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About prescription

Prescription in Greenify is precisely targeted rule to block unwelcome behaviors in any Android apps. It is published in open source by any community member on GitHub, and could then be imported into Greenify by any user. All experienced super users (especially developers) are welcome to publish and distribute composed prescriptions for the good of Android app community, to form a influence force and encourage the app developer to build for better device experience. This is the same goal of Greenify.

The prescription feature requires Greenify working in either root mode, or non-root mode but only on Android 4.4 to 5.x.

What could prescription do

Prescription may block various types of unwelcome behaviors in regular Android app, and it's still evolving with more capabilities coming in the near future.

• Behavior triggered by Android broadcast mechanism
• Service starting and binding (invocation) behavior
• Activity (UI) launching behavior

Some real world use-cases:

• Unnecessary power and memory consumption caused by background services or periodic behaviors, without settings in app to disable.
• Random lagging caused by lots of background processes unnecessarily launched in a short time, especially in some poorly written 3rd-party SDKs integrated by popular apps.
• Unwelcome promotions and ads, without proper settings in app to disable.
• Unwelcome or malfunctional built-in software components in the device.
• ……

How to write a prescription

Prescript is written in XML with versioned schema (defined by xmlns, see samples below) for compatibility. Newer schema version is generally supported by higher version of Greenify app.

Currently, the following two types of prescription are supported.

Prescript - single prescription with rule content.

Composing a prescript requires basic Android development knowledge and deep analysis in low-level app behaviors, as it is based on the intent mechanism, which serves as the most fundamental protocol of behavior and communication between (and also within) Android apps.

Syntax:

<prescription xmlns="http://greenify.github.io/schemas/prescription/v3"
  type="service|broadcast|activity"
  sender="other-app|other|any"
  [package="<app package name>"]
  [class="<component class name>"]>
  <intent-filter>
    <action name="..." />
    [<cat name="..." />]
    [<type name="..." />]
    [<scheme name="..." />]
    [<ssp literal|prefix|sglob|aglob="..." />]
    [<auth host="..." [port="..."] />]
    [<path literal|prefix|sglob|aglob="..." />]
    ...
  </intent-filter>
  [<intent-filter>
    ...
  </intent-filter>
  ...]
</prescription>

or (since Greenify v3.2.0)

<prescriptions xmlns="http://greenify.github.io/schemas/prescription/v2">
  <prescription ... >
    ...
  </prescription>
  <prescription ... >
    ...
  </prescription>
  ...
</prescriptions>

A prescript may contain more more than one <intent-filter> (See Android developer document for detailed syntax). If any of them matches, the behavior is blocked. Complex prescript may also restrict the intent matching to specific app or specific component within app, defined by package or class attribute of <prescription> tag. (see https://github.com/greenify/rx-baidu-sso/) You can mix and match the attribute package, class and <intent-filter> block to achieve desired qualification. The class attribute can be used alone since Greenify v3.3 (schema version 3) to block component with the same class name cross all packages. (see https://github.com/oasisfeng/rx-getui-wakeups)

Starting from Greenify v3.2.0 (schema version 2), prescript may also contain inline sub-prescripts. And a new attribute sender is introduced to limit the origination of behavior, with 3 supported types:

• other-app - originated from other app (default)
• other - originated from outside of target app itself. (including origination from system, in addition to other-app)
• any - originated anywhere. (including app-internal behaviors, in addition to other)

Example: https://github.com/greenify/rx-mipush

<prescription xmlns="http://greenify.github.io/schemas/prescription/v1" type="service">
  <intent-filter>
    <action name="com.xiaomi.mipush.sdk.WAKEUP" />
  </intent-filter>
</prescription>

This is a simple prescript with just one intent-filter to identify the behavior which it blocks. The attribute type="service" indicate it applies to "service".

Prescription Collection - a set of referenced prescriptions

Prescription collection may include prescripts and other prescription collections, all referenced by relative repository path.

Example: https://github.com/oasisfeng/rxs-push-services

<prescriptions xmlns="http://greenify.github.io/schemas/prescription/v1">
  <prescription link="/greenify/rx-mipush" />
  <prescription link="/greenify/rx-baidu-push" />
</prescriptions>

How to publish and distribute your prescriptions

All prescripts must be published on GitHub with repository name that starts with "rx-" while all prescription collections must be published with repository name that starts with "rxs-".

The README is optional but highly recommended to complement the short description with more detailed explanation about your prescription, especially the behaviors it blocks and the impacts on the user experiences.

To distrubte your prescriptions, you need to use the https://greenify.github.io/<user>/<repo> URL instead of the GitHub repository URL, for Greenify app to recognize and import your prescription. For example, a prescription hosted at https://github.com/oasisfeng/rxs-push-services should be distributed as https://greenify.github.io/oasisfeng/rxs-push-services (the only difference is domain name). When the latter link is clicked in web browser on the Android device with Greenify installed, Greenify will be launched to import this prescription.

Explore and play with the community

GitHub has a great design on community collaboration and development. You can create a repository and compose a prescription in minutes, all on the website, and make modification at any time with mobile browser on the go.

"Fork" is the spirit of GitHub and we embrace it too. You are welcome to fork prescription written by others and add your tweaks on top. If you wish, Pull Request is also encouraged to support each other in the community. In the future version of Greenify, we will add more recognizable interaction around the prescription forking, like switching among the forks.

If you have any questions to ask, or ideas to share, please feel free to post in our G+ community and XDA forum.