Developer Magisk stops MagiskHide and its own repo for modules

The developer of root method Magisk, John Wu, is discontinuing the MagiskHide feature to hide root access from apps and its own repo for modules. The developer is partly doing this because he is now working on Android security for Google.

Google has further approved Wu’s work on Magisk, he writes. The intent is to take root method development more seriously from now on with continuous integration on GitHub and more contributions from others to Magisk’s core. MagiskHide poses a conflict of interest because he works for Android security at Google. Therefore, the work on that will stop.

Chances are someone will pick that up and release MagiskHide as a module for the root app. Magisk is extensible with such modules. Sometimes apps won’t run or update if they detect a user has root access. This can apply, for example, to apps from banks or apps with streaming video.

Users have to flash those modules themselves as zip files within Magisk. The own repo is out, because according to Wu it is time-consuming to curate all modules for the own repo within the app itself. Magisk is the most popular method to get root on Android phones. Wu announced this spring that he would start working at Google.