User apps stored android

The best app stores for Android

There’s life beyond Google Play. With this list of app stores you can make use of the best alternative marketplaces to download the APKs of your favorite games or apps, especially those applications not available in the official store

Another alternative app store to Google Play

The best alternative to Google Play

An alternative to Google Play

The best alternative to Google Play in its Lite version

Android’s store for applications and other digital contents

Alternative Android application store

The Russian version of the 9Apps online store

Download apps for Android Auto to your mobile

An alternative app store

Application store focused on MODs

Xiaomi’s app store

Alternative Android application store to Google Play

App store with a basic design

Thousands of patched apps and games

Chinese app store

Take a look at the iPhone App Store

Download applications and game MODs for free

A store full of patched and modded games

The app store by Oppo

A great alternative to the Google Play Store

Aptoide’s app store for Android TV

An apps store alternative to Play Store

Download apps for Android from a range of alternative stores

Alternative to Google Play to download apps

An alternative to Google Play to download apps and games

Irani app store

Turn your Android into an iPhone

Download applications for Android

Tencent’s apps store

An alternative to Google Play to download apps

Install apps directly through APKs

The application store for manga and anime fans

Get hold of paid apps for free

Alternative Android game store to Google Play

Find modified versions of the applications that you use

The app store for cyber hunters

4399 is a store from which we can download thousands of games for Android

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How to store data locally in an Android app

Almost every app we use or develop has to store data for one purpose or another. It’s not all the same data, either — some apps need access to settings, images, and much more. The big question is how to manage this data so that your device can grab only what it needs. Luckily for developers, Android is full of ways to store data, and we’re here to run you through how they work.

For this article, we’ll discuss the different data storage techniques available to Android developers, along with sample code to get you started or to refresh your memory.

Ways to store data

Using Shared Preferences

Shared Preferences is the way to go if you’re saving primitive data as key-value pairs. It requires a key, which is a String, and the corresponding value for the said key. The value can be any of the following: a boolean, float, int, long, or another string.

Your Android device stores each app’s Shared Preferences inside of an XML file in a private directory. Apps can also have more than one Shared Preferences file, and they’re ideally used to store app preferences.

Before you can store data with shared preferences, you must first get a SharedPreferences object. There are two Context methods that you can use to retrieve a SharedPreferences object.

For when your app will have a single preferences file, and

for when your app could have multiple preferences files, or if you prefer to name your SharedPreferences instance.

On getting the SharedPreferences object, you then access its Editor using the edit() method. To actually add a value, use the Editor’s putXXX() method, where XXX is one of Boolean, String, Float, Long, Int, or StringSet. You can also remove a key-value preference pair with remove().

Finally, make sure to call the Editor’s commit() method after putting or removing values. If you don’t call commit, your changes will not be persisted.

For our sample app, we allow the user to specify a SharedPreferences filename. If the user specifies a name, we request for the SharedPreferences with that name; if not, we request the default SharedPreference object.

Unfortunately, there is no way to get a single list of all SharedPreferences files stored by your app. Instead, you will need a static list or access to the SharedPreferences name if you’re storing more than one file.

You could also save your SharedPreferences names in the default file. If you need to store user preferences, you may want to use the PreferenceActivity or PreferenceFragment command. Just remember that they both use Shared Preferences, too.

Using internal storage

There are plenty of times where you may need to persist data, but you find Shared Preferences too limiting. For example, you may need to persist objects or images in Java. You might also need to persist your data logically with the file system hierarchy. This is where internal storage comes in. It is specifically for when you need to store data on the file system, but you don’t want other apps or users to have access.

This data storage is so private, in fact, that it’s deleted from the device as soon as you uninstall your app.

Using internal storage is similar to saving with any other file system. You can get references to File objects, and you can store data of virtually any type using a FileOutputStream. What sets it apart is the fact that its contents are only accessible by your app.

To get access to your internal file directory, use the Context getFilesDir() method. To create (or access) a directory within this internal file directory, use the getDir(directoryName, Context.MODE_XXX) method. The getDir() method returns a reference to a File object representing the specified directory, creating it first if it doesn’t exist.

In the sample above, if the user-specified filename is empty, we get the base internal storage directory. If the user specifies a name, we get the named directory, creating first if needed.

To read files, use your preferred file reading method. For our example, we read the complete file using a Scanner object. To read a file that’s directly within your internal storage directory (not in any subdirectory), you can use the openFileInput(fileName) method.

Similarly, to access a file for writing directly within the Internal Storage directory, use the openFileOutput(fileName) method. To save files, we use the FileOutputStream write.

As you can see in the image above, the file path is in a folder not accessible by the file manager or other apps. The only exception to this will be if you have a rooted device.

External Storage

Google has made a few key changes to external storage, beginning with Android 10 and continuing in Android 11. To give users better control over their files and cut down on clutter, apps now have scoped access to external storage by default. This means that they can tap into the specific directory on external storage and the media that the app creates.

For more information about requesting scoped directory access, check out this Android developer tutorial.

If your app tries to access a file that it did not create, you will have to permit it to do so every single time. Data you store outside of select folders will also disappear if you delete your app.

Apps are expected to store files in one of two app-specific locations designed for the app’s specific persistent files and cached files, respectively. To access these locations, the app must verify the storage is available (which is not guaranteed, as it is for internal storage). The volume’s state can be queried using:

If MEDIA_MOUNTED is returned, that means you can read and write files to external storage. You will find a number of predefined directories that should aid with logical storage and prevent clutter. These include the likes of DIRECTORY_DOCUMENTS and DIRECTORY_MOVIES.

You can read a full explanation of how to use scoped storage here.

SQLite database

Finally, Android provides support for apps to use SQLite databases for data storage. The databases you create remain specific to your app and can only be accessed inside your app. Of course, you should have at least some knowledge of SQL before you attempt to store data with an SQLite database.

We’ll discuss each of these in turn, and we use data binding techniques for our sample code. Android provides complete support for SQLite databases. The recommended way of creating SQLite databases is to subclass the SQLiteOpenHelper class and override the onCreate() method. For this sample, we create a single table.

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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.

Read more:

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.

Read more:

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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