Free-Droid - One-Click Rom Installation Assistant

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imska

Senior Member
Aug 7, 2015
204
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free-droid.com
I have a MOTO G6 Play and it is an a only device, could i help you test to add support for treble devices? i can take and post logs and locats if needed and I'm familiar with ROM building and testing and debugging. Let me know if i can help
Awesome! Yes, let's do this! I bet a lot of people could use/need treble support.
What I need to know boils down to:
What is the difference in installation procedure with treble compared to non-treble? (Installation from stock as starting point)
Does it need any special Twrp version? Where to get treble enabled twrp from if official twrp is not treble enabled? How to know if a twrp image is treble enabled?
Does it have something to do with A/B or A-only recovery stuff? (Haven't figured that out yet either)
Which treble ROM(s) are stable and fully working?

Thank you
 
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imska

Senior Member
Aug 7, 2015
204
72
free-droid.com
new update to 0.7.14
  • fix resurrection remix availability check and download
  • automatically try fastboot boot if fastboot flash failed due to unknown partition name. This might be a first step to make Free-Droid work on A/B-devices.
  • fix nasty syslog retrieval bug
  • a few more smaller fixes
  • warn user about windows defender or another kind of antivirus blocking access to the adb.exe, fastboot.exe or heimdall.exe binary
  • package the binaries for windows instead of having the user download them at launch. This might trip fewer defenders and antiviruses.

It would be a good help if someone could test Free-Droid with and without windows defender activated and report the results. Testing results with other antivirus programs would be awesome, too.
 

imska

Senior Member
Aug 7, 2015
204
72
free-droid.com
need help from windows users: is Free-Droid launching the same way with and without windows defender (or other antivirus) activated? Does the antivirus warning popup even with windows defender and antivirus deactivated?
I can't test this myself since I do not have windows installed...

release 0.7.17 fixes a few frequent issues
improved handling of formatting the data partition in twrp if needed
disallow downloading twice the same file at the same time
do not ask the user to identify his device from an empty list
 

imska

Senior Member
Aug 7, 2015
204
72
free-droid.com
Hotfix update/release for thr failure to download magisk

I will be trying to figure out a better way for free-droid to keep itself up-to-date. It will probably just have the launcher packaged and then download the crucial code from the gitlab repo.
 

imska

Senior Member
Aug 7, 2015
204
72
free-droid.com
Hi Thank you so much for this App, unfortunately there is a problem downloading from gitlab, download cuts after 35mb - and if using download manager Uget it restarts after 35Mb.
https://gitlab.com/free-droid/free-droid/raw/master/update/Free-Droid-LINUX.tar.gz

Right now its stuck on 24MB when trying to get from https://gitlab.com/free-droid/free-droid/-/archive/master/free-droid-master.zip

Please, could you fix the problem and add new download link

Thank you

JBJ

It works fine for me, I just downloaded the whole tarball in one go. Are you sure you are not running out of space somewhere on your system?
 

imska

Senior Member
Aug 7, 2015
204
72
free-droid.com
Hotfix Release

New release available!
Mainly a hotfix for querying and downloading latest magisk version since magisk releases moved from XDA to Github.
Also made available the stuff needed for packaging Free-Droid on gitlab.
 

imska

Senior Member
Aug 7, 2015
204
72
free-droid.com
New major update to the project

No update to the Free-Droid software itself, but to the website: You can now find here an extended list with a lot of devices having official releases of TWRP, LineageOS, Resurrection Remix, Omnirom or Carbonrom. The devices are listed with their names, model names and codenames.
It is certainly not complete and might contain mistakes, but as far as I know, it is the first of its kind.

A new XDA thread has been created for anything concerning that list. I hope it is useful to some people.
 
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ErbDroid

Senior Member
Feb 25, 2018
107
53
Ok so i have been flashing phones since the galaxy S2!
I dont really need help with it, but i saw this project and thought it was a good idea, i installed it on my old dual-boot laptop on both Windows and Linux, it works well on BOTH! its a nice option to flash your phone via PC, reminds me of Samsung's Odin kinda but with extra options for us power users. WELL DONE! Great that its completely cross-platform too (i can suggest it to mac users too!) I will keep using it to try help out test.
I use my daily phone non-google (MicroG / Nanodroid) but i do use my gaming phone with Gapps (as they need google play games & Discord which are two of the very few apps that doesnt work with microG/nanodroid!) So a choice to load some Gapps would be nice too! Can i suggest that you use a few sources though: official gapps (for those sorta people!) GZR gapps (no longer in development but their AndoidFileHost site has gapps for both 32bit & 64bit systems running 7.0/7.1 and 8.0/8/1, they have 2 packages for each too "zero" are all lightweight packages (less than 70mb!) And "nano" which are only slightly bigger but give you google now/ assistant etc. BitGapps are active in development they also have 2 packages each for 8.1-9.0-10.0 (they are all modified to doze in the background so gapps arent always running!) Between these 2, you have lightweight gapps packages for android 7.0 onwards! And can accomodate to the older phones that are 32bit like the samsung S5 etc, hope this helps.
Thanks again @imska
 
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imska

Senior Member
Aug 7, 2015
204
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free-droid.com
I'm glad you like it and that you could put it to use.
Unfortunately, quite a few people are having trouble using it on windows... Did you have any driver (or other) issues on windows?

