Nook App Modifications, Part 1

Alex Harbuzenko · · android, nook, smali

Since becoming the owner of a B&N Nook reader, I’ve found that the apps for it are decent enough, but every once in a while they could be even better with a couple of minimal changes. The developers themselves hear about this a lot (the wishlist thread on the official forum has topped 800 posts), but for the last 3 months there hasn’t even been a hint of new firmware or the fixes everyone’s expecting.
The very first modification concerns the Home app — the device’s home screen. You can’t add anything new to it, but I badly needed a way to launch an application manager, so after decompiling and recompiling, the Nook Application Manager launches instead of chess. From the manager you can launch any other installed program (including the original chess itself). The manager can also uninstall installed apps, which comes in handy too. which is exactly what ended up happening.

Of course, the aforementioned manager has to be installed.The mod only works on rooted devices. I wrote my own Application Manager and then built it into Home.apk. The Games folder has been completely replaced with a new Apps folder that lists every program on the device. If an app’s icon isn’t the right shape or size, it gets slightly tweaked to match the overall style. All the changes were made using the smali decompiler and compiler.
A long press on an icon lets you uninstall the app.

Download link:
http://runserver.net/nook/Home.apk

Installation command:

adb push Home.apk /system/app/

P.S. The usefulness of this hack might be debatable for a lot of people, but personally I don’t launch games on my e-reader all that often, while third-party apps do come in handy from time to time — though not often enough to justify installing a whole different launcher from Nookdevs or Mynook.ru.

Update: this article has been reworked following the writing of a new version of the home screen.

Originally published 2010-09-14.