Where does App-Lounge get the apps from? Does it still use CleanApk?
I remember that there was an announcement that the apps will be downloades from the official google play store.
Nevertheless, I noticed that Aurora-Store often shows updates much earlier than App-lounge. Even if I explicitely search for updates. And I am not talking about one or two apps but sometimes even 10+.
This suggests that they use different sources and considering that it used CleanApk before, I suspect it still does…
Can someone (maybe from the official team) elaborate the situation?
Not sure why you would get F-Droid apps from (the completely anonymous and un-transparent) cleanapk.org, rather than direct from F-Droid. Best to install the F-Droid app and get apps and updates direct from there.
That feature has been on the Roadmap / ToDo list for a long time. Clearly not a high priority
Agree, have too many reliability issues with App Lounge presently. I’m running Aurora Store and F-Droid instead. Though if they get the reliability issues sorted out with App Lounge, I could go back to it. The idea is great, but the execution is lacking.
Developers don’t visit the forum. Access to the “team” is through Github bug reports. We can solve a lot of user problems as a community, but changes to software have to go through bug reports.
Unfortunately, I lack the skill to get that information from the source code.
In addition, the documentation states that play store apps are fetched from the play store (See quote at the end). However, that seems not the case (as Aurora Store finds updates much earlier than App Lounge). So I was wondering why that happens.
And if it still uses CleanAPK even though something else is communicated, I am wondering why that fact is not transparently communicated.
In the end, CleanAPK seems much less trustworthy than the play store. There is no impressum, and it is not known who operates it. So how do we know it is better than Googles playstore?
Well, we can’t.
but trust can be established cryptographically by checking and comparing the delivered apk’s signature to previously published or elsewhere published.
I keep defending cleanapk because I see the lamenting about playstore fetch issues (dried up token pool, or newer apk packaging, or anything tectonic within Google) and think there comes a day people will be thankful for /e/ to keep around a strategic plan B - but yes, direct f-droid fetches or f-droid custom repo indicies etc
Edit: to answer your original top question @Erim, both the playstore api and cleanapks api are queried for an app. When an app is available with fdroid and gplay, fdroid is shown. The comments in that file do some explaining.
Thank you for the location!
I followed the function call and there is something I don’t understand:
That line calls the function getGplayPackageResult if the PlayStore is enabled (by using Source.PLAY_STORE). (see Line 184 and Line 185)
But as far as I understand Source.PLAY_STORE will always return an empty string (see Source.kt and therefore that path would not be reached?
However some of the function calls and definitions are past what I know. So I am probably missing something…
Nevertheless, it is a double mystery then, how searching for updates with Aurora Store finds updates that App Lounge does not find. Consistantly and independent whether I which one checks for updates first
only a superficial java reader, but those are just enum methods? if you look at isStoreEnabled() it will go through a settings list by key to go boolean, then into a conditional accordingly.
If I want to have a stab at this myself, are there 2-3 appids where you say the lag is obvious?
