15 ms·

Tell HN: You can't add “no ads” in your Play Store app's title

• Aulig 5y ago
  Yea same here, recently got my app rejected because of "no ads". Not a fan of this change either, makes me prefer f-droid even more.
• SquareWheel 5y ago
  I'm actually glad to see editorializing disallowed in app titles. If everybody did it, the store would be a mess. I mean, it's already a mess, but even more so.
  • NoGravitas 5y ago
    "No ads" isn't editorializing, though. Unlike "best" or "#1", it's a statement of fact, and a fact that is probably useful to shoppers.
    • baseballdork 5y ago
      Could this be in response to apps indicating that they don't have ads even though they do?
      • londons_explore 5y ago
        Or apps which don't have ads when first installed, but ads later get added in an update. The user will likely never see the updated app name.
      • petschge 5y ago
        In that case these apps should be banned, not the use of "no ads" in titles.
      • rscoots 5y ago
        That or the fact that google massively profits off the presence of ads in mobile apps.
    • otterley 5y ago
      The presence or omission of a fact is often the result of a conscious editorial choice. It is frequently the intent, not the nature of the words themselves, that underscores the editorial nature of the statement.
      • Spivak 5y ago
        Buy Uncle Miller’s Corn Flakes — 100% arsenic free!
        • zepto 5y ago
          Avoid toxic chemicals - drink Coca Cola!
          • Spivak 5y ago
            Aspartame just hits different ya know?
        • otterley 5y ago
          Exactly. Another textbook example is the language describing meat as coming from pork with “no hormones added” even though it’s unlawful to add hormones to pork grown for human consumption. Sure, it’s a fact; but the choice to include it is made to provide a marketing boost over competing brands that might not have the language on the packaging.
          • duffyjp 5y ago
            Wow, that's incredibly dishonest to consumers! My turkey states "no hormones added," I assume that's also unlawful like pork? It should be illegal to advertise you're not doing something that is illegal in the first place if the intent is to imply others are in fact doing it.
            • otterley 5y ago
              Correct, both pork and poultry.
  • avereveard 5y ago
    But the need does not exists in a void - the store does not allow to filter in searches apps with ads or microtransactions.
  • sneak 5y ago
    Yes, this is definitely the reason, and it's unrelated to the fact that the store is operated by an ad company. Lie to yourself, but please don't lie to others.
  • TrueGeek 5y ago
    The problem (with both app stores) is there are really three types of apps: paid, free, requires subscription. Devs are having to use titles to make it clear which is which since the stores aren't letting them use categories. It's frustrating (for both user and developer) when a user downloads an app expecting it to be free only to find it won't work if you don't pay monthly.
    • SquareWheel 5y ago
      I agree. I'd also like to see information for things like one-time, subscription-based, or repeatable in-app purchases (eg. "gems"). Apple does a better job of displaying this information than Google. Sometimes I check what IAP are available on the iOS variant of an app I'm interested in, just to get a better idea.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• ffhhj 5y ago
  You can still put [no ads] or [PRO] in the icon, pro/paid in the title. That said, a no-ads app still has ads in Google's eyes if there is any promotional link, i.e. to your website or your other apps. Google takes down those apps if you don't label the links as "advertisement".
• PennRobotics 5y ago
  Google's curation of the Play Store, while protecting their own economic interests, feels a bit like a dark pattern. The fact that adding " n" to most keywords prompts " no ads" in the suggestions shows how popular this is. If I search for "tuner", I get two sponsored results first, then five ad-containing results with average 4.4 rating, then an ad-free app with 4.9 stars. My preference would be searching by rating with a minimum number of installs. Even using the 4.5+ filter seems to be the quickest way to find completely ad-free apps. But, what really works best (but never quickest) for many apps is to find an APK somewhere else, like Github.
  • PrimeDirective 5y ago
    Sorry for the offtopic, but can you tell me the name of the ad-less tuner app? I've been searching for one, but the best I found was Fender's. Which is pretty ok, too.
