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I'm creating a corporate app, and I need to keep it on the phone even after a factory reset has been executed by user.

If I set my android app to a system app, after a factory reset, will it be removed from the phone?

If it's not a possibility, then what can I do?

Thanks...

Fábio Filho
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I am not sure that this will work or not but you can try . This method requires a rooted device. If ur phone is not rooted then this method will not work. Ok firstly put your app in System/priv-app folder .This is place where all system apk's are stored. When factory reset happen's then the android system loads all the system apk's from the priv-app folder and again creates their odex files . So if your apk file is in this folder then there might be a change that your file will be installed with the system apks but your previous data will be lost. And one more thing when you put your apk in that folder then you must change the permission of the apk to 0644 otherwise it will not install the apk.

Developer_vaibhav
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  • i made a copy of my apk to there, but didn't work. =/ I set the permission '644' of apk file correctly – Fábio Filho Nov 03 '15 at 04:35
  • did u restart ur mobile? after placing the file there? – Developer_vaibhav Nov 03 '15 at 04:46
  • It's Works !!!! But i edited the code....... I put the following commands in android terminal: mount -o rw,remount -t rootfs rootfs /system ( - to be possible write in system partition - ) && chmod 644 /system/priv-app/myApp/myApp.apk ( - make apk readable and executable by default user - ) && chmod 755 /system/priv-app/myApp/ ( - make folder readable and executable by default user - ) ****It's very important rename file without spaces and specials chars as: *+.- .... always interleaving with uppercase and lowercase letters – Fábio Filho Nov 03 '15 at 05:05
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Factory Data Reset (FRP) only clears the data and the cache partitions.

system apps are located within the system partition.

So it will not delete the APK, but it will delete the local data of the app. for example the app saved some information about you in a local database (located within the data partition).

To build your APK from Android-Studio, Build > Build APK (Do not choose to Generate Signed APK)

Then copy the APK to the /system/priv-app/, set permissions accordingly, restart your device and done. (root privilege required).

Benny
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If you move the app as system app will not be deleted after factory reset. The application in other hand need to work without an account configured on the phone. For example, if the app that you are converting to system app, need an account configured at setting, it'll not work since after the factory reset the accounts are deleted.

LBE Security (the chinese security software) have an recovery my phone feature, and you can (from that app itself) mark it for been keep even thru the factory reset.

It would be awesome if google some day will mark the serial, imei or something of the phone to your google account, like apple does, so if anybody connect the phone again to internet, will be blocked. But since most of the android's phone can be easy re-flash (the rom) and even modify the imei, its sort of useless.

DefToneR
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I'm creating a corporate app, and I need to keep it on the phone even after a factory reset has been executed by user.

Technically, without included in factory image, it's impossible even if it is installed as a system app.

If it's not possible, then what can I do?

Besides you ask Google to include your app included in their factory images, you can do nothing.

hata
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