RIP the only reliable website for grabbing APKs. I don’t even actually have an adblock on my side.

It’s still somewhat usable after you dismiss that message but CSS screws up.

Any good alternatives? I know I can use Aurora Store to get older versions of apps, but then I’ll have to find version codes for those somewhere. The advantage of APKMirror also was that it showed the minimum API required to run a specific version of an app (so I could find the last working version to install on Android 5 for example).

  • young_broccoli@kbin.social
    8·
    1 year ago

    AFAIK xapk is not proprietary to APKpure and its safe. Its just a way to ease the installation of packages that require additional data (OBB) not contained in the apk to run. If you installed the same app from APKMirror (as an plain apk) you would need to then hunt for the obb files and “install” them manually for it to run. Packages that dont require this additional data are distributed as plain apk’s in APKpure, its only those that do that come in xapk format.

    As for the sketchy installers, I’ve seen a couple of them and they suck, I agree. Fortunatelly I discovered the other day that an app called ZArchiver (a file browser developed mainly to manage compressed files) can install xapk’s without problem, its a quite competent file browser and its free, without ads.

    Now if you still dont trust them you can try with the sites listed in FMHY

    Edit: Just remembered a site called apk.support They too use xapk but they also offer downloads as zip files containig both apk and data or the option to download them separately directly from google servers. I’ve used it a couple of times without issues.

    • Arma@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Oh, pardon my ignorance! I’ve had no idea these are plain archives and ZArchiver could handle them - still, I don’t get why APKPure would provide XAPKs for apps under 100 MB in size with no OBBs inside (example: Textra), other than to promote their installer.

      edit: I guess this may be to distribute additional config APKs (language, architecture) in one file with the main app, so perhaps APKPure isn’t that guilty here.

      That FMHY link is also incredibly helpful, thank you!