Xposed Framework is a system that allows you to change the behavior of Android phones, tablets, and other devices in some pretty powerful ways. It brings the sort of features that used to require a custom ROM to phones, tablets, and other devices that have been rooted… but which are still running the software that they shipped with rather than a complete replacement.
Since Xposed requires pretty deep integration into the operating system though, when Google releases a new version of Android it can break compatibility with older versions of Xposed… and sometimes it can take a very long time to get Xposed working again.
Case in point: it’s taken developer rovo89 more than a year since the launch of Google Android 7.0 Nougat was released to updated Xposed to support that version of Android. But that work is finally done, and Xposed for Nougat is now available.
If this sounds a little familiar, that’s because there had been unofficial builds of Xposed for Nougat in the past. But now an official build is ready to go. That means you’re less likely to run into bugs and you don’t need to install a custom ROM to use it.
The official build should offer better stability and improved support for Xposed modules.
Some of those modules allow you to change the look and behavior of Android features including CPU performance, the effective pixel density of your display on a per-app basis, the layout of the Android Status Bar and Quick Settings features, and more.
While Xposed now supports Android 7.0 and 7.1, Google recently released Android 8.0. Rovo89 is already working on porting Xposed to the new operating system and expects things to move much more quickly since Google hasn’t changed as much of the underlying code that Xposed relies on this time as it did when moving from Marshmallow to Nougat.
This seems like a losing war.
There are less and less reasons to get Xposed Mods since many small things that were staples in Custom Roms are making it to the AOSP. And Xposed brings a whole new level of complexity to the build, where if the features you sought after are built into the Custom Rom, it leaves a much smoother, simpler, and less-buggy experience.
I can see rovo89 eventually giving up on this project. They sort of felt this way from the KitKat to Lollipop jump.
Or you know what might be better?
If the friggen OEMs were responsible, and provided people with the source kernels, drivers, documentation, and a easy unlock able bootloader. Most people tinkering their devices are trying to fix the mess that the OEMs Skins and un-deleteable Apps create.
If it gets to the point that Xposed is no longer necessary, I think rovo89 will be happy to retire from the project. Even though you are right, Android has been giving more, albeit still limited, control over to the users. Personally, I enjoy xposed for background and ad free youtube and tweaking applications for maximum utility.