F-Droid Privileged Extension OTA App Cloning app description
Note: F-Droid requires root privileges to install Privileged Extension as a system priv-app.
https://www.androidfreeware.net/download-f-droid-apk.html can make use of system privileges or permissions to install, update and remove applications on its own. The only way to obtain those privileges is to become a system app.
This is where the Privileged Extension comes in - being a separate app and much smaller, it can be installed as a system app and communicate with the main app via AIDL IPC.
This has several advantages:
- Reduced disk usage in the system partition
- System updates dont remove F-Droid
- The process of installing into system via root is safer
This is packaged as an OTA (Over-The-Air) update ZIP file. It must be installed using TWRP or other Android recovery that can flash updates to the system from the /data/data/org.fdroid.fdroid folder on the /data partition. The standalone APK is called https://www.androidfreeware.net/download-f-droid-apk.html.privileged, and that provides updates after this OTA package is installed.