⚠️ Important.
From now on, if you want to contact me via email, please send it to am4android [at] riseup [dot] net. This shall be enforced with the release of the next stable release, which means that any attempt to contact me via any other email addresses will be ignored and may be reported as spam. Also, due to a high volume of emails of late, I may not be able to reply to all of them, especially the ones that does not contain any helpful info such as crash reports or the steps to reproduce the issue. If you're blocked on GitHub for your misconduct, chances are your messages will be filtered in my email client as well. This is a part of the ongoing measure to ensure the safety and longevity of my projects by blocking anybody who tries to harm the projects by any means. It should also be noted that only official sources should be used to download the applications. Third-party sources may provide modified version of the applications which may contain malware.

Third-party app stores should also take note of my message and take necessary actions to update the email address.

📣 May'24 Updates.
1. I've suspended GitHub discussions indefinitely as a number of people have been seen abusing this feature in order to bypass the GitHub issue templates.
2. Updates will now be posted in the App Manager channel rather than in the AM Debug channel to improve the transparency of App Manager project.
3. A new beta will be released near mid-June after updating the documentation.
4. Funding campaign for 2024 was ended on 31 May/1 June (depending on the timezone), and it won't be renewed next year.
5. A “Contributor of the Month” certificate will be issued each month to encourage users to contribute to App Manager and the related projects. It will be issued to a contributor (not to the maintainers) with more impacts than any other contributors (excluding the maintainers). This could be any type of contribution, such as bug fixes, feature improvements, documentation, creating helpful issues, community engagements, and funding. The denoscription of the contribution(s) will be provided in the certificate. A public record will also be kept for verification. The decision will be made heuristically and in good faith. The certificate may not be issued for the month if there isn't any contributor with significant impact or if the contributor has opted out of this program. (Claim the first certificate by dropping a certificate template at @LostFreedom!)
6. I'll be starting my Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of California, Riverside this September! (Shout-out to those who live near Riverside and Los Angeles!) My research will be very close to Android and Linux. So, it won't have a significant impact on the development of App Manager. More information will be available in my blog in due time.

📣 June'24 Updates.
1. I couldn't manage to publish the beta on time due to Eid and my illness (basically the flu you have before the monsoons). v4.0.0-beta02 and v3.1.7 will be released this week.
2. "Contributor of the Month" will be skipped for June since there wasn't any contributor with notable contributions.
3. Google seems to be introducing a lot of breaking changes to the permission APIs in Android 14 as they're figuring out a way to handle virtual devices. Notable changes were introduced in the following revisions: r29 and r50. This may cause frequent crashes as App Manager may not always be up-to-date with the changes.

I hope July will be a productive month as I intend to release v4.0.0 stable by the end of July.

Battery Charge Limiter (BCL) v1.1.0

BCL is now in the maintenance mode. Since Android has added native support for charging control*, there's no point in developing this app anymore. The app may, at best, receive occasional bug fixes in the future.**

- Added support for Android 12 and later
- Added Tamil and Simplified Chinese translations

---
* If your device has native support for charging control and it’s functional, the app will not work properly and your device may enter into an infinite loop of charging and discharging. Please uninstall the app if this happens to you.
** The app was originally developed for my own use. A public release was made based on user request. I no longer use the app since my device has native support for charging control on Android 14.

No-root users can utilize a notification system. This can be done by issuing a conditional notification using an automation app, or you can use this app: https://f-droid.org/packages/biz.binarysolutions.healthybatterycharging/

#stable #release
App Manager v3.1.7

The email address has been changed to am4android@riseup.net. App Manager related queries sent to the previous email shall be discarded.

- Hid “Data usage” in the App Info tab for apps without the internet permission
- Intercept newer photo viewer actions from the camera app
- Fixed creating custom backups when the backup name is empty
- Fixed freezing issues in the UI Tracker window on some devices
- Fixed delivering changes in apps made via batch operations
- Fixed freezing the app due to the refusal of the notification permission at the startup

Notification permission is mandatory on phones and tabs. Without this permission, you will not be able to use certain features.

- Fixed listing running apps on some devices
- Prevented the app from crashing in Android 14 r50
- Prevented the app from crashing when force dexopt is selected in Android 14 onwards

The feature was removed in Android 14.

