FAQ

Here are answers to some of the questions that users have asked multiple times in the past.

Does this app require root?

NO!

This app does not require root access and the development is also focused on implementing features without requiring root access.

But, it does require Shizuku to get ADB privileges.

Shizuku gets disabled when hotspot is turned on.

If you have USB debugging enabled as well in developer options, Shizuku continues to operate even if wireless debugging turns off.

This happens only in certain models where WiFi sharing is not supported but I have seen this concern from an overwhelming amount of people.

Why is Shizuku required?

Android Debug Bridge (ADB) is a tool that developers use to test their apps on devices before pushing them to markets like Google Play Store. But, ADB is also used internally by Google to test all the system features while developing Android itself.

Due to this reason, ADB has certain privileges that a normal app don’t have and Shizuku is an app that safely provides access to ADB by letting the user be in control by providing permission controls while also letting apps use system-level APIs more easily.

Hotspot and other network settings are very sensitive and thus, access to those settings is not provided to any app other than the Settings app. Thus, Delta uses Shizuku to access and modify hotspot settings.

Will you add “X” feature to the app?

Create a discussion or issue on the GitHub repo and I’ll assess how it can be implemented, whether it can be done and decide accordingly!

This app is maintained single-handedly by me. So, adding new features or reviewing large PRs (pull requests) take time given my other responsibilities. Thus, discuss once in the issues/discussion thread before making a huge change to the app.

Will you add root-specific features to the app?

Maintaining a separate implementation only for rooted devices adds more complexity to the app which requires a lot of maintenance already.

It is already unstable with Android’s internals changing with every Android version and with each OEM implementing networking on their devices differently.

Also, I do not have a rooted device to test with and emulators are flaky because the same APIs that work on emulators running a specific Android version do not work on real life devices.

So, nope, I will not add root-specific features to the app.

Can you make this app work without Shizuku as well?

Nope, because that would require running an ADB client in app for non-rooted devices and using su for rooted devices, both of which provide text shells.

The single advantage that Shizuku has over plain su or the adb shell is the fact that Shizuku lets you perform Remote binder calls by letting a server process run with ADB privileges and proxying your function calls to the system through itself.

Due to this functionality, developers like me can call system APIs directly using code, instead of parsing text data, which is more efficient.

Also, there is no shell command to communicate with tethering API on Android, so even if we can potentially get root access through Magisk or something else, we can’t use the functionalities directly.

Some functionality do not work on my device!

Every manufacturer implements the networking stack differently either due to specific hardware requirements, legacy code that they do not want to touch, etc.

Samsung is especially notorious because they have already implemented these functionality years before other OEMs did and thus, the entire codebase and APIs they use are different.

I only implement features using Android’s source code provided by Google as reference. Most of the OEMs adapt to these APIs over time and these APIs are the ones I can trust to work on majority of the devices (but even that trust is broken on Samsung)

I am not planning on supporting every edge case on every model by implementing device specific API as those API aren’t accessible using ADB sometimes.

I will do my best to debug and reverse-engineer every crash/failure and provide mitigations if possible but I will NOT adding features that work only on certain models.

IP addresses for the devices change every time.

This is something that I cannot control. Refer to this comment for a low-level analysis.