[Android Apps and Games] FFU5y:
A quick note

If you've come from Google Play to get support, welcome! I'm glad you made it here.

Please do post a description of the problem you are having, but you may also want to read the section below labelled What should I do when it fails?, as this will make it much easier for me to provide support.

If you're having a problem, the place to post it is here, because if you do so on Google Play then I have no way of responding. Unfortunately, this has been the case where an issue has become apparent, and I have included a fix, but there is no way for me to notify those who had the problem.

In any case, back to our normal program...

What is it?

PDroid Manager is an alternative OpenPDroid/PDroid 2.0 Management App. It is currently the 'official' management app for OpenPDroid, and serves as an alternative to the PDroid 2.0 App for PDroid 2.0.

It is GPL licensed (with additional attribution conditions). Source can be obtained from my github.

What does it need?

First, this relies on either the OpenPDroid Core/Framework patches (recommended), or the PDroid 2.0 Core/Framework patches being present in the ROM. You need to have them installed, either by getting the patches (OpenPDroid, PDroid 2.0), patching and compiling a rom yourself; or using the excellent autopatcher tool by mateorod and pastime to patch an existing rom.

It also requires Android 4.1.2 or 4.2.1.

Status

This app is in a supremely alpha state. It does have bugs. It will crash if you run it without the PDroid core/framework patches. It does have a problem with the way notification icons display if you install multiple apps without configuring them. It will crash in a range of other situations I haven't thought of yet.

It will crash if you try to use it while you have the PDroid 2.0 App installed. (It's a permissions signature thing, and you can't have both installed unless you resign them both yourself: see here for how to do that.)

It has been tested on three devices a Galaxy Nexus running AOKP, and a B&N Nook (cheers to mateorod) and a Nexus 7 running AOSP.

Probably others too now, what with people using it, but I don't have a list for that =)

What is the difference between this and the PDroid 2.0 App

This is an ALPHA status tool, so it has more bugs.

This isn't complete - it is missing useful things like an 'about' box, the ability to check the PDroid core version, backup & restore, all of which are in the PDroid 2.0 App.

It can keep logs of application activities. There is currently no way to view these, though. Logs are now (I think?) supported in PDroid 2.0 App. I haven't tried them though.

You can filter the app list by whether it is a system or user app, and by the type of permissions used. Now also in PDroid 2.0 App.

You can filter apps by the 'type' of permission they use - e.g. 'messaging', 'calls', etc.

The source is available.

It can create and restore multiple (human-readable) backups on your SD card or 'external storage'.

It supports multiple languages, thanks to the contributions of others (languages and contributors are listed below) PDroid 2.0 App now supports German and English (but not Russian and French).

Did I mention it has more bugs?

What is the difference between this and Permissions Denied, and other permission-modifying apps

In brief: OpenPDroid and PDroid 2.0 do not actually change the permissions of apps; rather, they intervene when the apps try to use some of the features allowed by these permissions. For example, it doesn't remove permission for an app to use the camera - instead, it lets the app believe it is using the camera normally but then feeds back a fake image when a 'photo' is taken. Similarly, the app can try to request the phone number from the phone, but PDroid can return either a blank number, or a fake number, to the app. The main advantage of this is that rather than the app crashing, as often happens if it finds expected permissions have been removed, it continues to operate simply using incorrect data as its input.

The downside is that PDroid requires modifications to the ROM, which is difficult.

What should I do when it fails?

First, check if the problem you have discovered is a known issue, by looking at issues on my github. If if has already been lodged, but you have additional information to add, then ideally attach it to the issue in github. Otherwise, you can post it here but please clearly refer to the existing issue in github when doing so.

If it is not a known issue in the github:

You can open an issue on my github, providing a logcat: see how to get a logcat.

You can post on this thread, providing a logcat. I will try to monitor this thread, but if it starts getting out of control then I will probably try to run up a bug tracker somewhere else for people to use (and I will always fall back on the github issue tracker).

