Host mapper

App Cloner 2.1 comes with a new networking option called Host mapper, which allows redirecting requests made with a specific host to a different host name or IP address and/or port number.

This can be useful for monitoring, intercepting, analyzing or modifying network traffic.

The option allows specifying one or more pairs of hosts in the form of A → B, where requests to host A are redirected to host B. For A and B you may use host names or IP addresses. You may also use wildcards, for example, while entering www.google.com would match this exact host name, writing *.google.com would match any google.com sub-domain.

If no port number is specified for A, it will match any port number, otherwise you may restrict the mapping to a host with a specific port number, e.g. www.google.com:80.

If no port number is specified for B, it will keep and use the request’s original port number, otherwise you may override and change the port number, e.g. www.google.com:443 → 192.168.0.10:8443. You may need to create two separate mapping rules to separate SSL from non-SSL traffic when using custom port numbers.

When forwarding SSL traffic to your own interceptor, you may need to enable the networking option Trust all certificates, as otherwise the SSL negotiation will likely fail.

By default a notification is shown for every request to a new host, whether mapped or not. By checking Silent you can disable these notifications.

The Host mapper option works at socket level, not at HTTP level. The HTTP Host header is not changed to the new host, so if the target server relies on this header for handling the HTTP request, the request may fail.

The Host mapper option is not compatible with the Hosts blocker option, meaning the two options cannot be enabled the same time. However, using the Host mapper option you may also ‘block’ requests by redirecting them to an invalid host, e.g. localhost or 127.0.0.1.

Like with the Hosts blocker option, the Host mapper option does not work with native network connections as used by most web browsers, web views and audio/video streaming apps.

The Host mapper option is available for users with the medium donation.

Create app clones with your own activity transitions

Do you find the default activity transitions in your apps too boring? App Cloner 2.1 comes with a new Activity transitions display option hosting 15 high quality transition animations, which you can use in your cloned apps:

**Fade**, **Zoom**, **Shrink**, **Split**, **Card**, **Swipe left**, **Swipe right**, **Slide up**, **Slide down**, **Slide left**, **Slide right**, **In & out**, **Diagonal**, **Windmill** and **Spin** transitions

This will override any activity transitions the app uses by default and you can also turn off any activity transitions by selecting Disable.

Here are some examples…

Note that not all apps use different activities for different screens. Some apps swap out views on a single main activity, in this case there won’t be any activity transitions.

The Activity transitions option is not a runtime option, so you’ll need to reclone the app every time you want to change it. The last four transitions are extra transitions for users with the small donation.

App Cloner donations summary

This summarizes the modding options and features unlocked by the various donations in App Cloner.

Small donation

(USD 10 on Google Play Store or crypto, USD 9 on PayPal)

Options:

GPS joystick
Fake date
Hide screen mirroring
Fake camera
File access monitor
Hosts blocker
Trust all certificates
Make debuggable
Make WebViews debuggable
Allow in multi-account apps

Features:

Create up to 30 clones
Change Android ID option → Custom Android ID, generate new random ID during each cloning process
Change IMEI / IMSI option → Custom IMEI / IMSI, generate new random ID during each cloning process
Change Google Advertising ID option → Custom Google Advertising ID
Change Wi-Fi MAC address option → Custom Wi-Fi MAC address, generate new random ID during each cloning process
Change Bluetooth MAC address option → Custom Bluetooth MAC address, generate new random ID during each cloning process
Invert colors / dark mode option → Schedule
Replace text on screen option → Regular expressions, more than 5 replacements
Flip screen option → Flip screen using NFC tag
In-app live chat option → Private chat room
Splash screen option → Use (animated) GIF images, opacity
Key mapper option → More than 5 key mappings
Block activities option → Blocking activities containing ‘ad’
Disable all networking option → Re-enable after

Medium donation

(USD 30 on Google Play Store or crypto, USD 27 on PayPal)

Options:

Accessible data directory
Host mapper
Hide VPN connection
Data directory FTP server
Override preferences
Stetho support
Sign as system app
Shared user ID

Features:

Create up to 50 clones
Modify views option → Hide modification
Layout inspector → Hide views
Preference editor → Add, edit or delete preferences

Large donation

(USD 50 on Google Play Store or crypto, USD 45 on PayPal)

Options:

Database editor
Process name

Features:

Create up to 100 clones

Huge donation

(USD 100 on Google Play Store or crypto, USD 90 on PayPal)

Options:

Custom certificate
Custom package name

Features:

Create up to 1000 clones

Giant donation

(USD 300 on Google Play Store or crypto, USD 270 on PayPal)

Options:

Custom certificate
Custom package name

Features:

Create up to 5000 clones

App screen indicators

Starting with App Cloner 1.5.31 you will no longer see a confirmation dialog when cloning apps installed as App Bundles. Instead, the app screen will show an App Bundle indicator, which lets you know that this app is installed as a Google Play App Bundle.