    • tambre 5y ago
      I also ended up with Fender's, but it wasn't terribly responsive so eventually purchased a strobe tuner [0]. Has some disadvantages over something like a smartphone, but better for my simple usage. [0]: https://www.thomann.de/intl/ee/peterson_stroboclip_hd.htm https://www.thomann.de/intl/ee/peterson_stroboclip_hd.htm
      • PrimeDirective 5y ago
        I do have a Boss TU-2, but I'm sometimes in a situation where I'm too lazy to use a cable but have my phone handy (because I record ideas on my phone)
      • jerf 5y ago
        How can you have an electronic strobe tuner? I understand the mechanics of mechanical ones (they're really quite simple), but how can you have one with an LCD display? Is it merely a weird way of outputting the same electronic tuning you can get from any FFT-based tuning, and they're just riding the reputation of the mechanical devices?
• xd1936 5y ago
  It will definitely improve the readability of Play Store lists to have those titles removed.
  • onion2k 5y ago
    That would make sense if, say, any phrase in square brackets was the reason for the rejection. The fact it appears to be only "no ads" means that clearly isn't the reason.
  • mrweasel 5y ago
    The alternative is Amazon style titles which contains insane amount of details (because that is/was the only thing Amazon could search). Ideally Google would allow the apps to be tagged as free, freemium, paid and app supported. I suspect part of Google reasoning is that doing so kill almost all the apps supported by ads.
• aww_dang 5y ago
  >I didn't want to test more in fear of banning... This line says so much more than the words alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farmer_and_the_Viper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farmer_and_the_Viper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:If_you_lie_down_with_dogs,_you_get_up_with_fleas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:If_you_lie_down_with...
• coolgoose 5y ago
  I always wondered why all these stores are so fucking awful to filter. Is it calculated ?
  • fer 5y ago
    Yes. I often find Play "hides" deep in the results apps that I had previously bought, even typing their exact name, in hopes I choose another (always paid or with ads) above them.
    • webmaven 5y ago
      > Yes. I often find Play "hides" deep in the results apps that I had previously bought, even typing their exact name, in hopes I choose another (always paid or with ads) above them. Previously installed apps and games used to be listed under the 'Library' portion of your user profile, now you can find them under 'Manage Apps and Device > Manage > Not Installed'. Of those path segments, the first is a menu option, the second is a tab, and the third is a drop-down. It is almost as if Google doesn't want the user to find it, while making it technically available.
  • MerelyMortal 5y ago
    I imagine it would be easy to add a search filter for ads or no ads, but they don't.
    • IshKebab 5y ago
      Are there any third party search interfaces? Seems like it would be pretty easy to add automatic checking for ads.
      • voussoir 5y ago
        Yes, Aurora Store provides a filter for this. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/ And someone else mentioned https://playsearch.kaki87.net/ https://playsearch.kaki87.net/
• CynicusRex 5y ago
  With “Aurora Store” you can filter out apps with ads, paid apps, or GSF dependent apps. Updating apps requires manually pressing “install”, but other than that it's pretty neat.
  • diogenesjunior 5y ago
    the problem i faced is that aurora store is disliked by google and my account was terminated. would recommend though.
    • anonymoushn 5y ago
      Your google account was terminated because you installed a different app store on your phone?
      • npteljes 5y ago
        Aurora offers to use some built-in account, which sometimes doesn't work, or to use your own. I guess OP used their own and got banned. Similar can happen to NewPipe etc users, Google doesn't like third party clients - allegedly. Hacker news discussion of the NewPipe account ban incident: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759
      • gibspaulding 5y ago
        If I remember correctly, Aurora recommends signing into the app with a burner Google account in case of issues like this. I think Google's problem is not so much installing a different app store, but signing into your Google account from it.
    • NoGravitas 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure you can use aurora store without connecting it to your Google account, though you can only install gratis apps this way.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  Mobile platforms are the 21st century nanny state. You can only do what we allow you to do, because it's for your own good.
