We may have all wondered if we should download older versions of Android apps instead of just getting them from the App Store. Would it benefit us by giving us access to removed features, or would we be bothered by how many bugs there were in the app before the updates?

For some, the answer may not remain clear, but for you, it’s just a matter of whether or not you want to try. It is because today, we will talk about how to download older versions of apps.

Why Should I Download Older Versions of Apps?

Do you have any idea why so numerous people want to download older versions of apps? After all, why bother when you can only download the latest version? To give you a better idea, here is an overview of these reasons:

Features Removed

Sometimes developers mistake removing features that are very beneficial to users. This often happens when developers don’t get full feedback from users.

Newly Created Errors

Although the primary purpose of updates is to remove bugs, some updates may introduce an even worse bug than the previous ones.

Interface Design

The UI may change after an update, but that doesn’t mean it always ends up being better. In fact, there are times when the UI becomes more difficult to use after changes have been made.

As Usual With Electronic Devices

The operating system may not remain able to accept the change in the application, mainly if an increase in performance is associated with the update, which also leads to increased resource consumption.

Attention to the Customer

Some apps have well customer support with their older versions than the newest ones, mainly since older versions had more issues than the newest ones.

Ultimately

Updates are likely to present users with tons of advertisements that weren’t there before without reason.

Now that you have an impression of ​​the importance of this topic, you should better understand why many people need to download older versions of apps. We call this process “rollback”. Unfortunately, recovery is not possible if you are on Google Play or the Apple Store. In short, you must use a third-party source. But before that, you still need to understand how to prepare for the process thoroughly.

Preparing to Download Older Versions of Applications

Before trying to download older versions of apps, it’s essential to understand that there are things you need to do first. Here’s a look at those prerequisites:

  • Enable unknown sources
  • Disable automatic app updates
  • Uninstall

These three are the conditions you need to meet before learning how to download older versions of apps. So, without further ado, let’s see how to complete them.

Enable Unknown Sources

Please note that your device does not allow installing apps from unknown sources by default. These anonymous sources include browsers, applications, file managers and many more. As we will be talking about websites, you need to enable this feature, and you can do it by following these steps:

  • On your phone, go to Settings.
  • From the Settings, go to Privacy.
  • Scroll down until you see an option that says ‘ Unknown Sources ‘, which you should enable.

Disable Automatic App Updates

In addition to allowing installation via unknown sources, you’ll also need to ensure that after downloading older versions of apps, they won’t update automatically; otherwise, what you have done would be meaningless. This is how you can do this:

  • On your stratagem, launch the Google Play Store.
  • On the left panel of the app, tap the three horizontal lines or the hamburger icon.
  • Select Settings. from the resulting menu.
  • Under the General section, look for the ‘ Auto-update apps’ option, then tap on it.
  • In the resulting pop-up menu, select No auto-update apps.

It should allow you to download older versions of apps as you wish without worrying about the apps updating automatically.

Uninstall the Updated App

The last thing you want to do before downloading older versions of apps is to uninstall the app in question. After that, you can install the older version correctly without any conflicts. But unfortunately, you will lose app data by doing so. On the other hand, you have the option to retain that data following a certain procedure.

We call such a procedure ‘synchronization’. It involves ensuring that the current application data is save from the cloud. You can usually do this by going to your Settings. Heading to accounts, then selecting Google. From there, make sure App Data Sync is enabled.

How to Download Older Versions of Applications in APK4Fun?

APK4Fun is quite a famous repository where you can download older versions of apps. Usually, it is where people get different apps in the form of APK files. It is similar to the Google Play Store and the Apple Store, except that it allows you to download any version of an app, including the latest version and even older versions.

It is how you can access the APK4Fun store and download the app versions of your choice:

  • On the site, click on the search bar which should be locate in the upper right corner of the page.
  • Type the name of the app you want to download.
  • Scroll down until you see a list of APK files with different dates listed. It is the Application Version History. Select the version you want to download. There should be details about that version if you want to know about it.

That is almost everything you need to know about APK4Fun. It may not be the best, but it’s still something to consider when trying to download older versions of apps.

Conclusion

Following are Google’s Android working system versions, which comes with various Google applications. However, unlike the iPhone, each Android device manufacturer can overlay its user interface features, which means the exact version of the OS may not function identically on different devices.