←back to thread

Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

(peabee.substack.com)
1192 points gniting | 4 comments | 29 Mar 25 21:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.88s | source
Show context
billfruit ◴[30 Mar 25 02:52 UTC] No.43520832[source]▶
Some apps like Obsidian needs permission to access every file on the device. It is surprising Obsidian isn't getting called out on that very much.
replies(3): >>43520836 #>>43522165 #>>43527715 #
wkat4242 ◴[30 Mar 25 02:53 UTC] No.43520836[source]▶
It's because it stores the files there so you can sync them with other permissions. And also that your notes aren't deleted like they would be if they were stored in the internal app storage. There's more granular options for filesystem access available but if you implement them you limit yourself to the latest Android releases.

According to Exodus it has no trackers and it's an open source app also so you can see what it does (though tbh I didn't check that for the mobile one)

If there's apps to call out there's way worse than Obsidian.

replies(1): >>43520959 #
billfruit ◴[30 Mar 25 03:16 UTC] No.43520959[source]▶
Obsidian isn't open source by most reports.

Surely Obsidian do not to see all files on the device, it only really needs to see the files the user needs it to see.

replies(2): >>43521657 #>>43523540 #
1. wkat4242 ◴[30 Mar 25 12:17 UTC] No.43523540[source]▶
> Obsidian isn't open source by most reports.

On FreeBSD I can build a full copy from source (in fact I have to, there is no binary package). The only issue seems to be licensing, not source availability. Personally I don't care about licensing (I completely ignore it all anyway) and it doesn't stop you from inspecting the source code.

I think Obsidian is a really great package, I just happened to have moved over from OneNote which is horrible Microsoft mediocrity and doesn't even have a Linux app. And the web version is really useless, it needs to refresh every day and it can only search within the same tab, not a whole notebook. Such a mess. Obsidian is so quick and efficient <3 And there is full self-hosted syncing available, which I also use.

replies(1): >>43523988 #
2. billfruit ◴[30 Mar 25 13:23 UTC] No.43523988[source]▶
Obsidian on Android source seems not available. Even generally the reports seems that source is not available.

May be the freebsd build is using some binary library packages?

A cursory search indicates that one of the freebsd 'build-scripts' used for installing obsidian uses a binary package for obsidian itself, not building it from source.

It strange that about obsidian which seems to be rather popular here has many people thinking that it is open source, when it is not.

replies(1): >>43529428 #
3. wkat4242 ◴[31 Mar 25 00:47 UTC] No.43529428[source]▶
You probably mean this one: https://github.com/jgrafton/freebsd-obsidian

That's just a user contributed thing though. It's also just in the official ports collection. There's only a makefile there and some config files for electron (electron is kinda a PITA to compile on FreeBSD because there's no package)

Now, it can update itself automatically but it's all JavaScript. No binaries.

But it's safe enough for me anyway. Especially because the dev community uses it do much. If it did something untoward it would be noticed quickly.

replies(1): >>43530219 #
4. billfruit ◴[31 Mar 25 02:34 UTC] No.43530219{3}[source]▶
The "official" packages seems derived from the Nix build for Obsidian, which is using binary caches to get the Obsidian binary is what I could understand.