FlosForge — Blog

Taming Windows app permissions after every fresh install

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Anyone who regularly installs Windows—whether setting up a new workstation, rebuilding a test laptop, or spinning up a fresh development virtual machine—knows the ritual that follows the first desktop boot.

Before you can actually do any real work, you have to spend twenty minutes hunting through the Settings app to rein in permissions.

Out of the box, Windows leaves dozens of capability levers wide open or in an ambiguous “not set” state where the operating system decides on your behalf. Built-in apps and third-party utilities can request background activity, listen through microphones, access webcams, poll location sensors, and read personal folders.

The pain of the 30-click maze

Managing these permissions in standard Windows 11 is remarkably tedious. There is no central dashboard. Instead, you are forced to navigate to Settings → Privacy & security, scroll through twenty different sub-menus—Camera, Microphone, Location, Contacts, Background apps, Radios, Diagnostic data—and click into each one individually.

Once inside each screen, you have to scroll through lists of installed applications, toggling sliders one by one. If you have fifty installed apps and want to ensure none of them can quietly use your microphone or poll your GPS in the background, you are looking at hundreds of repetitive clicks.

Repeat that process across multiple physical machines or half a dozen disposable VMs for testing, and it quickly becomes unbearable.

Why random “debloater” scripts are dangerous

Because this workflow is so frustrating, many developers and sysadmins resort to third-party “Windows debloater” scripts found on GitHub or tech forums.

While tempting, running opaque PowerShell scripts that blast registry keys with elevated privileges is risky:

They act as a blunt hammer: Many scripts indiscriminately wipe keys or disable core Windows services, breaking legitimate system features, updates, or application dependencies.
No visibility before writing: You rarely get to see an exact diff of what the script intends to change before it modifies your system.
No way to undo: If a script breaks something a week later, there is usually no journal or rollback mechanism. Your only recourse is System Restore or reinstalling Windows.

I wanted something far safer: a dedicated utility that gives me total visibility over every permission on the machine, lets me audit and adjust them in bulk, and guarantees that every write is previewed, recorded, and reversible.

So I wrote WinLevers.

How WinLevers works

WinLevers is a native desktop application built with C# on .NET 10 and WinUI 3. It scans the machine’s actual capability store and lays out the entire system under a single, searchable interface:

One view for all permissions: Pick a permission in the sidebar—Microphone, Webcam, Location, Background Access, Notifications, or even the GPU power preference—and every application on your machine appears in a clean table. You can see who published it, its current permission state (Allowed, Denied, or Not Set), and when it last touched that sensor.
Bulk filtering and actions: Filter by app name, publisher, executable path, or state. Want to deny microphone access to every app that hasn’t run in the last 30 days? Or revoke location permissions from all packaged utilities at once? Tick the rows, select your target state, and apply them together.
The Privacy Advisor: If you don’t want to comb through individual settings, the Privacy Advisor groups the highest-consequence capabilities (watch, listen, locate, or read files) into clear risk bands. It tells you exactly which apps currently hold those rights and offers one-click bulk actions to deny unneeded access.
Previews before touching anything: WinLevers never writes to the registry silently. Every bulk edit, profile application, or advisor recommendation opens a comprehensive preview dialog showing the exact keys and values that will change.
Atomic snapshots and rollback history: Before writing a single byte, WinLevers flushes a full JSON snapshot of affected keys to disk. Every write is committed to a local SQLite journal in %LOCALAPPDATA%, capturing the previous state. If an app breaks or you change your mind, you can open History and revert that exact batch with one click.
Machine portability via profiles: You can export your tuned permission baseline as a clean profile file. When setting up a new computer or booting a fresh VM, you just open WinLevers, load your profile, review the preview, and configure the entire box in seconds.

Keeping it safe and local

From day one, WinLevers was built under strict constraints:

Zero network code: There is no telemetry, no update ping, and no background reporting. The app cannot talk to the internet, and nothing about your installed software or machine identity ever leaves your computer.
User-level scope: It operates strictly within HKEY_CURRENT_USER—the exact same user-level registry store that Windows Settings modifies. It never touches machine-wide security keys or requires administrator rights for normal operation.

Now open source on GitHub

I originally built WinLevers to solve my own irritation with repetitive Windows setups and virtual machine maintenance. It saved me hours of clicking and gave me confidence that my fresh environments weren’t leaking data or running unnecessary background tasks.

