F-Droid

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F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform. The client makes it easy to browse, install, and keep track of updates on your device.

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Are Webapps in 2023 on android a way to go? (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I mostly use Webapps (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.tobykurien.webapps/) for access to socials and have quick links to services where I don't want to login every time. Don't know if there's an alternative way to do this beside use apps like Insular or other App Isolation like, don't even know why browser don't do this by create profiles or container. I mean apps are just web container most of the time, and I know the reason why service provider want let you just use their app, but what's the browser excuse? What's your approach to this considering that Webapps application is outdated?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Oh there is a APK, when using Chrome or Samsung Internet (installed via Samsung Store). The store is generating and signing the APK. Only with such a signed APK OS Level functions will work. A good example is the share_target functionality. If this is enabled by the PWA and installed as APK, you can share text and links with the PWA. The same applies for PWAs on the Desktop, for example with Edge on Windows.

If you use the same PWA with Firefox or Samsung Internet installed from Play Store, it can only add a shortcut on the home screen, without share_target functionality.

Additionally some service worker functionality is very basic on some browsers. On one hand this is bad for functionality, but good for privacy. Assume a PWA uses a background sync service for example. This can exchange a lot data and sync it with any target in the web, without user consent. This is only a small part where service workers do not respect users privacy.

If you look at that we come in fast steps to this insane and total crazy manifest v3 webextensions. They are completely privacy nightmare at least how Chromium designed them. The Mozilla implementation is a lot better, but incompatible to Chromium.

Welcome to the ugly world of new web technologies.