I know its new, so am I to lemmy, but I was curious if there is any plans to release Sync Ultra outside of the Play Store.
The features sound awesome and want to support lemmy but not everyone has Google Play/iOS.
An option like threema has to buy a license key and download the .apk would be ideal and I’d be all aboard!
I feel like the pool of Lemmy users who are willing to use a closed source app but not use the play store has to be incredibly small.
I feel there are a lot of custom rom users here which don’t have play services built-in or its hard to implement
Yeah, but I feel like those people are mostly going to gravitate towards FOSS clients
If they are decent, there is a limit of pain each Foss person can take
Choice and variety are important. If you only have one option/style, it will only take that one option failing for it to ruin things for everyone. What if Google Play somehow blocks an attack that foss-downloader apps are exposed to? What if the opposite happened?
Also, not having choices means that the official “choice” being made might not always be to your liking.
I think the amount of non Play Store/App Store users overall is very small. With GraphineOS at least I can restrict the app.
But I bet we skew towards the “have considerable amounts of disposable income” of the economic spectrum.
I’ve been asking for this for a while.
Same here. The only answers I find are “it’s an android thing” which tells me absolutely nothing.
In app purchases without Google Play is a pain. I understand why the paid versions are Google Play only. It sucks, but FOSS Android doesn’t have a good model for paid apps that doesn’t immediately lead to mass piracy.
In my opinion it’d be ethical to crack the software with revanced as long as you keep paying for your subscription (or if you buy lifetime), that’d be my solution. That’s illegal (and, if you’re not paying, unethical) though, requires some reverse engineering skills, and may require some trickery to keep the cloud features working.
Yeah, makes sense. Even if there was an option to buy the lifetime and download I would. But its a valid point it’d be too easy for people to share it then.
Thats why I think a licensing method would be best, like Threema has. You can download the app but can’t use it without a license key. Even still, it would be a lot of work.
Just disappointed I can’t support it, but its also my decision to not have the play store 🤷
“I want to take the Google route”
- Dev on discord.
What does that even mean?
That means he won’t release the app outside of the playstore.
I would also love to see a non Google play version of Sync.
As someone with a Huawei device (no Google Play Services) I’d love that too.
Ideally, a way of paying for a license key that unlocks all features would be the ideal. And maybe it’d be an advantage for the dev, we could pay him directly instead of a middle-man.
Infinity for lemmy has been released on izzyondroid/f-droid. Pretty much exactly like its reddit counterpart in features and was my preference over sync. Si im happy it works for lemmy :)
It’s extremely space wasting for anyone using sync in compact. About half as many posts per page. Unusable for me.
Sweet, thanks for the info I’ll check it out!
Is google play required for the app to function, or would sideloading the apk from a mirror site work?
Play services and play store are required for purchases. You can try to sideload and see if that works.
Aurora Store would probably be your best bet, honestly.
But you can’t buy Sync Ultra without google services
Isn’t that just a different front for the playstore?
It is, it’s not the same as fdroid
Is the code open? Because if it is someone can produce the fdroid version…
It’s not
