FAQ for FK Kernel Manager android app
For those of you coming here without knowing what the hell “FK Kernel Manager” is, it’s a complete toolbox for all devices and kernels with a rich feature set aimed for ease of use! From the less knowledgeable, to the most expert user, it combines everything you need to manage, tweak and empower your device.
You can get it from here, it costs around ~3€ and it’s been regularly updated since January 2012: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.franco.kernel
Here I’ll list all of the app’s features and what you can do with them. It’s going to be a lengthy post so bare with me.
Dashboard
Shows live stats of your system components and a few key settings.
Each section goes to its respective settings panel if you click it.
CPU goes to CPU/GPU Manager tab.
GPU goes to GPU Control tab.
Memory goes to Kernel Settings Memory tab.
Battery goes to Battery Monitor tab.
System goes to… well nowhere, it’s just a few stats.
Live Monitor
A more comprehensive overview of your system components with live graphics and some fancy shit. You can see things like ZRAM, I/O, Network usages, thermal zones (temperature of a few components inside the SoC), wakelocks (and a way to block them if there’s Kernel support) and a full kernel log with search capabilities, select to copy & more.
Battery Monitor
One of the most important and used features of FK Kernel Manager. Provides a massive amount of information regarding your battery life. The screenshots pretty much tell the whole story. This is the only feature of the app that works without root, and if you’re unrooted and try to open the app you get a prompt asking if you want to use the Battery Monitor 🤟
Flasher
This is the star feature of the app. It has seamless support for FrancoKernel with changelog & auto-flash, but more importantly it has a “Manual Flasher” support which allows you to basically flash anything from it without have to go through your recovery, just like magic. Things like Magisk Modules, kernels, fonts, you name it. Just click “Manual Flasher” and choose the zip from your internal storage and it’ll do the work for you. It just works™
Kernel backups
One of the OG features since 2012. Easily backup your boot partition (on older phones it was just the kernel + ramdisk, now it includes the recovery too) and restore it whenever you see fit. You can also add notes to the backup in case you want to later remember what it is.
CPU & GPU
Now things start to get interesting. Here you can do lots of different things. Change your CPU frequencies, governors, GPU frequencies, governors, CPU input boost frequencies, make Governor Profiles, change stune boost values, control the state of your CPUs (make them offline/online on-demand) and change CPU governor parameters.
Here you can save a copy of your governor parameters, or share it with your friends.
Here you can toggle your CPU cores online/offline on-demand.
Change your stune parameters related to how your the scheduler pins tasks to certain cpus depending on its priority.
Here’s more information about it: https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common/+/android-4.4/Documentation/scheduler/sched-tune.txt
Tune the frequencies of your CPU when it’s boosted from touch inputs. Higher the freq the more battery it’ll use, but you’ll have better performance. Tune it until you find the sweetspot.
Control over your GPU… seems pretty self-explanatory. There’s a few options that aren’t showing in this screenshot but are present in other devices such as Adrenoboost, GPU boost, and so on.
Kernel Settings
A selection of hundreds of different tunables. From ZRAM to I/O, you can’t get enough of these. Some options are kernel dependent, like Sound Control. But for the most part these settings show up for every device.
This is one of the most exciting features. In case I haven’t added a tunable on the app, if you know the path you can simply add it here and it’s available as if I added it myself. It’s awesome and you’ll love it!
To make your life easier the app also features a simple UI to tune the “LowMemoryKiller” values and it also includes simple presets. Choose how you want your device to manage your free memory and set it up with just one simple tap.
Display Control
This is a kernel dependent feature since 99% of the OEMs don’t have any kernel interface to do this. But if your kernel supports it, then you’re in for a treat. Tune your RGB, contrast, saturation and hue. If RGB is supported then you can enjoy NightShift, basically an in-kernel solution to turn your display warmer after sunset to ease the strain on your eyes — and much more!
Also supports K-lapse which is a 100% in-kernel solution that emulates NightShift, but has tons of more tunables.\
You can save your display colors into a profile based on your preferences and load them any time you feel like. Sometimes I personally prefer an “amoled-ish” color scheme, some other times I prefer something more natural like DCI-P3. These aren’t prebuilt into the app since they would vary between devices so you have to make yours based on your own preferences.
One of my favourite features. Also kernel dependent, but it works like magic as it supercharges the display brightness to appear way above the stock max brightness and allows you to see in direct sunlight. With this app however there’s a fancy listener that automagically enables this for you depending on the surrounding light!
Performance Profiles
This feature is for the most part only available on FrancoKernel because I bundle this with the ramdisk and each device has their own set of settings. The names & descriptions pretty much tell the whole history about what they do. Just tap and they’ll be applied. They also have a home screen widget & quick tiles that allows you toggle between them faster.
They are automatically set on boot so just tap & relax!
Per-app profiles
The most powerful feature on the entire app. Allows you to create tailored profiles based on a series of tunables and apply them on your apps. FK Kernel Manager detects when those apps are in the foreground and then apply the profiles you selected. When the app goes to the background it inteligently restores the previous values.
You can go pretty wild with this. Imagine a 3–4 hour car ride but you don’t have a car charger/power bank. Just create a profile with low CPU max freqs, lower max display brightness and maybe enabling Android battery saver too. Then apply that to Google Maps (or any other maps app you use) and the device will use WAY less power throughout the trip.
You can extrapolate that to games, or any other app. It’s just like magic!
Scripts manager
Pretty much allows you create your own shell scripts for whatever you feel like doing. You can also import scripts from other people (yay!) — you know those magical scripts everyone from XDA raves about? Just import them here and you can easily run them.
And there’s more! You can pin up to 3 scripts to Quick Tiles and you don’t even have to open the app!!! How magical is that!
Tips
These are just simple presets for those of you that are afraid to touch some of the more advanced features. Each of these tips is carefully detailed and offers an easy way to do things like underclocking your CPU by percentages. Just tap apply and you’re good to go!
This pretty much covers all the features at a glance. I’ll be gradually adding new features and update this FAQ. Also there’s likely things I forgot and will update this accordingly.
I hope you enjoy my app as much as I enjoy working on it ✌️
FK Kernel Manager is available for every device & kernel from the Play Store costing roughly 3€ which tremendously help me support my family!!!
