. Does App Manager support bounties? No. App Manager only accepts funding. Features are prioritised according to the developer’s current state of mind.
6. Why is Patreon added this time? A few people have suggested me to add Patreon as they were missing out due to the campaign being held only on Open Collective. However, Open Collective is still preferred over Patreon.
7. Is there any advantage of donating via Patreon? No. Donations do not unlock any features or any additional support, both are provided for free. On the contrary, we prefer that you donate using Open Collective.

For previous donors, the donation campaign remains the same as the last one except another option, namely Patreon, is added.