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> and where you can easily install apps through other means When the lawsuit started, apps installed like this couldn't be automatically updated without going

• talldayo 2y ago
  Which scare screens? I've sideloaded on Android for nearly a decade now, and the only one I've seen is the reasonable warning about third-party app sources when enabling it for the first time.
  • cma 2y ago
    I believe the right thing I wanted to refer to is unattended app updates, enabled for third party sideloaded stores only with Android 12 or so. Maybe 12 added it back after it was taken away at some earlier point?
    • kokada 2y ago
      I am an Android user for a long time (since Android 2.2) and used pretty much every version from then on. Google devices (from Nexus to Android One devices and now Pixels) pretty much always allowed unattended updates for a long time (you may be right about Android 12, my memory is fuzzy here). And I never remember having scary warnings for sideloaded apps, sure, Android made it more difficult to install them (by having a permission per app instead a global permission, but I would say this was a very welcome change), but it was never convoluted or difficult. But yes, non-Google devices make this way more difficult, e.g.: Xiaomi devices actually has a scary warnings and they trigger at each reinstall. Also, they messed up something in the install APIs so you can't update apps unattended, needing to trigger the popup to install at each update. So yes, in general, this is not the fault of Google but third-party companies.
      • kelnos 2y ago
        I think what people upthread are talking about is allowing third-party stores (like F-Droid) to do unattended updates. That has not been possible until recently. Up until Android 12 or so (possibly later), I had to manually approve it any time F-Droid wanted to update an app I'd installed through F-Droid itself. Unlike with apps installed via the Play Store, which can update them without needing my manual approval.
  • heavyset_go 2y ago
    There weren't scare screens, at least I don't remember any, but the upgrade flow was comically bad for apps installed outside of the Play Store. Let's say you install 15 apps on F-Droid. Every time you want to upgrade your apps, you were forced to manually initiate, and then sit through, each app update as they're installed in the foreground. This was because of deliberate limitations in Android. Whereas on the Play Store, you could hit one button to update all of your installed apps and the installations happened in the background. I believe it was after Google was threatened with lawsuits that they modified Android to be less tedious when it comes to managing and upgrading apps outside of the Play Store.
• Ferret7446 2y ago
  I don't remember how far back, but I remember third party apps working just fine at least, say, 5-6 years ago. The case was brought 2020, so I doubt this is true.
  • cma 2y ago
    Android 12 was what fixed what I meant to refer to: unattended updates with third party sideloaded stores. It's from 2021 and probably didn't get 50% marketshare until ~2023 or so. Developers for those app stores had to deal with their users being out of date all the time to a much bigger extent than Play store and officially partnered stores. And Android WearOS is still hard for side-loaded stores to work with at all without developer debugging mode I think and is tightly integrated with the phone stuff.