Prevent a specific app from being updated on client side

Question

I want to prevent a specific app from being updated by Play Store and Package Installer, preferably by refusing updates. Whenever I want to update it, I am supposed to be required to revoke the prevention manually, or the app cannot be updated. It should be a system tweak or a change somewhere in /data.

Things I've thought:

Tweak somewhere so the system reports the app to be infinitely new
Make the app "invincible" and cannot be modified

It doesn't matter if the app can be removed by regular means. Any thoughts?

Tried adding the i attribute on an app's APK location, to no avail. This sounds like something that would be accomplishable by Xposed. — Grimoire, Oct 03 '17 at 14:46
@DeathMashSalesman See this question of mine. chattr +i definitely won't work. — iBug, Oct 03 '17 at 14:49
Of course not. Sadly, no packages.xml mumbo-jumbo can help, either. Only Xposed. — Grimoire, Oct 03 '17 at 14:57
An idea, but not sure how to do this or even if it's possible: change the versionCode inside the AndroidManifest.xml. Generally, lower version will be prevented to overwrite higher version with error "failed to downgrade" (see https://stackoverflow.com/q/24547924) — Andrew T., Oct 04 '17 at 04:53
Possible duplicate of How to get rid of update notifications for a given app in Google Play Store? — Firelord, Jul 13 '18 at 02:23

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 13 '18 at 00:57

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I just found that Titanium Backup has a "Detach from Play Store" option for apps (requires PRO version). After detaching, apps won't show up in Google Play and thus won't be updated unless you manually navigate to the page and tap "Update".

answered Jul 13 '18 at 00:57

iBug

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score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 03 '17 at 15:42

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It seems as if you cannot turn off auto update for specific apps. But if the app updates independently of playstore, you can restrict background data for the app and it won't update as such

answered Oct 03 '17 at 15:42

Alain Giresse

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Prevent a specific app from being updated on client side

2 Answers2