When will you stop telling me about the bugs and give me a link?

I have added PDroid Manager to the Play store, so you can obtain it from there (which means easier updating). If you do get it from the Play store, remember that support is provided via this thread, not via the Play store comments. I have only added the app to the Play store as a convenience so people can get updates without monitoring this thread.

Check the attachments to this post for the PDroid ALPHA releases. Make sure you read that ALPHA part.

Source at my github.

Requirements: Android API 16 (i.e. 4.1.2 - haven't tested in 4.2 yet).

What does it look like?

This:

Why did you build it?

The original PDroid app by Syvat, and the subsequent PDroid Addon/Extension/2.0 apps by CollegeDev didn't do everything I wanted them to do. I couldn't modify them because I didn't have the source. I'd never created an app before and I wanted to give it a shot.

Why does it need permission to access my SDCard?

I've added the ability to backup and restore your settings to the external storage. In order to do this, I need to be able to write to, and read from, the external storage. I will be adding a version at some point which doesn't require this permission, and cannot do backups.

Isn't doing backups to the external storage really insecure? Couldn't another program edit my backups?

In general, doing backups to the external storage would be insecure, in two ways: other apps could read your settings from the backup, and other apps could edit the backup so when you restore it your settings are wrong.

The ability for other apps to read your settings is a problem even ignoring backups. The Pdroid 2.0 Core (and the original PDroid Core) do not prevent applications from reading settings without any permissions whatsoever. Yes, any app can read your settings directly from the PDroid service. That is the way the PDroid core is built at present (and I don't much like it, but that's another story).

The second problem is one that I have attempted to address. Each installation of PDroid Manager will generate a 'digital signing key', and any backup you create will be signed with this key. When you attempt to restore the backup, the signature is checked to ensure the backup (or signature) has not been modified. If the signature doesn't match, you are warned and given the opportunity to restore anyway. You cannot export this signing key, because exporting that key to your external storage would make it accessible to other programs, and with it they could re-sign your backups to make it appear that they had not been modified. This means if you uninstall and reinstall PDroid Manager, you will get 'invalid signature' warnings on all the backups made from previous installations. If you don't want this to happen, I recommend downloading and using Titanium Backup - it will store the encryption key (although on external storage, which itself could be a security risk). Thus, unless you uninstall and reinstall your PDroid Manager installation, the app will verify that backups have valid signatures before restoring them. Mind you, a root app could steal the signing key. As is always stated, for root apps it is all up for grabs.

I have a great suggestion! How should I get it to you?

First, keep in mind that there are various degrees of detail which can be provided with suggestions, such as:

A suggestion of a feature which could be included

A description of how the feature should work (e.g. user cases: list XYZ, then user presses N, dialog P opens, etc.)

Storyboards or images of what the feature could look like (even if it just a box diagram done in Powerpoint or something).

A suggestion of an app which implements a similar behaviour that could be used as a reference for implementation

A bit of example code

Suggestions of new features are excellent, and some suggestions need less description than others - e.g. "add a help button to each setting" needs less description than "add the ability to filter by the 'trust' state of the app" (although in both cases, interface diagrams could be helpful: e.g. should the help button go to the left or right of the text label for the setting?)

You don't have to provide all of these details, and indeed even if you do provide some details I may not actually use them (e.g. if your suggested images were very inconsistent with the Android UI idioms, or the rest of the app). You can certainly make suggestions that are quite simple: e.g. I would like to be able to apply settings to multiple apps at once, or I would like to be able to filter by individual settings rather than groups of settings (although the latter would be a good candidate for interface suggestions too). If you are suggesting complex features, though, some suggestion of how the interface should work could be handy too - even if I don't use the suggestions as such, they can be very useful for giving me different perspectives.

If you have a suggestion then please describe clearly the suggested feature, interface or behaviour change, or whatever your suggestion it may be. If it requires a new UI screen, or a change to an existing one, descriptions of how it should work, drawings or imagery (or pointing to another app) are very welcome.

