Adobe’s Controversial Clones Prove Googlebook Desktop Apps Are Closer Than I Thought

If you’ve spent any time following tech news or developer forums over the past couple of weeks, you’ve probably encountered the huge controversy surrounding ArtCraft. Created by developer Brandon Thomas, the project aimed to create an open source, cleanroom reimplementation of almost the entire Adobe Creative Cloud and Microsoft Office: spanning 13 distinct desktop applications built in pure Rust.

To be absolutely clear from the outset, I cannot condone ArtCraft on a legal or moral level. While Thomas claims the software was built using “clean room” methods without Adobe’s proprietary code, the fact that Anthropic’s Claude AI co-wrote more than 60% of the code base to visually mimic established commercial suites enters murky intellectual property territory. As photography veteran Aaron Nace points out in PHLEARN magazine, the broader creative industry has serious ethical questions about where this trend is headed.

However, if you put the controversy aside for a moment, a fascinating development just hit GitHub: a developer named MostafaXS1 has successfully created the artcraft-android builder. With pre-built ARM64 APKs now available for all 13 apps, including PhotoCraft, LightCraft, and VectorCraft, we see fully functional desktop UIs running natively on Android. For Googlebook OS, this has some pretty big implications.

True desktop UX compiled into native Android packages

One of the biggest concerns hanging over Googlebook OS right now is the fear that users will be stuck in an exploding desert of phone apps for the foreseeable future. Even though Google encourages responsive layouts, the general perception is that porting complex office productivity suites to Android will be a long-term challenge.

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Seeing How These ArtCraft Android Builds Work Explodes That Theory and after a quick download and installation we see:

• Native Rust, not a web wrapper: These are not slow web shells. These are pure Rust desktop apps compiled directly into native 64-bit Android ARM packages (NativeActivity).
• Office-focused workspaces: Instead of oversized touch targets, the UI provides dense interfaces, multi-track timelines, floating panels, and full keyboard and mouse navigation, right out of the box.
• True file system integration: The Android Builder connects directly to Android’s Storage Access Framework (SAF), saves system fonts, and even connects desktop file associations (like auto-open .psd files directly in PhotoCraft).

It’s rough around the edges, but the road map is clear

Make no mistake: these new apps aren’t ready to replace your daily workflow. According to the project’s own progress tracking tools, PhotoCraft is only about 45% ready for actual work, while LightCraft sits at about 61%. Menus can be clunky, advanced generative tools are missing, and camera RAW profiles are still mostly guesstimated.

Yet despite these rough edges, the tactile experience of opening them on a laptop’s canvas is undeniably desktop-like. Windows, toolbars, and keyboard shortcuts behave exactly as power users expect when they open a $1,000 laptop.

If a solo developer and open source contributor can leverage AI tools and Rust to compile 13 dense desktop-grade creative and desktop apps into native Android APKs in a matter of weeks, the big software companies really have no excuse at this point. Android 17’s underlying architecture is currently fully capable of driving serious desktop software. ArtCraft may be surrounded by controversy, but the implications of what they’ve delivered give developers a clear roadmap for the future of Googlebook OS software.