Boy has it been a hectic couple of days! John Wu returned to Magisk development, and promptly closed > 5 PRs (Pull Requests) and about 31 commits as of the time of writing. And in the process, killed off the Modules repository and Hide, with only a vague promise of custom repositories and “someone will do something” regarding Hide.
Wait. Killed off hide? What????
Bye, Magisk Hide and the repo
Let’s go back a little. Back right around yesterday, Wu tweeted “MAGISK IS BACK” (yes, all caps) and then several hours later, the Magisk repository (for the source code, not to be confused with the modules repository) saw a flurry of activity. Some sleuth then noticed a commit introduced a disclaimer that Magisk is not a Google product and…. removed all mentions of Hide. This left quite a few people scratching their heads and for good reason.
Then Wu dropped the bombshell in a blog post: Hide was dead, and so was the repo.
All chaos broke loose on the streets! A rebellion was had! People were robbing and killing, screaming “LONG LIVE HIDE”.
Okay so that’s not what happened. it was more like a disappointed sigh.
Hide and the Modules repository had been zombified for awhile. No major work had been done on either. The Module repository was no longer accepting new submissions, and Hide was disabled by default. Wu had already expressed wariness over both, and who could blame him? Apps just keep getting better and better at root detection and hardware attestation made SafetyNet even more of a threat, and the repository had turned into a fight after the last fiasco with unsafe modules. It was a losing battle every way.
And then Wu got hired at Google and the situation with Hide got more complicated: how could he work on a feature to circumvent a security feature (as abused as it is) while having privileged access to the source code for the things he was bypassing. The answer was he couldn’t.
The good news is most users will not be affected by this until the next stable release, which could be months.
How this effects Androidacy
The answer is not much.
Our modules will continue to be available from our Downloads section. Our modules follow and will continue to follow a no system modification policy, and we will continue to make a best effort to ensure they don’t break SafetyNet if it’s not already broken. Announcements and updates will be posted to our blog, and from there posted to XDA, Telegram, and via push notifications for those of you opted into that.
In addition, we’re considering a custom repository of our own, if Wu actually delivers on that particular tidbit. (Want to be considered for inclusion? Get in touch with us!) We will also examine options to assist our users with the ever important task of passing SafetyNet.
Looking at the future of Magisk
Magisk will continue as usual we believe, albeit without a couple core features. Custom developers will ensure other solutions exist. It will nonetheless be a disappointment to see such core functionality removed.
In the meantime keep an eye on our blog. We have some exciting new things in the pipeline!
Have any thoughts? Leave them in the comments!