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It seems like the entire fight is over Google Drive, which is not a hard requirement for pretty much any Android app. While Google's behavior here strikes me as

by Zak 2y ago

It seems like the entire fight is over Google Drive, which is not a hard requirement for pretty much any Android app. While Google's behavior here strikes me as ridiculous, dropping Drive support seems much more rational than dropping Android support entirely.

eightysixfour 2y ago
What would that workflow look like - users copy their files from Drive to their device, edit them, and then put them back on Drive?
- wonger_ 2y ago
  Bring-your-own-sync! Apps can be local-first, reading and writing to files on the device. Then each user can choose their own syncing service like Syncthing or Resilio Sync, which runs in the background and automatically syncs those files to your other devices.
  - eightysixfour 2y ago
    That sounds miserable. This is why apps end up enshittified with forced cloud services.
    - jasonjayr 2y ago
      For apps that use the local system, and after fighting through google's restrictions, syncthing has been a dream between my android, windows + linux systems. I Don't have to think about it. The restrictions imposed by the platform is why each app needs to have it's own half-implemented sync to it's own platform or some other cloud provider.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  It’s less manual than that, the app opens the OS file picker which has unlimited access, the user selects the file, the file is then made available for the app to access, the app can then save it to Google drive. What it can’t do is grab your entire drive file list and contents the moment you sign in.
blihp 2y ago
This was just the author's current issue on Android. In another month or two it would have been something else. I fought similar battles for the better part of a decade before finally giving up when Google's policies made it so that even keeping apps running (at least in my case) was an economic non-starter. The sheer amount of bureaucratic B.S.[1] they constantly fling at you while simultaneously bit-rotting existing applications is insane. [1] Sometimes it's related to their store listing policies which are constantly changing, sometimes it's related to taxation in a specific country, sometimes it's related to laws in a specific country, sometimes it's actually related to software (on-device or web services!) they are forcing you to update/change etc. etc.

by Zak 2y ago

eightysixfour 2y ago

What would that workflow look like - users copy their files from Drive to their device, edit them, and then put them back on Drive?

wonger_ 2y ago
Bring-your-own-sync! Apps can be local-first, reading and writing to files on the device. Then each user can choose their own syncing service like Syncthing or Resilio Sync, which runs in the background and automatically syncs those files to your other devices.
- eightysixfour 2y ago
  That sounds miserable. This is why apps end up enshittified with forced cloud services.
  - jasonjayr 2y ago
    For apps that use the local system, and after fighting through google's restrictions, syncthing has been a dream between my android, windows + linux systems. I Don't have to think about it. The restrictions imposed by the platform is why each app needs to have it's own half-implemented sync to it's own platform or some other cloud provider.
Gigachad 2y ago
It’s less manual than that, the app opens the OS file picker which has unlimited access, the user selects the file, the file is then made available for the app to access, the app can then save it to Google drive. What it can’t do is grab your entire drive file list and contents the moment you sign in.

blihp 2y ago

This was just the author's current issue on Android. In another month or two it would have been something else. I fought similar battles for the better part of a decade before finally giving up when Google's policies made it so that even keeping apps running (at least in my case) was an economic non-starter. The sheer amount of bureaucratic B.S.[1] they constantly fling at you while simultaneously bit-rotting existing applications is insane. [1] Sometimes it's related to their store listing policies which are constantly changing, sometimes it's related to taxation in a specific country, sometimes it's related to laws in a specific country, sometimes it's actually related to software (on-device or web services!) they are forcing you to update/change etc. etc.