Those accustomed to the world of smartphones will surely have heard the "news”A few days ago: sul Play Store the applications we download will have another extension. They will no longer be called .apk, but .aab. Many were frightened by this change but we are here to reassure you: if we continue to download apps on our Android smartphone from the Play Store, nothing will change. We specify Play Store why something will change only if we use third-party stores. But let's see in detail what the new standard is and how it works.
All you need to know about the “new” AAB file that will replace the APK file on Android smartphones. What is it and how does it work?
First of all, what are .aab files? Files with the .aab extension are designed so that Android applications take up less space on our smartphone. Those who will be interested are the Android developers, especially those that have applications on Google Play. Files of this type will save a lot of work in app development. That's why we users won't have to worry: after all, for us, nothing really changes.
To be honest, this format isn't all that new, but it was introduced by Google in 2018 only to make it available to the masses this year.
But what's the difference between .apk and .aab? Simple: the .apk file contains a lot of information, even too much, including all that which we (Italian users) don't even need. For example, if we download an apk from the Play Store, we will notice (by analyzing it) that there are inside it other mini-packages that integrate the different languages, for example. Things that we may not need, but that the format provides to make the app "universal". The new format instead contains only the mini-packages that interest us.
But please, how does this file work? Basically, the developer creates the app with the .aab extension and surrounds it with small .apk that go to implement (if needed) the main file. If we download the application, i Google's server will only download the mini-apk that we need, making the application lighter in the end.
Conclusions
No fear. For us it won't change that much: we will continue to download .apk files. And how is this possible? The truth is, we will not install the new format on our device since the Split APK Installer program will “work on it”, not the users. In fact, this will convert the files and install them on our device.
Source | Google