• peterkelly 5y ago
  Good. Phrases like that are just spammy and annoying and don't belong in app titles.
  • tehnicaorg 5y ago
    Like the terms "fast" and "secure" in "Google Chrome - Download the Fast, Secure Browser from Google".
• stuaxo 5y ago
  I really want a way to search for ad-free apps. I don't bother very much with the Android store because of this. If I want my 4 year old to use my phone I don't want her clicking some ad and leaving the app by accident. As a result, I only have apps by the BBC and a couple of others.
  • PennRobotics 5y ago
    I don't know about 4, but for toddlers, use Screen Pinning if you're going to let your child touch any Android device.
• ArchD 5y ago
  Users are interested in apps that have no ads. Whether or not an app has ads is not part of the standard app info fields, so while publishers could lie in the title, where else can the users find out whether there are ads and why couldn't Google instead just ban apps that lie about having no ads instead of outright banning "no ads" in the title? I think Google makes no money from free ad-less apps, so it is plausible that allowing free ad-less apps to promote themselves as "no ads" (over apps with ads or paid apps) is not directly financially beneficial to Google and is perhaps even harmful. You can see the disincentives at work here.
• amalcon 5y ago
  So, let's be clear here. The problem is not that they've prohibited people from putting this information in the app title. The problem comes if they've done so without introducing another way for the user to express their preference for ad-free apps. E.g. it should even work better if, hypothetically, the search function prioritized ad-free apps anyway when the user puts "no ads" in the search box. I can't tell if this is the case right now because, well, the store is still full of apps with "no ads" in the title. Those are still coming up first.
  • elzbardico 5y ago
    Well, we can expect the heat death of the universe before google does something that helps promoting apps that have no ads.
    • londons_explore 5y ago
      Most of their own apps have no ads... And google doesn't require a share of revenue for mobile ads either. Some users clearly prefer apps without ads, and will have a better user experience without ads. Google makes lots of product design decisions to attempt to improve user experience (even if they fail often). Therefore there isn't a clear incentive to prevent the user finding an app without ads.
      • jerf 5y ago
        If a Google app has no ads, it is because the information they are gathering feeds into the other ad algorithms enough to make it worthwhile. They are in an unusual position of being able to do that because of their size. (Not unique, but unusual.)
      • lostmsu 5y ago
        What apps are you referring to? Gmail and GMaps, the only ones I use regularly, do have ads.
        • cmeacham98 5y ago
• edent 5y ago
  Good? What's the alternative? Have a crappy, paid-for, add filled, bloated app promote itself as "Cauliflower Cooker Lite - the #1 free cauliflower app. 100% ad-free". Metadata like file size, whether there are in-app ads or purchases, etc, should be part of the store's listing - not the title.
  • npteljes 5y ago
    The alternative I'd like is making common user expectations into formalized properties of the software, making them visible and searchable. Like how it lists "Offers in-app purchases" currently, it could also list "Ad-free", "Free", etc.
    • chalst 5y ago
      F-Droid does this already with its listing of 'anti-features' for each app.
      • medstrom 5y ago
        Yes, what I've sometimes done is search F-Droid first, then find that same app on the iOS app store.
      • npteljes 5y ago
        Yes, and I love it! I'm using LineageOS for the third year now.
  • hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    > should be part of the store's listing - not the title. How long has Google store been operating (under various names)? Over a decade I think. Do they know people would love to choose between apps with and without ads? Of course. Why they decided not to implement it in the listing? Because they live from ads. There is exactly zero chance they will do it as you propose.
    • Kylekramer 5y ago
• Kinrany 5y ago
  Is there an unofficial searchable index of Play Store apps?
  • moritzwarhier 5y ago
    Not that I know, but there's this search tool which scrapes (so it's slow). https://playsearch.kaki87.net/ https://playsearch.kaki87.net/
• Kiro 5y ago
  I fully support this. I truly despise the SEO spam on Google Play. The title should be the name of the app and nothing else.
• kache_ 5y ago
  Good thing there are alternative app stores, and that you can straight up download and install an APK. I never go on the play store, and no one should.
