yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Android Apps and Games] IronTechmonkey:
I’m exploring the disabling of autostart components in AppControl. Can anyone say what are the specific security or resource preserving benefits of disabling autostart components?. Also, I’m well backed up and can easily undo these changes but wanted to fish for some advise or caveats first.

For some apps I understand why I would need notifications or other functionality enabled by Autostart so I wont disable autostart components for them: Adaway, LMT, MyPhoneExplorer Client, Nova Launcher Prime, Retro Clock, Secure Settings, Super SU, System Monitor Lite, Tasker, Titanium Backup, Watchdog Light, Widgetsoid.

Although I understand why the following apps would include autostart components, if I don’t push email or use notification features it seems safe to disable autostart components of these: K-9 mail, Maps, My Tracks, Network log, TV Listings, XDA Free, GMail (just to appease Google I might leave this one alone)

I don’t know why these apps need autostart components but don’t use notifications from them so will disable autostart components on them as well : Dolphin Browser, Easy Tether, Firefox, Skitch

Why do 3rd party messaging apps 8SMS and Textra appear in the AppControl list and have Autostart components but native CM11 messaging does not appear in the AppControl list at all?

Of course the broad answer to all this is to try it and see, which is what I’m going to do. Just sussing out potential pitfalls first.

Also I would add: Although I have not used SD Maid intensively I’ve been watching this thread for some time and am pleasantly surprised and entertained by how often Dark3n has made the most recent post. Now that is some active and dedicated Dev love. Nice!
[Android Apps and Games] Mike B.:
I won't comment on the specific examples you mention but I've noticed that some apps include an "autostart" process enabled by default for the sole purpose of checking for updates. Where available, disabling autoupdate from within the app suffices but not all apps are coded wisely or elegantly... ;)
[Android Apps and Games] Salim.Keady:
BlueStacks

well am using this app on BlueStacks app player

it crashes when i finish cleaning (i clean everything) i have to restart it

but i has awesome results

THANKS
[Android Apps and Games] IronTechmonkey:
I suspected by general context, and by color of autostart status text in SD Maid that in app update settings are a factor here. Thanks for the confirmation. I've always disabled every kind of auto update and synch feature than can be disabled (by the user interface - not freezing services here). In a bit of a wild guess I think others like Firefox and Dolphin appear because they have notification capability. In any event I'm going to toggle autostart components off for a few of these and see how it goes. Thanks again.

---------- Post added at 08:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:46 PM ----------

Pardon my off topic here but I maintain virtual machines of DOS 6.2x/Win3.11, OS2, Win98, Win2000, WinXP, Ubuntu 10, Ubuntu 12, Win7 and Playstation2 Emulator but had not yet discovered this so thanks for mentioning it Perhaps I'll make a roomful of mirrors and install it on one of my VMs :silly:. That said, I'm not surprised there would be some problems on an emulator. Nice to know it worked at all.
[Android Apps and Games] jr67:
The CM messaging app is a system app so you need to enable "Include System Apps" in the Autostarts Settings for it to appear.
[Android Apps and Games] Dark3n:
Without decompiling the application in question we don't know what certain components do. We can detect components as "autostart components" by seeing if they are registers for the "ON_BOOT_COMPLETED" event. Which means these components get notified by the system when the device has finished booting. These are the only facts we have. As a human we can then deduce possible behavior by looking at the component name, e.g. "AutoUpdateService" might be a routine that checks for updates. That's not a fact though, just an educated guess.

The benefit depends on what the component does, but just like on Windows, if you have 50 apps trying to do something when the device lags, there are only finite resources.

Example:

As the launcher is just another app, this would mean that the launcher might be laggy and unresponsive directly after boot because it shares resources with too many other apps doing stuff on boot.

Android documentation recommends to use registering for this event sparsingly which is also why this requires specific permissions. A well written app shouldn't cause much trouble. SD Maid uses the on_boot_event to restore the scheduler timer, because that gets lost on reboot. It's a short routine that gets the target date from the settings file, calculates the remaining time and restores the alarm that triggers SD Maid at that date. This doesn't use many resources and happens very quickly, but other apps might be doing more resource intensive stuff such as scanning the device or initiating network communication.

