Nox, despite being the most feature-filled Android emulator, has a lot of negativity surrounding it due to their antics when it comes to making income off of their program. It is known for running repeated advertisments in the background, calling home and passing along system information (outside of your Android instance) as well as a vast amount of potentially sensitive data in an encrypted payload back to their multitude of servers. With the following preventitive measures, we can stop a majority of this happening as well as greatly improve the overall performance.
-
Download and Install a fresh copy of Nox. The latest version is fine (for now). If you already have it installed, that is fine too. No need to reinstall.
-
Enable Root Mode on Nox by clicking the gear icon and then checking the
Root Startup
box. -
Install a new Launcher from the Play Store. ANYTHING but Nox's default. I suggest Nova Launcher.
-
Once your launcher of choice is installed, click the Home icon and choose Nova Launcher and to Always Use This Launcher.
-
Go to your App Drawer and open File Manager and navigate to
system
->app
. In this folder, findLauncher_X.X.X_*.apk
andcom.facebook.lite.apk
– delete them. If it says they are not found after tapping delete, just tap delete again. -
Close Nox and navigate to
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc
and right click thehosts
file and open it in Notepad (Run as Administrator if needed) or a plain text editor of your choice (e.g. Notepad++, VS Code, etc.) – once open, append the following list to the bottom of the file:
127.0.0.1 8.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 alog.umeng.com
127.0.0.1 android.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 androiden.duapp.com
127.0.0.1 api-new.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 api.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 api.mobula.sdk.duapps.com
127.0.0.1 app.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 app.static.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 app.test.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 attitude.applinzi.com
127.0.0.1 au.umeng.com
127.0.0.1 bbs.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 bi.yeshen.com
127.0.0.1 bignox.com
127.0.0.1 cn.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 common.duapps.com
127.0.0.1 de.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 dev.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 download.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 en.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 es.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 feed.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 fr.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 game.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 gift.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 gray.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 group.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 hm.e.shifen.com
127.0.0.1 hmma.baidu.com
127.0.0.1 id.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 image.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 info.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 ios.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 kr.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 launcher-us.yeshen.com
127.0.0.1 launcher.us.yeshen.com
127.0.0.1 log.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 mail.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 mis.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 mobile.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 ms.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 my.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 news.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 noxagile.bceapp.com
127.0.0.1 noxagile.duapp.com
127.0.0.1 nrc.tapas.net
127.0.0.1 open.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 passport-us.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 passport.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 pasta.esfile.duapps.com
127.0.0.1 pay.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 ph.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 phone.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 plat-api.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 player.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 pop3.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 pt.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 pubstatus.sinaapp.com
127.0.0.1 res02.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 res05.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 res06.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 res09.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 res11.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 res12.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 res.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 res.noxmobi.com
127.0.0.1 ru.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 sdk.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 sdk.open.inc2.igexin.com
127.0.0.1 shouyou.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 sj.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 sns.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 st.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 survey.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 t.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 tdcv3.talkingdata.net
127.0.0.1 tl.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 tracking.apptrackerlink.com
127.0.0.1 tracking.trnox.com
127.0.0.1 tui.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 tv.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 tw.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 unauthorized.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 union.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 user.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 vip.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 wap.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 www.bignox.com
127.0.0.1 www.yeshen.com
127.0.0.1 www.yeshen.com.w.kunlungr.com
Once appended, save and close Notepad.
- Navigate to
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Nox
and openConf.ini
in the same editor used forhosts
above. Once open, change the following options to the values defined below:
pop_ads_refresh_time=9223372036854775807
service_qq=0
service_qq_link=<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"#\" style=\"display: none;\"></a>
collect_behavior_enable=false
collect_behavior_interveral=9223372036854775807
root=false
Afterwards, save and close the file. Right Click it, go to Properties, and check Read Only
so Nox will not revert these changes.
Once this is all done, you are free to re-open Nox and continue playing as usual.
Ragnarok Mobile as well as a select few of other games have an in-game 2K resolution mode achievable by the iPad Pro and high-end 4K Android tablets. It can be enabled while using Nox by setting a proper resolution and DPI.
If you have already performed the steps above, you will need close Nox and temporarily uncheck Read Only
on your conf.ini
. Afterwards, open Nox and click the Cog on the top right and go to Advanced settings.
Performance Settings
These are computer-specific, so go to Start Menu -> Right Click My PC -> Properties and see how many cores your CPU has and how much memory you have.
Cores
Same amount as your processor has (e.g. i7-8700k has 6
)
Memory
If your system has 16GB
or more of memory, 8096MB
is more than sufficient.
If your system has 8GB
of memory, 4096MB
is sufficient.
If your system has 4GB
or less of memory, I'm sorry– but you shouldn't attempt 2K.
Startup settings
Width: 2560
Height: 1440
DPI: 320
Miscellaneous
Graphics rendering mode: Speed (DirectX)
Frame settings: 60
Mouse acceleration: Checked (Turn off mouse acceleration in Windows)
Hi guys. Recently I have been trying to sniff Nox`s internal exe-files and realized that when I launch specific applications (google-made?)
nox_adb.exe
recieves such messages:See the last line. I am not much familiar with adb API. Could someone plz tell wtf this command means? The only thing I am able to realize that there is some things are happening with default Nox launcher
launcher3
. Btw it is removed at that moment on my Nox copy so idk what is result of that.This is not the only one thing I have found intriguing while sniffing it. Sometimes when you are launching Nox there is such call to
7za.exe
So here we can actually see that Nox is decompressing some passworded archive located ant %username% folder and extracts some rule.xml and state.xml files.
Ok. I have caught that archive and decompressed it myself (seems like password is constant just like zip-file name?). There is a content of extracted files
rule.xml
Seems like none interesting here.
state.xml
A little bit more intriguing things here. Wtf is "pulish_package" means? Anyway it is emty here now and I did not even get default launcher installed after this events (I have my
conf.ini
unlocked for writing so Nox has less limits to install it but it did not.Anyway I will still observing this situation.
Btw I have turned off calling the original command (so no decompression of strange xml files, only sniffing recieved commands) and it feel like Nox has no problem with it and it still works like a charm.
My objective is to improve Nox debloating process or/and result and so on.
Plz write your ideas if you have ones. I`d be very appreciated.