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Comment by dur-randir | Hacker News Reader

  - TitaniumBackup
  - ability to monitor battery consumption
  - some dpi evasion apps (they sometimes work where no vpn gets through)
  - packet capture
  - Macrodroid
  - view wifi passwords
  - edit gps.conf, wifi configs, add custom root certs, change default font, etc
  - ssl cert unpinner
  - call recording
  - install Youtube Vanced over original one
  - allow screenshots from any app
  - forbid quick tiles access from lock screen (holy crap, why not all roms have this option??)
  - block custom wakelocks
  - allow app versions downgrade without uninstalling them

You see, half of my phone's capabilities are locked because of "reasons" by Google. But it's me who owns the phone, not them.

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Can it stop Google Play Protect from removing permissions on apps you haven't used in a while (while still leaving scanning intact)?

Unlike most people, I pay attention to and carefully configure permissions for my apps when I install them. Only to have Google tear down all that hard work a few months later :-S.

Others also feel this pain:

https://support.google.com/android/thread/159501058/how-do-i...

Not sure why the stock app hasn't got a Disable checkbox for that feature, wondering if there's a LineageOS-friendly equivalent that does.

Yeah, I know your pain. What's worse, there is/was bug in some roms/GP versions which reset this setting upon reboot. Ugh.

I don't know how to turn this misfeature off. Lineage just has a generic slider on a per-app basis, but it still requires revisiting each apps' settings page.

It should be possible with lsposed, but I haven't found such a module.

You can deactivate this feature on a per-app basis.

Yes, but you'll have to do it for every app you ever install, one by one.

And unfortunately there's a several seconds long wait for the screen to refresh in between each one (at least on my phone and others' I've seen).

Be careful with Titanium backup. It cannot handle several modern Android things properly. (E.g. proper SE Linux file properties)

I learned the hard way after the fact...

It handled my recent transition flawlessly, but is there anything better?

The modern version is https://f-droid.org/packages/com.machiav3lli.backup/

Neo Backup and Swift Backup are my go-tos. First is free and open source, second is closed source and some features are locked behind paying but it's pretty cheap and feels more polished (only supports keeping one backup at a time though, unfortunately, and you can't browse backup files because they're forcefully encrypted).

Half of these I have with my unrooted custom ROM. Beside, for most you only need root once and can remove it afterwards.

This is a weirdly arrogant authoritarian attitude you have against other's using their devices.

By using that unrooted custom ROM, it's not like root doesn't exist anymore, you just don't have it. The people who built the ROM have root, not you. They own your phone. It's their phone, not yours.

Having access to a root shell isn't bad, or dangerous, or a security risk. Not having means not having ownership of the device.

I had to laugh at your first sentence, that incendiary reply is almost comical.

Even if a single use case requires root, I still need root on device, no way around that.

TitaniumBackup still working fine for you? Last time I tried to restore apps on Lineage 18.1 recently in the last year most restored apps crashed until I wiped their data/cache in the settings. This basically makes Titanium a glorified app installer, mostly defeats the purpose.

The only problem I've encountered is when rolling back updates for some apps - they'd crash after restoring them from TB, so I have to uninstall them first and only then restore. But I have a fairly conservative set of apps.

Stock Android allows viewing Wi-Fi passwords these days

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