Dumpsys Packages Copycat vs Port Authority
Side-by-side comparison of two open source alternatives
Dumpsys Packages Copycat
With the introduction of the QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES permission, as far as I understand, it became impossible to use built-in tools to list and inspect installed packages. (Please let me know if you are aware of another workaround.) That is, of course, assuming you don't have access to root privileges. However, you might not desire to root your phone, either because it can turn out to be quite difficult to achieve, or because it has numerous disadvantages in itself, anyway. Another option is to connect to the phone via Android Debug Bridge (ADB) and run: adb shell dumpsys | sed -n '/^Packages:/,/^[[:space:]]*$/p' The command prints the "Packages" section from dumpsys, which contains detailed information about every installed package. It works, but the downside is obvious: You need an extra device to connect and run adb. This app strives to reproduce the output from above command, right on your phone - neither root privileges nor ADB required - using only API calls and the QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES permission.
Port Authority
A handy systems and security-focused tool, Port Authority is a very fast port scanner. Port Authority also allows you to quickly discover hosts on your network and will display useful network information about your device and other hosts.One of the fastest port scanners with host discovery on the market! Host discovery is typically performed in 3 seconds. If the device you’re scanning drops packets, it takes less than 10 seconds to scan 1000 ports. If the device you’re scanning rejects packets, it takes about ~30 seconds seconds to scan all 65,535 ports!Port Authority has no ads and will never have ads. It requires extremely limited permissions since it only needs to interact with your network. The internals are designed to take advantage of today’s modern phones with multiple cores to ensure you can scan your network as fast as possible.
| Feature | Dumpsys Packages Copycat | Port Authority |
|---|---|---|
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0-only |
| Install sources | F-DroidGitHub | F-DroidGitHubIzzyOnDroid |
| Categories | Password ManagerProductivityDev Tools | Password ManagerProductivity |
| Features | Ad-FreeOpen SourceNo Tracking | Ad-FreeOpen SourceNo Tracking |
| Platforms | Android | Android |
| Website | ||
| Source code |