App Cloner Overview

The user interface of App Cloner is split into three main sections accessible via the bottom navigation bar: Apps, Clones and Purchases.

Apps

The Apps section shows original apps, i.e. those apps that you can clone.

Installed apps

The Installed apps tab shows apps that are currently installed. The pop-up menu allows launching the app, uninstalling the app, showing the app info screen, saving or sharing the app as an APK file.

Note that when saving apps, which are installed as App Bundles you will be prompted for a directory rather than a filename. This is the directory into which the split APK files will be saved. When sharing App Bundles App Cloner will automatically generate a ZIP archive containing the split APK files.

You can long-press to multi-select and save or share multiple apps. Use the search button in the toolbar to search for / filter apps by name. The menu item Show system apps allows including or excluding system apps (note that it’s not recommended to clone system apps).

Tap on an app to edit the clone settings and press the Clone action button to clone it. The cloning process may take a few seconds or several minutes. This depends on the size of the app and the speed of your device. It’s recommended to leave App Cloner running in the foreground while cloning.

Please observe the dialog for any warnings shown during the cloning process as sometimes it’s necessary to tweak a few options to get the clone working. For example, when cloning games you occasionally need enable the Skip native libraries option, which you can find under Cloning options. If the clone still crashes, you can also try to switch the Cloning mode to Manifest or enable the Increase compatibility / Ignore crashes options and clone the app again.

After the cloning process has finished you’re asked to install the cloned app. You may need to grant App Cloner permission to install apps. Once installed, tap on Launch to open the clone.

To create multiple clones make sure to set the Clone number separately for each new clone. Clones created with the a certain clone number will update any existing clones with that clone number.

APK files

You may also clone apps without installing them first by directly adding APK files to the APK files tab. This may be useful if you want to clone an older version of an app while still keeping the latest version installed. It’s also helpful in case you don’t trust an app and want to clone it enabling one or more of the privacy options before installing the cloned version of the app.

Tapping the Add action button allows adding APK files from various sources. If you want to add a single APK file from your storage select From a file. You may also add multiple APK files found inside a directory at once by selecting From a directory. App Bundles are not yet supported.

If an app is already installed, you may copy its APK file to the APK files tab by selecting From an installed app (you could then uninstall the original app and still clone it from the APK file). Note that App Bundles can not yet be copied to the APK files tab (but you can still clone them directly from the Installed apps tab).

Select From a web page to search for a downloadable APK file on the internet. This opens Google by default, where you can type a query such as “<App Name> APK”. Be careful to only download APK files from trusted sources. Preferably, you should search for an app on apkmirror.com (From apkmirror.com) or apkpure.com (From apkpure.com) and download the APK file directly from these sites. Note that APKM or XAPK App Bundle formats are not yet supported (you would need to install these apps first and then clone them using App Cloner).

Finally, you can download and add an APK file by providing a URL.

The pop-up menu allows saving, sharing or deleting the APK file. You can long-press to multi-select and save, share or delete multiple APK files. Use the search button in the toolbar to search for / filter apps by name.

Tap on an app to edit the clone settings and press the Clone action button to clone it.

Clones

The Clones section shows cloned apps. Cloned apps cannot be re-cloned but certain runtime modding options may be updated dynamically if you have the Runtime modding options add-on.

Installed clones

The Installed clones tab shows cloned apps that are currently installed. The pop-up menu allows launching the clone, uninstalling the clone, showing the app info screen, saving or sharing the app as an APK file. Use Report app issue to send a report about a clone crashing or not working correctly, sometime it’s possible to fix these issues in a new release of App Cloner.

Clones created with the premium version of App Cloner require App Cloner to remain installed so that they can check if the premium subscription is still active. Do not install clones in a virtual environment or secondary workspace. If you want to use clones in a secondary workspace you should install App Cloner in this secondary workspace and then create & install the clone inside that workspace. Note that clones created with the Giant donation don’t require App Cloner to be installed and they may also be installed on different devices.

If you have the Runtime modding options add-on, you can use Edit clone settings (or tap the cog icon) to edit any runtime modding options. Tapping the Send action button sends the the new clone settings to the clone and restarts it. Note that not all modding options are runtime modding options. If you want to change non-runtime modding options you must reclone the app under Apps (you can always reload the clone settings from an installed clone).

If you have the Export & import app data add-on, you can use Export app data and Import app data to export and import the app’s data, i.e. back up and restore internal app data and files, including any settings, preferences and login sessions if these are stored as part of the app data.

This allows you to move clones to other devices or keep different versions of the app state as restore points. The exported app data cannot be viewed or modified and you can only use the app data for clones of the same original app (but you can re-import to different clone number of the same app).

Android accounts, app files from internal or external SD-cards or cloud-based app settings are NOT included in the export. The export and import process terminates the app to avoid files being locked. When importing app data, any existing files are replaced and cannot be recovered afterwards.

Note that this may not work for apps that encrypt their internal app data. Also, this add-on will not work for original apps, you can only export app data from cloned apps.

The Preference editor allows editing the cloned app’s preferences and settings. Manage blocked hosts allows editing any hosts that were blocked using the Hosts blocker modding option. The File access monitor allowed viewing files the cloned app accesses and requires the File access monitor option to be enabled. The Layout inspector allows viewing and modifying the cloned app’s view hierarchy.

You can also save or share the cloned app. Remember to read about device locking in case you plan to install the clone on another device.

Use Update to reclone / update a clone, even if it’s not listed under Pending updates. This can be useful after you’ve installed a new version of App Cloner, which may have improved certain modding options.

