My favourite root apps for Android 13

Martin Jud

21/7/2023

Translation: Megan Cornish

What are the best apps or features that only work with a rooted phone? After a few months of searching, I’ve found my favourites.

A cheap four-inch phone has been my daily companion for a good five months now. It’s a Cubot KingKong Mini 2 Pro which arrived with Android 11, but I manually installed Android 13 on it and rooted it. Root access is to Android what administrator privileges are to Windows. It allows you to use special apps that regular users can’t. In this post, I’ll introduce you to the root apps I no longer want to be without. From A (AdAway) to X (XPrivacyLua).

For the backstory, take a look at the following three articles:

AdAway – my favourite ad blocker

AdAway is a free, open-source ad blocker. You can use it on both rooted and non-rooted smartphones, although it’s apparently more reliable on the former. It blocks ads by redirecting ad network connections to a local IP address (127.0.0.1). Hosts files from different sources determine which connections are blocked. You can also add other sources yourself. As ads are blocked at the system level, AdAway works not only in the browser but also in apps.

The app is reliable and hides ads on almost all websites and apps. On some pages, such as heise.de, I continue to see self-advertising, which is probably being played independently of advertising networks. And then there’s YouTube, which is unaffected by AdAway’s official host lists and continues to serve ads.

You can download AdAway through the alternative app store F-Droid. If you don’t like AdAway, I can also recommend the Magisk module BlockAds. BlockAds comes without a graphic interface and is just as reliable as AdAway. However, you can’t customise the hosts sources yourself.

Aptoide – my favourite alternative app store

Aptoide is an alternative Android app store that’s been around since 2011. You don’t need a rooted device to use it. However, if you use it with a rooted device, you can use it to update apps automatically. Aptoide offers a wide range of free apps – most of which can be found on the Play Store – plus apps you won’t find anywhere else. This includes ad blockers like AdAway. Developers also have the option of running their own store for their apps in Aptoide.

Registration isn’t required for Aptoide and you can download the app here and use it for free. The store offers a number of benefits, such as being able to install and use previous versions of an app – or even different versions at the same time. If you update your apps through it, you often get updates earlier than in the Play Store. This is because there’s no geo-location restriction and updates aren’t rolled out in waves.

BusyBox – my favourite command line functions module

BusyBox offers advanced command line capabilities. It’s an app or module that provides a range of Unix utilities and commands. Root functions of other apps need it to work – such as the well-known Titanium Backup (which doesn’t work on Android 13).

Even if the app doesn’t evoke many emotions in me, I appreciate its usefulness and see it as my favourite app that provides and enables things that I don’t 100% understand. As the version of Stephen Stericson’s BusyBox (Pro) in the Google Play Store is three years old and its development has apparently been discontinued, I opted for an alternative: a Magisk module – there’s a separate section for Magisk below – which user osm0sis has provided for download in a thread on the XDA Developers forum here.

DiskDigger Pro – my favourite data rescuer… and killer

DiskDigger Pro can recover deleted files if you have root privileges. According to the app description, without root rights you can only restore cached photos and videos – i.e. thumbnails and the like in lower quality. So far, I’ve only used the app to restore data once, and it was easy to recover the folder with videos and photos that I accidentally deleted. I use another function of the app more often: you can use it to clean up the free storage space on your smartphone so that deleted files stay deleted.

A slightly slimmed down, free version of DiskDigger is available here. The Pro version can be found here on the Google Play Store.

LiveBoot – the best boot animation ever

Tired of your previous start animation and looking for something different? Install an alternative. My favourite animation is LiveBoot by Chainfire.

The developer describes the boot animation as: «a boot animation that shows you logcat and dmesg output on the screen as it happens.» This means you can see what the system is doing during the boot process.

It looks like this:

The colour shows you if something isn’t running smoothly. I accidentally caused a bootloop with a Magisk module once. This is when the system gets stuck starting the operating system and can’t get out of a loop. LiveBoot was generating red text almost non-stop. I saved my smartphone by following this guide (under the first question).

If you like, you can also deactivate the colours and view the boot process in black and white. You can also adjust settings for the background, number of lines and other elements. If you treat yourself to a pro version of the module, you’ll not only be supporting Chainfire; you’ll also get additional features.

LSPosed – my favourite framework module for even more modules

LSPosed can be considered the successor to Xposed. It enables functions formerly provided via the Xposed Framework using the current Android OS. Similar to the BusyBox, the LSPosed framework is a prerequisite for certain apps. These are installed as a module. The thing about modules that you install in LSPosed is that they can influence the behaviour of the system and apps without changing their APKs themselves.

The most prominent example that the framework requires is XPrivacy (XPrivacyLua on Android 13). It’s a module that tames the data-gathering frenzy of other Android apps without stopping them from working.

Magisk – the best root app ever

Magisk is open-source software for rooting Android devices. Actually, it’s the only software that’s really suitable for this that hasn’t been discontinued. Luckily it’s as magical as its name implies – for me, it’s the best rooting app out there. It works by implementing a systemless root mode. This allows changes to the system without changing the system files themselves.

