App store - first feedback

I just got App, /e/'s new app store.
I think I gonna love it! The design language is simple and clear.
But as our job here - as observers - is to give feed back, So, I’ll start with that:

No comment yet about usability, as installing and updating is not working yet - at least, not for me.

Searching apps

  • What I love: you search an app and in the list of search results you get right away the privacy rating for each apps.

  • What could be better: When I search for “fdroid”, no results are found, I really need to type “f-droid”. I think it’d be good if searching becomes a bit more flexile.

When I am searching for “messenger”, I’ll be probably interested in messenger apps such as Whatsapp, Snapchat, Telegram or Facebook Messenger, but the search result show basically only products related to the latter one. It’d be good if searching become a bit more flexile. But maybe the more relevant results will come all alone once many more people are searching and installing apps…

Availability of apps. Maybe that’s in process but there are quite some from our suggested apps that are not included (yet) : Applications in /e/ "app store"

Security and privacy. For the moment the app store does not feel (yet) like the app store of an operating system that is putting special priority on security and privacy. It could make sense to allow users to find security and privacy enabling apps as well as Open Source Software much easier.

  • Like: With its own categories on the home screen: "Top Security, privacy and open source apps" and "Latest Security, privacy and open source apps.
  • Or: with a simple indicator for each app in the search results, earmarking it with a logo as open source.
  • And: Add an option in the app store settings permitting exclusively open source apps going to be displayed as results.

Ratings. Really great idea to include privacy and energy consumption.

  • For the moment I still have a bit of difficulties to understand how you come up with the privacy scoring. Example: Facebook 0.0, Facebook lite 5.0. but Frost (open source Facebook wrapper) 5.0, Wire 5.0, Signal 5.0, Telegram 5.0.

Explanations. I think, once you are on the page for a specific app and you are thinking about installing it, it could be good to make the information provided a bit more snappy. Examples:

  • Licence. "GPL-3.0-only", better write "Open Source (GPL-3.0-only)". Or alternatively, when clicking on the word "Licence" to get more detailed information what different licence models are possible.
  • Privacy analysis. Very good and easy to reach. I’d love to have next to the terms “Permissions” and “Trackers” indicated right away how many (the number of) Permissions and Trackers are required by that app.

Otherwise: Bravo and thanks so much.

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Something else that I noted:

  • It would be good to indicate not only the publisher’s name but maybe country and incl. contact details. That could be done in the “Information” section. This info can be helpful to better identify (among apps with very similar names), the one I am really interested in.
  • Equally: a publishers website if available (helpful for Open Source applications).
  • Equally: the app name (could be shown when clicking on the version number).
  • Unwanted apps. Will there be a ‘report’ button to notify for instance abusive apps. And linked to that issue: Is there a charta what apps have to repect in order to be integrated into the app store (non-homophobic, non-racist…) and who will be ‘curating’ the app store?
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Hi,

App store looks good.

First thing, I looked for the settings and disabled “Automatically install updates”.

For the Apps :

  • It’s very good to have a privacy and energy consumption !

I like to have easily all the permissions required in one place.
But, sometimes, it’s not very comprehensive.
For exemple :
What does mean “RECEIVE”, receive what ?
Or if you look to facebook permissions, there are 5 times “ACCESS” and 3 times “RECEIVE”. What does it mean ?

  • I love to have Trackers ! That is very usefull. Thanks.

  • It would be great to have the ability to sort in search, by Privacy rating, for exemple.

  • Some apps have “unknown” for the editor. For exemple 2048 from group Secuso.

  • It could be great to touch the name of the editor to have all the apps from this editor.

For the store :

  • I looked for a place to see, the apps already installed, but didn’t find one.
    On an app property page, it see the app is installed as I can open it, but nowhere, I saw the list of installed apps.

  • On the update page, it could be usefull to have a “check now” button.

Thanks. Great job.

3 Likes

Hi @ralxx,

Thank you for your feedbacks. I created corresponding issues:

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Thanks @rhunault for the ‘translation’ of my feedback into issues.

The point “Make it easier to find…” represents well what I had in mind. Just as an addon: It would be good to include Open Souce and Privacy as criteria to rank search queries: I do not know according to what criteria to list results for search queries in Apps. I suppose one criteria is how often apps have been successfully inststalled. Open Souce and Privacy could be a perfect criteria to rank an app higher.
(For now when I search for ‘Messenger’ or ‘Chat’ apps like Telegram, Signal or Delta are not listed at all, no K9 when searching for ‘Email’).

And: Ideally, Open Souce and Privacy apps (when they are listed as a result of a search uery) would a slightly different background color to be easily recognizable (see image).

Thank you for the proposal, added to the issue. :wink:

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