What causes "Invalid format: mode not found" in MuntashirAkon/AppManager?

Fix the rule source so each APP_OP line has: package, op code, and mode (e.g. pkg op mode)

MuntashirAkon/AppManager · error · IllegalArgumentException

Invalid format: mode not found

Error message

Invalid format: mode not found

What it means

AppOpRule parses a TSV rule line: the op code comes from opInt, and the mode must be the next token in the StringTokenizer. If the token stream is exhausted, the rule line is malformed and the constructor throws IllegalArgumentException('Invalid format: mode not found').

Source

Thrown at app/src/main/java/io/github/muntashirakon/AppManager/rules/struct/AppOpRule.java:30

public class AppOpRule extends RuleEntry {
    private final int mOp;
    @AppOpsManagerCompat.Mode
    private int mMode;

    public AppOpRule(@NonNull String packageName, int op, @AppOpsManagerCompat.Mode int mode) {
        super(packageName, String.valueOf(op), RuleType.APP_OP);
        mOp = op;
        mMode = mode;
    }

    public AppOpRule(@NonNull String packageName, String opInt, @NonNull StringTokenizer tokenizer)
            throws RuntimeException {
        super(packageName, opInt, RuleType.APP_OP);
        mOp = Integer.parseInt(opInt);
        if (tokenizer.hasMoreElements()) {
            mMode = Integer.parseInt(tokenizer.nextElement().toString());
        } else throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid format: mode not found");
    }

    public int getOp() {
        return mOp;
    }

    @AppOpsManagerCompat.Mode
    public int getMode() {
        return mMode;
    }

    public void setMode(@AppOpsManagerCompat.Mode int mode) {
        mMode = mode;
    }

    @NonNull
    @Override
    public String toString() {

View on GitHub (pinned to 0152f468fc)

Solutions

Fix the rule source so each APP_OP line has: package, op code, and mode (e.g. pkg<TAB>op<TAB>mode)
Validate token count before constructing, or catch IllegalArgumentException per line and skip malformed rows
Re-export the rules from a current App Manager version to regenerate well-formed lines

Example fix

// before
AppOpRule rule = new AppOpRule(pkg, opInt, new StringTokenizer(line, "\t"));
// after
StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(line, "\t");
if (st.countTokens() < 2) {
    Log.w(TAG, "Skipping malformed app-op line: " + line);
    return;
}
AppOpRule rule = new AppOpRule(pkg, opInt, st);

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(line, "\t");
if (st.countTokens() < 3) { // package + op + mode
    Log.w(TAG, "Malformed APP_OP line: " + line);
    return;
}

Try / catch

try {
    rule = new AppOpRule(pkg, opInt, tokenizer);
} catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
    Log.w(TAG, "Skipping invalid app-op rule: " + line, e);
}

Prevention

Validate column count per TSV line before constructing rules
Keep rule files generated by the same app version that will import them
Never hand-edit exported TSV backups; re-export instead

When it happens

Trigger: Constructing AppOpRule with a tokenizer that has no remaining element — i.e. an app-op rule line containing only the package and op code without a mode field.

Common situations: Hand-edited or truncated rules backup TSV files; importing rules exported by an older App Manager version with a different line format; copy-paste dropping the last column.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid ... format", "must be in format X", "does not look like a ..." — invalid argument format errors across CLI tools and libraries — this error's family across 17 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of MuntashirAkon/AppManager@0152f468fc (2026-09-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/57f45f7c5035826c. Report an issue: GitHub.