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Really wish the app store had a "only apps under 10MB" filter. The fastest, least ad-filled and micropayment filled apps are usually the small ones. By downl
by londons_explore 2y ago
Really wish the app store had a "only apps under 10MB" filter.
The fastest, least ad-filled and micropayment filled apps are usually the small ones. By downloading a 3 megabyte thermometer app you'll be much happier than a 150 megabyte thermometer app.
- onlyforthat 2y agoI remember there was a publisher in Play Store who had very small apps like single digit kb flashlight, sudoku, calender, etc. I can't find them now. Those apps were really small all within <200kb
- butz 2y agoGoogle Play probably kicked them off for not using latest Android SDK or something. So many tiny and high quality apps were lost.
- johnisgood 2y agoGoogle is not only killing their own projects, but other people's, too.
- refulgentis 2y agoI'm no fan of Google, but it's slightly more complicated than that, there's a lot of security and privacy stuff that can't be enforced if your app was build 6 years ago and still slopping around.
- tourmalinetaco 2y agoDoes that really matter for a local-only 5KB app that only talks with my phone‘s flashlight, or reads sensor data? Now, maybe for the 500MB adware-filled “flashlight” app that connects to 100s of servers and demands access to everything my device can do, but that would be banned on any competent app store anyway.
- ninetyninenine 2y agoNo but enforcing policy is manageable. Enforcing reasonable security measures based on nuances and case by case situations is not manageable for an ecosystem of that scale.
- JoshTriplett 2y agoI don't know if this is still the case, but at one point the permission needed to access the flashlight also gave access to the camera. And there aren't restrictions on network connections from apps. (I'd love to have app network access restricted by permissions, but that would be a large change.) And in any case, Android has had built-in flashlight support for a while now, for any phone that has a camera with a flash. Is the "turn the screen bright white" style still useful with modern Android?
- MrLeap 2y agoIt is if your flashlight's broke.
- freedomben 2y agoKind of a side note, but flashdim is an amazing open-source flashlight app that everybody needs[1][2][3]. [1]: https://github.com/cyb3rko/flashdim https://github.com/cyb3rko/flashdim [2]: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.cyb3rko.flashdim/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.cyb3rko.flashdim/ [3]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cyb3rko.flashdim&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cyb3rko.fl...
- ainka-ainka 2y agoGrapheneOS (https://grapheneos.org/ https://grapheneos.org/) contains network access permission.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- inquirerGeneral 2y ago[dead]
- epmaybe 2y agoThis is something that really bothered me - I had an app that was small and worked fine on the latest Android OS, yet they took the app and account down because we hadn’t uploaded a new version in a year. Appeals didn’t help
- heyoni 2y agoWhat was their reasoning?
- jart 2y agoTo keep you running on the hamster wheel. They'd ban Mozart and Shakespeare from the app store if they could.
- bee_rider 2y agoI don’t think that was their reasoning. Like, Google, all these megacorps, they are bad, but we should at least argue against their actual arguments.
- consteval 2y agoTheir reasoning is probably security. They're working under the assumption your app takes untrusted input in some way, maybe over the network. Which isn't a bad assumption, I mean almost all apps do. Very few apps are true self-contained applications, like a calculator. So then if there happens to be some vulnerabilities in an older Android SDK then your app is susceptible. They could patch back security but that's expensive after a while. Easier to force app makers to update their apps.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ryandrake 2y ago3P app developers are also complicit. Often they deliberately cut off support for old OS's and old devices, because it's "too hard" to support them or whatever. Everyone seems to be working together to keep us on the hamster wheel.
- azthecx 2y agoI use the minesweeper, sudoku and solitaire apps from dustland design (search pub:Dustland Design) they're very minimalistic and clean. There's also currency / unit converter and calendar by Sam Ruston which are in the same vein very good and clean.
- bongobingo1 2y agohttps://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Dustland+Design&hl=en-US https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Dustland+Des... Nice!
- bcraven 2y agohttps://simplemobiletools.com/index.html https://simplemobiletools.com/index.html The gallery app is superb.
- lambda 2y agoWeird that their GitHub says "without ads", but the apps in the play store say contains ads. It looks like they're doing ads/paid model in the app store, are they ad-free from F-Droid?
- nine_k 2y agoInstall from F-droid :shrug:
- zwirbl 2y agoIt was sold to an adware vendor that is milking the brand hard. Another one for the 'used to be great' pile
- pwg 2y agoThey were forked to the "Fossify" tools from the version just before the adware takeover. All the "Fossify" versions are available on F-Droid: https://search.f-droid.org/?q=fossify&lang=en https://search.f-droid.org/?q=fossify&lang=en
- aorth 2y agoThe Simple Mobile Tools suite was sold to an adware vendor last year. Plenty of links to stories if you're interested, even here on HN.
- p4bl0 2y agoYes, the SMT apps are slowly being forked over to the Fossify project: https://www.fossify.org/ https://www.fossify.org/.
- Viliam1234 2y ago
- Sarkie 2y agohttps://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=8214346176194980263 https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=821434617619498026...
- sprak 2y agoThis (Simple Mobile Tools) used to be a good set of apps. But it got bought up a an ad firm. The new, still ad free apps, are known as Fossify: https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=7297838378654322558 https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=729783837865432255...
- bscphil 2y agoI'm surprised to hear this. Fortunately it doesn't look like the source code itself got taken over [1], and of course F-Droid, which is always the best place to get any open source Android application, still has the same version as the latest Github release. [2] These applications are blessedly feature complete, and I haven't noticed any issues being "stuck" on the F-Droid versions. [1] https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/Simple-File-Manager https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/Simple-File-Manager [2] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.simplemobiletools.filemanager.pro/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.simplemobiletools.filema...