• duxup 5y ago
  It would be nice if there were better filtering options when searching the stores. Open source would be nice, but some validation would be nice and not sure that is easy.
• camelcasing 5y ago
  ah so that's why my app got denied an update
• photochemsyn 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure the reason I got the infamous 'shadow ban' on Youtube for my Google account (i.e. I can see my comments but nobody else can, and my upvotes/downvotes behave similarly) was that I made a lot of snarky comments about how many ads different kinds of content had per minute of viewing time. I'd also note in the comments when Youtube gave the 'log in to see this age-sensitive content' warning (which didn't show up when logged in). They don't want anyone questioning their ad revenue model I guess, nor their algorithmic ranking system...
• joshstrange 5y ago
  A bit of a tangent but I wish more than anything that App Store/Play Store allowed for more advanced search. Some of what I want I know will never come but I'd love to be able to filter out any games that have any type of coin/gem/currency for sale through IAP. Normally I have to rely on reddit posts or random blogs that I find with search terms like "$gameType game with no P2P/P2W" or "$gameType game with no IAP" but even that's not perfect. I'm perfectly fine paying for a game and I'm fine with the game having IAP for extra things like "No Ads", level packs, or similar but I despise games that have any sort of P2P/P2W, they always optimize for the wrong thing (making money > fun/interesting/etc).
• perlpimp 5y ago
  I wonder if no-аds would work. see I used Cyrillic a here.
• marcodiego 5y ago
  I use e.os from the e.foundation. Good if you can live google-free. My app store I use is f-droid. It has instructions for reproducible builds of apps and, for each app, it clearly indicates its license and if it has anti-features.
• jimktrains2 5y ago
  I wish so much I could simply pay for ad-free versions of software, and I don't mean in-app purchases to unlock features, which I wish people didn't do and instead had a paid version in the store. I use f-droid as much as possible, but there are a few things not available there.
• mynameisash 5y ago
  I am an Android user fed up with Google, but I've never really focused on alternatives to stock Android. I briefly investigated Cyanogenmod and its successor, LineageOS, but never to the point of installing it. I do use the Gmail app on my phone, but it's not a requirement for me. Beyond that, I don't really have strong ties to the Google Suite of apps. I do have a few apps I've purchased and use frequently, but most are freeware. All that said, for those of you who have de-Googled your phone, how much friction was there? Is there a leader of the pack for alternate app stores (if necessary), and/or do you load APKs directly?
  • pomian 5y ago
    have been running de googled for more than last 6 years. during original setup of phone there is a lot of opportunity to shut down Google. how ever, can proceed and succeed most of the way with the right tools, and patience. vigilance in disable options is important. some times you can disable all actions after install - for example location, etc. F-droid is your primary source for apks. they have everything you need, with very good filters and warnings about privacy and other options of their apps. If you need some apk available on that is on Google only, then there are a few other sites, that package them and seem to work quite well. They look sketchy, they promote other apps, but I haven't had any issues using them in over 5 years. just click carefully. for example apkpure. You can get things like Signal, mapy. cz, Wyze and so on, better yet, sometimes older versions. In a few apps, while running, you have to ignore the message that you need Google for this app to work. I haven't had one that actually needed it. even Google photos. (assuming you don't want it linked to Google cloud.)
• distantsounds 5y ago
  This is frustrating. One of my wife's favorite apps, Instagram's Boomerang, has been broken on Android 12 since release. No sign of fixing it. The app store has been flooded with 1 and 2 star reviews as a result. I went digging for an alternative. It's just playing a 5 second loop forwards and backwards, so it can't be hard to re-implement, right? Someone's gotta have an alternative. You have now entered the Clone Wars. Dozens of imitation apps that claim to do the same, with similar names, touting similar features. Except they are riddled with ads and often don't even do what's advertised without some big watermark or outright paying for it. I'd love to find the one that's ad-free and just does what it should but I'm wading through what looks like aisles of a dollar store. The curation has gone to hell and this isn't helping. We need better ways of sorting and filtering on the app store.
