Settings

There are a few global FlashFire settings that can be changed in the Settings page of the app.

Compression method

This setting governs which compression method is used when creating backups. There are three options available:

• None
  Don't compress backups at all. While this is fast, it takes up the most disk space of the three options.
  
  
• LZ4 (fast)
  Use LZ4 compression for backups. LZ4 compresses extremely fast and provides a reasonable compression ratios. The speed difference between using LZ4 or no compression at all is not noticable on most devices, but the disk space differently is! This option is the default.
  
  
• GZIP (best)
  Use GZIP compression for backups. GZIP uses the deflate algorithm and provides a significantly better compression ratio than LZ4, so it saves more disk space. It is also much slower than LZ4.

GZIP compression cores

When using the GZIP option as the Compression method setting, this setting decides how many CPU cores are used for compression. Using more cores speeds up the compression, but also warms up the device.

• Single core
  Only use a single core for compression. This is the slowest option, but shouldn't significantly heat up the device.
  
  
• Half available cores
  Use half the number of available cores for compression. This provides a decent trade-off between compresison speed and heat generation. This option is the default.
  
  
• All available cores
  Use all the available cores for compression. This is the fastest option, but some devices will get very hot when it is used, as it may run your device at 100% of its CPU capacity for quite a while.
  

Treat system as original

FlashFire pre-sets some flashing options based on the current system modification state. These are just the checkboxes that are automatically checked for you when you add a new action, and can be manually changed at any time. In the past, system modification was always auto-detected, but it has been discovered that this is not completely reliable. Now we default to Always because it is the safest setting.

• Always
  Treat the device as if all system partitions are stock and unmodified.
  
  
• Never
  Treat the device as if the system partitions are modified. You might want to use this setting on custom firmwares.
  
  
• Auto-detect
  Attempt to detect if the system partitions are modified or not, and act accordingly.

Flash bootloaders

This setting controls if FlashFire will attempt to flash bootloader partitions. By default, bootloader partitions are only read and never written. Even when enabled, flashing bootloader partitions may not succeed - many devices have protections in place against the bootloaders being overwritten.

Please note that flashing bootloaders is extremely dangerous. Any bug, error, or failure may result in an unrecoverable hard-brick. Do not use this feature unless you know exactly what you are doing.

Due to the danger of this feature, it is automatically turned off every time FlashFire starts. You have to manually re-enable it every time you want to use it.

If you must flash bootloaders, it is advised to use a bootloader-based flashing tool such as fastboot or ODIN to do it, as these are the safest methods. OTAs may also update bootloaders, and though slightly less safe than fastboot/ODIN, it is still much safer than having FlashFire flash bootloader partitions directly.

Emulate framebuffer

This setting controls if AROMA Installer will be presented with a fake framebuffer. On many devices AROMA Installer cannot function when called from FlashFire without this setting being enabled, because it cannot get access to the real framebuffer, and thus the user interface cannot be displayed.

If this setting is enabled (the default option), a framebuffer will be emulated to work around this issue when AROMA Installer is detected.

If this option is not needed on your device to have AROMA Installer work together with FlashFire, the emulation will be noticably slower than not using the emulation. However, it is still advised to keep the option enabled, as it also tries to prevent reboots during the flashing process.

If FlashFire freezes during flashing when you expect AROMA Installer to be launched, disable this feature. There is a kernel issue in some firmwares that causes this. If you are lucky, your device is one of those who can use AROMA Installer without this feature. Unfortunately, there is no possible work-around for that kernel issue.

Clear cache

FlashFire caches information about files, such as the list of contents of archives, updates and OTAs, for faster operation. If changes in files are not reflected in the FlashFire user interface, use this option to clear all cache information.