google VS Obtainium

yes, I practice this. however its quite difficult, as most package sites dont surface this information. so I end up comparing the go.sum of god knows how many packages:

https://github.com/3052/google/blob/main/go.sum

of course its a balancing game, because if you can add one import and save 1000 lines of code, it might be worth it. I am probably the outlier though. I would guess most people just find the module with the most stars, and turn off their brain after that, regardless if that module is a bloated piece of crap.

> But the only way to get apps from the Google Play Store without installing the entire set of Google Play Services is this

No, that's not true:

https://github.com/4cq2/googleplay

Just FYI, there's an Android app called Obtainium that lets you add Github (and a few other) repos to it. Obtanium will then check those repos for updates and install the new APK for you. Its pretty slick for people that prefer to get their APKs direct from the dev.

https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium

While F-Droid will manage updates to anything installed through it's shop, you aren't stuck manually checking and updating things if you go decide to download APK releases directly. Obtanium is essentially a tracker/updater for managing your APKs from a broad range of sources. At the moment I'm only using it for a Bluesky client I grabbed off GitHub but I can see replacing the F-Droid shop with it once I've really settled on my app choices. Something on the list to investigate later.

LinkSheet FFShare Obtainium

A trick from another forum: there's an app named Obtainium which can monitor and update almost everything not installed from the regular store(s).

Obtainium (version 1230): Get Android App Updates Directly From the Source.

https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium Getting updates for the non Google Play Apps

"Due to their process of building apps, apps in the official F-Droid repository often fall behind on updates. F-Droid maintainers also reuse package IDs while signing apps with their own keys, which is not ideal as it gives the F-Droid team ultimate trust. Additionally, the requirements for an app to be included in the official F-Droid repo are less strict than other app stores like Google Play, meaning that F-Droid tends to host a lot more apps which are older, unmaintained, or otherwise no longer meet modern security standards."[2]

[1]: https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium#readme

I like this app for interfacing with fdroid: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.machiav3lli.fdroid/

I also like this CLI for bulk downloading apks for initializing a new device over adb: https://github.com/mvdan/fdroidcl

To get releases faster there is obtanium: https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium

``` import os import json import subprocess import requests obtanium_url = "https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium/releases/latest" app_data_dir = "/Android/data/dev.imranr.obtainium/files/app_data/" sources_file = os.path.join(app_data_dir, "sources.json")