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

BTW, Android 15 is the only Android OS for which I didn't need to apply any specific patches. Because, as it appears, most interesting patches to the AOSP have already been applied to Android 14 r29 and later. I think most AOSP developers here will agree that this is a very rare event in Android history (and makes system developer's life a bit difficult). As somebody said in Mishaal's Telegram group: there should've never been an Android 15, Google should've moved straight to Android 16 instead (I heard they're releasing it earlier than expected anyway). But you know, new year and new (useless) release. People in the systems and hardware research always talk about the end of Moore's law, but I think the entire technological advancements have slowed down, and it's likely that this trend will continue for a few more years.

📣 November’24 Updates.

1. If everything goes as planned, the v4.0.0 stable release will be made at the end of this month (December). But before that v3.1.8 will be released for the current stable users who aren’t able to suspend/unsuspend apps in v3.1.7.
2. Some users are reporting that they cannot install a few modded apps with App Manager because it fails to parse the APK files. There could be many reasons for this. For example, App Manager uses the standard zip library to read any APK files (since they are simply zip files). A zip file stores a lot of metadata apart from the file themselves to enable a zip file reader to understand what the zip file contains and how they contain. However, Android framework implementation of APK file reader disregards some of those information while reading an APK file. A clever developer can actually exploit this to create a zip file with invalid metadata, thus, making it impossible for a typical zip file viewer to extract those files. One way to mitigate this is to modify the metadata on the fly before parsing it using a zip file reader which I am currently looking into. Another example is the use of non-standard headers. A typical Android binary XML (not to be confused with ABX format introduced in Android 12) reader expects the binary to be formatted in a certain way which, unfortunately, is not how Android framework reads an Android binary XML. This allows a clever developer to inject those non-standard header, thus, rendering the reader useless. In App Manager, we use ARSCLib for this which is known to have such issues.
3. Some debug build users are complaining that the new Finder feature is great, but they cannot actually do anything with it other than listing the apps. Note that the feature is highly experimental, and I have a few exciting plans for the feature. For example, the filtering rules that you apply in Finder may actually be reused in other places such as in the main page and for profiles. More details will be available as the feature matures.
4. As I have started working on the app actions (that Autostarts support), I have realized that some features in the 1-click Ops page needs better UI to select and manage the search results. Such improvements will be gradually made in the future.
5. Many people have faced problems in connecting to ADB. I’ll add some troubleshooting options in the future to better assist you with those problems. While I admit that my solution to the ADB is not perfect (partly due to lack of time and resource), the library I developed for this project is currently the only free and open source solution that works on Android devices. So, if you want that your problems be solved, it’s better if you can assist me in troubleshooting the problems. This will not only be beneficial to App Manager, but also to other projects that utilize the library.

HyperOS 2.0 users.

If you have trouble updating the systems apps through App Manager, try setting the installer name to one of the system apps (such as Shell, Google Play Store, or File Explorer). This is a new restriction introduced in HyperOS 2.0, and non-root/non-ADB users, unfortunately, may no longer update the system apps through a third-party installer. For others, a better option will be be available soon. For reference: https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager/issues/1484

Announcement.

This is a time when people in many regions become generous and donate to their favorite charities and non-profits. While you cannot donate to App Manager right now, consider donating to the following non-profit organization and services*. They're part of the reason App Manager is still here:
1. IzzyOnDroid. Contrary to what many people think, IzzyOnDroid is not just a repository, it's a silent movement trying to set some standards on how an open source app should be. Many features in App Manager were possible because of IzzyOnDroid's constant efforts. https://android.izzysoft.de/help?topic=support_us
2. F-Droid. F-Droid is the de facto source of free and open source apps on Android. Many users of App Manager actually install the app from F-Droid. It has many faults, I admit, but it's still the best we've got. https://f-droid.org/en/donate/
3. Exodus Privacy. It is a community-led effort to maintain a list of trackers in Android applications. App Manager primarily uses this list to report potential trackers in an Android app. https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/page/contribute/
4. Bouncy Castle. App Manager exclusively makes use of the cryptographic libraries maintained by The Legion of Bouncy Castle Inc., an Australian charity and fundraiser. Without their libraries, much of the features of App Manager wouldn't have existed. https://www.bouncycastle.org/engage/donate/
5. Matrix. Matrix is where our support group is hosted. We've also reused some code related to cryptography from its SDK. https://www.matrix.org/support/
6. Riseup. App Manager makes use of Riseup's email service for secure communication and GitLab instance for hosting a mirror. https://riseup.net/en/donate
7. Codeberg. App Manager also has a mirror at Codeberg. Codeberg is a non-profit that aims to provide a space to free and open source projects such as App Manager. https://donate.codeberg.org
8. Weblate.** Localization/translations of App Manager are managed through Hosted Weblate, a free service run by Weblate. https://weblate.org/en/donate/
9. UN Crisis Relief Fund. As M. Gustave put it in the Grand Budapest Hotel: “There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.” https://crisisrelief.un.org/opt-crisis

