Magisk is one of the most powerful Android mod tools and a godsend for users who buy a phone without a strong custom ROM community. But since its creator John Wu was hired by Google himself in May, his future has been somewhat unclear. Earlier today, Wu updated his Medium site for the Magisk project, stating that the open source tool will continue to develop … but with a few notable changes.

The big news: Wu officially has Google’s blessing to continue running the Magisk project. This is a big deal, because certain elements of the program represent a possible conflict of interest for him. One item in particular: MagiskHide, the tool that allows changes to the main software of an Android phone to go unnoticed by applications and system tools. (This is a big deal for users who want to modify their phone without losing access to “secure” apps like banking or certain games.) To this end, MagiskHide will be largely discontinued.

“MagiskHide will have to see its end of life,” Wu said. “Having access to almost all of Google’s source code (as all Googlers do) and talking with various related teams, it just doesn’t make sense to me. to be involved in a root cover-up business because it is simply a conflict of interest. “

The open source nature of Magisk means there’s nothing stopping another developer from creating a similar tool, and without any sort of approval or cooperation from Wu, there’s not much Google can do about it. . (Indeed, similar tools are already available.) A small part of the MagiskHide tool will remain: the ability for users to set a process denial list that prevents Magisk from interfering with specific applications.

Wu also said that he no longer had the time or interest to moderate the Magisk module repository. The repository will be removed from the app and a GitHub web-based replacement maintained by members of the Magisk community is in progress. Manual file-based installation is always an option.

The last version of Magisk was version 23.0, released in May. It may be some time before the next version is released, given the scale of the changes that John Wu has described.