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Syncthing Android App Discontinued

(forum.syncthing.net)
397 points opengears | 4 comments | 20 Oct 24 14:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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_fat_santa ◴[20 Oct 24 15:55 UTC] No.41896183[source]▶
Looking at the underlying thread[1], the author mentions that it's very hard to publish on Google Play

> Reason is a combination of Google making Play publishing something between hard and impossible

Can someone expand on what's going on here?

[1]: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/discontinuing-syncthing-androi...

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izacus ◴[20 Oct 24 16:25 UTC] No.41896453[source]▶
In this case the author doesn't want to use Storage Access Framework APIs to access the file system which were mandated a few years ago as the way to access data outside the app sandbox.

They're Java-only APIs and since Syncthings core isn't written in Java, the author would have to write JNI glue to call Android when writing/reading files (and honestly this would be quite tedious, because the way SAF works is to assign Uris to each file and you need to keep querying it to get folder structure since you can't just concat paths like with files).

The author didn't want to do that and tried to persuade Google to continue letting them access all files, all photos and all documents directly and Google said no. That was the "difficulty" - turns out it's really hard to publish on Play if you refuse to follow the guidelines. Just like on AppStore.

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1. codethief ◴[20 Oct 24 18:08 UTC] No.41897277[source]▶
Wait, I seem to remember this discussion from years ago and thought it was resolved. Back then, Google wanted to drop the "access all files" permission from Android's permission system entirely but IIRC Syncthing & file manager devs then convinced them to keep it. But now Google comes back at them with a Google Play policy that prevents them from using that permission in practice?
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2. IshKebab ◴[20 Oct 24 18:56 UTC] No.41897637[source]▶
You have to ask permission via a form from Google and your app must closely fit a white list of use cases (file manager, etc.) Obviously there's a high chance they just say "nah". Definitely sucks.
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3. juliangoldsmith ◴[21 Oct 24 01:43 UTC] No.41900005[source]▶
It probably doesn't help that Syncthing is a direct competitor to Google Drive.
4. izacus ◴[21 Oct 24 12:53 UTC] No.41903641[source]▶
Yeah, but the legitimate use-case for that permission is VERY narrow - as in, if there's ANY way to implement your use-case using SAF, you MUST use SAF.

And SyncThing can be implemented using SAF - it's "just" a lot of work and that's usually not enough for Play Store to grant exception.