• ChuckMcM 5y ago
  I suspect this is to foreclose against a future option for Google to monetize ‘free’ content in the play store without compensating the developers much as they do people’s videos on Youtube. For those who aren’t aware, in the games industry the distributor has been in the role of adding DRM to games on the pretense that they are “protecting their interests and channels”. As the distributor, Google may feel empowered to make these sort of “protective” changes, and the one that would be most likely (in my estimation) would be wrapping the APK such that it played a pre-roll ad before your free game started. I could be completely off base here but to my way of thinking it would be consistent with Google’s moves in the past.
  • tauntz 5y ago
    That would explain why they are trying to convince/coerce/force developers to hand them their signing keys during the last years.
    • pow_pp_-1_v 5y ago
      I think the signing keys are required because of features like "play as you download" etc. [Not an Android dev]
      • btown 5y ago
        As we've seen with the complaints re: AMP [0], Google is incredibly talented at building "it loads faster" features that are primarily a way to give them greater control over monetization in ways that are less than transparent. Requiring signing keys can be both of these things at once. [0] https://searchengineland.com/google-throttled-amp-page-speeds-created-format-to-hamper-header-bidding-antitrust-complaint-claims-375466 https://searchengineland.com/google-throttled-amp-page-speed...
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • igneo676 5y ago
        The real Google response would be - it's to facilitate a migration to new signing keys in case the developer: 1. Loses their signing keys 2. Needs to migrate to a better signing algorithm Google can just handle that on your behalf. Additionally, there's no more need to care about signing keys at any point in the development pipeline. Rather than keep it secret, anyone with proper access to the Google developer console can sign and release apps More cynically, what they're really guarding against is other app stores. It's MUCH harder to migrate an app from the Play Store to another store if the signatures don't match. * Without a matching signature, the user can't pull their data from Google in the same way. They'd have to completely uninstall and reinstall the app, potentially losing data if the app isn't backed by a server. * With a matching signature, the other app store should pick it up seamlessly. Modifying apps without opt-in seems like a step further than they'd be able to pull off without massive backlash right now.
• tfang17 5y ago
  Have new changes affected anyone else's Play Store Explore traffic? Would love to chat if so. We've seen a significant decrease and can't figure out why.
• Pxtl 5y ago
  As a user, I'm constantly bothered by how poor the metadata is about how the app is monetized. And this problem occurs across multiple platforms - Windows Store is even worse. I do not hold it against developers that they need to make money. But when I'm searching for apps, I want to make an informed decision about how it's going to do that - be it through ads, through paid unlock of the full functionality, through paid subscriptions, or is it a paid-up-front app, or a combination thereof. The ability to filter on this critical attribute is slim-to-nonexistent.
• undersuit 5y ago
  >Regular Expressions: Now You Have Two Problem When do they crack down more like how https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian will autoremove your comments if your username has the string 'ad' in it? I'm serious, this isn't going to be enough. Liars and scammers will find out how to get around the filter and create badly named apps regardless, just like how my spam is barely readable English. I can read it but a filter can't.