* I'm not affiliated in any way with any of these services or non-profits nor have they asked me to post this on their behalf.
** While Weblate software is free and open source, Weblate is NOT a non-profit.

📣 January'25 Updates.

- In the past couple of weeks, a lot of improvements have been made to the existing features, and I am happy to announce that v4.0.0 will be released in the next week. Writing changelog for 5 different platforms is not an easy task, but I'm almost finished writing the in-app changelog which is, by far, the most complicated one. Testers have also done a good job in reporting potential issues and fixes were made promptly.
- As App Manager is built on the principles of open source, privacy and security, and (according to the last poll) almost 60% of the users are using App Manager for privacy, I'll be focusing more on improving the most crucial projects that App Manager depend on in regards to privacy, such as ADL and Android Libraries. Advanced users and community members are encouraged to contribute to the ADL project since all the related projects are now more-or-less dead. ADL project, compared to App Manager, is a very small project and does not require any coding or programming skills. You may need to have some knowledge about JSON which is very easy to learn. I'd ask every one of you to try to contribute at least once a month to the ADL project to accelerate the process of listing and reviewing the bloatware in Android. Once we can bring it to a stable position, the maintenance would be quite easy.

#stable #release
App Manager v4.0.0

App Manager v4.0.0 comes with a lot of new features and improvements. Visit in-app changelog for details.

- New logo!
The new logo is just a cursive “A”. The design is based on the Tengwar Telcontar font which was created to bring the Tengwar noscript, originally created by J. R. R. Tolkien, to the digital world. The letter has the classic App Manager color (i.e., \#dcaf74) and uses a pure black background instead of a shade of grey.

- Android 14 and 15 support
App Manager now targets Android 14 and fully supports Android 15.
Known issue: KeyStore backup/restore is not working in Android 12 and later.

- Revamped debloater
Debloating profiles were available as “Presets” in the Profiles page which has now been replaced with the Debloater page and can be accessed from the three-dots menu in the Main page. ADL is a new project that focuses on maintaining a list of bloatware as well as potential open source alternatives. Contributions are welcome!

- Introducing file manager
App Manager offers an (almost) fully-featured file manager with basic file operations, such as copy, cut, rename, and delete along with the batch operations. It also offers an extensive “Open with…” dialog to open a file with another app, and a comprehensive file properties viewer. Folders can also be added to the list of favorites for quick access. And many more.

- Integrated code editor
Manifest and code viewers have been replaced with this new editor. Among other regular features, it includes proper syntax highlighting and advanced searching options. In addition, files from third-party apps can also be opened for editing.

- History of operations
All 1-click operations, batch operations, and profile invocations are now stored as history. The history items can also be executed from the History page. To ensure consistency, the profile state, configurations, package list are also stored, and this stored version is executed instead of the actual profile. As a result, this works even if the profile is deleted.

- Per-app freezing, and more
Freeze/unfreeze feature now supports setting per-app freezing method which is beneficial in certain scenarios, such as when a user want to suspend some apps while using the disable method as the default. In addition, an “Advanced suspend” option is added which force-stops an application before suspending it, thus, prevent it's services from running in the background.

- Log viewer enhancements
Log viewer now supports enhanced searching and filtering options, such as keyword- and regular expression-based searching and filtering. Please read the in-app changelog for details. Support for batch operations has also been added.

- Launching non-exported activities
App Manager now supports launching non-exported activities in no-root and ADB mode. However, in no-root mode, android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS permission is required.

- New tags in App Info tab
Five new tags are added in the App Info tab. They are: bloatware, Xposed, sensors disabled, open links, and static shared libs. Clicking on “bloatware” will display more information regarding the bloatware and suggest alternatives, “Xposed” tag will display dependency information, “open links” will display a list of links supported by the application, and “static shared libs” will display all version of the application installed in the system along with an option to uninstall them. The latter is useful for applications, such as Trichrome.
Known issue: “Sensors disabled” only works real-time. That means if the application is not currently active, this tag will always display even though the applications may use sensors while it is running. This is a framework limitation and nothing can be done to avoid it effectively.

