com.sec.android.daemonapp Copy

The Weather app on Samsung Galaxy devices, made by Samsung. Despite the generic "daemonapp" package name it is the app and widget behind Samsung's weather experience: current conditions, temperature, humidity, wind speed, hourly forecasts and a weekly outlook, plus the Weather widget you can place on the home screen. In our sample it is Samsung-signed by the same key that signs the framework on those devices. It uses device location. Samsung documents that the app automatically shows weather for your current location, with the option to add further locations manually. On newer models it also feeds other surfaces: Samsung describes weather summaries appearing in Now Brief and weather-driven changes to the Photo Ambient Wallpaper lock screen. Those integrations are limited to select recent devices, and the release at which each arrived could not be sourced, so treat the surfaces it feeds as device-dependent. For Android Enterprise, EMM and kiosk use it plays no part in enrolment, policy or management. It is worth attention for two reasons: it is a user-facing app most single-purpose deployments do not want, and it is a location consumer, which matters where location use is being minimised. It is a reasonable candidate to hide or disable through your EMM's system app management. On recent Samsung builds, disabling it should also be expected to remove the weather content from the lock screen and Now Brief surfaces described above.

• How to use the Weather app on your Galaxy phone - Samsung →
• How should system applications be handled on a COPE device? - Jason Bayton →
• Package provenance for com.sec.android.daemonapp - 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 51 permissions: 4 runtime (user-granted), 8 signature or system-level, 8 install-time and 31 vendor or uncatalogued.
• APK size ranges from 16.7 MB to 60.7 MB across the reporting device profiles, so the build differs substantially between them.
• Reported as an updated system app on 2 of 22 profiles - a newer build is installed over the one in the system image there.