Apart from that, thank you a lot for your hints to the gapps projects! Gapps are definitely on the TODO-list and it would be great to have the choice between official, opengapps and Bitgapps.
 

imska

Senior Member
Aug 7, 2015
204
72
free-droid.com
It's been a while. Pushed a few updates fixing bugs.

A/B-support is not there yet, but I figured out you can simply install your rom using Free-Droid and plug out the usb cable after the the nanodroid patcher finished flashing. This way you prevent the reboot at the end. With TWRP install twrp again by flashing the twrp img file to the recovery partition. Reboot to recovery (hopefully TWRP again). plug in the usb cable and do the installation with Free-Droid again. If you want to be sure everything is installed correctly on both A and B slots, you can repeat the cycle one more time, before finally booting into the rom.

Installation on A-only devices should still work as expected. Mostly just one click.
 
Just stumbled across this project and even though I've dug myself way too deep and for way too long into Android to make use of this myself, I think it's a fantastic thing and I will certainly recommend it further!
One thing though that I find a bit odd given this is called Free-Droid (I guess mostly free from Google, right?): Cloudflare and Google APIs on your website! I don't think it fits with the project description to be using this. Maybe you'll look into it.
Anyway thanks for this!
 
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imska

Senior Member
Aug 7, 2015
204
72
free-droid.com
Just stumbled across this project and even though I've dug myself way too deep and for way too long into Android to make use of this myself, I think it's a fantastic thing and I will certainly recommend it further!
One thing though that I find a bit odd given this is called Free-Droid (I guess mostly free from Google, right?): Cloudflare and Google APIs on your website! I don't think it fits with the project description to be using this. Maybe you'll look into it.
Anyway thanks for this!
What's wrong with retrieving a JS and a CSS file from content delivery networks? I could set the page to retrieve them from unpkg or my own server, but what difference would that actually make?
The goal is not avoiding google altogether. That would be nonsense since android is made by google. The goal is to simplify the installation of a "clean" android without google's closed source components doing whatever we are not really supposed to know about.
 
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imska

Senior Member
Aug 7, 2015
204
72
free-droid.com
Huge update 0.8.1 is here!

A lot of work went into this update and a lot of things changed:
  • A/B support! (finally, it was about time...)
  • Way faster installation (got rid of unnecessary stuff)
  • Magisk does not install by default any more
  • Expert settings have a button to try the Magisk installation after the first boot
  • Installing Google sync adapters and swype libraries is not possible any more
  • More reliable procedure to update TWRP from TWRP
  • More reliable procedure to format data if necessary
  • Download and use LineageOS for Microg if the installation of MicroG is selected (default) (no more struggle with the signature spoofing patcher)
  • The main and big nanodroid zip is not downloaded and used any more, instead we resort to the small packages for f-droid and microG (a big thank you goes to @Setialpha again for providing those!)
Free-Droid is meant to be a tool mainly for users not familiar with fastboot, ADB, TWRP, flashing, etc. If you encounter issues with Free-Droid, reports are very welcome! Don't hesitate to ask questions even if you are no expert.
 
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imska

Senior Member
Aug 7, 2015
204
72
free-droid.com
0.8.2
  • The data partition is now formatted by default instead of just wiped (can be switched off in the expert options, though it means the data partition would not be touched at all). This somehow helped make the installation of Lineage 18.1 work on pioneer.
 

colm.smyth

Member
Nov 21, 2010
9
0
0.8.2
  • The data partition is now formatted by default instead of just wiped (can be switched off in the expert options, though it means the data partition would not be touched at all). This somehow helped make the installation of Lineage 18.1 work on pioneer.
Anyone know of this works on ASUS Rog Phone 3, it doesn't show on their site....
 

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    Code:
    I am not responsible for any damage resulting from the use of the Free-Droid software.

    Free-Droid is now Anarchy-Droid
    Free-Droid has been fully rewritten from scratch in go and is now published as Anarchy-Droid. This page is kept for reference only. Please follow the link and use the new version of this software.

    Introduction
    Free-Droid is an application designed to help you install custom roms on your Android device. It is supposed to make the process of finding, downloading and installing a rom (with addons like Magisk, F-Droid and microG) as easy as possible. The primary audience is all the folks who do not really know anything about Android, TWRP or roms, but still would like to run a free, open-source and non-bloated Android on their devices. Using a free after-market rom like LineageOS should not be restricted to the few people with enough technical know-how to do the complex installation procedure all by themselves.
    Free-Droid is free and open-source and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. As of now, it should be working fine with Samsung, OnePlus, NVidia, Sony and Motorola devices and with all other devices that already have TWRP installed.