Because it proved so useful to me and a few friends who tested it, I decided to release it as free and open-source software under the MIT license.

If you are tired of clicking through dozens of privacy sub-menus after every fresh Windows install, you can read the documentation on the WinLevers project page, or grab the source code and build it directly from GitHub.

Simple Hydration Tracking With Zero Ads, Subscriptions, or Data Mining

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Logging a glass of water should be the simplest digital action on a mobile device. However, opening a typical water tracking app today often means sitting through a 5-second video advertisement, dodging upgrade banners for “AI hydration coaching,” or creating a cloud account just to save a 250ml entry.

Many commercial hydration trackers monetize user attention through invasive ad networks and background telemetry. But logging water intake is an offline utility—it requires no cloud servers, no AI algorithms, and no subscription paywalls.

Instant logging designed for everyday life

I built FlosForge Water for Android to make hydration tracking effortless, fast, and completely private:

One-tap widget logging: Log drinks directly from your Android home screen without even opening the app. Custom cup presets allow you to log your regular water bottle or glass in a single touch.
Smart, non-intrusive reminders: Reminders only fire when you are behind on your daily target, avoiding noisy notifications when you are already well-hydrated.
Clear visual statistics: Track daily progress, weekly hydration patterns, time-of-day distribution, and streak achievements with clean charts.
Health Connect integration: Optionally sync water entries with Android Health Connect without giving away internet permissions.

Local-first, zero telemetry

FlosForge Water has no internet permission, no account requirements, and no subscriptions. Your daily drinking history is stored locally on your device and can be exported at any time.

Hydration tracking should serve you—not ad networks or cloud subscription models.

Counting Steps Privately Without GPS, Telemetry, or Cloud Accounts

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Modern smartphone operating systems include dedicated, hardware-level step counter sensors designed specifically to count physical steps using minimal battery power. Despite this, many pedometer apps on the Play Store demand full GPS location access, require mandatory cloud logins, and charge monthly subscriptions to view weekly movement charts.

Continuous GPS tracking transforms a simple step counter into a location recorder, building a detailed map of where you live, work, and exercise. Forcing your daily movement logs into remote cloud servers or AI processing pipelines introduces unnecessary battery drain and privacy risk for a metric your phone already calculates locally.

Hardware step counting done right

With FlosForge Steps for Android, I built a clean, battery-efficient pedometer centered on data sovereignty and zero surveillance:

Zero location permissions: The app never requests GPS or location access. It reads step events directly from Android’s hardware step sensor, preserving battery life and location privacy.
Detailed hourly breakdowns: View step distribution across every hour of the day to spot sedentary periods, track daily streaks, and review weekly, monthly, and yearly historical movement.
Home-screen widgets: Monitor progress toward your daily goal at a glance with customizable, resizable desktop widgets.
Manual activity logging & Health Connect: Add steps for walks taken without your phone, or optionally import steps from Health Connect using read-only integration.

Your physical activity stays on your device

FlosForge Steps has zero internet permissions. There are no advertising SDKs running in the background, no cloud analytics tracking your habits, no subscriptions, and no unneeded AI features.

Your movement history remains entirely on your hardware, under your control.

Why Your Medication Reminder Should Never Be a Subscription

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When you rely on daily prescription medication, missing a dose due to a failed notification, intrusive ad popup, or server outage is not just inconvenient—it can be dangerous. Yet many popular medication reminder apps have migrated to subscription models, placing basic features like refill warnings or multiple schedules behind monthly paywalls.

Simultaneously, these apps often collect medication names, dosages, and administration times to feed cloud analytics or targeted ad networks. The names of your prescriptions can easily disclose medical conditions, mental health diagnoses, or chronic illnesses. This information should never leave your possession.

Reliability and privacy over cloud gimmicks

A medication tracker needs to do one job with absolute reliability: ensure you take the right dose at the right time, while keeping your health records confidential.

In FlosForge Meds for Android, every notification and record is engineered for dependability and privacy:

Exact Doze-bypassing alarms: Built using Android’s exact alarm APIs so notifications ring on time, even when the phone is in deep sleep mode or battery saver state.
Critical lock-screen protection: High-priority alarms for time-sensitive medications ensure you don’t miss doses. Lock-screen notification text can be customized or anonymized so sensitive pill names aren’t visible to passersby.
Versatile schedule types: Supports daily times, specific days of the week, cycle protocols (e.g. 21 days on, 7 days off), interval hours, and as-needed (PRN) logging.
Refill warnings & doctor logs: Tracks pill inventory counts to alert you before you run out, and generates PDF adherence summaries for clinic visits.