- Sarkie 2y agoAh yeah. Forgot about that!
- simonmales 2y agof-droid is a great way to find bloat free apps
- Self-Perfection 2y agoOpenIntents?
- Vt71fcAqt7 2y agoHow would this feature handle an update that increases the file size? What about apps that download assets after you install them?
- Ylpertnodi 2y agoIsnt this one of the world’s software ...why would a thermometer (for example) app need updating? And, would you let it?
- oneplane 2y agoBecause a thermometer is software and software is imperfect. Perhaps it made some assumptions that causes phones that were released after the app was released to drain the battery very quickly. Or it has a calculation error where over time it accumulates a significant difference between the measurement data and the data that is rendered on screen. Or perhaps it's using an API that we all thought was safe, but turns out it's not. Or it needs to use an API to get temperature data (thermometer can have different meanings) and the API no longer exists. Even something as silly as an app that does nothing can run into these issues. The APIs and other interfaces used to run applications are imperfect. Sometimes doing nothing about it is a choice, sometimes the vendor doesn't deem that acceptable and then it is no longer a choice. Either way, the application will have to adapt or degrade (to the point where it degrades out of existence).
- Zambyte 2y agoHardware is also imperfect, but "good enough" is much easier to accept in the context of hardware. Good enough should also be good enough for software. Changing from using one system API to another shouldn't push an app over an N MB filter anyways. If the user runs into an issue, they can update. Otherwise, if it still works fine just continue to use it. The argument for updating to keep up with API changes can also be flipped against updating to protect against UI/UX changes. I have lost features from Android updates that I have never been able to get back on my phone, only recreate them on my GNU/Linux desktop.
- yieldcrv 2y agoThat reminds me of one reason I got out of mobile app development, totally forgot about until now Often times the hiring managers wanted to see something more akin to a portfolio, like an art project, for apps that many times didn’t exist anymore or have a production server up anymore But the more arbitrary metric was trying to be sure that I worked on anything “big” And the 8-12 megabyte package sizes - which I spent a lot of time optimizing with many competence inspiring techniques - would signal that the app or service or userbase wasn't big. Which had nothing to do with anything, could have hundreds of millions of downloads and users In that space there is a huuuge incentive for bloatware
- sunnybeetroot 2y agoI have never experienced nor heard of a hiring manager determining the outcome of a candidate based on the MB of an app they worked on. I would run away from working for a company like that.
- yieldcrv 2y ago> I would run away from working for a company like that although a form of affirmation about my experience, and caked in privilege, my experience is that a company that does one odd thing during an interview process isn't indicative of anything. actual job and team I’m on can be fine
- nine_k 2y agoOh, does that manager also measure productivity in lines of code? And maybe even a movie by the amount of money spent?
- nixass 2y agoWhy, what's wrong with 172MB calculator app?
- bagels 2y agoWhatever is in the extra 150MB. Ads, spyware, bloat, slow performance.
- kragen 2y agoi would say 'whatever is in the extra 171.97 megabytes' i wrote a calculator app including its own implementation of decimal floating point and it's still only 20 kilobytes
- consteval 2y agoDepends a lot on the implementation. If you're dynamically linking to system objects and you're assuming the presence of X, you're chilling. If you're using Rust and you have to compile in the whole world, probably not gonna be that small.
- internetter 2y ago1. I doubt this includes GUI 2. The Qalculate CLI is 2mb, so perhaps your 20kb calculator could add some features while still being a 100% pure calculator
- kragen 2y agoyeah, the 20-kilobyte calculator runs as an x-windows application, but it doesn't have any buttons or anything; it's keyboard-driven. the 'gui' is https://gitlab.com/kragen/bubbleos/blob/master/yeso/yesocalc.c https://gitlab.com/kragen/bubbleos/blob/master/yeso/yesocalc...
- oneplane 2y agoA calculator app doesn't need that many megabytes of code and assets to be a calculator app. So if an app is way bigger than it should be, it usually means one of two things (usually!): 1. The app was not very optimised, perhaps created by a novice, containing a lot of things it doesn't need. 2. The app used to be really small, but a lot of extra code was added to serve you ads, profile you for better targeting or do sneaky stuff you didn't ask for.
- Waterluvian 2y agoThe red flag for me is that they're all “free.” Let me filter by apps that cost money, are ad free, and sometimes even: don’t have in-app purchases.
- n_plus_1_acc 2y agoAurora Store can at least filter by paid/IAP/has ads
- refulgentis 2y agoI continue to be puzzled by how much smaller apps are on Android, ex. Took me 9 tries, including ads, to find a thermometer app over 7 MB. I've worked on both platforms for years and yet don't really know why. Only guess is Android has a much richer tradition of vector art over bitmaps, and Swift libraries had to be compiled in for years until ABI stability enabled using dynamic linking to OS ones
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nine_k 2y agoPublisher not also being a major hardware vendor helps :-| (Only partly a joke, etc.)
- Ciph 2y agoDoesn't fstore have a filter for that?
- jart 2y ago> 150 megabyte thermometer app Does such a thing really exist? Or are you just making a point?
- zamadatix 2y agoFor reference the first app I got on Apple App store (ignoring the ad result) for "thermometer" is > 100 MB. Looking at the first ~dozen only 1 comes in under the <10 MB category. The two biggest offenders of huge app sizes are shipping cross platform runtimes (the kind that tend to throw in the kitchen sink, not the kind that act as a thin layer) and tracking/analytics bloat.