#blocking
Will ad/tracker components remain blocked if AM and its related background services are turned off?

No version of App Manager before v4.0.0 runs in the background. App Manager does the user-initiated operations via foreground services which are technically not running in the background since the process remains in the foreground. App Manager v4.0.0-alpha01 onwards can run in the background if it's explicitly enabled in the privacy settings.

Most changes you made in App Manager are immediately applied to the system. If, for example, restarting is required, App Manager will explicitly ask you to restart your device (the restart option itself may not necessarily be offered by the app though). So, there's no need to run App Manager in the background in order to continue blocking any components. In fact, even uninstalling App Manager will not remove those rules from the system. You need to remove all rules from App Manager settings before uninstalling App Manager to remove those rules.

? Q&A

#adb #root #wireless_debugging
Why didn’t App Manager add support for Shizuku?

App Manager’s use of hidden API and privileged code execution has become quite complex and cannot be easily integrated with other third party apps such as Shizuku. However, the primary reason for this decision is based on the fact that Shizuku as a project (and software) is not a free and open source software. Though a user may easily be deceived by its use of Apache 2.0 license, the maintainers have added the following exceptions to the license:

• You are FORBIDDEN to use image files listed below in any way (unless for displaying Shizuku itself).
  manager/src/main/res/mipmap\-hdpi/ic_launcher.png manager/src/main/res/mipmap\-hdpi/ic_launcher_background.png manager/src/main/res/mipmap\-hdpi/ic_launcher_foreground.png manager/src/main/res/mipmap\-xhdpi/ic_launcher.png manager/src/main/res/mipmap\-xhdpi/ic_launcher_background.png manager/src/main/res/mipmap\-xhdpi/ic_launcher_foreground.png manager/src/main/res/mipmap\-xxhdpi/ic_launcher.png manager/src/main/res/mipmap\-xxhdpi/ic_launcher_background.png manager/src/main/res/mipmap\-xxhdpi/ic_launcher_foreground.png manager/src/main/res/mipmap\-xxxhdpi/ic_launcher.png manager/src/main/res/mipmap\-xxxhdpi/ic_launcher_background.png manager/src/main/res/mipmap\-xxxhdpi/ic_launcher_foreground.png
• For the project as a whole, it is not free. You are FORBIDDEN to distribute the apk compiled by you (including modified, e.g., rename app name "Shizuku" to something else) to any store (IBNLT Google Play Store, F-Droid, Amazon Appstore etc.).

As you can see, they have written about the non-free nature of Shizuku themselves in the second paragraph.

App Manager, on the other hand, is a free and open source software and published under the terms of GNU General Public License version 3 or later. Even then, we went beyond what you often see in most open source projects by ensuring that every aspect of App Manager is open source. This includes its name, source code, documentation, icons and artworks, translations, libraries, dependencies, sub-projects and tools. Through the secondary Telegram channel, we also regularly publish reports regarding translations and private communications. In my Open Collective page, you can also find transaction history either from Open Source Collective or other supported donation sources (the latter are published there manually through announcements). We do this because we believe in transparency, reproducibility and FLOSS ideologies, and Shizuku appears to be against some of these ideals. Remember that we do not support nor promote non-free projects or software without exceptions because they go against everything App Manager stands for. We never supported popular applications such as Google Play Store, and even we temporarily discontinued support for Aurora Store when its maintainer decided to publish non-free advertisements in the app (which were later reverted and App Manager to reinstated its support promptly). Now, this does not mean that we do not respect the people who develop those tools. We understand that they have a different ideology than us, and we respect their beliefs and ideologies. But this does not mean that we have to give up our own ideologies to include support for them. That being said, if you feel differently, unlike, say Shizuku, our copyleft license allows you to modify the project to suit your needs and redistribute it under any name or icons you want (but we suggest you not to use the reverse domain io.github.muntashirakon as this will cause confusion among the users).

? Q&A

#blocking
Is it possible to configure the app to work with banking apps?

