This post follows my latest experience with Play store.
I have been wondering for a long time what we independent developers can do to improve our position.
Automatic updates broke your phone; the fix is a highly technical manual process.
https://kbin.social/m/androiddev is more appropriate for this type of post.
The 2020 lawsuit said Google was deceiving people into thinking that they could control the information they're willing to share.
This won’t be nearly enough for Epic Games.
- For 5 years, Google will let developers offer an alternative in-app billing system next to Google Play (aka “User Choice Billing”)
- For 5 years, Google won’t make developers offer their best prices to customers who pick Google Play and Google Play Billing
- For 4 years, Google won’t make developers ship titles on Google Play at the same time as other stores and with feature parity
- For 5 years, Google won’t make companies exclusively put Google Play on a phone or its homescreen
- For 4 years, Google won’t stop OEMs from granting installer rights to preloaded apps
- For 5 years, Google won’t require its “consent” before an OEM preloads a third-party app store
- For 4 years, Google will let third-party app stores update apps without requiring user approval
- For 4 years, Google will let sideloaded app stores use its APIs and “feature splits” to help install apps
- For 5 years, Google will turn its two sideloading “scare screens” into a single user prompt which will read the equivalent of this agreed-upon language: “Your phone currently isn’t configured to install apps from this source. Granting this source permission to install apps could place your phone and data at risk.”
- For 5 years, Google will let User Choice Billing participating developers let their users know about better pricing elsewhere and “complete transactions using the developer’s existing web-based billing solution in an embedded webview within its app.”
- For 6 years, Google will “continue to allow developers to use contact information obtained outside the app or in-app (with User consent) to communicate with Users out-of-app”
- For 6 years, Google will let consumption only apps (e.g. Netflix, which doesn’t let you pay on device) tell users about better prices elsewhere, without linking to an outside website — example: “Available on our website for $9.99”
- For 6 years, Google “shall not prohibit developers from disclosing to Users any service or other fees associated with the Google Play or Google Play’s billing system.”
Candy Crush would have been the gateway drug.
Spotify’s “unprecedented” popularity justified the deal.
Google keeps piling on restrictions for distributing apps via the Play Store, which is an issue when they have an effective monopoly
Swap screen down from the top of the screen - like when you want to see a notification: different devices acts differently, in some you have to swap from upper-right to see the tiles. You can also edit the tiles to add, remove and re-arrange, in order to have the ones you use more often in the first page.
"Do not disturb" option should be available as a quick setting tile, which is more complicated to activate from a button combination, but not too hidden in the device settings.
For "Do not disturb" (if this is what you ask) you can configure it in device settings: Sound > Do Not Disturb > section "What can interrupt do not disturb".
Google's "solution" can't do anything for bootlooping devices.
Web Integrity pivots to Android, could permanently kill YouTube Vanced-style apps.
You have the obligation to use it since the manufactures doesn't gives updates to various versions of the OS, for example, if the device has version 13 and there is an update for 14 if you choose to not get the newer version you'll not get security updates for version 13. Also, newest devices will get only version 14 (or newer) and with the boot loader locked you can't install a different version of the OS.
For me, the question is whether I have the right to use a device I bought as I want or not. There is, rightly, a lot of talk about "right to repair," but now the issue is becoming "right to use".
Can I install an old application that I still find useful or should be the operating system to decide if i can use it, without there being an incompatibility issue?
Can I decide what permissions I want to give an application or should the Play store (and protect) decide without appeal what I can do?
One of the bigger changes to Android 14 is that Google is completely banning old app installs
But it is for security reasons - it is always about security reasons when old devices and now even old apps have to be thrown away.
Android 14 offers a lightly customizable lock screen and not much else.
Android 14 offers a lightly customizable lock screen and not much else.
(Does anybody care about Android 14? Currently, those who will end up with a bricked Pixel phone.)
Users with multiple profiles are getting locked out of local storage and losing data.
Users with multiple profiles are getting locked out of local storage and losing data.
(It wouldn't shock me if they found out that this bug is related to all the changes Google has been making the last few years to prevent users and apps from being able to access their files in a normal way because it's trying to make Android a bad copy of iOS.)
The popular developer forum is still hunting for a "path to profitability."
How’s the update working out for you?
Google picks who gets features.
We are 3000 members!
The number of members is enough to create a healthy community without attracting spammers. What's missing now is more participation and post creation. Don't be shy, if you find an article that is about Android-or Google, since the two sometimes coincide-share it with the rest of us.
All the displays, cameras, batteries, and back plate are now for sale.
- Kotlin: "are you talking to me?"
Automatic Chromebook expiration dates still "fundamentally flawed," critics say.
They do it for your privacy :)
For me, too, this was the point that triggered my reaction.
Time is relative :)
This is an updated article, but since it contains a lot of information grouped together I thought it might be useful.
Can i use the svg file as app icon to this project: https://github.com/anemomylos/shell4kbin ?
I would prefer not to spam kbin about this application, but if you think it might be useful to others you are free to post a link in other magazines/fediverse. Thanks for the tip about Obtainium.
Okay, I found it. I updated the app to support JS injection: https://github.com/anemomylos/shell4kbin/releases/tag/0.3-4
I didn't know about it. Can you give me more info?
In that case it would not have changed anything. Instead of seeing the Cloudflare page in your regular browser you would have seen the same page in this app, since this app is only a dedicated browser for kbin.social, nothing more.
This app is like Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Opera, but unlike them it only loads by default kbin.social. I think Datas_Cat_Spot's comment explains the only advantage this app has over any other browser for browsing the site.
My need was to open the site in a dedicated browser to keep it separate from the default browser, so I put together some code I had available from other projects to create this app. I have shared it in case it might be useful to others, although for most people using the default browser to view the site is the best choice.
This gives greater value to the comment since it was not influenced by the events of the last few days.