Nightzuku

Nightzuku is a customized modern fork of Shizuku, maintained by kerneldroid. It provides a robust, high-performance interface for applications to use system APIs directly with elevated permissions (root or ADB).

The project tracks the latest Android platform developments, including Android 16/17 target stability, introduces a revamped Modern Material 3 Expressive UI using Jetpack Compose, and includes a full ADB-backed ZIP modules runner.

Important

Migration action required: due to the package identity upgrade (moe.shizuku.privileged.api to kerneldroid.nightzuku), any older official Shizuku Manager app must be uninstalled from the device before installing Nightzuku. Otherwise, they will conflict.

Fork additions

- Jetpack Compose manager UI with Material 3 Expressive components, motion, switches, and rounded icon treatment. - Android 16/17 target work with current preview SDK and build tooling in this fork. - ADB Modules screen for installing and managing ZIP modules. - Module features: module.prop, banner, enable/disable switch, action.sh, policy-gated service.sh, local WebUI, delete, path checks, size limits, output limits, and last-run logs. - Module policy settings: Safe mode, Full access, and background action control.

Background

When developing apps that require root, the standard approach is running commands in a su shell. This is slow, unreliable due to text processing, and limited to available commands. Even with ADB, apps often require root for privileged operations.

Nightzuku provides a high-performance alternative by allowing apps to use system APIs directly with elevated permissions.

How does Nightzuku work?

Android uses binder for interprocess communication (IPC) between apps and the system server. The system server checks the UID and PID of the client to enforce permissions.

Nightzuku guides users to start a Nightzuku server process with root or ADB. When an authorized app starts, it receives a binder to the Nightzuku server.

Nightzuku acts as a proxy, receiving requests from the app and forwarding them to the system server. This allows apps to use system APIs with the server's elevated permissions (root or ADB), making it almost identical to using system APIs directly.

License

Apache 2.0