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Total Commander forced to stop letting you install APKs

androidpolice.com

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Re: Total Commander forced to stop letting you install APKs

#71

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #5
branon wrote: post #2

Alternative app that's not encumbered by the Play Store's rules: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.ghostsq.commander/

Its functionality is hindered by Google in that it can not download and install updates in background as Google Play does. One has to root the phone and loose access to banking and SSO apps to get enough permissions for F-Droid. EU anti-competition monkeys should have looked at that a long time ago.

According to https://www.xda-developers.com/android-12-alternative-app-st..., it could do it, it's just not implemented.

Given that trying to update a package from the notification just yields an error and this issue hasn't been fixed for 5 years (https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/-/issues/669) and the F-Droid repository is known to update so slowly that most devs recommend adding their direct channel, F-Droid doesn't really feel like a usable alternative.

I think unfortunately the best bet here is to wait for some commercial player to step in and make a decent alternative.

Re: Total Commander forced to stop letting you install APKs

#72

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

oliwarner wrote: post #28
TheMatten wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android 12 supports background updates: https://developer.android.com/about/versions/12/features#aut...

Yes, but f-droid et al cannot update in the background. That's a problem.

That's on F-Droid though...

Re: Total Commander forced to stop letting you install APKs

#73

Post by oliwarner »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #72
oliwarner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but f-droid et al cannot update in the background. That's a problem.

That's on F-Droid though...

And they try, but Google makes you root your device to install a service level apps to handle that stuff in the background.

Sorry if I'm appearing snarky but that's the whole point of this thread. Google obstructs third-party app stores.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fdroid.fdroid.privileged...

Re: Total Commander forced to stop letting you install APKs

#74

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

oliwarner wrote: post #73
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's on F-Droid though...

And they try, but Google makes you root your device to install a service level apps to handle that stuff in the background. Sorry if I'm appearing snarky but that's the whole point of this thread. Google obstructs third-party app stores. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fdroid.fdroid.privileged...

This used to be true, but as the comment you've responded to (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31424242) explicitly explains, since Android 12 you don't need to root your device and install the service level app. There's a new API specifically to allow apps like F-Droid to update apps they've installed, F-Droid just didn't get around to using it yet: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/-/issues/2316

Re: Total Commander forced to stop letting you install APKs

#75

Post by oliwarner »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #74
oliwarner wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they try, but Google makes you root your device to install a service level apps to handle that stuff in the background. Sorry if I'm appearing snarky but that's the whole point of this thread. Google obstructs third-party app stores. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fdroid.fdroid.privileged...

This used to be true, but as the comment you've responded to ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31424242 ) explicitly explains, since Android 12 you don't need to root your device and install the service level app. There's a new API specifically to allow apps like F-Droid to update apps they've installed, F-Droid just didn't get around to using it yet: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/-/issues/2316

Well that's very silly of me.

Re: Total Commander forced to stop letting you install APKs

#76

Post by sam_lowry_ »

jeroenhd wrote: post #46
Freak_NL wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this something that only happens with some banks? I have GrapheneOS on my Pixel 6 with F-droid, and the banking app of ABN AMRO from the Play store just works.

In my experience the ING NL app also works perfectly fine on rooted devices. You can usually apply a working Magisk Hide plugin relatively easily for apps that don't support it. I suspect that some banks use a whitelist rather than a blacklist for certain phones.

KBC and Itsme are hard to trick into working with a rooted phone. I tried and dropped the ball at some point.

Re: Total Commander forced to stop letting you install APKs

#77

Post by mschuster91 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #70
mschuster91 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some also check for other signals indicating root - for example, if Samsung Knox shows up as enabled in the build properties, but accessing it fails with an exception, the phone was rooted at least once (even if you re-flash an official firmware and re-lock the bootloader, the Knox Secure Enclave stays dead). Tricking out these detections is a nightmare.

Yeah, Samsung is pretty bad (or good, depending on your point of view) when it comes to this stuff. I would never root a Samsung phone because of this mess.

The problem is you're effectively stuck with either Google or Samsung if you want decent performance, update availability, spare part support and the security of not having Chinese spyware embedded on order of the Chinese dictatorship. And Google is known for delivering absolute lemons as hardware, with next to zero support to make stuff worse.

Re: Total Commander forced to stop letting you install APKs

#78

Post by Gigachad »

Frotag wrote: post #21
TrianguloY wrote: post #18

An app on google play can't update itself...except if the app was made by google (YouTube updates itself almost weekly, all server side). That's why it's called google play, because it's where google plays with all of us.

PWAs are basically websites with a home screen icon. But they can be published in the playstore and update everything but the icon and name.

The web apis haven’t become quite good enough to match native apps yet though. Things like inter page transitions and gestures aren’t as nice.

The telegram web app is the best example I have seen so far and it looks like a real app but the gestures fail to recognise or complete a lot of the time.

Re: Total Commander forced to stop letting you install APKs

#79

Post by Gigachad »

asddubs wrote: post #69
CWuestefeld wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Pixel 5a is not rooted, and I have F-Droid running on it, from which I've installed several apps.

yes, but you have to manually update those apps

Which is a huge pain because you can’t just spam click update or “update all”. You have to one by one wait for them to download and for the android UI to come up and then wait for the install to finish before starting the next one
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