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A theoretical way to circumvent Android developer verification

(enaix.github.io)
194 points sleirsgoevy | 11 comments | 31 Oct 25 20:20 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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ianbutler ◴[01 Nov 25 01:06 UTC] No.45778398[source]▶
I think this means we need to rely on web technologies more. PWAs are looking pretty good on mobile devices these days and you can publish any web app you want with no reviewing authority. The web has a bunch of crazy APIs now that let you build crazy things and for everything else you're a hosted server away somewhere that can run more complex jobs.

I believe devices I own should let me do whatever I want with them and I agree that the verification is BS, but I'll work around it in the ways I can which means building more for the web.

If that ever drops the open pretense (since both traffic and trust authority are largely centralized and thus easily controllable) then I'll only write for self hosted linux boxes.

We as individuals can only do so much. We'd need actual organization and some measure of political power to do anything more since normal people do not care about this.

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1. Wowfunhappy ◴[01 Nov 25 01:10 UTC] No.45778424[source]▶
I thought Brent Simmons did a great job laying out why PWAs don't work: https://inessential.com/2025/10/04/why-netnewswire-is-not-we...

The tl;dr is that a PWA implies an app which is based in the cloud. So suddenly you need a server, and you need to store user data, which means costs and dealing with privacy and security.

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2. teraflop ◴[01 Nov 25 01:30 UTC] No.45778524[source]▶
That explanation doesn't really make sense to me.

If something could be built as a native app without depending on a central server, it could also be built as a PWA without a central server. You don't need to store user data centrally at all, just because it's a webapp. You can just have the clients use localStorage or IndexedDB or whatever.

You still have to host the static files for the webapp itself, but that can be made very cheap.

Of course, API feature parity between native and web apps is a separate issue. But the argument about server costs doesn't seem like a good one.

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3. Wowfunhappy ◴[01 Nov 25 01:47 UTC] No.45778611[source]▶
Isn't localStorage limited to 5 MB of data?
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4. teraflop ◴[01 Nov 25 03:14 UTC] No.45778962{3}[source]▶
Sure, but localStorage isn't really ideal for storing large objects anyway, because it forces everything to be stored in one big string-to-string map. It's great for small amounts of data such as user preferences.

There are other APIs that allow you to store binary data directly (which you'll probably want if you're storing large files) and also to use/request larger quotas.

5. porridgeraisin ◴[01 Nov 25 03:16 UTC] No.45778969{3}[source]▶
Yeah, better is the filesystem API
6. koiueo ◴[01 Nov 25 03:31 UTC] No.45779043{3}[source]▶
IndexedDB API is a bit more liberal in that regard
7. twixstar ◴[01 Nov 25 04:25 UTC] No.45779242[source]▶
I read the article, and I'm pretty certain he's talking about a traditional web application. When we speak of PWAs we're thinking of a set of APIs that let a web app behave like a native application. i.e 'installation' + service workers, background sync, IndexDB/FileSystem etc. You could probably make a self-sufficient RSS reader with what's available.
8. charcircuit ◴[01 Nov 25 05:54 UTC] No.45779532[source]▶
Practically you are going to have a server distribute a native application anyways.
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9. Jaxan ◴[01 Nov 25 11:04 UTC] No.45780747[source]▶
Basically every native app has a server behind it to harvest user data nowadays. So I don’t think it’s an argument for why PWAs won’t work.
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10. Wowfunhappy ◴[01 Nov 25 11:51 UTC] No.45780947[source]▶
If the app is made by a company, sure.

It seems to me that, ironically, PWAs are uniquely ill-suited for the type of non-corporate software where distribution outside mainstream channels makes the most sense.

11. poisonborz ◴[01 Nov 25 13:09 UTC] No.45781373[source]▶
Not the developer. This is all additional complexity and less privacy for the user.