App cloner is pretty much self-explanatory as it means that it clones apps. But there are many misconceptions about it, I heard them myself personally from people who are not much into tech.
What exactly an App Cloner does?
In Plain English, the App Cloner is an app itself, which you can install on your Android mobile (since it is uncommon for iOS apps to be cloned) when it will give you a list of all the apps that are installed on your mobile.
Now, every app has got a unique signature within its APK file, which prevents the installation of apps using the same signature.
So, you cannot install and keep two instances of the same app. There are people who would want to use two apps to use two accounts.
And this is what App Cloner does. It makes changes to the APK file of the app so that it can easily be installed as a separate app available in the app.
And to differentiate it from the original app, it also gives you the option to make changes to the icon of the app. Such as, you can rotate it, flip it, change the colour, or even change the app icon itself.
The purpose of app cloner is to allow you to run multiple instances of the same app.
It is solving a problem which a lot of people face. People who want to use separate accounts. For example one for personal use, one for business, although there are many other use cases as well.
A lot of Android Smartphone manufacturers have understood this, and have been natively offering solutions for people to use multiple instances of the same app.
Pros of using App Cloner
Just like we discussed above, the App Cloner allows you to clone an existing app and make changes to the icon, which makes it easy to recognise which app is which.
Basically the App Cloner gives you more control over the copied or the second instance of the same app that you use.
Cons of using App Cloner
Although, if the mobile phone manufacturer has already got a similar feature built into the smartphone, the App Cloner does not offer anything extra, apart from giving you the option to change the colour of the app icon.
Potentially you’ll be wasting space of your mobile by keeping the App Cloner installed.
Alternative to App Cloner
The alternative to App cloner would be the native feature available in the smartphone, if it is there, although manufactures and started offering this feature.
Even if your smartphone does not have such kind of feature, there are other apps such as Parallel Space, that solve the problem of using multiple instances an app. We have compared App Cloner with Parallel Space in a dedicated article which you can read here