Full list of changes: https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager/compare/v3.1.6...v3.1.7

Privacy Digest: June 2024.

Previous report: https://news.1rj.ru/str/AppManagerDebug/4083

Time interval: July 2023 - December 2023 (including 18 previously active crash reports)
Total crash reports: 88
Total active crash reports: 12 (76 reports were deleted)
Total missing signature reports: 110 (29 reports were deleted)

📣 July’24 Updates.
1. The situation in my country wasn’t very well this month (and won’t be in this month). The police, the special forces, the armed forces along with the student wing of the current political party attacked the students and civilians, protesting against a discriminating quota system in govt jobs, throughout the country resulting in the death of 277 or even more, which is highest number of deaths in a single movement since its independence in 1971 (we’re now calling it the July Massacre). In addition, the Internet wasn’t available for five days throughout the country, and the cellular Internet wasn’t available for ten days, and the Internet speed is still very slow. I posted some updates earlier in the debug channel on Telegram, and a few users emailed me and offered to help me in any way they can. Thank you for your emails. Just to give you an update, I’m well and safe, and I don’t need any help right now. I also couldn’t focus on anything else, including this project. So, I couldn’t make a beta release like I announced earlier.
2. “Contributor of the Month” will be skipped for July due to the above circumstances.
3. I’ve been seriously working on the backup/restore feature. It needs a lot of improvements including support for importing/exporting contacts, SMS/MMS, Wi-Fi configurations, VPN apps, autofill apps, accessibility apps, input methods, spell checkers, notification channels, and so on. Some of the features require a lot of work, and won’t be available anytime soon. Be sure to take a look at the changelogs to find what’s new in backups!
4. It appears that some directories aren’t accessible on some devices (Amazon Fire TV, or example) in ADB mode. What’s more curious is that newer Androids don’t support opening streams via ADB in some directories (blocked via SELinux). As a result, we may need alternative methods (such as no-root usage or streaming via shell) for those cases. However, further investigation is needed.

5. As I started looking into the permission issues, it appears that the sorting out all the permissions is not an easy thing to do, and a lot of people in the past have tried to come up with solutions, but none of them have offered any perfect solution. This is almost an impossible task for several reasons: a) There are two permission APIs (i.e., PermissionManager and AppOpsManager), b) Some permissions are merged with each other in those APIs which can cause unexpected behaviour both aren’t altered at the same time, c) Although each permission (or app op) supports a wide set of modes or flags, only a few specific modes or flags actually work with a permission and finding this out is complicated, especially for the infrequently used permissions (as they are not available in Android Settings to find how they should actually be granted or revoked), d) Many permissions (and most app ops) have no public documentation, making it difficult to find out what they are supposed to do, e) There are some other APIs that should’ve been included with the permission APIs (e.g., battery optimisation, sensor, net policy) as their independent presence makes no sense, f) Some vendors include their own sets of permissions and app ops whose behaviours are largely unknown, g) Vendors provide permission whitelists for some applications (fortunately, this is manageable through the permission flags), h) Same permissions work differently in each version of Android, and i) Some app ops depend on other app ops. Therefore, in creating a permission model, we’ll have to unify all those permission APIs and present them to the user in a way so that it would look as if the permissions are handled by a single permission API, and this isn’t an easy thing to do. Because we still have to provide a way to show which permissions are affected by the change and offer an option to alter them manually. This is further complicated by other apps (e.g., App Ops, Permission Pilot) that offer their own sets of abstraction, and the user expects similar behaviour from App Manager. Another issue is that the purpose of the “Uses Permissions” and “Permissions” tabs were to display the permissions declared in the manifest of the app. If such a permission model is implemented, it should not replace those tabs.

Bangladesh v2.0!

We have just got our second independence through a historical revolution! Congratulations to all Bangladeshis who follow this channel!

📣 August’24 Updates.