In order of 'most desirable' to 'least desirable' (from my perspective) I suggest:

Post the suggestion to my github

Post the suggestion on this thread

PM me (this is low on the list because if I get a flooded PM box it will be hard to find anything).

Finally, remember nothing says "I'd love this feature to be in the app" like a patch to implement it ;)

Can I contribute a translation?

Absolutely! I welcome translations! The process for doing a translation will depend on whether you have a github account or not.

Currently we have translations being contributed for:

English

French (jpeg729 and patrickpr)

German (TamCore)

Hungarian: appelsson

Russian (Beasty)

If you have a Github account

You can fork the PDroid Manager project, and create a "values-xx" directory for the relevant language (e.g. values-de for German). Into that directory, you will need to copy:

Files containing text displayed to the user are:

access_notification_text.xml, which is the text for notification messages provided to the user when an app attempts to accesses a particular type of data.

arrays.xml, which currently contains the text of the drop-down lists used for filtering, and the 'Untrusted, Trusted, No Settings' text displayed.

settings_strings.xml, which contains the text descriptions of each setting, and the associated help text. (I have *just* pushed an update to github for this file, so if you want to translate it make sure you do a pull).

strings.xml, which contains the 'general' strings used in the app.

Once you have created those files, you can commit them, and then create a 'pull request' so I know they are ready to be integrated. I'll then integrate them.

If you don't have a github account

You will need to download the four files linked above, and translate the strings in them. Once you have done that, post to this thread with the files attached.

Remember:Keep in mind that if you have the files sitting around for a while in a partially translated state, they could change in development! When doing translations, make sure you have the latest version from the server. If you find that the strings etc have changed on the server, and you have done a partial translation, you can use a tool like WinMerge to merge the new changes into your file without a lot of work.

Also, if you are creating translation files, please include yourself as an @author in the header to the file, or nominate the details you would like to have recorded against your authorship. Also note that basically the entire app is under a GPL license, and I will only accept material which is licensed under a GPL or BSD license, to make sure that people are free to copy and edit the code as they see fit.

What do you have planned next?

Fix bugs

Add a 'preferences' and 'info' screen to check PDroid core/framework version, etc mostly done

Add help to the individual settings, so users can understand what they mean DONE!

Add the ability to view log and delete logs

Add the ability to create 'profiles' - i.e. pre-configured groups of settings, which can then be applied to an app

Add batch processing, so profiles can be applied to multiple apps in a single action Released in 0.9.3

Add filtering of apps by individual settings, not just by 'setting group'.

Add filtering of apps by setting state (i.e. trusted, untrusted, no settings)

If you want you can give it a go. Read the source. Have fun. Just don't complain that you haven't been warned about it being buggy.

2013-01-15 v0.2.9.9 ALPHA

Changes

Added support for 4.2.1 - not that it stopped you installing it anyway, but for Google Play it mattered =)

Added Spanish support, thanks to alceasan.

2013-01-12 v0.2.9.8 ALPHA

Changes

Fixed a force-close affecting everyone as a result of a corrupted APK. Sorry about that, all!

2013-01-12 v0.2.9.7 ALPHA

Changes

Added Hungarian language support thanks to appelsson.

Updated French language support thanks to jpeg729.

Fixed (I think) a bug in which the app crashed when an installed app does not have an icon.

2012-12-15 v0.2.9.5 ALPHA

Changes

Theoretically fixed a bug which I was unable to reproduce (but I think I know why) which caused a crash rather than a friendly message when a user attempted to run PDroid Manager without the PDroid core installed.

CHANGE LOG

2012-12-15: v0.2.9.4 ALPHA

Changes

Added detection of whether necessary permissions to write to the PDroid core were present, and provide a friendly message if they are not. (These permissions are absent if PDroid 2.0 App is installed before PDroid Manager, not uninstalled before PDroid Manager is installed, and the two packages have not been re-signed with the same key).

