SuperSU, a Popular Root App For Android, Disappears From Google Play Store (androidpolice.com)

Corbin Davenport, writing for AndroidPolice: For years, SuperSU was one of the most popular root applications for Android. Chainfire, the creator of SuperSU, handed over development to CCMT in 2015. He ended his involvement with the app last year, so CCMT has been in full control of it since then. For reasons currently unknown, SuperSU has now vanished from the Play Store. The app's Twitter and Google+ accounts for SuperSU haven't made a post since last year, the Facebook page has been inactive since March, and the official forum is currently offline. As such, it seems like the app was largely abandoned. The latest version available from APKMirror was published in January. Further reading: End of an era: Chainfire is halting development on all root-related apps.

Comments

Magisk

[Anonymous Coward]

Magisk with Magisk Manger has been a nice alternative for me.

Re:Magisk

[Anonymous Coward]

With how phones are going, a systemless root like Magisk is just the next step in the process. Hopefully Magisk can carry the torch from where SuperSU left off, so people can still run their stuff like Titanium Backup, firewalls, and other apps.

There's always Superuser on F-Droid

[gti_guy]

https://f-droid.org/en/package...

Re:There's always Superuser on F-Droid

[JackieBrown]

Which was last updated on 2016-01-21

Re:There's always Superuser on F-Droid

[higuita]

and still works fine...

Re:There's always Superuser on F-Droid

[Shikaku]

I don't think the issue is whether it works. It might be good enough as a utility but for what it does, which is give root system permissions and do some very powerful tasks, it needs a patch if a security issue/bug arises, and someone has to code that. I saw some good alternatives in this comment section though and I'll keep that in mind; I am just warning people that this is a possibility.

Re:Why was it ever on the Play Store?

[ArchieBunker]

I'd rooted my old Android phones because there is no other way to remove the factory installed bloated apps and spyware. I also rooted my iPhone because iTunes is so shitty and terrible. I just want to access the phone like a flash drive. But you can't even do that because iOS mangles all the filenames.

Re:Why was it ever on the Play Store?

[Bruce Perens]

Well, some of us are even the creators of some of the software on those phones as Open Source, for example Busybox is widely used, and we're quite competent to manage our own devices. The main reason is that we wan to be in control. Who wouldn't? We want to be able to run our own software, we want to be able to do things that the OS doesn't allow by default. Some of the most simple functions of the device seem to be locked away from normal applications, not always for the best reasons.

We also want to be able to load an alternate OS, like LineageOS, when it becomes available for our devices. Meaning we need to be able to re-write the firmware, which root can do.

SuperSU fixed my useless Samsung Galaxy Tab

[MobyDisk]

I have an older Galaxy Tab that was useless out-of-the-box. I should have returned it because it was so slow that it literally couldn't keep up with my typing, even after a factory reset. It scrolled at 5 fps. After it fell into disuse for years, I rooted it with SuperSU, and used a task manager find and delete two processes that were eating 80% of the CPU. No idea what they did, but the tablet has been fine since then.

Magisk had replaced SuperSU a long time ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Magisk had replaced SuperSU a long time ago.

Chainfire is an absolute master and his SU applications impeccable

But with the latest revisions of Android, Magisk had begun to replace what SuperSU and other SU applications provided.

LineageOS doesn't need this.

[The_Dougster]

Instead, LineageOS https://lineageos.org/ provides a su option zip that can be flashed along with the main image and opengapps. After it is installed, you can toggle root access via the developer options and control which apps can get it.

The list of devices officially supported is not huge, but there are some unofficial builds available now for select others. LineageOS is rather nice if you can run it.

Magisk

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Magisk has made SuperSU irrelevant because SuperSU needs to modify the system partition and Android since version 7 doesn't quite like it to the point that many functions stop working completely.

Re: Why was it ever on the Play Store?

[nnull]

I decided to try to do work on a trip recently with just an iPad. Suffice to say, I will never do it again.

Try to transfer files from an SD card on an IPad? Ahahah Good luck, frustrated me to no end. FileExplorer ftp server saved me here.

File handling in IOS is absolutely absurd.

My productivity went down dramatically on an iPad as many applications that claim to be similar to their desktop counterparts are not even close. Most of them are completely useless. Doing simple things like organizing things in windows to see my notes is very time consuming.

Eventually I got so tired of it that I connected to my vpn to remotely connect to my desktop. Lack of a mouse made things annoying, but I became more productive again. I'm in Japan with fast internet so it works fine.

Re: Why was it ever on the Play Store?

[nnull]

Oh to my point. If I have to root my device to be able to do simple tasks as above and then the manufacturers do everything to prevent me from doing so, it's a damn useless device to me.