What is xprivacylua?

XPrivacyLua is an Android privacy tool that feeds fake data to apps instead of letting them access your real personal information. The core problem it solves is that when you revoke permissions from an app the normal Android way, the app might crash or refuse to work. This tool takes a different approach: it gives apps dummy data so they keep running normally, but your actual contacts, location, messages, and other sensitive info stay protected. The tool can restrict a wide range of data. It can hide your contacts, call log, calendars, and installed apps. It can fake your location, device identifiers like the IMEI, and Wi-Fi network names. It can block apps from recording audio or video, prevent them from sending SMS messages, and even block analytics tools that apps use to track your behavior. You can also write custom restriction definitions if the built-in ones don't cover a specific app's behavior. This is designed for privacy-conscious Android users running Android 6.0 Marshmallow or later. For example, if you want to use a social media app but don't trust it with your real location or contacts list, this tool lets you grant those permissions while secretly feeding the app empty or fake data. It works with both regular apps and system apps, and supports multiple user profiles on the same device. The project requires the Xposed framework, which is a tool that lets modules intercept and modify how apps behave on a rooted Android device. This means it is not a simple app store download, you need a device where you have installed Xposed. The tool itself is free and open source under the GPL license. There are some limitations worth noting. It cannot prevent audio recording through certain methods some apps use, like WhatsApp's approach. Some tracking restrictions only work on apps whose code has not been obfuscated, meaning developers can technically make their apps harder to protect against. A few specific apps like Google Maps may throw errors when certain restrictions are active.