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Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

(peabee.substack.com)
1192 points gniting | 2 comments | 29 Mar 25 21:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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zx8080 ◴[29 Mar 25 23:53 UTC] No.43519828[source]▶
> For extremely specific use cases such as file managers, browsers or antivirus apps, Google grants an exception by allowing QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES permission, which provides full visibility into installed apps.

Why would browser need to enumerate the installed apps?

Why?!

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Borealid ◴[29 Mar 25 23:58 UTC] No.43519852[source]▶
When a user visits a play.google.com URL Google wants to be able to show either an "install" or a "launch" button contingent on whether the app is already installed.

In other words, blame Google product management.

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lurking_swe ◴[30 Mar 25 00:03 UTC] No.43519879[source]▶
this doesn’t make sense and sounds like an excuse IMO.

Instead of the browser enumerating all apps, why can’t it check when you visit a page if the current page (ONLY the current page) is installed as an app?

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jerbear4328 ◴[30 Mar 25 00:07 UTC] No.43519892[source]▶
How would the OS know if the app that the browser is querying about is actually the current page? For all the OS knows, the user might be quickly visiting a ton of play.google.com pages for the top 1000 apps on the app store.
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1. heavenlyblue ◴[30 Mar 25 00:30 UTC] No.43520010{4}[source]▶
make it into a system dialog?
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2. LordShredda ◴[30 Mar 25 00:37 UTC] No.43520054[source]▶
But God forbid users learn how to use their device. All of this could be prevented by having the users manually pick the application instead.