Skit Progress Report: July 2019

Tuesday, Jul 30, 2019 · 3 min read · 557 words

After a short break, the next update for Skit is released, with new sorting modes for applications, by install and update date, ability to select “saving” mode for applications, a vast amount of new information for devices with Android Q, design improvements and some fixes and improvements.

Skit | Skit Premium

Detailed changelog

Information

Android Q

I have added full support for Android Q in both ways: functional and informational. We will speak about the functional part later and now I will share updates in the informational part. Statistics screen can properly display Android Q (SDK 29) in all graphs. There is a bunch of new permissions supported by Skit - ACCESS_BACKGROUND_LOCATION, ACCESS_MEDIA_LOCATION, ACTIVITY_RECOGNITION, CALL_COMPANION_APP, REQUEST_PASSWORD_COMPLEXITY, and SMS_FINANCIAL_TRANSACTIONS. Also, new information available for Services. Services could be foreground or background and if service is foregrounded, Skit can display its type now. And the last update for Android Q users - definition of APEX packages, which is new technology from Google, that used to update OS just using Google Play.

General

I have one surprise for all other users - Broadcasts. This is a new screen in the 1.3 update. Broadcast Receivers simply respond to broadcast messages from other applications or from the system itself. These messages are sometime called events or intents. For example, applications can also initiate broadcasts to let other applications know that some data has been downloaded to the device and is available for them to use, so this is a broadcast receiver who will intercept this communication and will initiate appropriate action.

Features

In this update, I have hardly worked on adding more settings for displaying, sorting and extraction modes. One of the most requested features by users was sorting and naming by install and last update date and it is implemented now in Settings screens.

I had to make one big update under the pressure of Android Q and Google. The problem is that with the new OS update, access to the internal storage is closed for all applications. Now you can choose the mode to extract - manual or automatic. In manual mode, you always have to choose the folder into which you want to extract applications. Automatic mode is similar to how the application worked in previous versions, but now all extracted applications will be saved to /sdcard/Android/data/com.pavlorekun.skit/files, which is the default folder for application’s files. It is worth noting that if you delete Skit, then all extracted files will also be deleted. There is a big plus in this, now the application will not require permission to write data to the storage of the device.

Design

There are some improvements for design in this update - indicator of “launch ability” of activity in Activities screen, updated overhaul design of Services screen, which is similar to Activities screen now and small behaviour change for users of new gestures navigation from Android Q - instead of “Press once again to exit” exit hint you will see “Swipe once again to exit” :)

Fixes

• Fixed: Missing “Premium” state for description in Onboard screen.
• Fixed: Not tinted navigation bar when the “Actions” menu opened in Details screen.
• Fixed: Blinking of different themes during initialization.
• Fixed: “null” fields in every information screen.