    Download
    Download from the official website.

    Images
    screenshot-start.png

    screenshot-settings.png

    screenshot-expert.png

    screenshot-help.png

    screenshot-working.png


    What it does
    • help you activate USB debugging
    • help you install drivers
    • help you unlock the bootloader
    • download and install TWRP
    • update TWRP if a newer version is available
    • download and install a rom
    • download and install F-Droid and MicroG
    • download and install Magisk (legacy method, off by default)

    Features and explanations
    Please visit the Gitlab page of the project for more details!

    Compatibility
    Free-Droid is supposed to work on as many devices as possible. Supported brands as of now are:
    • Samsung
    • Motorola
    • Oneplus
    • NVidia
    • Sony
    • Every device that already has TWRP installed: launch Free-Droid, boot your device into TWRP and connect it with USB to your computer
    For the support status of a specific device, you can enter its model name here to check the compatibility.
    The Free-Droid application itself will tell upon device connection if it is compatible. If it says that your device is not supported, you can be sure that it will not work. As of now, Free-Droid will display device untested for most devices, because I will only mark a device as supported if a few people tested it and confirmed it is actually working fine.

    Changelog
    For a changelog please just have a look at the commits on gitlab.

    Beta
    Although Free-Droid already runs very well, I was not able to test it on a lot of computers and with many different devices. Therefore, consider Free-Droid to be beta software for now.
    Besides, there are a few things that still need to be implemented. What is not working yet:
    • project treble roms
    • devices that need special treatment like storage repartitioning
    Finally, in order to lead Free-Droid out of the beta phase of development, a lot of testing needs to be done. This way, Free-Droid will know more reliably which devices can be expected to be workable without issues and which ones it should deny to work on.

    Further development plans
    • add support for more brands that can be easily unlocked
    • handle project treble GSI roms
    • add a button to abort a running installation procedure
    • create packages for 32 bit computers
    • add MoKee rom
    • add /e/ rom
    • add possibility to install openGapps instead of microG ?
    • add possibility to select an additional zip to flash after the rom ?
    • fix crash on windows if changing folder on rom selection dialog
    • add a way to backup and restore using TWRP ?
    • add more documentation to the gitlab page ?
    A note about Magisk installation
    Installing magisk is getting more and more difficult. The installation method employed by Free-Droid is now discouraged and called a legacy installation method, because it can cause trouble and break the ability of the system to boot. For that reason, the installation of Magisk is turned off by default now in Free-Droid and a warning is issued to the user when turning it on.
    You can still try to install Magisk with Free-Droid during the normal installation procedure. But if your system does not boot afterwards, you will have to try again without Magisk. On some devices, you might need to know how to manually boot into recovery in order to retry the installation (device-specific hardware key combination).
    Free-Droid now also provides an easy way to try and install Magisk later on. The same ("legacy") installation method is used, but you can try the installation after the first boot of your newly installed system. I've seen a case where this would work while installing Magisk before the first boot would not work. This assumes that TWRP is connected or at least still installed.

    I need you
    Please test Free-Droid on your computer and with your device.
    In case of issues: use the button in Free-Droid to pack a bug report and either send it with an email or create an issue on the gitlab issue tracker.
    If you have a device of a supported brand for which Free-Droid does not find a rom by itself, please leave me a message with a link to a working rom (and/or TWRP image). If you can confirm that the rom is stable and fully working, I will add it to the Free-Droid unofficial archive and it will become available in Free-Droid.
    If you know about a faulty official release of TWRP or a rom, please also leave me a message. Example: the latest few official releases of TWRP for i9305 (Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE) are faulty and fail when trying to install a rom with sideload. Free-Droid uses a specific version of TWRP in that case and can automatically handle cases like that in general. I just need to know which devices need a workaround.

    Thanks To/Credits

    XDA:DevDB Information
    Free-Droid, Tool/Utility for all devices (see above for details)

    Contributors
    imska
    Source Code: https://gitlab.com/free-droid/free-droid


    Version Information
    Status:
    Beta

    Created 2019-07-01
    Last Updated 2021-04-09
    3
    This is beatiful! I wasted probably 2 hours this morning to get a android 9 on my old s5 since i need it for a project, i'm not a complete newby, i rooted and changed rom many time in the last 8 years but i do it every once in a while, so i always have to check for tutorials again and there is alwasy some step that don't go as planned, as today the rom was not installing, was almost ready to give up to not lose more time, saw this, was almost sure this would gone wrong somewhere as all automated stuff while after a couple of clics and 5/10m my s5 was ready with android 9 on it. THIS IS JUST BEATIFUL and great, hope it gain the visibility it deserve!
    Really GREAT job!
    2
    2
    download for linux coming soon ?
    2
    Download for Linux 404 Not Found
    https://free-droid.com/
    Downlad for Windows yes for Linux no

    You're absolutely right, thanks for pointing that out!
    Fixed.