• drusepth 5y ago
  FWIW, the store itself already displays whether the app has ads -- directly below the app title [1]. This seems reasonable to me. I'd imagine you probably couldn't add [no IAPs] to a title, either. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.StudioWheel.Bard https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.StudioWhee... (random app with ads)
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• notananthem 5y ago
  Title is marketing drivel. If it is ad-free, that should be evaluated not by the developer. I'm a huge fan of not trusting developers :)
• danShumway 5y ago
  It's hard to interpret this because in the presence of better searching tools for ads, and better surfacing of metadata fields about ads, this would be a clearly pro-consumer move. It wouldn't even be remotely controversial. And my instinct is to interpret it through that lens, it is a policy that in many ways just makes sense. But I don't think there is a way to exclude apps with ads from search results or to search for add-free apps specifically? Google isn't taking advantage of any of the upsides of having "ad-supported" as a separate category of information. This is a general problem, search in the Play Store is kind of frustrating; it doesn't feel designed to help really filter information. I constantly wonder if I'm being far too charitable with Google or not charitable enough. It's a hard balance to strike, and I always feel like I'm slightly getting the balance wrong. Maybe the correct thing in this case is not to question the policy itself at all but to redirect all of that energy towards the more pressing question, "why can't I filter based on this category?" Because we can have a somewhat endless debate over whether this policy is good or bad based almost purely on Google's motivations and what they plan to do next. But most of that is just interpreting Google's intent; in the abstract forcing apps to move information out of titles into easily accessed categories/fields is a good thing. And in contrast to a debate about intentions, the lack of filtering tools around ads, and the lack of any ability for developers to highlight being ad-free as a selling point -- those are pretty unambiguous weaknesses of the Play store that make the store worse regardless of Google's motivations. The search page doesn't even show whether or not an app contains ads (or in-app purchases while we're on the subject), you have to go into the app screen to see that, Google really isn't putting a ton of effort that I can see into surfacing this information. That kind of stuff is negative, that stuff should be fixed. The search page does show the price of the app directly in the result list. It should also show an icon indicating if the app has ads or not, that's information that is just as relevant as the price. In a lot of cases ads are the price of an app, and so for UX purposes they should often be treated like they're the same category of information.
• dheera 5y ago
  Can we just all agree on an alternative language that means "no ads"? How about "coool" spelled with 3 o's? As long as you use that everyone will know it means "no ads" if we can get some media to write about it.
• markus_zhang 5y ago
  Is foreign lanaguage OK?
• NikolaNovak 5y ago
  Honestly I'm OK with that. Title doesn't actually GUARANTEE there are actually no ads. I would rather train people to look for actual authoritative answer. (I also personally hate when games try to put attributes in title, it just makes the entire search list meaningless)
• pmarreck 5y ago
  nо аdѕ The text above is spoofed Unicode and may bypass simple filters. Enjoy. In the event HN reverts these to ascii glyphs, try a regen from here: https://onlineunicodetools.com/spoof-unicode-text https://onlineunicodetools.com/spoof-unicode-text
• motohagiography 5y ago
  Very good to know! I had been mulling an app company that did privacy centric paid variations on popular free* apps, but it depended on being able to market them as being ad and surveillance free. However, if this policy precludes that, it does seem a bit anti-competitive.
• georgeecollins 5y ago
  I don't know why they have the policy. It is also possible that they don't want you to put something in the title that they don't have the means (or maybe resources) to check.
• mandeepj 5y ago
  You can’t also add “new” in your game title. They deleted my account, just for that reason
• kazinator 5y ago
  Try using alternative Unicode characters; chances are the Google maggots forgot to normalize the characters in the title before looking for the substring. ℵ0 ÅⅮȘ or whatever.
• PrivateLaws 5y ago
  I use LineageOS with F-droid without GAPPS... missing some things, but overall very happy. The worst thing is probably how bad the search feature is in OsmAnd.
• commoner 5y ago
  The Play Store already has a "Contains Ads" label for apps with ads. Preventing users from searching/filtering with this label is consumer-hostile. Here are a couple of third-party workarounds: - KPlaySearch (https://playsearch.kaki87.net https://playsearch.kaki87.net) lets you search the Play Store and optionally filter by whether the app is free of ads and/or in-app purchases. Source code: https://git.kaki87.net/KaKi87/KPlaySearch https://git.kaki87.net/KaKi87/KPlaySearch - Aurora Store (https://auroraoss.com/download/AuroraStore/ https://auroraoss.com/download/AuroraStore/) is an alternative Play Store client that works without a Google account and without Google Play Services. Its app search allows filtering by whether the app is ad-free and/or dependent on Google Play Services. Source code: https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore
• junon 5y ago
  It makes sense at face value. But knowing google, there's something very off-base at play here.
• Trias11 5y ago
  Ads is google's god. "No-ads" is like coming to google church and offending the religion.