Third party android app

What Is a Third-Party App?

You use these apps on your smartphone and tablet all the time

A third-party app is an application created by a developer that isn’t the manufacturer of the device the app runs on or the owner of the website that offers it. You could think of those as first-party apps, although that term isn’t used very widely (we’ll use it in this article to make it clear which is which).

Third-party apps may be welcomed or forbidden by the device or website owner. For example, the Safari web browser app that comes on the iPhone is a first-party, built-in app made by Apple, but the App Store contains other web browser apps that Apple approved for use on the iPhone but didn’t develop. Those apps are third-party apps. Facebook permits some apps that it didn’t develop to function on its social media site. These are third-party apps.

Types of Third-Party Apps

There are several different situations where you may run into the term «third-party app.»

• Apps created for official app stores by vendors other than Google (Google Play Store) or Apple (Apple App Store), and that follow the development criteria required by those app stores, are third-party apps. An approved app by a developer for a service such as Facebook or Snapchat is considered a third-party app. If Facebook or Snapchat develops the app, then it is a first-party app.
• Apps offered through unofficial third-party app stores or websites that are created by parties not affiliated with the device or operating system are also third-party apps. Use caution when downloading apps from any resource, particularly unofficial app stores or websites, to avoid malware.
• An app that connects with another service (or its app) to either provide enhanced features or access profile information is a third-party app. An example of this is Quizzstar, a third-party quiz app that requires permission to access certain parts of a Facebook profile. This type of third-party app isn’t downloaded. Instead, the app is granted access to potentially sensitive information through its connection to the other service or app.

How First-Party Apps Differ From Third-Party Apps

First-party apps are applications that are created and distributed by the device manufacturer or software creator. Some examples of first-party apps for the iPhone are Music, Messages, and Books.

What makes these apps «first-party» is that the apps are created by a manufacturer for that manufacturer’s devices, often using proprietary source code. For example, when Apple creates an app for an Apple device such as an iPhone, that app is a first-party app. For Android devices, because Google is the creator of the Android mobile operating system, examples of first-party apps include the mobile version of Google apps such as Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Chrome.

Just because an app is a first-party app for one type of device, that doesn’t mean there can’t be a version of that app available for other types of devices. For example, Google apps have a version that works on iPhones and iPad, which is offered through the Apple App Store. Those are considered third-party apps on iOS devices.

Why Some Services Ban Third-Party Apps

Some services or applications ban the use of third-party apps for security reasons. Anytime a third-party app accesses a profile or other information from an account, it presents a security risk. Information about the account or profile can be used to hack or duplicate the account. In the case of minors, it can expose photos and details about teens and kids to potentially harmful people.

In the Facebook quiz example, until the app permissions are changed in the Facebook account settings, the quiz app can access the profile details it was granted permission to access. If the permissions are not changed, the app has access to the Facebook profile, even after the user has quit using the app. It continues to gather and store details from the Facebook profile, and these details may be a security risk.

Using third-party apps is not illegal. However, if the terms of use for a service or application state that third-party apps are not allowed, attempting to use one to connect to that service could result in an account being locked or deactivated.

Who Uses Third-Party Apps Anyway?

Third-party apps have a variety of productive, entertaining, and informative uses. There are third-party apps that manage several social media accounts at the same time, such as Hootsuite and Buffer. Other third-party apps manage bank accounts from a mobile device, count calories, or activate a home security camera.

Open the app menu screen on your smartphone and scroll through the downloaded apps. Do you have any games, social media, or shopping apps? Chances are good these are third-party apps.

Snapchat allows only certain third-party apps developed via Snap Kit, its developer toolset. Snapchat has blocked all other third-party apps. Using an unauthorized third-party app, such as SCOthman, Snapchat++, or Phantom, can result in the loss of your Snapchat account.

To delete a third-party app, long-press the app icon until it jiggles > tap Delete. Or, tap Settings > General > iPhone Storage > select the app you want to delete > Delete App.

There are several ways to get apps that aren’t in the App Store. If you trust the app and its download source, you can trust a third-party app to add it on iPhone. Go Settings > General > Enterprise App, select the app, then tap Trust and Verify App.

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10 best third party app stores for Android and other options too

We also look forward to trying out the Epic Games Store when it eventually launches. You can read more about it here. Huawei is also building a third party app store, called AppGallery (link here), due to the US-China trade war. It may compete with Google Play as well someday.

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Amazon Appstore

Price: Free / App costs vary

The Amazon Appstore is likely the most competent app store aside from the Play Store itself. It’s the stock app store on all Amazon Fire devices. The store has a variety of apps, including some big, popular names. It also has all of Amazon’s various apps and it used to be the sole home of Amazon Prime Video. This is an actual app that you can install on any Android device without a ton of issues. It also runs concurrently with other app stores if you want to use more than one. It could definitely use some optimizations, but it’s otherwise more positive than it is negative. We do wish it had a better selection, though.

APKMirror

Price: Free

Okay, so APKMirror isn’t technically an app store, but rather an app repository. You can find all kinds of stuff here, including some beta apps not available in the Play Store. However, you can still get updates from the Play Store if a newer version comes out, so it’s an excellent secondary source of apps and some games. This definitely isn’t a full store experience and we really only recommend it if you want to try something specifically or find an older APK of an existing app so you can roll back to a previous version due to bugs or preferences. It’s surprisingly safe to use and a source we often link to in our other articles.

