7 Must Have Apps For Any Rooted Android Device [Roundup]

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With root access on any Android device, comes great power and even greater customisation options. Once you have root access on your Android device, you can not only enter the world of custom kernels and recoveries, but also use some very powerful and unique apps.

If you recently rooted your Android device and are looking for some awesome root apps, below is a small list to quench your thirst and make the whole trouble of rooting your device worth it.

7. StickMount

Most Android devices nowadays support USB OTG feature, which allows users to connect any USB device to their Android device. This includes anything from another Android device, a pen drive, USB keyboard or mouse, an external HDD, Gamepad and more.

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While most Android devices support pen drives and external HDDs out of the box, they only support FAT32 formatted ones. StickMount solves this problem by allowing users to read or write to an external NTFS partition without any issue. The app is also useful on devices like the Galaxy Nexus and nexus 7 etc., which do not automatically mount external USB drives.

6. Titanium Backup

Perhaps the biggest reason why most people root their phone is to gain the ability to backup their installed apps and associated app data. Titanium backup is the go-to app for all such intents and purposes, even though it has a very confusing UI.

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Apart from backing up all your data, Titanium Backup can do much more including scheduled backups to cloud storage services like Dropbox, creating an update.zip file for all your app data, converting any app to a system one, uninstalling system apps and much more. The app is easily well worth its asking price of $4.99. A free version is also present, but you will run into its limitations sooner than later.

5. NoBloat

As the name suggests, No Bloat allows you to remove all the bloat from your Android device. For rooted users, the app should come in handy to remove all the useless apps and bloat that carriers or OEMs ship in their phone right out of the box, and free up some resources that should improve performance and battery life,

No Bloat is pretty simple to use, and even has an handy option to backup the APKs before deleting them, in case things go wrong.

4. Cerberus

Google recently released Android Device Manager, but the service does not even come close to Cerberus, which is the reigning king of the anti-theft apps on the Play Store.  Even without root access, Cerberus provides many advanced features such as the ability to automatically email you an image clicked from the front camera whenever someone enters a wrong unlock pattern or PIN, the ability to wipe the phone via SMS commands and more.

However, it is with root access that Cerberus becomes much more powerful. The app, after granting root access, resides in the system partition of your Android device, which means it will even survive a hard reset. This means that sooner or later you will end up catching the person who stole your beloved Android device.

3. Greenify

The main aim of Greenify is to stop apps from unnecessary running in the background and consume precious resources of your Android device. The app requires root access and hibernates app processes to achieve its aim. Keep in mind that this is not similar to a task killer. Instead of killing background app processes, Greenify only ‘hibernates’ them and automatically starts them up when needed.

I have previously written about Greenify here, and the app is a must-have if your Android device has slowed down a lot thanks to a lot of unnecessary apps running in the background.

2. RoundR

The only purpose of RoundR is to make the edges of your screen rounded, instead of flat, like in iOS. While this may seem like a very minor change, it somehow ends up making a very noticeable difference in day-to-day usage.

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It is very tough to explain how rounded corners can affect the UI so much, but in the end it does. RoundR is one of those apps that you must try to know the difference. The app can be downloaded for free from the Play Store.

1. GMD Gesture Control

GMD Gesture Control is particularly useful for Android tablet owners. Using this app, users can assign certain gestures to perform certain tasks. For example, you can setup a four finger swipe across the screen to automatically take you to the previous app you were using as in the iPad. You can easily emulate all the gestures that the iPad has using GMD Gesture Control.

Even Note and other Phablet owners can use GMD Gesture Control for navigation purposes. Instead of hitting the back button, they can assign a gesture which they can draw on the screen to imitate the back button.

What’s your favorite root app? Drop in a comment and do let us know!