How to toggle Airplane Mode on Android 4.2 and above using root?

Question

As is known, on Android 4.2 only system applications can toggle Airplane Mode. But I think it must be available for rooted devices. And I want to impliment it in my application for rooted devices with Build.VERSION.SDK_INT>=17. How to toggle Airplane Mode on rooted devices with Android 4.2?

Returnee

Related (though not necessarily a duplicate): #13767409 – Fettling

Yes, this question is not duplicate. – Returnee

Answer 1

There is a new "settings" binary in Android 4.2 You can also use it without su, then your app needs the permission required to change this setting declared in your app's manifest (which would be WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS for flight mode in 4.2 - which is only granted to apps installed on system partition).

Activate

su 
settings put global airplane_mode_on 1
am broadcast -a android.intent.action.AIRPLANE_MODE --ez state true

Deactivate

su
settings put global airplane_mode_on 0
am broadcast -a android.intent.action.AIRPLANE_MODE --ez state false

For other android versions and other settings (flight mode can be activated without root before 4.2) you can use sql injects in settings.db

su
sqlite3 /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db
insert into global values(null, 'airplane_mode_on', 1);

Replace "global" with "system" or "secure" and 'airplane_mode_on' with the key of your desired table entry. For some settings you need to send certain broadcasts afterwards, see example above for flight mode.

To explore your settings.db run this in a terminal app:

su
sqlite3 /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db
.tables
select * from global
select * from secure
select * from system

Unstained

I'm not 100% clear on this... Does this mean there is no way to legally toggle airplane mode on >= 4.2 via an API without rooting? – Electroluminescence

Yes, this is what the original questions also says. (Your app cannot be a system app without root or yourself developing/compiling the firmware). – Unstained