// the take
A drop-in replacement for Android's stock package installer that adds real support for split APKs, bundletool .apks files, and zipped APK dumps — things the OS installer simply can't handle. It's built by vvb2060 (known for Android systems-level tooling) and targets people who sideload apps regularly, especially split-APK builds from F-Droid alternatives or CI pipelines.
Handles split APK installation correctly, including picking the right ABI/density/locale splits the way bundletool's install-apks does — most installers get this wrong or don't try. Needs zero Android permissions because it offloads privileged operations through Shizuku (IPackageInstaller/IActivityManager access) instead of requesting INSTALL_PACKAGES. Ships at under 500KB with no background processes, and the archive/unarchive flow for Android 15's app archiving feature is a genuinely useful inclusion most installers haven't added yet.
The 'zero permissions' pitch is misleading by omission — it works because it requires Shizuku to be set up first (ADB debugging or root), which is a real setup barrier the README doesn't mention. It leans on reflection against hidden Android system interfaces (IPackageInstaller, IActivityManager, ApkAssets internals via the stub module) to get elevated install behavior; that's inherently brittle across OS versions and OEM forks, and breakage on a new Android release is a when-not-if. It's a single-maintainer project with no visible test suite, so correctness on edge-case splits or archive formats rests entirely on manual QA and user bug reports.
We read the README, the directory tree and a key source file in October 2026. Nobody pays to be listed. How we judge →