A nice trick a developer could do is to post pone the actual work by using the on boot event to set up an event 10 into the future. As a user or without decompiling the app you can't know what is happening though.

Most people probably just deactivate all on boot components, see if it improves something or breaks something, i.e. trial & error.

Please record a logcat of the crash and mail it/post it.

The color of the autostart tag only reflects whether all autostart components are deactivated or not.

Tag exists = Component exists.

Tag colored = At least one component is enabled.

Tag gray = No component is enabled.

SD Maid should actually work on everything that does not diverge from default Android (i.e. AOSP / Nexus devices). The last time i checked BlueStacks they had some weird setup regarding installed applications, i don't know whether it was just a bug or they deliberately tried to hide their "bluestacks apps".

When querying the packagename of a bluestacks app it was returned as "not found" by the system, but when you ask the system for a list of all installed apps, the list contains the bluestacks apps.

This causes issue for SD Maid when trying to determine whether files are corpses. I have some workaround ideas, but they have a negative impact on overall robustness and performance.

I asked Bluestacks people via twitter about this but never got a response, then i lost interested in fixing this.
[Android Apps and Games] IronTechmonkey:
Thank you very much for the very helpful information. Managing such startup resources and activity on PCs is actually one of my professional specialties and I'm quite comfortable with this stuff, particularly with the additional details you've provided. To your point about disabling auto-updates; I do that everywhere that is possible in the GUI as well as disabling all auto-syncing so I would not expect any major gain in start-up time, power consumption or performance. To another point you made about Windows and the bottleneck of activity at start up: True that, and another factor there is that most PCs still use platter based drives which, in the age of triple channel memory and3+Ghz quad cores disk access are glacially slow by comparison, particularly at startup.

Knowing that there was very low risk and acknowledging that there may be little gain I disabled all autostart items for the following: Firefox, Dolphin, Easy Tether, My Tracks, Network Log, TV Listings, XDA.Have not noticed any difference after a day.

I’m saving the multiple autostart items behind Gmail and Google Maps for more controlled tests because, with those there might actually be performance gains or losses or other impact on the system that I should keep an eye on.

I’m glad I dug deeper into SD Maid’s features as I was not using it to it’s potential for my device, and I thank you again for the information.
[Android Apps and Games] carlese:
[MENTION=608746]Dark3n[/MENTION] I don't know if it's SD maid related, but my alarm app (stock euphoria OS alarm) rings only for one second and then goes off.. Could it be because I clean system, apps and database at night? What can I uncheck to prevent it?
[Android Apps and Games] Dark3n:
I don't see how SD Maid could cause something so specific.
[Android Apps and Games] carlese:
I don't know, maybe deleting cache or other things.. For example I see that my keyboard resets to the standard one if I let SD maid clean apps (including SwiftKey).. So maybe that's the same.. I'll test more and report back ;)
[Android Apps and Games] B3311:
Same here. In my case it's nothing to do with SDM but another app, My Android Tools Pro. I've disabled/restricted way too many alarms, activities and services with it, but haven't tracked down the culprit. One ring wakes me anyway.
[Android Apps and Games] carlese:
I am using amplify with xposed too.. Gonna try to figure it out..
[Android Apps and Games] Celestial Fury:
So here's something most curious and annoying. I used SD Maid to remove the following system apps: Google Play Books, Google Play Newsstand, AR Effect, Social Live, & NDRUtils. It didn't work. In fact right after "Delete the app and its data", Xprivacy showed a notification that the apps were (re-)installed.

Upon a reboot, opening play store and scrolling through the apps installed list caused a one time screen jump back to the home screen. Further checking showed the apps were definitely there.

I tried several times and failed to remove these particular apps. Other system apps (including some by Google) were removed just fine. In the past I had previously removed them without any problems. I had to remove them now again after getting the phone back from repairs.

It's only after ticking "remove keepers" in AppControl that they were finally removed successfully.

I wouldn't put it past Google to have some sneaky auto reinstall (is this even possible) or for Sony to take a leaf out of their book but NDRUtils is from the most respectable [MENTION=4904057][NUT][/MENTION].