APKPure

Price: Free

APKPure is a third party app store with a lot of upside. It has a lot of popular apps like TikTok, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, UC Browser, PUBG Mobile, Brawl Stars, and many others. The app store features a clean, coherent UI with a decent search and a good overall selection. It has a lot more categories than the Google Play Store, although some categories are a little light in terms of good apps for download. You can get the basics here with no problem, including some Google apps like Gmail.

APKUpdater

Price: Free

APKUpdater isn’t really an app store, but it has a neat function. You can update your existing apps without the use of another app store. It sources downloads from multiple sources so you get the latest updates as quickly as possible. The UI is simple Material Design without any problems. It’s a good way to keep your device up to date without the hassle of having a full blown app store on your phone. There is a search for other apps, but it’s not quite as good as a dedicated app store.

Aptoide

Price: Free / App prices vary

Aptoide is one of the oldest third party app stores on the list. It has a bunch of modern apps like Facebook, Nest, YoWindow Weather, Fleksy, and many recent games. However, the main draw of Aptoide is its looser regulations for content. You can find adult (NSFW) apps and games here as well as questionable apps like Show Box. Of course, this gives the app store a bit of a badlands feel so make sure you pack an antivirus app if you use this one. Aptoide suffered a data breach in 2020. However, since you can use the service without creating an account, its security issues didn’t actually affect many people.

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F-Droid

Price: Free

F-Droid is one of the older app stores on the list and among the most trustworthy. The store experience is mostly for productivity and power user stuff. We’re talking about apps like an Arch Linux package browser type of stuff. There are some basic apps on there, like Simple Gallery or Simple Calendar along with a very small selection of games. However, by and large, this is an app store for people who need something a little extra that the Play Store doesn’t have. F-Droid is open source and every app on the platform is open source. You can even find alternatives to F-Droid on F-Droid. This is a neat little app store.

Humble Bundle

Price: Free / Varies

Humble Bundle is an excellent place to score some cheap mobile games. It has a pay-what-you-want system that lets you score games for less than you’d normally buy them. There are tiers where you get more stuff if you pony up more money. You can download any app or game you bought through this method at will so it works out pretty well. Some of the money also goes to charity so it’s all for a good cause. They don’t have a proper store like Google Play, but they do run bundles fairly frequently. Check out the linked page for more details.

QooApp

Price: Free

QooApp is a different sort of app store. It’s best for those who enjoy Asian games from Asian developers. You can find all kinds of stuff here, although only some of it has English (or any other non-Asian language) translation. This is mostly useful for getting Japanese variants of global games like Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. TapTap is another app store with basically the same premise. We have that linked up below in the other section.

Samsung Galaxy Store

Price: Free / App prices vary

It’s a shame that Galaxy Store is only available on Samsung devices because it’s actually fairly competent. The selection is obviously smaller than the Play Store and likely a little smaller than Amazon’s Appstore. However, it has a clean UI, simple navigation, and it actually has some rather popular apps and games, including Microsoft, Netflix, Hulu, Fortnite, Brawl Stars, and others. It’s not an end-all-be-all kind of thing, but those with Samsung devices have a decent secondary app store along with Google Play right on their devices already.

Yalp Store

Price: Free

Yalp Store is another unique app store. It uses Google Play Store APKs but you get them without the actual Google Play Store. You can search for, install, and update apps directly from the source and we quite like that. The UI is a little old, but it works well enough. There are also additional features for root users. You don’t even need a Google account to use it, although your purchases may not be saved over the long term.

Honorary Mentions

There are plenty of other app stores on the Internet. Some of them are pretty good and some of them are only kind of serviceable. Many of these are listed for the sake of completion. Here we go:

• ACMarket– ACMarket is a surprisingly good looking app store. It is reminiscent of Google Play in a lot of ways and includes some popular apps and games. It also supports modified APKs and other such things. Tread carefully because some of that stuff can be suspect.
• Getjar – Getjar is kind of the Wild West of app stores for Android. You can find all kinds of ridiculous things here, including adult content, modified APKs, and some popular stuff like UC Browser. Tread lightly, this place always gives us the heebie-jeebies.
• Mobilism – Mobilism is a smaller app store with a few extra features. It also includes over 800,000 ebooks. The app works as a crowd sourced app store where you get the app from the hosting the uploader chooses. It has some good ideas and so we give it an honorable mention.
• Opera’s App Store – We’ll be honest, we didn’t know Opera had a mobile store until we started researching for this. It has a bunch of options. However, all of those options default to the Google Play Store anyway. It’s a good secondary way to browse Google Play apps, but we wouldn’t necessarily call it its own apps tore.
• SlideMe – SlideMe is another older app store similar to Aptoide and Getjar. The website doesn’t inspire confidence, but the store itself works okay. You can find stuff like OfficeSuite or WPS Office there along with other similar productivity apps. Its game selection is very weak, though.
• TapTap – TapTap is an Asian-oriented app store with a bunch of stuff from that region. It’s a good way to get a hold of some Japanese games with a region lock in the Google Play Store. It’s also a decent way to get Japanese versions of games with distinctly different global versions, such as Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. All of the games on this one are in Japanese, Chinese, or Korean.
• XDA-Developers – There are a lot of developers that use XDA-Developers as kind of a test ground for apps that eventually end up on Google Play most of the time. You can get root-only apps like Xposed or Viper4Android here. A couple of our best apps from 2018 began life here as well.

Thank you for reading! Try these out too:

If we missed your favorite app store, tell us about them in the comments below. You can also check out all of our app lists by clicking here!

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