The technical advances achieved over the years in the mobile telephony sector, in addition to the numerous advantages that have brought to our daily life, have also caused some collateral drawbacks: one of these is the fact that applications and mobile games are becoming heavier, which means that a good portion of the population, those who still do not have access to state-of-the-art devices or high-speed Internet connections, have problems when it comes to getting hold of the latest apps and tools.
That's why, while Google has developed new versions of Android, it also has devised solutions to ensure that applications are not that heavy. One of the newest was called Dynamic Asset Delivery, which allows developers to prepare their games so that can be played by users even if all their assets have not yet been downloaded.
But to make this system a reality, Google is relying on other technologies which he had previously implemented. It is about App Bundle, a format that optimizes the installation package of each app for each specific device, thus saving space. But there is a problem: the arrival of this format had made it very difficult download and install apps and games from alternative stores to Google Play. Until today.
What are app bundles?
Despite their apparent drawbacks, the truth is that i bundle di app have led to countless improvements in terms of application distribution through the Google Play Store. Broadly speaking, this concept refers to a publication format that includes all application code and resources, but leaves the task of in the hands of the Google Play Store generate the APK file which will eventually be installed on your device. This way Google Play can just take the resources you need for installing the application on each specific device, eliminating the unnecessary ones for save space and speed up both the download and the installation process.
The operation of this system is fully automated, so that the user does not have to do anything. To illustrate how it works in an example, imagine downloading an application such as WhatsApp. Therefore, when you download an app or game from Google Play, the following happens: if the developers have opted for the app bundle format for their application, Google Play will automatically identify which parts of the application are needed to make it work properly depending on the hardware and software of the device as well as other parameters such as the tongue.
So when you download the application, what you are actually downloading is the base APK file - which will be the same on all devices - along with other matching compatibility modules, for example, processor type and architecture, screen resolution, Android version or language setting. The rest of the modules will not download, thus saving storage space and time as the download process will be faster.
Ma what happens if i change the settings of the mobile phone? In case of any kind of change that could affect the performance of the app due to the lack of the necessary modules, for example when changing the language of the device or when changing the Android version, Google Play will install the necessary modules in automatic mode.
So far they are all advantages, both for developers, who save work and time by leaving the “packaging” process and signing each application in the hands of Google; and for users, who make sure they download the apps that best suit their devices, saving space. However, the fact that developers who have already opted for this measure have stopped collect all the resources of your apps inside the APK files, made it virtually impossible to offer their apps through alternative channels to Google Play. This is where they come into play i file.APKM e l’app APKMirror Installer.
How to download and install app bundles
APKMirror is one of the Repository more popular of alternative apps and games for Android to Google Play and, as such, one of the most affected by the arrival of the app bundle format. For this reason, in the last year the team in charge of giving life to this portal - which, by the way, is the same behind the Android Police support - has developed a way to download and install app bundles without having to resort to Google Play.
The solution is based on two parts: first, a new file type, with .APKM extension, which is nothing more than a compressed and encrypted file that contains both the APK of each application and the resources optimized for each specific device. Instead, the application is offered APK Mirror Installer, which today is the only one capable of installing applications based on the app bundle format with the .APKM format.
Taking all of the above into account, the process for install the app bundles on our Android using APKMirror Installer is simple. Just follow the steps below:
- Download any app that supports app bundles from APKMirror. –Some examples of apps with this format are Netflix, YouTube or Pokémon GO; They will be identified by a green label with the words "Bundle" -
- Open the APKMirror Installer app and tap the «Browse files» button.
- Find and select the application package you downloaded in the first step.
- Tap "Install package" wait for the appropriate resources to load for your device.
- Finally, tap "Install app" to install the application. Note that you must have activated unknown sources first.
