XDA Developers

XDA (formerly known as XDA Developers) is a mobile software development community launched on 20 December 2002. Although discussion primarily revolves around the Android operating system, members also talk about other operating systems and mobile software development topics.

Many software and hardware hacks, Android rooting methods, Android custom ROMs and other phone- and tablet-specific tweaks originate from the members of the XDA Forum.

XDA also hosts the XDA Portal, a source for tech news, products, guides, and features which launched in 2010.

Montreal-based Valnet Inc. acquired XDA along with four other websites—Pocketnow, AppAdvice, BackyardBoss and Hook&Bullet—from Busy Pixel Media in February 2022.

In 2023, FeedSpot listed XDA (with 11 million members) as the largest mobile software development forum and among the top 70 technology forums to follow.

History
XDA-Developers.com was created by Dutch company NAH6 Crypto Products BV and launched on December 20, 2002. In January 2011, XDA Developers was bought by the US based company JB Online Media, LLC. and subsequently by Canada based Valnet Inc. in February 2022. The name XDA Developers is originally derived from the O2 XDA, which was marketed as a personal digital assistant (PDA) with extra features.

In 2013, XDA partnered with Swappa to become its official marketplace where users can buy or sell devices.

Website layouts
Their forum site underwent major redesigns in 2010, 2013, late 2014 (named XDA 2015) and late 2020 (named XDA 2021).

The 2013 layout distinctively indicated the number of active and total registered users at the top right, and the 2015 layout supported responsive web design and was available with a dark-on-light color scheme option.

As of 2020, the website features 3 themes, namely XDA, XDA Dark and XDA Classic. The older layout options for XDA 2013 and XDA 2015 were removed in XDA 2021.

The website transitioned from vBulletin to XenForo on December 1, 2020, along with a major layout redesign, named XDA 2021.

Custom ROM controversy
In February 2009, Microsoft asked XDA Developers to remove all ROMs created by OEMs.

Reception
In 2008, CNET Asia suggested that XDA Developers offers potential solutions to problems with many Android-based mobile devices. In other mobile phone reviews, testers at CNET preferred using XDA Developers' ROMs when carrying out detailed reviews.