I'd love to know what happened and if what I did was the correct way to remove those apps.

Finally, the second screenshot that shows 1 OK | 0 failed is TOO FAST TO SEE! I had to time a screenshot to even have a chance to check if it was showing any errors.
[Android Apps and Games] Vagelis1608:
You only removed their updates from /data

Uninstall them again. That should remove them from /system

Sent from my D620r [Stock 4.4.2]
[Android Apps and Games] Celestial Fury:
Sounds probable but I tried several times. Each time it removes one update? SD Maid can't remove in one go? Remove keepers need to be checked to remove in one go?
[Android Apps and Games] Dark3n:
I don't have my head in the code atm, but on a quick skim i could not see why it should behave that way with the option "remove keepers".

The keepers flag affects the removal of /data/data and /Android/data folders while the app install state is determined by /data/app and then /system/app.

If this is reproducable everytime and the only difference is the "keeper" flag, please create a bug ticket ( http://sdmaid.darken.eu/issues ), this is weird enough :confused:.

You can see the result in the navigation drawer too.

[MENTION=4849551]Vagelis1608[/MENTION] is correct, in case of system apps that have been updated, you have to uninstall them two times. It's an internal thing. The .apk in /system/app is actually not really installed when there is a userspace update.

I think i alpha tested some logic for this already but did not put it into production because it was not reliable accross 2.3-5.0 (With SDM v4 we can reevaluate this again). Wouldn't we want to make this optional then though? Uninstalling system app updates could also be considered a feature ;). Though you can still do that through the default system uninstall, so for consistency we probably should make it a one pass action.

On what device/ROM is this happening and what superuser app? If i rememeber correctly there were some issues on HTC devices, something around S On/Off. Don't have a HTC device to test though.
[Android Apps and Games] Celestial Fury:
Ok I get it then:good:. It probably had nothing to do with remove keepers. It just so happened all the incremental updates were uninstalled when I selected it. Where can I find the navigation drawer?

Well, the option says "Delete the app and its data" so one would expect the whole app to go and not just its incremental updates. A person would think SD Maid wasn't working. As for uninstalling system app updates as a feature, if we choose to delete the app and its data we'd be wanting the whole app to go and not just its updates.
[Android Apps and Games] Mike B.:
This is not specific to SD Maid. In your scenario, you have TWO apps: the original one in /system/app (e.g. MyApp-v1.apk) and the updated one that you downloaded (e.g. MyApp-v2.apk). When you "Delete the app and its data', you delete the update first which reverts MyApp to the original version. This is similar to the "uninstall all updates" (or whatever it's called in your ROM) option from the Applications Manager. Deleting

both

without warning might become a support nightmare. To avoid confusion, [MENTION=608746]Dark3n[/MENTION] may be able to display the specific version that is to be deleted but I'm not sure it would be convenient or advisable.
[Android Apps and Games] Celestial Fury:
Regardless, only one app is displayed. Multiple versions may be how the system works but as far as the user is concerned, only one app - one version (the latest) is installed. It's also a matter of language. "Delete the app and its data" means just that (it doesn't say delete the latest version of the app). Any user who chooses this option fully intends to remove the app totally. If it says one thing but does another then there is no congruence between function and design.
[Android Apps and Games] Mike B.:
We can't automatically assume that a user always wants to completely uninstall both the original and the updated versions of a system app. I know I'd be very annoyed if a user app did that to me without a clear warning. In fact, I often see queries about the best way to get rid of an unwanted OTA for a sysapp and return to the ROM version. Maybe the confusion is merely a matter of semantics and using "Delete the l

atest

version of the app and its data" would suffice. Other utilities that manipulate system apps (TiB, for example) add an "(updated)" label to highlight the difference between original and latest versions. My concern would be that SD Maid may end up being weakened if it tries to be everything to everyone and drowns the user in too many options, but that's clearly for [MENTION=608746]Dark3n[/MENTION] to decide.
[Android Apps and Games] tetakpatak:
I totally agree. This is a small, cool app of mighty power and it should remain that way IMHO.

tetakpatalked from Nexus 7 flo
[Android Apps and Games] Cyclu:
Hello CelestialFury!