Otherwise, this version is identical to v.0.2.9.3. It was just added because I saw some crashes due to PDroid 2.0 App being installed with Google Play users.

2012-12-14: v0.2.9.3 ALPHA

Changes

The main stand-out of this release is batch processing: further details about that are after the list.

Instead of crashing if you don't have PDroid installed, it will now give you a message telling you that you need to install it.

Batch processing: you can now select a bunch of apps, and change their settings. Long-press on an app to enter selection mode, touch other apps to select or deselect them, then use the action bar options to choose what to do.

Added a 'purge settings' option to preferences. This deletes all settings for all apps.

Changing language now triggers a restart of the app (after prompting the user) to immediately switch language

Restructured the filtering interface to work better on smaller devices, and generally look nicer.

Info/help buttons for settings only appear on larger devices now (due to screen real-estate issues). Clicking on the name of the setting will display the help on smaller devices.

Performance improvements

Known bugs

When multiple apps are installed one after the other, the notification to update settings of previous installations is replaced (rather than additional icons appearing). Still.

I think there is still something funny going on with the 'trust' indicator after you save an app, but that may be a new issue. Still.

App names in the application list don't get reloaded when the phone locale changes, which means they stay in the old language until manually refreshed. I'm no longer going to call this an issue, because it is handled by the OS.

Also see my github list: https://github.com/wsot/pdroid-manager/issues

Key points about batch processing:

When you select some apps and choose 'custom settings', only the settings relevant to the apps will be displayed (unless you choose 25+ apps; then it was too slow to work out which ones were relevant).

Only those settings you select new values for will be changed. Those with no pressed buttons will be left alone.

You can 'deselect' a button in batch mode by pressing it again (effectively clearing that setting row, so it will not be changed).

Batch processing can be a bit slow, but unfortunately that is a consequence of the Privacy service to which PDroid Manager connects. I have modified this service to improve performance, but I'm still testing the changes so the app does not require those modifications.

You can't avoid overriding the 'logging' and 'notification' settings when doing batch processing at this stage. I will resolve this soon.

2012-12-07: v0.2.8 ALPHA

This is a minor update: It provides an updated German translation from TamCore, and

Changes

Updated German translation from TamCore,

fixes the Application List scrolling back to the top when you open details for an application, thus losing your place.

Known bugs

When multiple apps are installed one after the other, the notification to update settings of previous installations is replaced (rather than additional icons appearing). Still.

The app will probably crash if PDroid is not installed. Still.

I think there is still something funny going on with the 'trust' indicator after you save an app, but that may be a new issue. Still.

App names in the application list don't get reloaded when the phone locale changes, which means they stay in the old language until manually refreshed. Still.

Also see my github list: https://github.com/wsot/pdroid-manager/issues

2012-12-03: v0.2.7 ALPHA

A couple of new features in this one, and returning to just one version (rather than multilingual and English). The backup and restore features are shiny and new, and *should* work, but be cautious when using them. I've tried them out quite a bit, with custom settings etc, but there could be bugs there that will cook all your PDroid settings. If you find one, please, please report it (see the section on reporting bugs).

Changes

Added a 'preferences' screen, with 'About' box, 'Credits', and a link to this thread

Added language selection (i.e. overriding phone language), again in the preferences screen. Note that for the language to change, you need to force-close and restart PDroid Manager after switching languages. I'm looking at how to resolve this.

Added backup and restore of settings. This requires access to your external storage, hence the new permission. I will be adding supporting code at some stage to allow a separate version without backup and restore to be easily generated for those who are uncomfortable with SDcard access by the app. You can read more details about the backup approach in the Why does it need permission to access my SDCard? and Isn't doing backups to the external storage really insecure? Couldn't another program edit my backups? sections.

Known bugs

When multiple apps are installed one after the other, the notification to update settings of previous installations is replaced (rather than additional icons appearing). Still.

