Even though this has improved over time, there is still some notable difference from apps installed from the official package manager of distribution. If you are running third party themes and icon packs, you might not get the correct system theme, cursor, and app icons. For example, Snap and Flatpak require the system themes packaged in their specific formats. Native Theme Supportīoth Snap, Flatpak, and AppImage package formats support the native look and feel for GTK and QT applications, though with some limitations. They run in a sandboxed environment and have access to the system only via user permissions.

A good example would be android applications. Like an exe file for Windows systems No No Yes Online App Store Yes Yes Yes Multi-version Parallel Apps Support Yes Yes Yes Automatic Updates Yes Yes Yes(with caveats) Support for Chrome OS (through Crostini containers) Yes Yes Yes App Size Can vary but higher than AppImage Can vary but higher than AppImage Lowest Number of Applications Available in the App Store Highest Lowest Somewhere in between Plugins for Desktop App Store Software Yes Yes No Permission ControlsĪ Sandboxed application enhances overall system security compared to an app with full system access. Features Snap Flatpak AppImage Permission Controls Toggles (GUI and CLI) like in Android devices Yes Yes No Sandboxing Support Yes Yes Yes Sandboxing Mandatory Yes Yes No App Portability Yes Yes No Native Theme Support Yes (with caveats) Yes (with caveats) Yes (with caveats) Support for Bundled Libraries Yes Yes Yes Fully Contained Single Executable Support. Although most of the features are self-explanatory, we have elaborated some of them below the comparison table. The table below gives a detailed summary of the key differences between Snap, Flatpak, and AppImage.

Packages without this update information can be updated with a tool like AppImageUpdate.

Instead, the AppImage package comes with additional information on how to install updates. Another feature to note is that it does not use repositories to install package updates like Snap and Flatpak. Users can find the packages on the AppImage website.

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