bug: Patching fails on low end Android 10 and lower devices

[whitesnakeftw]

Bug description

Steps to reproduce:

• In normal mode (not expert), just tap on YouTube
• Let it download the version it says or use the one you've already downloaded (20.40.45 in both cases)
• When reaching 59/59 patches and 74% the app will just exit without any error printed anywhere.

I also tried to use expert mode, and when attempting to run it with Performance -> Enable process runtime, with any value of memory limit, patching fails right away with the following error: Patching failed: Patcher process exited with code 1.

Version of Morphe (Manager) and the app you are patching

Morphe Manager version: 1.8.0-dev-2 (same results on 1.7.1)
Patches version: 1.14.0
YouTube version: 20.40.45
Phone: Redmi 8
Android version: 10

Morphe logs

morphe_logcat_2026-02-19.log.txt

Acknowledgements

• I have checked all open and closed bug reports and this is not a duplicate.
• I have chosen an appropriate title.
• All requested information has been provided properly.
• The bug only affects using Morphe (Manager)

[LisoUseInAIKyrios]

Older versions of Android have issues with using an external process.

Your device may not have enough ram.

Right now the only work around is to patch on a different phone, and the final patching screen is an icon to save the patched app that you can send to your other device

Or you can patch using a computer and CLI tools.

[MarcaDian]

Problem with OutOfMemoryError on low-end devices.

Alloc young concurrent copying GC freed 0(15KB) ... 0% free, 255MB/256MB

[whitesnakeftw]

@LisoUseInAIKyrios yes, I had already patched with morphe-cli, was just reporting the issue.

@MarcaDian I was suspecting that, thanks.

[kissingcloper]

hello, I can add my feedback maybe it can help :
I have two phone running android 10
redmi 7A and Samsung J6

on the redmi the patching fail (the app just crash) on expert mode it use 256MB and all is used at a point (see screenshot) and crash but on the bottom it said I have 1,23 GB ram free so why it use just 256MB and run out of memory

on the samsung it use 512MB and so the patching process do not run out of memory and the patching process work fine

What is strange is that the two phone have the same memory ~ 3Gb

[LisoUseInAIKyrios]

Android 10 and lower devices cannot use runtime process, so extra memory cannot be allocated and the app only gets what Android provides.

The 256mb device is because Android is not giving it the "large heap" of 512mb.

The only solution for these lowly devices is to patch on another phone/computer and send the patched apk to the old device.

If the device can be flashed to a newer version of Android, that would also fix the problem (must be Android 11 or newer).

[MarcaDian]

@wchill
This can be closed by #403 ?

[whitesnakeftw]

@MarcaDian probably not. Morphe manager still crashes on my Redmi 8, while patching the latest recommend YT version (used v1.16.0-dev.3) patches.

[wchill]

This issue is likely unfixable on Android 10 and lower devices for any app that requires patching resources due to the 256MB limit, at least without major changes to arsclib. This is because arsclib has to load the resources.arsc in memory, decode all of the resources in it, and create its own tables and such, which quickly adds up.

Given that only 6.8% of Android devices in use today are running Android 9 or 10, it's likely not worth the effort to try and fix this - it's significantly more complex than the work that was put in for #403, and that already required a lot of research, experimentation, and implementation work.

Users on Android 9 or 10 who run into memory related issues should use CLI instead.

#403 does fix this problem when using only bytecode patches, however, like with TikTok.