com.samsung.android.mapsagent Copy

A Samsung-signed system package that current Galaxy builds label "Application recommendations". It has no launcher entry: this site records it as not user-facing on every observation, so it is a background component rather than an app anyone opens. The current label and the permissions described below point towards application recommendations and home-screen shortcuts rather than towards mapping or navigation, despite the package name. Whether the older builds Samsung listed as "MAPS Agent" had a different role could not be sourced. Samsung publishes no documentation for it, so this note describes what can be evidenced and stops there. Its permissions in our sample are the most informative part: QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES, the launcher's INSTALL_SHORTCUT and UNINSTALL_SHORTCUT permissions, read and write access to Samsung's own launcher settings, a data-sync foreground service, INTERNET and POST_NOTIFICATIONS, plus a read identifier naming com.samsung.android.app.omcagent, the package this site documents separately under Samsung's CSC and OMC customisation mechanism. Those are names in an observed permission list rather than proof of ownership or of a runtime relationship. Taken together the set is consistent with a component that fetches recommendations over the network and is able to place or remove home-screen shortcuts, which is also what the label says, but the specific behaviour is not documented by Samsung and is not asserted here. Samsung's separate, account-linked personalisation service, Customisation Service (com.samsung.android.rubin.app), is documented separately on this site; whether this package depends on it, or on the opt-outs that govern it, could not be sourced. For Android Enterprise, EMM and kiosk fleets, the relevant point is what a component of this description would do to a managed home screen rather than what it is called. On corporate-owned devices, manufacturer app recommendations are rarely wanted, and shortcut changes made outside the management stack are worse than untidy on a locked-down build. The controls worth reaching for are the ones in the management layer rather than anything specific to this package: on a dedicated device the practical approach this site recommends is to control what is reachable through the app allowlist and then test the finished build by actively trying to escape it. Whether any Samsung privacy opt-out governs this particular package could not be sourced, so none is recommended here as a control for it. No safe-to-disable rating is offered below either, because Samsung documents neither what this package does nor what depends on it, and a rating either way would be a guess. Version note: the label has changed. Samsung's Common Criteria mode application list for Android 11-era Galaxy S20 FE firmware names this same package "MAPS Agent" at version 1.0.00.6, whereas every device label recorded on this site now reads "Application recommendations". The same package is absent from Samsung's Android 9-era Galaxy S10+ list, which is suggestive of a later addition, though a single firmware list is not enough to date it. Our sample runs from version 1.0.00.49 to 1.0.10.0 with target SDKs from 30 to 37. What the rename reflects, and whether the package's function changed alongside it, could not be sourced and is recorded here as an open question.

• Galaxy S20 FE 5G (G781B) application list - Samsung Knox CC Mode documentation →
• Galaxy S10+ LTE (G975F) application list - Samsung Knox CC Mode documentation →
• How do I prevent users from escaping kiosk (lock task) mode? - Jason Bayton →
• Package provenance for com.samsung.android.mapsagent - Android System App Database →

• Signed by the device maker's own signing key (Samsung), so it is an OEM preinstall, but 2 different certificates appear across the fleet, so OEMs ship their own builds of it. It also signs the Android framework, so it is a platform-level key on its device(s). Inferred from the certificate appearing only on Samsung devices (508 packages, 10196 observations).
• Its largest observed manifest declares 16 permissions: 2 runtime (user-granted), 2 signature or system-level, 6 install-time and 6 vendor or uncatalogued.
• Never reported as user-facing, so it runs as a background or system component rather than an app the user opens.