Bangladesh v2.0!

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

1. 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.

*? 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.

*? June'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 description 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.

⚠️ 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.

#stable #release
App Manager v3.1.6

- Funding campaign dates have been updated as this is going to be the last campaign in many years.
- [Security] Update vulnerable dependencies

Full list of changes: https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager/compare/v3.1.5...v3.1.6

Funding App Manager, 2024 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 243,000 lines of code…

#stable #release App Manager v3.1.5 - Check if the selected item is a directory before importing backups - Fixed disabling components in Android 14 - Fixed retrieving and updating permission flags in Android 12 onwards - Prevented the Log Viewer page from…

#stable #release
App Manager v3.1.5
- Check if the selected item is a directory before importing backups
- Fixed disabling components in Android 14
- Fixed retrieving and updating permission flags in Android 12 onwards
- Prevented the Log Viewer page from crashing on device configuration changes

Full Changelog: https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager/compare/v3.1.4...v3.1.5