These issues are usually discussed in the respective communities, not in the App Manager community itself (because fixing issues with banking apps is not our priority). That being said, there's no universal way of fixing issues with banking apps, and App Manager is a generic tool that happens to fix issues with certain banking apps in certain countries. There are other tools such as Universal SafetyNet Fix which are also known to fix some other issues. It all depends on the libraries used by the banking app to check for potential issues with the OS. Therefore, you should find such a community for your bank or country and post your issues there.

? Q&A

#install
Is there a way to install AAB file via App Manager?

AAB stands for Android App Bundle which is not an Android package (APK). This is essentially an intermediate format which stores data for all the supported platforms and APIs in a single file which can later be converted into an APK file or a set of split APKs via bundletool based on the requirements of the target device. This means that if you set specific configurations (platform type, language, display resolution, etc.) before you generate the APK(s), the tool will produce APK(s) only for those configurations. Since a typical device (phone, tablet, TV or watch) uses only a small subset of all the configurations available, the total size of the split APKs generated by the tool is much less than a universal APK (that is, a single APK file that has all the supported configurations). This format and tool are used by Google Play Store to generate split APKs for the target device to reduce the total size of the files so that it takes less time to deliver and install the app. This also allows Google Play Store to support a feature known as Dynamic Delivery (that is, an app can request the user to download split APKs based on requirements after installing the app).

Now, Android ensures the legitimacy of an app by a method called app signing. In this method, the APK(s) are digitally signed by the app developer before releasing them out in the wild, and Android can later verify whether the integrity of the files are preserved by running a verification test. So, when you generate APK(s) in your side, there is no way to get it signed by the original app developer (in Google Play Store, for example, a developer must upload their signing key along with the AAB file so that Google can sign the generated APK files for them). You can still sign the app yourself and use it for yourself, but this can be risky because you must have downloaded the AAB file from the Internet, and there's no easy way to figure out if the AAB file is modified by a malicious agent or adversary. So, while developing App Manager, it was concluded that AAB format is primarily meant to be used by the developers and the app stores and shouldn't be handled by App Manager. If a developer uploads only the AAB files in their release page, you should ask them to publish APK or APKS files instead.

? Q&A

#blocking
How effective is App Manager in blocking network connections if ad/tracker components are blocked?
App Manager is not a firewall app. It does not prevent an app from phoning home (or to any other offensive sites). It can block components which may be used to monitor the behaviour of a user, collect data, display advertisements or prevent working with other offensive apps such as Google Play Services (GMS) to track users. Since they consume a lot of power, blocking them would not only reduce data collection but also make the device a lot more faster. So, for a complete privacy, you should also use DNS- or VPN-based firewalls to avoid phoning home. (However, you should avoid apps that directly modifies the ip-tables because it's unsafe and UID-based blocking is not a good firewall in Android.)

Anyway, if your OS allows it, you can completely block internet connections for an app using App Manager via net policy.

? Q&A

As announced earlier, App Manager community channel will be discontinued in favour of App Manager community organisation currently hosted in GitHub. You can find these particular instructions in the issues section of Tips and Tricks repository for now. In the future, there will also be a community website. Benefits of this approach:
1. Better searching experience than Telegram
2. Accessible to anyone around the world, not just to the Telegram users
3. Ability to comment on each instruction
4. More community involvements.

Original announcement for community: https://t.me/AppManagerChannel/145

#blocking #crash #bootloop
Accidentally blocked some components which is causing a bootloop or the OS to crash during startup. How to fix via recovery?

