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Skit Beta 3.0 is packed with Material You, big screen improvements and new features
Material You has found its way into many Google apps, but other big apps are still reluctant to add it, fearing it might dilute their brand. Luckily, smaller indie developers are much more excited about Google’s new design paradigm, as syncs for Reddit, Inware, and Tasker are already available in the color of your wallpaper. The app manager, Skit, is the latest third-party app that brings some Material You magic to its interface, along with a bunch of new features.
If you’re not familiar with Skit, it’s an app that allows you to view and manage all your installed apps, giving you much more detailed information about them than the system itself would give you. You can see when you’ve installed or updated apps, how much storage and memory they’re using, how long you’ve been using them, what their permissions are, and you have the option to extract apps as APKs.
Despite the Russian attack on his homeland, Pavel Rekun has released a major 3.0 open beta update for his app management and information app. The headline change is likely the addition of Material You, with the app getting its color scheme from your wallpaper if you’re running Android 12 on a device that supports Google’s new automated color extraction engine. Implementation is solid, with all parts of the app easy to read in a variety of color options, making Skit feel right at home on a phone jam-packed with Google apps. The developer even added a themed icon to help Skit fit within the Google apps on your home screen on Android 13.
The release is also a nod to Google’s newfound interest in tablets. The developer writes that optimizing the app for tablets and other large-screen devices like foldables and Chromebooks was a top priority and seems to have paid off. On larger screens, installed apps are now listed in a grid format instead of a list, making much better use of space. The bottom bar also moves sideways, and many parts of the app have been redesigned to offer a multi-column view.
As for feature updates, Skit 3.0 gives a better idea of which permissions are potentially dangerous and which are usually harmless. While the app separates “dangerous” and “normal” permissions fairly strictly, keep in mind that most apps that request access actually need it to function to its full potential, and usually mean no harm if they ask for it ask.
To dig deeper into the weeds, Skit 3.0 is also experimenting with an option to always force extracting regular APKs instead of splitting APKS files which tend to cause headaches when you want to install them. The developer notes that this may not always work, however, as the base APK is sometimes missing critical components stored in one of the shared files. To offer another workaround, Skit 3.0 now also offers the option to install APKS files natively, resulting in a seamless experience when you come across an APKS file to install. Note that former Android Police sister site APK Mirror uses its own split APK file format (.apkm), so you can’t use Skit to install split APKs from that source.
Skit is far from the only option for managing apps, but since its inception in 2019, it’s quickly gained a reputation as one of the prettiest and most user-friendly options that don’t add unnecessary bells and whistles. Skit also has a fair income model, with a completely free basic app with no ads and a $1.99 premium version with convenience features like detailed stats and the option to delete and extract multiple apps at once. The strategy seems to be paying off, as the app has now accumulated more than 100,000 downloads.
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