From time to time, we like to dive into the murky depths of the Play Store and see what cool root-only apps we can dredge up. If you went to the trouble of rooting your phone, you'll want the best root apps to take advantage of all that freedom. That's just what we have here, the best root apps carefully chosen as must-have additions to your arsenal.

Read on for eight more killer root apps that change the flow of time, liberate your music, test your network, and more.

GMD Speed Time

In-app purchases are becoming the norm in Android gaming, and that's a real drag. When you see an otherwise great game resort to mandatory wait times in order to extract additional cash, it can make you rage. Well, rooted users don't have to wait around for time to advance at the rate of one second per-second like chumps. GMD Speed Time can speed things up as much as 1000x.

By speeding up your device's internal clock, the game thinks more time has passed, and bingo. Your virtual crops have grown in a fraction of the time. GMD Speed Time might cause some weirdness with your device's clock readout, but a reboot should fix any issues.

[EMBED_APP]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gmd.speedtimelite[/EMBED_APP]

Android Police coverage: 37 Best (And 1 WTF) New Android Apps And Live Wallpapers From The Last 2 Weeks (1/21/13 - 2/4/13)


Market Helper

For obvious reasons, Market Helper is not available through Google Play. This is an app that can make your rooted device look like a completely different phone or tablet to Google's servers. Unlike some older apps, Market Helper doesn't touch your build.prop file – it just emulates another device's fingerprint. This process will give you access to apps that are restricted to a certain device through Google Play. Market Helper has also recently added the ability to alter your carrier info for apps that are not available on your network.

Market Helper can currently make your phone or tablet look like a Nexus 7, Galaxy S III, Kindle Fire HD, Transformer Pad TF300, One X+, or Nexus 4. As for network support, it has hundreds of carriers from all over the world. You don't have to reboot to switch fingerprints, but a reboot might be needed to get your device back to normal after you've finished fooling Google.

Android Police coverage: [New App] Market Helper Lets You Download Incompatible Apps Without Changing The Build.prop (Root Only)

Download: Market Helper


Greenify *ROOT*

We all know that task killers are not just useless, but downright detrimental to your phone's operation. Although, there are some apps that just don't behave properly, eating up resources and burning through your battery. So what are you supposed to do? Uninstall? Freeze with Titanium? Greenify offers an alternative. With Greenify, you can set apps to go into hibernation mode when they sit in the background too long. The upshot is that you can still use the app normally, but it won't cause problems while your phone is doing more important things.

Greenify does all of this without interfering in Android's memory management processes. Apps might be a little slow to come back up if they've been "Greenified," and background operations like alarms and push messaging won't work. Greenify is free, which is pretty cool.

[EMBED_APP]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oasisfeng.greenify[/EMBED_APP]

Android Police coverage: [App Roundup] Our Five Picks For Best New App From February 2013

Android Police coverage: 55 Best (And 2 WTF) New Android Apps And Live Wallpapers From The Last 2 Weeks (2/6/13 - 2/22/13)

Android Police coverage: [New App] Greenify Keeps Rooted Devices Running Smoothly By Hibernating Specified Apps When They're Not In the Foreground


DriveDroid

Anyone that spends time working on computers knows the value of a bootable Linux thumb drive. Sometimes you just need to troubleshoot a problem and get past all the possible software causes. If there are no USB drives handy, DriveDroid can let your rooted Android device do an impressive impersonation of one. Simply drop a Linux ISO on your device (or download from the included directory), and you can host the image over USB to a PC. Make sure boot priorities are set to check the USB connection first, though.

Not all Linux ISOs will work, but most modern distros shouldn't give you any problems. You'll just want to make sure the version you're booting to supports USB drives. Also, your Android device needs to have USB mass storage support. There is a free ad-supported version of DriveDroid, as well as a paid edition.