I think adding the word "update" (see the screenshot please) would be a good indicator that we have multiple versions (exactly two) and additionally in the Details dialog (long press app>menu) under "Source dir:" add the path for the second system apk.
[Android Apps and Games] Celestial Fury:
Hey:). "Update" or something to highlight the difference or "delete latest update" or if no updates exist then "delete app" works just fine. :good:
[Android Apps and Games] Cyclu:
I agree with you it would be nice to have these improvements let wait and see what Dark3n thinks about it.

Best regards!;)
[Android Apps and Games] Dark3n:
Marking updated system apps is something SD Maid could and should do in AppControl.

I created a ticket for that here: https://bitbucket.org/d4rken/sd-maid/issue/222

Feel free to chime in with ideas how it could look, but I don't think it will still make it into SD Maid v3, so chime in with material design ideas for tags ;).

I always love colors as hints, but if people don't know what the colors mean it's usually just confusing :).

Currently imagining all tags ("updated system app" would be a tag) in AppControl as small colored circles with icons in v4, where it gives a hint if you click them.

Maybe shortscuts in a right side drawer to for quick filters and the quick filters would display icon + name again which would make it obvious what the icons in the list mean.

I'm still torn about how the uninstalling would work UI wise.

While adding a setting that changes the behavior would work, i don't like the idea.

One more idea i had was this:

- The current "Delete app and its data" deletes update & original in one pass, with no option to change that

- And we make "Reset app to its first install" also uninstall updates in case of system apps (in addition to the data wiping).

What do you guys think?

Proposal ticket here: https://bitbucket.org/d4rken/sd-maid/issue/221

Would love it if any good ideas would also be posted there, it just gets lost in the thread otherwise.
[Android Apps and Games] Dark3n:
SD Maid v3.1.2.4 (361) signs in.

Just bugfixes & database updates.

Currently in beta, but I'll probably push this through to production on friday.

http://sdmaid.darken.eu/download

http://sdmaid.darken.eu/changelogbeta

Thanks for all the nice clutter reports. Should SD Maid repeatedly fail to transmit reports, please drop me a short message.
[Android Apps and Games] Dark3n:
SD Maid v3.1.2.5 (362) brings fixes for Android 5.1.

http://sdmaid.darken.eu/download

http://sdmaid.darken.eu/changelogbeta﻿

Changes in details:

What: Freezing apps & toggeling autostart components now works correctly on Android 5.1.

Why: The action itself was not broken but SD Maid did not recognize the result of it's actions. On <5.1 the result of the action was outputted by the packagemanager on STDERR, although weird, that's how it always was, so SD Maid only looked there. In 5.1 this has now been changed (fixed?) and the result it printed to STDOUT. Solution: SD Maid reads both channels.

What: I fixed owner forensics for /data/app on Android 5.1.

Why: On Android <4.4, "/data/app" directly contains the apk file for each app. But on Andriod 5.0 it only contains directories that then contain both the "base.apk" and a "lib" folder. So for 5.0+ devices previous SD Maid versions just rolled with that (i.e. had matching that assumed this structure). Now along comes Android 5.1 and "/data/app" contains both directories and direct .apk files. More specifically, an app gets a directory if it needs to store library files otherwise it will only have an .apk file there. So 5.1 now has a mix of both <4.4 and 5.0 behavior.

Solution: Improve checks to account for this. It cost us some performance, but I also improved performance with a different approach, so overall it's probably neither faster nor slower.

What: I reenabled the CorpseFinder "/data/app-lib" filter for Android 5.0+ devices.

Why: As previously mentioned, since Android 5.0 we have each apps "lib" folder under their respective packagename in "/data/app" instead of "/data/app-lib". When first adding Lollipop support i just deactivated the filter on 5.0+ because I thought there was no need for it, as "/data/app" now contains all libs and that folder is covered by another "Owner Forensics" plugin and by an another CorpseFinder filter. Now during testing I finally upgraded my N5 from 4.4.4 to 5.1 and noticed the "/data/app-lib" folder was still in use. After further tests i came to the conclusion that: Any app that was migrated from 4.3/4.4 to 5.0+ keeps it's folder in "/data/app-lib", but new installs (possibly updates too) will have their libraries placed in "/data/app/<pkg>/lib".

