Exploiting Android Icons for Fun and... Probably Not Profit
summary
Shows how Android activity aliases and dynamic shortcuts plus a foreground service are used to make playable home‑screen games: a Tic‑Tac‑Toe (9 icons) and a Snake rendered by updating ShortcutManager.updateShortcuts and toggling manifest aliases via PackageManager. Activity aliases are static and slow; dynamic shortcuts update at runtime but require user pin confirmation and still show latency (demo runs with a 500 ms tick ≈ 2 FPS on the presenter’s emulator). The builds work but hit rate limits, launcher inconsistencies, and perceived input lag.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Android icon exploits
- 1:02Tic-Tac-Toe with icons
- 6:55Activity alias limitations
- 7:57Dynamic shortcuts interactivity
- 12:28Live Snake game
- 18:24Snake game demo
- 20:10Practical takeaways
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