1. Try to remember the blocking method you’ve used. Default is IFW + Disable. This is also the worst case scenario here. So, if you can’t remember it, assume it’s the default.
2. Take note of the packages and components that App Manager blocked. You can find them at /data/user/0/io.github.muntashirakon.AppManager/files/conf/ (assuming the user ID was 0). Rules for each app is saved in a file with format <package\-name>.tsv (eg. io.github.muntashirakon.AppManager.tsv). If you only need the components blocked in a particular interval, you can do this by inspecting the modification date of the files.
3. Navigate to /data/secure/system/ifw (Android M or earlier) or /data/system/ifw (Android N onwards) and delete the noted packages or components. App Manager stores rules for each package in a file with format <package\-name>.xml (eg. io.github.muntashirakon.AppManager.xml)
4. Navigate to /data/system/users/0/package\-restrictions.xml, find the package names you noted earlier and delete all the XML tags called disabled\-components.
   Example: Say you’ve accidentally block the .MainActivity of App Manager. You should find an entry like this:

```

```

If there's an entry like above, delete only the content beginning with <disabled\-components> and ending with </disabled\-components> like this:

```

```

So, the final results would be something like this:

```

```

In order to ensure that you didn’t corrupt the file, you should copy this file to your PC, delete the entries, validate the file using any XML validator and copy it back to where it belongs. Also, none of these files are accessible from ADB without root, but you can do this in the recovery if it supports this. If the recovery doesn't offer a terminal or a file manager, use something like the Aroma FM.

? Q&A

#permission #flyme
Granting usage stats permission hangs my device. How to disable it before opening the app?

In privileged mode, usage stats permission is used by default which might cause issues in a few devices due to bad implementation. There’s a way to disable the feature without opening App Manager’s main page:

1. Install App Manager, but do not open it
2. Open App Info page of App Manager in Android Settings app
3. Click on Additional settings in the app (you may have to click on Advanced before that). This will open the settings page of App Manager.
4. Navigate to Appearance > Enable/disable features and then uncheck Usage access.

? Q&A

#uninstall #debloat #profile
Uninstall unneeded system apps using profiles.

Profiles in App Manager is a very useful feature if you know how to use it. As an example, it can be used to uninstall unneeded system apps and keep track of them too in case you face any issues and wan to revert some apps back:

1. In three-dots menu in the Main page, go to the Profiles page by clicking Profiles
2. In the Profiles page, you can create a new profile using two methods:
   i. If you want to debloat your OS, you might want to start using a preset already supplied by App Manager (in the three-dots menu), or
   ii. Click on the New Profile* floating button at the bottom of the page.
3. Add/remove all the apps that you need/don’t need
4. Save the profile using the three-dots menu
5. Return to the Main page and click List options (the icon to the right of the Search button)
6. In the list options dialog, navigate to the bottom, and in the Profile input box, select or type the name of the profile you’ve added earlier. You can additionally apply other filters such as Installed or System

7. Use batch operations to uninstall the filtered apps.

8. In an upcoming release, there shall be a separate page dedicated entirely to debloating your system.

? Tips & Tricks

#uninstall #crash #samsung #one_ui
Attempting to uninstall App Manager causes crash. How to fix?

In some variants of One UI and Lineage OS 17.1, attempting to uninstall App Manager might cause the Android installer to crash. This is a third-party issue and can’t be fixed from our side. However, it may still possible to uninstall App Manager in one of several ways:

1. Ensure that Lineage OS 17.1 and OpenGapps are up-to-date.
2. Remove the SD Card before attempting to uninstall App Manager.
3. Clear all data or reset all permissions of App Manager, especially the usage stats permission.
4. Disabling App Manager also helped some One UI users to successfully uninstall App Manager. If you cannot disable, you can also try force-stopping the app.
5. Uninstall without clearing data. Use this as a last resort. If you are running App Manager in root or ADB mode, you can do this inside App Manager by navigating to the App Details page of the app. In other cases, you can either use root or ADB to run the following command:

pm uninstall \-k io.github.muntashirakon.AppManager

Samsung has a long history of paying no attention to issues and vulnerabilities. So, if you care about privacy, you should install a privacy-friendly ROM instead of One UI, and if you care about security, you should avoid buying Samsung devices altogether.

? Tips & Tricks