Android: F-Droid Classic and the new Privileged Extension

Of all the Android app stores, perhaps the most interesting is F-Droid - the one most comparable to typical Linux package managers, as not only the technical and ethical quality of the program itself are good, but if the 100% Free Software official catalogue comes short, you can always add 3rd-party ones!

Just like every non-preinstalled app store, however, each installation or update is for all intents and purposes not different than manually installing an .apk, with manual confirmation that quickly gets tedious.
F-Droid addresses this with a "privileged extension" that is supposed to get installed as a system app, however that implies not only having some form of root access but also modifying the /system partition or using questionable bind-mount hackjobs (as a testament of G**gle and most OEM's commitment to an open platform respecting consumer freedom);

Now consider "F-Droid Classic", a compatible client that remains true to the more functional traditional layout instead of the newer, consumer-ish one; but more relevantly to this article, once it became clear the official Privileged Extension would not have supported it, an alternative was developed taking advantage of the same mechanism corporations use and abuse to remotely manage employees' phones!

Setting it up is fairly simple: after installing the F-Droid Privileged Extension - Device Owner as it's called, execute the following command over Android Debugging:

Code:

adb shell dpm set-device-owner eu.bubu1.privext/org.fdroid.DeviceAdminReceiver

That is all: the only caveat is that this command requires the lack of any logged-in accounts (as determined by the appropriate page in the system settings), making this more attractive immediately after a factory reset, or otherwise requiring a little additional effort.

Enjoy your newly found freedom AND convenience!

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