- Per-session installer options
It is not possible to modify installer options during the installation by clicking on the “settings” button in the installation dialog. The installer options will be applied to all the applications installed in the same session (i.e., the installer queue).

- Advanced mode of operations, ADB enhancements, …
App Manager now supports running its remote server (which is used as a proxy for running privileged operations) as any supported user (UID). This includes root (0), system (1000), and shell/ADB (2000) through the custom commands. This is also useful for Fire TVs which have disabled connecting to ADB from localhost through socket connection. In addition, ADB pairing is now done using notifications rather than split screen. ADB connection speed can also be improved by choosing to run App Manager in the background which can be configured in the settings.

- Data usage widget, and more
Data usage widget display the total data usage for the day, similar to the screen time widget which displays the total screen time for the day. In addition, existing widgets have been improved.

- Others
* Replaced log viewer, sys config, Terminal, etc. with Labs page
* Added an option to disable sensors for each app in the App Info tab
* Added an option to perform runtime optimization of applications in the 1-click Ops page and in the App Info tab
* Added support for Zstandard compression for backup/restore
* Enabling APK signing now automatically enables zip align feature
* Support exporting application list as CSV or JSON in the batch operations
* Added pure black theme support
* Display current activity name (when possible) in the UI Tracker window
* Added an option to filter apps by user in the Main page
* Display a link to Pithus report in the scanner page if available.

Full Changelog: https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager/compare/v3.1.0...v4.0.0

Opinion wanted.

We're trying to improve the sorting options in the Main page. As more options are being added, we need to ensure that the user experience is in good shape. Therefore, we're conducting a survey on the sorting options in the Main page. Due to the limited number of options supported by Telegram polls, we're asking you to go to https://cloud.disroot.org/apps/forms/s/aqRKgdFz4Zx2xQ6kKY4Jna2G and answer the poll. In addition to the poll, you can also specify if you have any other sorting options in mind that you'd like to see in this page.

Disroot is a privacy-friendly cloud service that some of may have already heard of, and the form data are anonymous. You can also access the form using Tor. To do this, please replace with https://cloud.disroot.org with http://3rhtbo7bb3o5qvx2iyirppxxtpwnlxkavdyjdckmuzh2uohibignufqd.onion in the link above.

Privacy Digest: February 2025.

From now on, I will no longer report curated statistics on crash reports or missing signatures as nowadays, I receive a lot of general purpose emails than those. Also, instead of emails, I'll be using communications because I'm considering each email thread to be a single communication.

Time Interval: January 2024 - June 2024
Total communications: 251
Total active communications: 63 (188 communications were deleted)

PS: Thanks Tutov for your regular updates on various devices where you tested App Manager. You sent a lot of messages, but at the time I was too busy with admission. So, I couldn't send any replies.

#stable #release
App Manager v4.0.1

- Overlay management
In the App Details page, a new tab “Overlays” is added where per-app overlays are displayed. They can also be enabled or disabled using the toggle button. In addition, if the App Details page of an overlay package is opened, a “Overlay” tag will be displayed in the App Info tab. Clicking on the tag opens a dialog containing additional info along with a button that allows navigating to the App Details page of the overlay target package if it is installed.
Known limitation: At present, it only works for root/ADB users in Android 8 (Oreo) and later.

- Unfreeze option in activity shortcuts
If the application corresponding to the shortcut being launched is frozen, App Manager will now offer you to unfreeze the app temporarily so that the shortcut can be launched. The app will be frozen again once the screen is locked.
Known limitation: This may not work on devices without a screen lock or if the screen is locked some time after the display goes off.

- market-like URL support
Third-party applications can now open the App Details page of any installed package by invoking an Intent with an URL with the following format:

app-manager://details?id=<pkg>&user=<user_id>

where <pkg> stands for package name, and <user_id> stands for the user ID which is optional.

- Updated color codes
In order to improve accessibility, certain color codes have been improved. Visit Settings > About > Version/Changelog for details.

- Others
* Avoided waiting for the remote server to respond when no-root mode is set
* Fixed downgrading apps in Android 10 onwards
* Fixed installer issues in the Huawei stock operating systems
* Improved text formatting in the “What's New” dialog
* In the UI tracker window, fixed clicking on the icon after it is iconified
* Updated bloatware and suggestions

Full Changelog: https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager/compare/v4.0.0...v4.0.1

📣 February'25 Updates.

