End of an era: Chainfire is halting development on all root-related apps

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XDA Senior Recognized Developer Chainfire is best known for his work on SuperSU, the root solution that the Android community favored for many, many years. Since retiring from development on SuperSU, Chainfire decided to take a break from developing on Android. Today, he has announced that all of his root-related applications are now end-of-life. That means they will no longer receive any development support from him, and in some cases, may disappear entirely.

Chainfire is a legend in the XDA community. His work on SuperSU single-handedly brought root access to millions of Android users worldwide. Although many users have since switched to Magisk for all of their root needs, Chainfire’s work should never be forgotten. His work was instrumental in achieving systemless-root access on the Google Pixel, something which is now considered standard. His knowledge of Android boot images has helped countless developers on our forums.

On the side, he has also been working on a variety of projects. Some of them, like his Firmware.mobi website and FlashFire, are directly relevant to his work on SuperSU. Others, like 500 Firepaper and Live Boot, aren’t directly related to SuperSU. There are even more root-related apps on his Play Store page that thousands of users still enjoy. But with Chainfire’s announcement, all development work on the aforementioned projects will be halted. For FlashFire, Live Boot, and other root-related apps, the reason was already given in Chainfire’s announcement post. For 500 Firepaper, development is halting for reasons outside of his control.

Fans of his applications will be sad to hear that development will no longer continue. I will personally be missing Recently, which has cleaned up my recent apps list for years. It still works for now, but there’s no guarantee a future Android version won’t break it. Chainfire has stated that he will consider open sourcing some of his projects, but he isn’t making any guarantees. He has also stated that he may update some of his non-root apps, but he didn’t mention which ones would receive updates. If you are interested in reading his full announcement, you can do so at the link below.

Read Chainfire’s announcement on Google+