Magisk is much more than a root manager. On the one hand, it offers optional advanced features – such as a systemless hosts file or support for Zygisk – and on the other, you can install modules. If you activate the Zygote daemon, for example, you can hide the root state from other apps along with a configurable deny list and a Magisk module. So, basically, Magisk modules are new apps or features. You can download them from developers as a zip file and install them directly in Magisk. The modules are Magisk’s biggest advantage over the former, discontinued alternative SuperSU.

In my last smartphone article, I planned to use modules to get a banking app up and running. Since then, I’ve tried out a number of instructions and modules. The instructions in the first and eighth post can help apps to pass Google’s SafetyNet test and stop them being able to recognise that the device is rooted. This in turn causes Netflix to reappear in the Google Play Store on my smartphone. So far, Google hasn’t offered me the app, which is why I got it from Aptoide and kept it up-to-date.

But the banking app in question (Postfinance) still refuses to work, throwing up an error message about root/jailbreak. I strongly suspect that while it doesn’t recognise the root state, it still recognises that the bootloader is unlocked. Meaning that an alternative Android is installed and it’s another bank restriction to refuse to use the app.

Root Uninstaller Pro – I’ve had it for ages and it still works

I’m not sure if there’ll ever be a better alternative to this app from developer AntTek Mobile. Not just because the last version was released eleven months ago and it can no longer be found on the Play Store. Nevertheless, I’ll keep using it as long as it still works.

The main great thing about Root Uninstaller Pro is that you can use it to uninstall not only normal apps but also system apps. The second-best thing the app can do is freeze apps and unfreeze them later. If you’ve had enough of WhatsApp or all the other social media noise, give yourself a break and put the app in the virtual freezer. It’ll disappear from your smartphone’s app manager and you won’t read anything from it until you unfreeze it again.

Other functions include backing up, restoring and resetting individual apps or changing their categorisation. You can make a system app a normal app or vice versa.

SD Maid Pro – my favourite app and system cleaner

SD Maid Pro helps you to optimise and clean your smartphone. Thanks to rooting, deleting data that’s no longer required works better than with other phone cleaners. The app cleans up app data and caches, temporary files, empty folders and much more at the click of a button. It also has utilities that provide you with information about the system and apps, for example. There’s also a kind of task manager which you can use to manage autostart functions and freeze or uninstall apps.

If that’s not enough, there’s also a memory analysis, a database cleanup and functions for finding and deleting duplicates and dead data from former apps. I don’t want to be without SD Maid Pro now. A free, slimmed-down version is available on the Play Store here. You can find the license key for the Pro version here.

Swift Backup – my second favourite backup tool

I used to use Titanium Backup when I wanted to make a local copy of all my apps and their data. But it doesn’t work on Android 13. The best alternative I’ve come across is Swift Backup. Its scope isn’t quite as large as that of Titanium, but it does an impeccable job. You can use it to back up and restore all apps, including system apps, Wi-Fi networks, wallpapers, SMS and call logs.

Swift stores the backups on your device’s local storage, directly in the cloud or in both, depending on your preference. However, you need the premium version of the app to save to the cloud. You can back up to various providers such as Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or to local network storage using SMB, WebDAV, SFTP and more. For example, I use SFTP and my Synology NAS (website in German).

If you want to keep your old backup when you make a new one, it’s easy. The targeted deletion of apps that are no longer available from the backups and automatic backup schedules are also part of the app. You can get Swift Backup here on the Play Store.

XPrivacyLua – my favourite privacy manager for Android 13, which is unfortunately no longer being developed

I used to use XPrivacy Pro. However, development has been discontinued for a long time and it doesn’t work with Android 13. One successor is XPrivacyLua, which I installed as a LSPosed module. Generally speaking, it works like the original. However, development of Lua has already been stopped. I haven’t found a good alternative yet – if you know one, please share it in the comments. ;)

XPrivacyLua allows you to protect your privacy – the clue’s in the name. It helps you block apps from revealing sensitive data. You decide which permissions you revoke for each app. However, XPrivacyLua doesn’t actually revoke authorisation; it uses fake data to feed the app or simply doesn’t provide any data. So, the app thinks it still has access. This often results in apps continuing to work without the data actually requested being missing.

As you can see in the two screenshots, you can individually influence a number of different authorisations such as location queries or accessing the call log. It’s great, and I’ll need to replace it soon when Android 14 comes out.

The long route to my smaller data slingshot

This is the fourth and final article in a mini-series on a tiny cheap smartphone and my journey to a rooted custom ROM. It was a struggle at first, as I had to get used to a keyboard that was too small. Another issue was researching suitable ROM versions of Android 13. Installing the new operating system and rooting, on the other hand, were moments of pure DIY joy. I wouldn’t be without root apps now. It’s a good feeling that my smartphone is (literally) less of a data slingshot than others.

Martin Jud

Senior Editor

martin.jud@digitecgalaxus.ch

I find my muse in everything. When I don’t, I draw inspiration from daydreaming. After all, if you dream, you don’t sleep through life.

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