The Best Free/Paid Custom Kernel Managers For Android

Its no doubt that if you are reading this then you might be searching for some of the best kernel managers to tune kernel settings to get the maximum or balanced performance out of your phone. Other things which I am sure of is that - you know about root, installing ROMs and Kernels. Thats a good start and I don't need to explain you about kernel and root.

A kernel manager allows you to tweak the settings of your device at the kernel level. A kernel is the heart of your phone and you need to take care of it sometimes to keep everything working well and fluid. Most of the Android devices are shipped with a default kernel which are already tuned for best performance but that might be not true for all. An average user does not care about much these things and maybe do not know about these things. All these stuff for the nerds. So a default kernel which is shipped with devices does not provide much options for users to tweak the settings, meanwhile a custom kernel opens a vast array of options for tweaking.

With custom kernels you can tweak the CPU/GPU speed , manage the screen colors, get options for optimizing sound controls at kernel level and a lot of other things. It is not like that you will get all these options in a custom kernel automatically, for this the developer of that kernel has to add all these things in kernel. You can have more or less features compared to other custom kernels.

Since we are looking here for kernel managers, then we do not have much options to choose from. Personally I found 3 kernel managers which serves the purpose of tweaking kernel very well. One of them is free and 2 are paid. So lets start with the free one.

1. SmartPack Kernel Manager

SmartPack-Kernel Manager is a heavily modified version of official Kernel Adiutor (KA), which is originally developed by Recognized Developer @Grarak. Kernel Adiutor has been abandoned and have not received any update from July 2018. Since it was an open source project ,so a new dev SunilPaulMathew picked this up and has been improving it since then. This is not available to download from play store , you need to download this from the app release page on github. Interface of the app is pretty simple and settings are divided in section using a sidebar. The best feature of this app is - Custom Controls. With custom controls you can even add support for the things which has been added in kernel but are not supported by kernel manager yet. You can read more about these controls in the app itself. They are not easy as they seems because you need some knowledge of shell scripts.

You can also save the kernel and devices logs to your sdcard using the export logs option in settings.

As I said earlier the features you will see in this app regarding the tweaks of kernel depends on you custom kernels. All I can say is that it supports most the things which you need to tweak if your custom kernel supports it. The other features which are available for all are -

Dark Mode
Dark Mode
Option to flash recovery zip files while running Android OS, that is even without rebooting to custom recovery.
SELinux Switch.
GPU and CPU Frequency live stats and their usage
Custom Controls
Build Prop Editor
Profiles with tasker, allows you to tweak settings automatically when an specific even occurs, like launching a game or an app.
More Features and info on XDA thread

Name	SmartPack
Download	Direct Link / All Versions
Support	XDA Thread

2. FK Kernel Manager

This is a paid app and one of the most popular kernel manager out there. It has a nice and modern which I think is needed for the tall display devices. It has its navigation bar at the bottom of the app and makes it easy to reach settings and other options. It also provides live CPU/GPU speed , input/output speed, info about wakelocks, RAM, Zram, thermal temperatures of different things and kernel logs too.

It has per-app profiles support which is the best things. You can make and profile with different setting and save it. These settings will get applied automatically when you launch that app for which you made that profile. It has a script manager which allows you to write a shell script and it will get automatically executed every time your phone boots. You can import and export these scripts easily from/to storage.

It has a nice dark mode by default but you can that to light from settings. If you enable the battery monitor , it will start showing you the battery stats in notification bar which details of idle battery drain and on screen usage drain percentages. Its a very useful feature for me.

You can flash kernel zips directly from this app, as well as other zips which modify the system.

Name	FK Kernel Manager
Download	Play Store

. EX-Kernel Manager

EX Kernel Manager (EXKM) gives you total control over your hardware with premium features and a beautifully optimized material design user interface. EXKM is the ultimate tool for performance tuning, maximizing battery life, configuring gestures or tweaking color and sound.

Dashboard: your homepage within the app, Dashboard summarizes your current settings and shows real-time CPU and GPU frequencies, temperatures, memory usage, uptime, deep sleep, battery level and temperature, governors, and i/o settings.

Battery Monitor: the most accurate way to measure battery life. EXKM’s Battery Monitor is designed to show battery statistics that you can use to improve battery life scientifically. EXKM Battery Monitor measures % battery use per hour and gives separate statistics for screen off (idle drain) and screen on (active drain). It automatically measures only when the battery is discharging so you never have to remember to reset the stats or create markers.

CPU Settings: easily create, share and load CPU governor profiles for maximum battery life. Adjust max frequency, min frequency, CPU governor, CPU boost, hotplugging, thermals and voltage (if supported by kernel or hardware)

Graphics Settings: Max frequency, min frequency, GPU governor, Adreno Idler (requires kernel support)

Advanced Color Control: RGB controls, saturation, value, contrast and hue, Save, load and share custom profiles. (requires kernel support, most custom kernels for Qualcomm devices implement this driver)

Custom User Settings: This feature allows you to add any kernel setting you want. Kernel settings are located in the /proc and /sys directories. Simply navigate to the desired path and you can quickly and easily add the setting to the app where it can be changed on the fly or applied at boot. Plus you can easily import/export your custom settings and share with other users.

CPU Times: Show CPU frequency usage and deep sleep, and optionally sort by most used frequencies.