1. The month August has been quite eventful. The tyrannical govt of Bangladesh was ousted on 5 August as people joined the students in their one-point demand. The prime minister fled the country, police fled from their stations, students and army were in charge of law and order, and an interim govt was formed. Then, we saw many unsuccessful attempts by various parties to oust the new govt. Also, there was a sudden and massive flood in the Southeastern part of the country. Finally, when all things were settling down, I lost my grandmother in 22 August as she had multiple strokes due to old age. It was also my last month in my job as I am starting Ph.D. from September. I also needed to prepare for my journey to a new country, which will also be my first ever visit to any country as well as plane journey.
2. I am trying my best to update documentation so that I can release the next beta as soon as possible. v4.0.0 introduces a lot of changes. So, it’s taking some time, not to mention the distractions that I’m constantly facing.
3. Many people are talking about the latest Magisk privilege escalation vulnerability which allows a third-party application to obtain root without any prompt. The vulnerability is discovered by the Magisk contributors themselves and cannot be exploited easily. So, there’s no need to panic. You can also switch to the Canary channel to have a fix, but it’s not urgent.
4. On another news, Samsung users should really focus on debloating their stock ROM as we’re seeing a surge of vulnerabilities in their system and preinstalled applications. One of the primary reasons for privilege escalation vulnerabilities is the lack of audit of the system applications. UID < 10000 are special UIDs that need special care, especially UID 1000. Unfortunately, we can expect nothing from them as it seems that the security audits are skipped even for their kernel modules. My question is: if you cannot audit your system applications, why do you develop them in first place? Why not rely on the AOSP instead.

📣 September’24 Updates.

1. Writing documentation for v4.0.0 is more complicated than I thought. So, I shall release a new beta with partial documentation as the time is running out for beta, and complete the documentation in the RC.
2. One of the reasons for me being slow in the development is that my Xiaomi phone does not work in the US due to bandwidth limitations. I have also moved to a place which is about 1,000 feet higher than where I used to live. As a result, the battery also does not last long. I also have a (cheap) iPhone which I now use regularly (which is unbearable, by the way). However, I have ordered a Pixel phone which, hopefully, will be delivered at the end of this week. Once I get my new phone, I can be more regular in the development as well.
3. Due to study and research pressure, I need to be more efficient with the development. So, I decided to discontinue alpha-beta testing from this release. From now on, only RC and stable releases will be provided. This also means that features will be a bit unstable and inconsistent for the stable users. What this means is that features as well as bug fixes will be delivered as soon as sufficient contributions are made. If there are new and exciting features, the minor section shall be increased (e.g., 4.0.x → 4.1.x), and if there are only minor features or fixes, the patch section shall be increased (e.g., 4.x.0 → 4.x.1). This also implies that there won’t be any major releases until I believe that I can handle alpha-beta testing again. This may be a bad news for some users, but this has to be done to prevent potential “burn-out” on my part.

Translators.
I have updated the strings on Weblate. Please bear in mind that you'll get roughly a week to translate the new strings before the next release, and three weeks before the next RC. (Unless something bad happens, there will only be one RC for this version before the stable release.)

📣 October’24 Updates.

1. I’ve received my Pixel phone which is a bit dull compared to my old phone. It seems as if Google Pixel itself is at least two years behind Lineage OS even though Google is (more or less) the sole maintainer of the AOSP. Weird! Anyway, my phone will be unlocked this month, so I can try better alternatives.
2. I’ve more or less finished writing the documentation. I’m currently merging the translations from Weblate which is a bit tedious task because I need to verify each contribution one by one (and there are 91 such contributions). Most users of App Manager do not speak English. So, this is something where I pay a lot of attention. As I said last year, this task would’ve been easier for me if Weblate had provided a way to moderate the translations on the FOSS tier.
3. The next (and final) beta is scheduled for 12 November if you’re looking for an exact date. I’ve got an extended weekend in the US which I plan to utilize for this purpose.

Translation Updates.

[previous update]

I have reviewed and merged 47 commits out of 91 commits (51.65%) from Weblate.

