Xposed is a free, independently developed tool which lets Android users customize their OS. It makes use of self-contained software “modules” which can be installed to change specific aspects of a UI, without users needing to install a whole new ROM.
Xposed must be updated for compatibility with each new Android version and this can take more or less time depending on what’s changed from the previous OS. We’ve been waiting to learn more about its support for Android Nougat since its developer, who goes by the name rovo89, discussed it last November. Two days ago, he took to the XDA developers forums to shed some more light on the status of the project.
rovo89 said that, though it was in progress, he couldn’t say when the new Xposed version would be finished. He discussed a number of changes from Android Marshmallow to Nougat which has made updating Xposed more challenging than from Lollipop to Marshmallow — chiefly, the way Nougat handles app installations.
The install process for apps is now faster, which is good for Nougat users, however it means that rovo89 has to develop the Xposed framework to support this new process, which he said could take “hundreds of hours.”
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The developer said that he’d already experimented with ways to do this and said that, theoretically, it could be done in two weeks if it was being worked on 24 hours per day. But that’s not feasible and instead he said that in the last year he’s only had about 5 hours per week to work on “Xposed stuff.”
“You can do the math yourselves… There are just so many other (non-technical) things that I need or want to do. If you substract the time it took me to build the new installer version, move the repo to a new server and restore compatibility with the Nov 2016 security patches, that’s even less time for new stuff,” he said.
If we were to do the math ourselves, and assume the project does still require 336 hours of work, it would take rovo89 just over 67 weeks to complete, or until around the middle of May next year, if he was working on it at the maximum of five hours per week.
Of course, we don’t need to take it so literally, the crux of the matter is that it’s a big project for a developer to handle alone with other commitments — it’s no surprise it could take a while to finish.
In closing, rovo89 said: “So yes, I’m still working on Nougat support, whenever my free time allows it, but I don’t have any idea when it will be done. Once it’s done, you’ll know.”
You can read his full statement at the link and check out the current Xposed thread here.