No subscriptions, no telemetry, no AI hallucination

FlosForge Meds operates completely offline without internet permissions. It contains no AI chatbots making unverified medical suggestions and no cloud servers collecting your dosage history.

Your pill logs are stored locally with encrypted protection. There are no subscriptions to renew and no accounts to create—just a reliable, private pill tracker that works when you need it.

Private Blood Sugar Tracking Without Cloud Servers or Paywalls

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Managing blood sugar levels is a daily necessity for millions of people managing diabetes, prediabetes, or metabolic health. Yet, many modern glucose tracking apps lock essential medical features—such as HbA1c estimation or PDF doctor reports—behind recurring monthly subscriptions. Worse still, many mandate cloud accounts that upload your glucose history to remote analytics servers.

Blood glucose readings are highly sensitive health metrics. They reveal dietary habits, medical conditions, medication regimens, and daily stress levels. Uploading this information to cloud databases or exposing it to third-party AI models introduces significant privacy risks without adding any diagnostic accuracy.

What effective glucose tracking actually needs

Tracking blood sugar effectively requires clarity, speed, and meaningful context—not AI hype or paywalled charts. When building FlosForge Glucose for Android, I focused on the core features patients and doctors rely on:

Instant logging with meal context: Quickly record readings in mg/dL or mmol/L alongside vital context tags (fasting, before/after meals, exercise, bedtime) to understand why your glucose moved.
Clinical statistics on-device: Automatically calculate average blood sugar, Target-in-Range (TIR) percentages, and estimated HbA1c directly on your phone without sending raw data to remote servers.
Doctor-ready PDF exports: Generate clean, formatted PDF logbooks in a single tap to bring to your next endocrinology or GP appointment.
Photo & note attachments: Attach photos of meals or log notes alongside specific readings to identify hidden carb spikes or pattern triggers.

Privacy by design: encrypted & offline

FlosForge Glucose requests zero internet permissions. Your glucose entries and attached photos are protected using SQLCipher hardware-backed encryption directly on your Android device.

You own your medical data entirely. You can export complete CSV backups or PDF reports whenever you choose, with zero cloud tracking, zero telemetry, and zero subscription paywalls.

Why I built an open-source Android Phone Checker

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

One afternoon, a notification popped up on my personal phone announcing that a new application had just been successfully installed.

I had not downloaded anything. I had not opened an app store, clicked an installation prompt, or given consent. When I checked where it came from, the culprit was clear: a privileged, pre-installed manufacturer store app that shipped with the operating system out of the box. Because manufacturer system packages often hold elevated installation privileges, it had silently pulled and installed software onto my device without asking.

That notification sparked an investigation. I connected the device and began digging into the packages, permissions, and system processes running under the hood. What I found was frustrating: layers of pre-loaded bloatware, background telemetry daemons, and services holding sensitive permissions that I neither wanted nor needed.

I wanted a clear, safe, and transparent way to see what was actually happening on my phone—without needing to root the device or run unsafe exploit tools. So I built Phone Checker.

The tool runs directly from your computer over standard ADB (Android Debug Bridge) via USB. It audits thirteen distinct permission groups, uncovers pre-installed bloatware, identifies apps running in the background, and gives you a clean overview of your device’s security posture. Crucially, every check is read-only by default, and no modification is ever made without explicit confirmation.

Why open source?

When deciding what to do with the project, two things were immediately clear:

First, this is not an isolated problem. Many Android users find themselves in similar situations—dealing with pre-installed bloat, opaque manufacturer permissions, and unwanted background activity on hardware they ostensibly own. Having a trustworthy, inspectable tool to audit that environment is something people genuinely need.

Second, I firmly believe that this should not be a paid app. You should never have to buy a subscription or pay a gatekeeper just to audit permissions and clean the clutter from your own personal hardware.

For those reasons, I decided to put the project out there for free.

You can read more about what the app does on the Phone Checker project page, or inspect the code, build it yourself, and contribute directly on GitHub.