These translators were blocked due to abuse:
- Adminslot69
- Valter Skot

These translators didn’t ask for permission as per policy:
- marciozomb13 (suspected machine translation)
- BahmanMD
- Denis Nemtsov
- H Vergnol
- tabby
- Jose Delvani
- kekomenos
- LucaS D. (mistakenly translated to Simplified Chinese instead of Portuguese and didn’t put them back)
- Luke Jakn
- Muhammad Bahaa
- George Mihăilă
- translater 616
- Nazar
- Mohammed al-Qubati
- Besnik Bleta
- Pablo
- Astoritin Ambrosius

These translators also didn’t ask for permission, but their contributions were considered valuable:
- Yuxuan He
- Miokoba
- Alireza Rashidi
- hugoalh
- Luna
- acress1

These translators have either altered their email address or been subjected to impersonation:
- ShareASmile <ShareASmile@users.noreply.hosted.weblate.org>
- LY <51789698+Young-Lord@users.noreply.github.com>

These translations are asked to be more careful about translations as they made one or more translation mistakes:
- ngocanhtve (Partial translation in Vietnamese)
- Andrey F. (Translated non-translatable strings in Russian)

These translators have tried to translate in a language they didn’t request:
- ℂ𝕠𝕠𝕠𝕝 (𝕘𝕚𝕥𝕙𝕦𝕓.𝕔𝕠𝕞/ℂ𝕠𝕠𝕠𝕝) (Translated Russian, but was assigned Latvian)

Thanks Rex_sa for fixing the Arabic strings!

#ustable #beta #release
App Manager v4.0.0-beta02

Private messages should be emailed to am4android@riseup.net. Emails sent to any other email addresses shall be discarded.

- Added full support for Android 14-r29 and later

App Details page
- [App Info] Added a new tag: Sensors disabled
System may misreport this permission. The best way to check if sensors are indeed disabled is by opening the app first and then visiting the App Info tab leaving the other app running in the background.
- [App Info] Added option to enable/disable sensors
- [App Info] Display detailed installer info
An info button is added next to the installer which displays the installer, the actual installer (AKA initiator), and the APK source (originator). Clicking on each item opens the corresponding App Details page. It also fixed displaying the installer app in certain devices.
- [App Info] Use the configured naming format when sharing an APK(S)
- Display blocking method in the components tabs
IFW+Dis = The component is blocked using both IFW and disable
IFW = The component is blocked using IFW
Dis = The component is disabled.
- Hide “Data usage” for apps without the internet permission
- Disabled “IFW” and “IFW+Disable” in the providers tab
In Rules settings, the denoscription for “Default blocking method” was also updated with a note that says IFW feature does not work with providers, “disable” is used for them instead.
- Fixed applying IFW method in the components tabs
Fixed applying IFW rules if the previous rules were “IFW+Disable” or “Disable”.

App Usage page
- Improve the usage time calculation method
The usage events returned by the UsageStatsManager were assumed to be in order of their timestamp which does not seem to be true and resulted in missing a few events due to the standard calculation method, that is, calculating the time difference between activity resume and pause timestamps. In addition, it appears that the system may log activity stop timestamp without logging any pause timestamp (a typical activity cycle would be resume → pause → stop → resume → …) causing further miss of events. These issues were addressed by sorting the events in order of their timestamp as well as measure the time difference between resume and stop timestamps instead of resume and pause timestamps.
- Fixed the “times opened” value
In order to calculate a more reliable number of times an app was opened, the time difference between each activity opening and closing are now relaxed. So, when the user navigates to another activity from an activity belonging to the same app and the time difference is less than 500 ms, the time difference is added to the total usage time. This calculation is technically more precise than the system's own open count because certain navigation involves the use of system UI (e.g., the arrow in the gesture navigation is emitted from the System UI app and should be considered as such) which are ignored. However, the issues with choosing 500 ms (half of a second) time difference are as follows:
1. Due to an user waiting a long time to trigger the back gesture or simply bad coding, an app may take more than this time to open an activity which will cause them to be listed as two accesses.
2. Some apps support multiple windows. If the user opens another activity in a new window shortly after opening the first activity, the two accesses may be counted as one instead of two.
These events are considered extraordinary and can be negligible in a real-life setting.

