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Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

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Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#321

Post by starfezzy »

xxprogamerxy wrote: post #202
turblety wrote: post #137

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

Simple, UX. The reality is, most webapps for mobile just suck. The UX is nowhere near that of a native application. I don't want any text to be selectable. I don't want pull to refresh on every page. I don't want the left-swipe to take me to the previous page. You can probably find workarounds for all these issues. The new Silk library ( https://silkhq.co/ ) is the first case I've seen that get's very close to a nati…

That is not an objection. Two decades of webapp progress instead of native app progress would have (and still would) addressed all of that.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#322

Post by jen20 »

hk__2 wrote: post #210
wruza wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at how many apps require permission to see you contacts. And how many actually need your contacts to function. That is, again, not require but ask for on iphone. I have zero non-functioning apps on my iphone due to denied access to contacts. Even a chinese bluetooth light controller doesn't dare (while refusing to work on android for the same reason). You can hate apple/iphone ecosystem all you want, but let's n…

> I have zero non-functioning apps on my iphone due to denied access to contacts. You don’t have WhatsApp then.

iOS grants just the contacts you select - including “none” to apps. WhatsApp works fine in that regime.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#323

Post by psychoslave »

worksonmine wrote: post #240
baxtr wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean something like CapCut that has access to the phone camera for capturing video.

Browsers have camera and local file access if the user grants permissions, what do you mean isn't possible with the browser?

I think that the name browser is basically just what is putting people in the wrong track of interpretation. They have been fully fledged VM sandboxes, which incidentally happen to also embed html and pdf interpreter natively.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#324

Post by ranger_danger »

Numerlor wrote: post #56
ranger_danger wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only can most apps see the titles of all other open windows on the system, but they can log all your keystrokes, take screenshots, record audio/video of you or your screen, or copy/delete all the files in your home directory, without any explicit permission or notification. This is at least true for Windows and most traditional (X11 at least) *nix systems. That is one thing I think Android got right... by default…

On windows you shouldn't be able to do (most of) these directly with apps running under admin, though that's a small consolation when the browser is a normal process. I'm not sure if we'll get away from these anytime soon as any out of the box solution will inherently limit the user's freedom that has persistently been there for decades on PCs

I have absolutely done all of these things on Windows, even for commercial applications. Programs that keylog (i.e. calls SetWindowsHookEx) sometimes get tagged by antivirus though.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#325

Post by saturnite »

ignoramous wrote: post #229
3abiton wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google refuses to patch this. That's why projects like XPL-Extended (and previously XPrivacyLua), are an absolute need. I never run an android phone without these.

XPrivactLua and other XposedMod/Magisk extensions break open the app sandbox. It is better to restrict running those on usereng/eng builds (test devices). For prod builds (user devices), I'd recommend using Work Profiles (GrapheneOS supports upto 31 in parallel) or Private Spaces (on Android 15+) to truly isolate apps from one another.

I'm on Android 14 and I've been pretty happy with an app called Insular on F-Droid or Island on the Play Store. It let's you install as many instances of an app as you'd like and they'll show up in the work profile, ignorant of the others' existence.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#326

Post by carlosjobim »

wiseowise wrote: post #221
setopt wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. In cases where a native app and web app are both available on iOS, there’s often a huge difference in battery usage and sluggishness. Also, as a sibling poster mentioned, I like having fully “offline” apps as well, for example for maps and notes. I’m not saying that I l…

> In cases where a native app and web app are both available on iOS, there’s often a huge difference in battery usage and sluggishness. Yeah, like single native instagram draining battery faster than combination of multiple websites that I visit in Safari. > For the same reason I won’t replace my real computer with a Chromebook for the foreseeable future. > real computer Where most of the modern applications are eith…

> Where most of the modern applications are either web wrappers or Electron apps.

Only if you're stuck on a depreciated platform like Linux. If you are on Mac, native applications – real applications – are much more powerful and usable than any web wrapper on Linux.

I've noticed Linux users have taken a habit of proposing their broken way of using a computer through the browser for other platforms as well. But on other platforms we are already spoiled with quality software.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#327

Post by nodar86 »

xxprogamerxy wrote: post #202
turblety wrote: post #137

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

Simple, UX. The reality is, most webapps for mobile just suck. The UX is nowhere near that of a native application. I don't want any text to be selectable. I don't want pull to refresh on every page. I don't want the left-swipe to take me to the previous page. You can probably find workarounds for all these issues. The new Silk library ( https://silkhq.co/ ) is the first case I've seen that get's very close to a nati…

> I don't want any text to be selectable

Disabling text selection is not just worse UX, it is actively user-hostile

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#328

Post by billfruit »

wkat4242 wrote: post #311
billfruit wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obsidian isn't open source by most reports. Surely Obsidian do not to see all files on the device, it only really needs to see the files the user needs it to see.

> Obsidian isn't open source by most reports. On FreeBSD I can build a full copy from source (in fact I have to, there is no binary package). The only issue seems to be licensing, not source availability. Personally I don't care about licensing (I completely ignore it all anyway) and it doesn't stop you from inspecting the source code. I think Obsidian is a really great package, I just happened to have moved over fro…

Obsidian on Android source seems not available. Even generally the reports seems that source is not available.

May be the freebsd build is using some binary library packages?

A cursory search indicates that one of the freebsd 'build-scripts' used for installing obsidian uses a binary package for obsidian itself, not building it from source.

It strange that about obsidian which seems to be rather popular here has many people thinking that it is open source, when it is not.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#329

Post by [deleted] »

ErigmolCt wrote: post #270
captn3m0 wrote: post #69

The ACTION_MAIN loophole has been written about before: https://commonsware.com/blog/2020/04/05/android-r-package-vi... Google refuses to patch this. I wonder what would happen if you submit it to the Android VDP as a permission bypass. There’s also this SO question by the author about the bypass: https://stackoverflow.com/q/79527331

Submitting it to the Android VDP is a solid idea, though I wouldn't be surprised if it gets waved off as "working as intended."

[deleted]

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#330

Post by gregw2 »

ErigmolCt wrote: post #270
captn3m0 wrote: post #69

The ACTION_MAIN loophole has been written about before: https://commonsware.com/blog/2020/04/05/android-r-package-vi... Google refuses to patch this. I wonder what would happen if you submit it to the Android VDP as a permission bypass. There’s also this SO question by the author about the bypass: https://stackoverflow.com/q/79527331

Submitting it to the Android VDP is a solid idea, though I wouldn't be surprised if it gets waved off as "working as intended."

The right ("as intended", in my view) functionality would be to support a manifest with, say, five apps, and if as a dev you wanted more youd apply to google for an exception (like aws limit increases) with a list of reasons for each app.
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