If you experience any issues with cloning App Bundle apps, it’s still recommended to try cloning the standalone version instead, which you can download from apkmirror.com or apkpure.com. You can do this directly from the APKs tab in App Cloner. If you don’t see the APKs tab, you may need to enable it first by tapping the folder icon.

Alternatively, tap the App Bundle indicator to search for the app directly on apkmirror.com, apkpure.com or the web.

You may also see two further indicators on the app screen: OBB and LIB.

If you see the OBB indicator the app (or game) uses expansion files, which are additional resource files typically used by games to store graphics or media files. The cloned app won’t be able to download these files itself from the Google Play store and probably won’t work without them. You can either copy these files manually before running the clone or you can upgrade to the premium version of App Cloner to automatically copy expansion files during the cloning process. You can tap the OBB indicator to see additional information and to enable Preserve expansion files, which may help if the game has problems loading its resource files.

If you see the LIB indicator it means the app uses native libraries. Normally, native libraries are also processed during the cloning process. However, sometimes this may cause crashes when launching the cloned app or game. If you see a crash notification asking you to enable the Skip native libraries option, or, if the clone crashes without any message, you should tap the LIB indicator and enable Skip native libraries and clone the app again. You can also enable Skip native libraries under Cloning options.

Google logins in cloned apps

As mentioned in App Cloner and on https://appcloner.app, Google account logins will not work in cloned apps.

The reason for this is that Google logins are facilitated by Google Play Services, which performs a certificate check of the cloned app against the API key used. When cloning an app the certificate changes as the APK must be signed using a new private key.

If the app or game offers another login method such as Facebook, Twitter, email or SMS login, please use the alternative login method instead.

Problems with notifications

Sometimes it happens that notifications do not work in cloned apps, especially when the cloned app is in the background. Some Android devices use aggressive memory management methods, freeing up as much RAM as possible by killing apps when in the background. Depending on the device, this may also affect persistent background services used for delivering new message notifications.

What you should try here is to exclude the clone from any battery optimizations in the Android system settings as this may keep the app’s background services alive.

Using the Launching option Request ignore battery optimizations you can create clones that will automatically prompt to be added to the ignore list.

You can also try to use the option Persistent app to keep the app alive even when in the background. You should remember that persisting apps may reduce the available RAM memory, especially when creating many clones, which might have a negative impact on other apps or system performance in general.

However, sometimes notifications simply don’t work in clones, as in the case with Skype. This may be because of the internal method used to deliver notifications from the server-side components to the app, which may break for modified app certificates or package names (which is often used as an app’s unique identifier).

Device locking

All clones are device-locked by default. This means if you create a clone on one device, it cannot be used on another device. This is to prevent distribution and abuse of clones. This also happens when using the premium version of App Cloner.

The simplest way to get the clone working on another device is to install App Cloner on the other device itself and create a new clone locally. You can always export and import the clone settings used for a particular app.

However, if you want to create a clone for a specific target device, e.g. a friend or family member, then please use the Device lock option, which you can find under Launching options, pasting the correct target device identifier into the dialog. The device identifier is shown in a dialog when trying to open the clone on another device. On smaller devices you may need to scroll down inside the dialog to see the device identifier.

On Android 8.0 or higher do not use the Device ID shown under App Cloner Settings > Device info. Starting with Android 8.0 each app gets its own device identifier, so to find the correct device identifier you must first launch the clone without the Device lock option enabled.

You can also use the Device lock option to paste multiple, comma-separated identifiers, which allows a single clone to run on multiple devices.

The Huge donation or Giant donation removes device locking, so you can create clones that run on all devices. However, you are not allowed to distribute clones outside of your company, unless they are your own apps or you are the copyright holder. Please see the App Cloner Terms of Use at https://appcloner.app/terms/.

Please note that the In-app live chat option always enforces device locking, even if you’ve made the huge or giant donation . This is because the live chat feature incurs server and hosting costs. Each live chat user should use their own licensed copy of App Cloner.