[EMBED_APP]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.softwarebakery.drivedroid[/EMBED_APP]

[EMBED_APP]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.softwarebakery.drivedroid.paid[/EMBED_APP]

Android Police coverage: 55 Best (And 2 WTF) New Android Apps And Live Wallpapers From The Last 2 Weeks (2/6/13 - 2/22/13)


GMusicFS

Google Music does a lot of things right, but there is always the galling requirement that you use Google's official Play Music app on Android if you want access to your cloud tunes. Whereas most first-party Android apps have gotten a fresh coat of paint on occasion, Play Music is showing its age. If only there was a way to use a better app while still having access to music from your Google account. Actually, root users do have that option. GMusicFS makes those locked up tracks accessible to apps like PowerAmp, and it's free.

XDA Developers forum member bubbleguuum came up with a nifty way to get at the music you put on Google's servers. GMusicFS connects to your Google account and imports track information to your device. Next, the app mounts the cloud drive as local storage so other apps can see and stream the music. GMusicFS should theoretically work on any device running Android 4.0 or higher, but it can be temperamental. This is another app you're going to have to sideload outside of Google's approved ecosystem.

Android Police coverage[New App] GMusicFS Beta Brings Cloud-Stored Google Music To Other Media Players On Rooted Devices

Download: XDA Forums


Network Log

You probably have a number of apps running in the background on your device, and some of them are connecting to the internet. What the heck are they up to anyway? Now you can find out with Network Log. Leveraging root access, Network Log can monitor IP tables and logging to display a real-time list of active network connections for each app. You can watch the bits fly in the text log, or check things out in graphs. There is even a live updating notification if you're super-paranoid.

[EMBED_APP]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.googlecode.networklog[/EMBED_APP]

Android Police coverage: 53 Best New Android Apps And Live Wallpapers From The Last 3 Weeks (2/23/13 - 3/12/13)


dSploit

As they say, with great power comes great responsibility. Rooting your Android device gives you a lot of power, but we ask you exercise it responsibly, especially if you start mucking around with dSploit. This is a networking suite geared toward IT security and penetration testing. This completely free and open source app can wreak havoc on unsuspecting Wi-Fi networks, but you'd never do that, right?

With dSploit you can map networks, fingerprint network devices, search for known vulnerabilities, crack flawed passwords, and perform man-in-the-middle attacks to sniff passwords or hijack sessions. The APK is available for download, but there is also a GitHub repository if you want to check out the inner workings.

Download: dSploit, GitHub


Superuser by ClockworkMod

It seems like every time you turn around, the ClockworkMod folks are putting out another phenomenal app. Just 15 days after lead dev Koushik Dutta announced the project on Google+, ClockworkMod pushed its open source Superuser app to Google Play. This app, and others like it, are the gateway to root access on your device. When an app requests root, it's up to your Superuser app to grant access.

The high-minded ideals of open source are certainly on display here. Because the code is available, anyone is free to go over the app to check for security holes. Koush also created a new permission for his Superuser app: android.permission.ACCESS_SUPERUSER. Apps will eventually be expected to request root privileges in this open fashion or be shut out. The app is even available for download on the ClockworkMod site in addition to Google Play. The new Superuser has been merged into CyanogenMod, and might find its way into more ROMs down the road.

[EMBED_APP]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.koushikdutta.superuser&hl=en[/EMBED_APP]

APK download:
http://download.clockworkmod.com/apks/Superuser.apk

Manual installation with the recovery zip:
Recommended if you are having installation issues or are not rooted
http://download.clockworkmod.com/superuser/superuser.zip

Android Police coverage: 53 Best New Android Apps And Live Wallpapers From The Last 3 Weeks (2/23/13 - 3/12/13)

Android Police coverage: [App Roundup] Our Five Picks For Best New App From February 2013

Android Police coverage: Koush's Open Source Superuser App Goes Live In The Play Store


Conclusion

That's it! Eight more root apps that make you feel like a smartphone superhero. If you're not rooted, I'm sure some of these apps have you thinking about it. Make sure you circle back and check out all our root links up at the top if you do. Should you find a root app that's particularly useful, don't hesitate to tip your favorite Android blog (that's us, by the way).