How to grant permanent wallpaper access in Smart Launcher

Granting Wallpaper Access to Smart Launcher via ADB

Some of Smart Launcher’s best features, like blurred backgrounds, home screen screenshots, and backups that include your wallpaper, need access to your wallpaper.

Starting with newer versions of Android, Google made it so that apps need special permission to access the wallpaper. However, due to Play Store rules, we’re not allowed to request that permission directly inside the app.

To solve this, you can grant the permission manually using a safe and official tool called ADB (Android Debug Bridge). It takes just a few minutes, and once done, you’ll never have to repeat it, even after updates. You’ll only need to do it again if you uninstall and reinstall the app.

Prerequisites (for all systems)

1. You must have a USB cable to connect your phone to your computer.

2. On your Android phone:

   • Go to Settings > About phone

   • Tap Build number 7 times to enable Developer options.

   • Then go to Settings > System > Developer options

   • Enable USB debugging

3. When prompted on your phone, tap "Allow" to authorize USB debugging.

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Windows

1. Download ADB:

   • Go to the official Android SDK Platform Tools page: https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools

   • Download the ZIP for Windows and extract it somewhere (e.g. C:\adb)

2. Open Command Prompt:

   • Press Win + R, type cmd, press Enter.

   • Navigate to the folder where you extracted ADB:

     cd C:\adb

3. Run the command:

   adb devices

   • This checks if your phone is connected properly.

   • It should show your device ID. If it says “unauthorized,” check your phone and authorize USB debugging.

4. Grant the permission:

   adb shell pm grant ginlemon.flowerfree android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE

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MacOS

1. Install ADB (choose one):

   • With Homebrew (recommended):

     brew install android-platform-tools

   • Or download manually from: https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools

2. Open Terminal (⌘ + Space, type “Terminal”)

3. Connect the device and check connection:

   adb devices

   • Authorize your Mac on your phone if prompted.

4. Grant the permission:

   adb shell pm grant ginlemon.flowerfree android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE

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Linux (Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora/Arch)

1. Install ADB:

   • Debian/Ubuntu:

     sudo apt install android-tools-adb

   • Fedora:

     sudo dnf install android-tools

   • Arch:

     sudo pacman -S android-tools

2. Open a terminal

3. Connect the device and check connection:

   adb devices

4. Grant the permission:

   adb shell pm grant ginlemon.flowerfree android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE

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How to verify it worked

1. Open Smart Launcher.

2. Try again any feature that previously failed due to the missing permission.

If something still doesn’t work, try restarting the phone.