Substratum developers launch Change.org petition

Yesterday, we revealed that the Android P developers preview launched at the beginning of the week prevents the use of themes and overlays. This means popular theming app Substratum (and its sister app Andromeda) will not work on Android P. Even with root access, the future version of Android, as it is right now, will only allow overlays from the system itself.

Substratum is a popular app, with nearly a million users and over 500,000 installs from the Google Play Store. Since the CM Theme Engine is gone, Substratum is the app of choice for Android enthusiasts to customize the look of their devices.

With Google taking away the ability for Substratum to function, users are getting pretty upset. In the Facebook comments of our own article on the topic, some heated words were thrown around, with some users saying they will switch to iOS if Substratum isn’t supported in Android.

We now have word from Substratum itself on the topic. As one would expect, the team is quite upset about Android P prohibiting its work. Christopher Kardas, the PR and Community Connections Manager for Substratum, says, “[Google blocking Substratum] changed everything for the hundreds of thousands of people that want to install custom themes from the Play Store without rooting their device. That means no more rootless Substratum. No more custom themes. It’s all gone.”

In response to Google, Substratum launched a Change.org petition. As of this writing, it already has nearly 1,800 signatures, which isn’t bad for 24 hours. It certainly can’t hurt to let Google know how much theming Android means to the community.

If you feel inclined to do so, throw your signature on the Change.org petition here. You can also let Google know how you feel by starring the Google Issue Tracker here.