Ask HN: Why was Materialistic (HN client) removed from Play Store?

#1

Post by hidden-spyder » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

I can no longer find it in Play Store. Even the link provided in its official repo fails to load. There are no mentions of it being removed, so is it just me?

Re: Ask HN: Why was Materialistic (HN client) removed from Play Store?

#2

Post by daqnal » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

I believe it is because their app was not updated in 2 years, and was auto delisted from Google Play. https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic/issues/1464

It is still up on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.github.hidroh.materialist...

Re: Ask HN: Why was Materialistic (HN client) removed from Play Store?

#3

Post by hidden-spyder » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 3:49 AM UTC

daqnal wrote: post #2

I believe it is because their app was not updated in 2 years, and was auto delisted from Google Play. https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic/issues/1464 It is still up on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.github.hidroh.materialist...

Thanks! I didn't think about searching on fdroid.

Why does Google do this? Now I wonder what good apps I can't find due to them not being updated.

Re: Ask HN: Why was Materialistic (HN client) removed from Play Store?

#4

Post by daqnal » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 2:17 PM UTC

hidden-spyder wrote: post #3

daqnal wrote: post #2

I believe it is because their app was not updated in 2 years, and was auto delisted from Google Play. https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic/issues/1464 It is still up on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.github.hidroh.materialist...

Thanks! I didn't think about searching on fdroid. Why does Google do this? Now I wonder what good apps I can't find due to them not being updated.

My guess is probably both to free space from their servers and to ensure that unknowing users aren't downloading an app that doesn't have somewhat recent security patches.