Solution: Fix OwnerForensics plugin for /data/app-lib on 5.0+ & enable CorpseFinder filter on Android 5.0+ devices
[Android Apps and Games] Dark3n:
10k installs and no unexpected crashs or reported issues.

-> v3.1.2.5 has been moved in production (staged rollout).

^ See post above for details & link.
[Android Apps and Games] killoid:
[MENTION=608746]Dark3n[/MENTION] found a ui glitch. in appcleaner>minimum cache age, when 0 days is selected or it is by default selected, it shows like ss. if i slide the slider then it shows correctly. ss attached. & another issue is corpsefinder is detecting telegram+'s (now plus messenger) folder as corpse. link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.telegram.plus
[Android Apps and Games] Dark3n:
Thanks [MENTION=5107949]killoid[/MENTION]

The Telegram issue will be fixed with the next beta.

Looking into the dialog issue right now.

Common GB, why do you have so many bugs :'(.

edit: Fixed the dialog. Looks like usually onProgressChanged triggers when initially setting values, except on GB it doesn't.
[Android Apps and Games] Dark3n:
The latest BETA is now SD Maid v3.1.2.6 (363). It further moves us towards v3 becoming a legacy version and starting development of v4.

Some details:

Most importantly, SD Maid wasn't drinking coffee on some 5.0/5.1 devices, that's fixed now.

A few fixes for more GB bugs thanks to [MENTION=5107949]killoid[/MENTION]. It's important we fix any remaining issues that are only on 2.3 or 4.0 as I don't want to go screw around with the old UI after diving into MaterialDesign for v4.

I've migrated the sdmaid<>myserver communication to what v4 will use. Instead of using it for statistics, it is now only used to check for updates. This means I reduced what information gets send as I only need a small subset to be able to tell whether there is an update available for you.

The statistics collection will be moved to Piwik with a future update where I have been contributing to it's Android SDK for the last week. I'll make a longer post about this when the update that introduces it is ready. This is also the last big milestone for me before I can start with v4.

I also added code that allows a user to manually update SD Maids internal databases for hidden cache and clutter. For now this is unnecessary as I plan to update the databases for some time, but just in case, it's in there now.

http://sdmaid.darken.eu/download

http://sdmaid.darken.eu/changelogbeta﻿
[Android Apps and Games] Kung-Fu-Tse:
this made my day :D :highfive: :good:
[Android Apps and Games] Dark3n:
It was the most horrific bug I've seen in a long time and no one told me about it ಠ_ಠ.
[Android Apps and Games] Ultramanoid:
It was too horrible to let you know and shame you. We hoped you realized on your own.

(◑︿◐)
[Android Apps and Games] Technical:
How to migrate to beta? Just install over the Google Play version?

Will the pro features work?

How to upgrade the beta? Does is update internally or should I come here to check for a new beta version?
[Android Apps and Games] MikeRL100:
Join the beta group on Google Plus and view the community from a PC and opt into the beta. Then it'll update right over it. Pro features will work. Alternatively you can grab them from the ftp server at http://darken.eu/sdmaid/download/UNSTABLE/

There are internal builds, but you're not missing much. They'll crash a lot more. They go through extra testing. If you want an internal build to test a bug you've found, talk with darken and he should agree as long as you're honest and use it for feedback purposes. Then again I'm not him so I cannot say with 100% certainty.
[Android Apps and Games] killoid:
[MENTION=608746]Dark3n[/MENTION] i'm experiencing a little glitch. i've selected to scan & clean in a single pass in the settings. when i switch to quick access tab from another tab or i exit the app & then start it, it shows the green scan button for .5 sec & then the red scan & clean one. it happens very quickly. btw previous versions didn't have such issues. i've for now disabled that option to scan & clean in a single pass so that the issue can't happen.
[Android Apps and Games] Dark3n:
I think i know what it is, if you can reliably reproduce it, send me a quick mail, I'll give you a test version.
[Android Apps and Games] atomomega:
I've been having trouble updating this app today. On 4 different devices, play store gets stuck on Downloading.

Anyone else experiencing this?