Backup/restore
- Improved handling custom users in backups
* Properly handle backup/restore for a single app. “Custom users” in the backup options is displayed only if the app is installed for multiple users. Similarly, cross-user restore is supported via the “Custom users” option. In addition, fixed issues causing the backup or restore to be performed for the wrong users.
* Unless the “Custom users” option is selected, backup or restore is made only for the current user in the batch selection mode. Others retain the old behaviour. For example, in the batch selection mode, restore is only made with the “base” backup which is defined to be the primary backup for the current user. So, if “Custom users” option is selected for restore operation, App Manager will try to find the base backup of each selected user and restore those for that user.
These behaviours are applied throughout the app to reduce complexity and remove any ambiguous behaviour.
- Fixed creating custom backups
When custom backups are enabled but the backup name is empty, create a custom backup with the current date and time instead of creating a base backup.
- Fixed the “cache” “no cache” confusion in the backup flags selection dialog
The “No cache” flag was replaced by the “cache” flag, but the translations still use the former. So, the string ID is altered to invalidate the translations.

DexOpt
- Set default compiler filter from the pm.dexopt.install property
- Fixed applying force dexopt in Android 14
These fixes may not work for every device. A novel approach is needed to reduce the complexity as well as put an end to the cat-and-mouse game.

File Manager
- Fixed remembering scroll position during navigation

Installer
- Accelerate the installation process in Android 12 onwards when possible
If an app is being installed in the foreground, App Manager will try to accelerate the installation process by delaying various post-installation tasks carried out by the system services.
- Properly handle the originating URI extra supplied by third-party apps via Intent.EXTRA_ORIGINATING_URI
- Set originating package in Android 7 onwards
The originating package is automatically determined from the Intent sent from the third-party apps. However, the determination logic may not always work, but it was ensured that there will not be any false positives, e.g., no spoofing can be done by a third-party app.
- Set package source to PACKAGE_SOURCE_OTHER by default in Android 13 onwards
This is done to prevent the system from applying various accessibility restrictions to the app. However, PACKAGE_SOURCE_STORE is set by default if the originating package is one of the supported app stores. At present, the supported app stores are: Aurora Store, Droid-ify, F-Droid, F-Droid Basic, F-Droid Classic and Neo Store. It is up to the developers to ensure that they send the APK installation requests in a proper way, i.e., by utilizing features such as startActivityForResult whenever possible.

Interceptor
- Intercept SAF, dialer, gallery, search, music player, and WhatsApp URLs

Main page
- [Batch Ops] Added option to export app list as CSV and JSON
- Display restore dialog for uninstalled apps with backups
Instead of displaying “App not installed” toast for the uninstalled apps with backups, open the restore dialog instead when clicking on such an item in the Main page.
- Fixed retrieving applications when there are too many applications installed on the device

Profiles page
- Display app op names instead of number in the profiles page

Settings page
- Added support for pure black theme
- Added a fallback server runner command from DE storage
Added a fallback server runner command in case SD card is inaccessible from the UID from which the noscript is being run. This leverages the device encrypted storage (data_de) by making certain folder and files globally accessible.
- Fixed displaying custom commands in the mode of ops page
- Fixed the noscript for the Mode of Ops settings page

UI Tracker
- Display current activity name when possible
In addition to displaying the class name and its hierarchies, the window will display the activity name if there's is an activity (not all windows are activities). This requires the usage stats permission which is enforced here even if it's disabled in the settings. This is because this feature is meant to be used as a useful tool separated from the rest of the app, but with some level of integration.
- Fixed freezing issues in certain devices (e.g., Samsung)

Others
- Allow opening an application in Android TV as well as for other users
This feature does not work in the installation completion dialog or notification.
- Allow the remote server to run under any privileged UID
- Made notification permission optional
Although denying notification permission will render many features useless, it is made optional for those who insists on denying it. However, the permission shall still be asked everytime the app is launched until it times out.
- Updated documentation to reflect latest changes
In addition, Oxygen OS specific ADB instructions were added.
- Fixed changing permissions in Android 14-r50 and later
- Fixed deleting the cached application after the installation attempt fails
- Fixed delivering changes made via batch operations
- Fixed issues with executing automated tasks from the third-party applications
- Fixed suspending packages in Android 14-r29 onwards
- Hide Code Editor if it's disabled in settings

Full Changelog: https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager/compare/v4.0.0-beta01...v4.0.0-beta02