The app will probably crash if PDroid is not installed. Still.

I think there is still something funny going on with the 'trust' indicator after you save an app, but that may be a new issue. Still.

App names in the application list don't get reloaded when the phone locale changes, which means they stay in the old language until manually refreshed. Still.

Also see my github list: https://github.com/wsot/pdroid-manager/issues

2012-11-30: v0.2.6 ALPHA

This release has two versions: Forced English (PDroid_Manager_0.2.6_en) and multilingual (PDroid_Manager_0.2.6_multilingual). The multilingual will automatically use the language matching the phone where possible. The 'en' version uses the exact code I intend to apply to allow users to override the automatic language selection. Basically, this is the same as having a button to force the app to always use English, except the button isn't on the user interface and is always pressed. If you find this isn't always showing English, please let me know so I can fix it.

Changes

Incorporated updated help text (fine work by wbedard, to which I made minor edits. Thus, errors are probably mine not wbedards).

Added German translation (thanks to TamCore) and French translation (thanks to patrickpr on GitHub; note I removed a few words from the translations because the English help text changed, so may have introduced gramattical errors into patrick's French).

Added automatic language data re-loading. To optimise speed, some language-specific text is stored in the database. To make sure that stays up to date, the App will check if the language has changed, and regenerate that database data if it has. If this doesn't happen for you, and the interface stays in English when you switch your phone to German, etc, please report it..

Added different button sizes for 'large' vs 'non-large' devices. This means that buttons will appear larger on most 7-inch tablets (and maybe 10-inch tablets too; my 10-inch isn't working right now) than on phones.

Modified the code to use Android 'Fragments': hopefully, this will be invisible to users at this stage; however, in future it will allow easier development of a multi-panel tablet interface. This is a pretty major change, so may have introduced bugs. Sorry.

Updated notification bar icon to match Google's style guide.

Known bugs

When multiple apps are installed one after the other, the notification to update settings of previous installations is replaced (rather than additional icons appearing). I will fix this soon, honestly.

The app will probably crash if PDroid is not installed.

I think there is still something funny going on with the 'trust' indicator after you save an app, but that may be a new issue.

App names in the application list don't get reloaded when the phone locale changes, which means they stay in the old language until manually refreshed. I'm undecided as to whether to I consider this a bug or not. Feedback (or patch to fix it) welcome.

Also see my github list: https://github.com/wsot/pdroid-manager/issues

2012-11-25: v0.2.3 ALPHA

Changes

Added improved text for the access notifications

Added a help button for each setting with a summary of what the setting does (I know it is ugly, and I plan to fix that soon).

The application list status indicator should now work under all normal circumstances

Dialogs have been added when loading, saving etc. to avoid interactions that could cause crashes

Known bugs

When multiple apps are installed one after the other, the notification to update settings of previous installations is replaced (rather than additional icons appearing).

The app will probably crash if PDroid is not installed.

Also see my github list: https://github.com/wsot/pdroid-manager/issues

2012-11-19: v0.2.2 ALPHA

Changes

Re-added some debug logging (but still much less than was there originally).

Added the ability to delete privacy settings from an app, both in the application settings detail screen, and on the long-press menu on the application list.

The application list status indicator (i.e. trusted, untrusted, no settings) now updates after the long-press menu is used, or the settings are changes in the detail display

An 'all' option has been edited when filtering by the type of settings (e.g. messaging, media, etc).

Known bugs

The trusted/untrusted is sometimes incorrect - 'trusted' apps may appear as 'untrusted'.

When multiple apps are installed one after the other, the notification to update settings of previous installations is replaced (rather than additional icons appearing).

The app will probably crash if PDroid is not installed.

Also see my github list: https://github.com/wsot/pdroid-manager/issues

2012-11-16, later: v0.2.1 ALPHA

Removed writing to the device log (so logcat will not be hideously large)