Xposed Framework – Modifying Android without Modifying System Files/Applications

In my previous posts, I have explained what is Custom ROM and the advantages of using them. But now, a developer named rovo89, has developed a framework for Android which would give you the possibility to modify your existing Android ROM without modifying any APK or ROM flashing, the only thing that Xposed Framework requires is root access. Xposed Framework allows you to make small tweaks to existing Android operating system without replacing it.

Working of Xposed Framework

To make various changes, developers modify the system files, to be precise, system APKs, and developers make the changes and release them in custom ROMs. To use the changes made by developers, users have to flash custom ROM on their device.

To install Xposed Framework, root access is required, but after installation it should work without root access. From the words of developer himself:

“I extended the /system/bin/app_process executable to load a JAR file on startup. The classes of this file will sit in every process (including the one for system services) and can act with their powers. And even more: I have implemented something that allows developers to replace any method in any class (may it be in the framework, systemui or a custom app). This makes Xposed very powerful. You can change parameters for the method call, modify the return value or skip the call to the method completely - it's all up to you! Also replacing or adding resources is easy.”

Xposed Framework works with almost all Android devices with Android version 4.0 and later, and also the device should have ARM processor. Sadly, if you have a Gingerbread version on your device, or a device with an Intel processor, you are out of luck.

How to Install Xposed Framework

First of all, make sure your device is rooted. The root access is required by Xposed framework for installation. Then take a Nandroid Backup of your device, as in the case of unexpected consequences, you can always restore to the state your device was at earlier.

You need to download the APK file attached to this forum: Xposed - ROM modding without modifying APKs, and install the APK on your Android device.

After its installation, open the Xposed Installer app and press the Install/Update button to install the Xposed Framework. Now, the app requires Root Access.

After installation, press the Reboot button to reboot your device and the Xposed Framework will become active.

You can also uninstall the Xposed Framework by returning to Xposed Installer app and pressing the Uninstall or Clean up button. This would reverse the changes made to the app_process executable in your device.

Xposed Modules

The Xposed framework provides a base for various modules to do their work. After installation of the Xposed framework, you'll need some other apps to actually do modifications to your device.

There are many modules available on various forums. You can check here for a list of available modules using Xposed: List of Xposed Apps and Modules.

The Xposed Framework is useful for people who don't want to risk flashing Custom ROM or want Stock ROM with some modifications. The installation of Xposed Framework and its modules do not require using Custom ROM's or changing the device firmware and the changes to system made by them can be easily restored to factory defaults at a click of a button.

All the Best on using Xposed Framework..!!

Resizing and Modifying Images through Linux terminal

This one is really interesting feature of Linux. We always had use some photo editing software like Photoshop for resizing, modifying etc to the images. But now this can be done quickly by just executing commands through the Linux terminal. Imagemagick is a suite of command-line utilities for modifying images. Imagemagick can quickly perform operations on images from terminal, also can perform batch processing of many images.

Installation:

This can be done by installing the Imagemagick by executing the command, as it is not included in the default installations of Ubuntu or any other Linux distributions. Get it through following command:

sudo  apt-get install imagemagick

Converting the Formats:

This is one of the basic things to do that is converting the images from one format to other formats. In this, the operation will be done on image according to the command given and saves the image with the name we specify in the command. The command is:

     convert filename.jpg filename.png

You can also specify a  compression level for JPEG images:

convert filename.jpg –quality 94 filename.jpg

The number must be between 1 and 100.

Resizing Images:

This is used to resize the images.The command is

convert filename.jpg –resize 180x100 filename.jpg

This command will resize the image to 180pixels in width and 100 pixels in hieght.

If we give the same name in the command it will overwrite the original image with the new size.

If we just want to resize the width of the image, this can be done by the command as follows:

     convert filename.jpg –resize 180 filename.jpg

Similarly , just hieght can be resize by the following command:

convert filename.jpg –resize x100 filename.jpg

Rotating Images:

This is used to rotate the images by an angle we specify in the command.This will take the image and rotate the image by the angle specified and save the image given by the name in the command.If same filename given then Imagemagick will overwrite and rotate the original image and save it.

The command is:

     convert filename.jpg –rotate 90 filename –rotated.jpg

This command will rotate the image to 90 degree.

Applying Effects:

Imagemagick can apply a variety of effects to the images.

For example the following command applies the “charcoal” effect to an image:

convert filename.jpg –charcoal 2 filename-charcoal.jpg

The charcaol command used to give the charcoal effect to the image and 2 is to indicate the strength of the effects.

Another one is like implode effect.This effect can be applied by the following command:

     convert filename.jpg –implode 1 filename-imploded.jpg

Combining Operations:

All the above commands seen can also be combined and can be applied to the images.

For example the following command resize the image, rotate it, apply an effect and then convert it to another format:

convert filename.jpg –resize 300x300 –rotate 180 –charcoal 4 –quality 94 filename.jpg

Batch Processing:

Imagemagick can also operate the batch processing to the images.

For example,the following command will take all the png files in the current directory, rotate them and save a new copy of each with “-rotated” added to the beginning of each filename

for file in *.png;do convert $file –rotate 90 rotated -$file;done

This is  just some of the features of Imagemagick done by the commands through the Linux terminal.Still,there are many more with Imagemagick which we can do and can apply lots of interesting features to the images.