- I've received some interesting feedbacks in the opinion poll (the poll is still open). I'll try to address a few of those, but before that, you should know that sorting or filtering is difficult to implement without affecting the overall loading speed of the Main page. Those who have been using App Manager from the very beginning knows how long it took to load this page without the caching mechanism that was implemented much later. However, for certain cases, caching needs to be bypassed. For example, a list of running applications cannot be cached as it is a real time information. Same goes for the size checks. For those cases, when the filter/sort is triggers, App Manager takes a snapshot of the running apps/size and apply the selected option. This is why you may see increased loading time when you use those options. Also, as the number of sorting and filtering options are increasing, it's also necessary for a (not a complete) re-design of the list options to make it less overwhelming to a regular user. The reason for the poll to have limited voting options is also this. I want to understand which sorting options are most likely used by a user so that they can be more accessible than the others at the initial stage. It is also possible to update the options dynamically based on usage, but this will have a negative impact because when you use a feature regularly, you develop muscle memory. So, you may end up being annoyed with the dynamic options due to occasional changes in the layout. These are some of the trade-offs that needs to be considered when working on a complex feature that requires a simple front-end.

- Grouping apps on the Main page based on predefined groups is an interesting idea. But when you think about it analytically, you can find that groups cannot be overlapped, unlike say categories, tags, or profiles. So, it is necessary to research on how all these can be integrated. For example, groups can be just categories with where only one app is allowed across groups. Tags and categories are likely the same thing. Also, there may also be collections of tags or categories which can be just filters. In that regard, a single group/category/tag can also be regarded as a filter with just one item. These are some of the interesting concepts that require some deep thinking. Profiles is another topic.

- What is the biggest obstacle in publishing a new release? Writing changelogs. Though it may be surprising to many people, writing changelog often takes several hours to finish, because it's necessary to take a look at the features implemented, improved or fixed, and then write it in a way that makes some sense. Then, certain platforms requires a certain amount of work as well. For example, F-Droid has a restriction on the number of characters a changelog may contain which is way too limited for an active project like App Manager. For the in-app changelog, it's necessary that all the changes are documented properly since we expect people to read it most often. In other cases, such as GitHub, Telegram, Matrix, or website, it is expected that the users will just skim over the changes, but at the same time, they may be referred by other channels, forums, etc. So, they have to sufficiently denoscriptive but easy to read and understand. Finally, we also need to post the update via the social networks (Mastodon and X). Possibly developing a feature is less tiresome than this since they tend to be more rewarding and enjoyable.

- A few months ago, I talked about permissions in Android. App Manager currently does not have a permission model. This, as you may recall, is because Android itself has a very complex and distributed permission model. Unifying them is a challenge that App Manager needs to eventually address. My estimation is that such unification attempt may take at least 5-6 years if I do this alone (and I probably have to do this alone).

- My rooted phone broke down. I suspected it has something to do with the battery as it's no longer charging. As a result, development of root-only features and bug fixes are paused until I can find a solution. I can use an emulator, but they aren't convenient for testing certain aspects of root.

- We actually have everything necessary to implement ADB backup/restore for supported apps inside App Manager, only a user interface is necessary. However, the primary problem is the convenience, because whenever you run ADB backup, a popup will be displayed by the Android system asking for a password (which you should not set since encryption is handled by App Manager on its own) which can be very annoying. Then, the primary concept is to convert an ADB backup into regular App Manager backup and vice versa to allow restoring arbitrary backups made using App Manager which may not hold in all cases, especially the apps that only support key-value backup/restore. This is an interesting problem that I need to look into. ADB backup can also back up launcher widgets which App Manager cannot right now.

- The contributor of the month for February is Theray Tharow. Tharow was chosen for their outstanding code contribution to App Manager which include implementing the front- and back-end of the overlay management features. I hope more people will be interested in code contribution because this is where more contributions are needed.

📣 Announcement.

I've launched a new website to make it easy for Android users to discover, share, understand, and investigate pre-installed applications (AKA bloatware).

https://muntashirakon.github.io/android-debloat-list

You also have an option to open the App Info of an installed application from the website (which will work from v4.0.2).

#stable #release
App Manager v4.0.2

- Updated bloatware
- Fixed fetching applications in multi-user environment in no-root mode
- Fixed opening app-manager URLs from the web browsers
- Fixed updating SSAID
- Prevented a crash in Android < 9.0 that occurs due to invalid app ops.

Full Changelog: https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager/compare/v4.0.1...v4.0.2