You can long-press to multi-select and save, share or update multiple apps. Use the search button in the toolbar to search for / filter apps by name.

Pending updates

The Pending updates tab shows installed clones that can be updated. App Cloner does not automatically update clones when their original apps have been updated, e.g. by Google Play. You must perform the update process manually by tapping the Update button, either for a specific clone or, if you want to update all clones at once, by tapping Update all.

Updating a clone will reclone the original app using the same clone settings that you originally used when cloning the app, even if you have changed the clone settings under Apps in the meantime. After you’ve recloned the app, install the new clone directly over the old clone. This will keep all app settings, preferences and login sessions. Do not first uninstall the old clone and then reinstall the new clone as this would clear the clone’s app data.

When updating clones, you should consider that newer app versions may introduce incompatibilities, copy protection or other issues, which might result in the updated clone not working as expected. It’s highly recommended that you purchase the Safe update add-on and enable the Safe update checkbox when updating a clone. This creates the updated clone in a way that allows you to easily revert it back to the previous version if necessary. More importantly, you can restore the previous working version without having to uninstall the clone and losing the app data and settings. To revert to the previous version go to the Generated APKs tab and select Revert to previous version from the pop-up menu.

You can long-press to multi-select and save, share or update multiple apps. Use the search button in the toolbar to search for / filter apps by name.

Generated APKs

The Generated APKs tab shows the APK files of generated clones. This serves as a backup of all your cloned apps, in case you need to reinstall or save these clones at a later time. Each time you clone an app with a specific clone number it will replace the APK file for that clone number.

The generated APK files are stored internally inside App Cloner. If you want to copy the APK file to an external storage location during the cloning process, you can do this using the Cloned apps output folder setting under Settings.

The pop-up menu allows saving, sharing or deleting the APK file. Use Report app issue to send a report about a clone crashing or not working correctly. Use Show clone settings to inspect the clone settings used for creating the clone; the clone settings are read-only since it’s an APK file.

You can long-press to multi-select and save, share or delete multiple APK files. Use the search button in the toolbar to search for / filter apps by name.

Pending installs

The Pending installs tab shows the APK files of generated clones that are currently not installed. If you have cancelled the app installation after cloning or if you have uninstalled a cloned app you can reinstall the most recent version from here. Tap the Install button to install a specific app or Install all to install all apps.

You can long-press to multi-select and save, share, delete or install multiple APK files. Use the search button in the toolbar to search for / filter apps by name.

Purchases

The Purchases section allows you to:

Upgrade your App Cloner to the premium version
Purchase add-ons to extend the functionality of App Cloner or clones
Make donations to increase the total number of clones and unlock additional features

The premium version supports up to 20 clones and unlocks all modding options, except for certain more intrusive modding options and features, which are available for users with donations. For details on how many clones you can create and what additional features are unlocked with each donation please see App Cloner donations summary.

App Cloner 2.0 introduces premium subscriptions, which is the same as premium but also includes new premium modding options added in App Cloner 2.0 and later. The purchase is valid for a full year and does not get renewed automatically.

All donations require the premium version. Larger donations do not include smaller donations. App Cloner purchases and donations may be used on up to 10 devices.

Google Play Store

The default payment method is Google Play Store. This uses a separate companion app called App Cloner Premium & Add-ons on Google Play, which can be used to make purchases or donations.

The main App Cloner app (the blue one) can be downloaded and installed from the official App Cloner home page https://appcloner.app. It will read and merge purchases & donations from the green companion app. Make sure to keep both apps installed.

To install the main App Cloner APK outside of Google Play you need to enable unknown sources. Make sure to only download App Cloner from the official home page. Remember to keep Google Play Protect enabled, which also scans & verifies apps installed outside of Google Play.

Note that the Play Store companion app has no cloning functionality itself. The average rating of the companion app is very low because most new users don’t understand the reason for having two separate apps after the Google Play Store suspension of App Cloner and the fact that we’re not allowed to provide direct links to the App Cloner home page. If possible, please leave a positive rating to improve the average. It will be very appreciated.

If existing Google purchases are not recognized you may have multiple Google accounts and Google Play selects the wrong account to validate the purchase. Unfortunately, Google Play does not report purchases across multiple Google accounts and doesn’t allow apps to select a specific account. Make sure the Google account used for the purchase is the first (primary) or only Google account in your Android settings. To check which account was used for a purchase visit https://pay.google.com.

Rebooting the device may also help as it clears the Play Store cache. Otherwise please uninstall and reinstall App Cloner. Another way is to use the web version of Google Play and install the companion app to your phone while logged into the correct Google account.

The worst case solution is: Uninstall the app, remove all Google accounts except the one used for the purchase, reboot your phone and then reinstall the app.

Cryptocurrency

If you can’t use Google Play Store you can also make purchases or donations using one of the following cryptocurrencies:

Bitcoin
Bitcoin Cash
Ethereum
Litecoin

IMPORTANT: When making a crypto purchase make sure to send the exact quoted amount in the cryptocurrency. The payment system is automated and won’t unlock the purchase unless the full amount is received in the cryptocurrency. If you send an equivalent value in USD or other currency it may not result in the same crypto value due to the constant fluctuations.

If this has happened, however, you can send the remaining cryptocoins to the same address within 24 hours and the purchase will be unlocked. It must be the same address to be recognized as part of the same purchase.

If you have difficulties restoring your purchases please see How to restore purchases & donations.

Support

You can get in touch at support@appcloner.app or here. We’re happy to provide support and answer your questions.