Comment by swatcoder
7 months ago
There's going to be loud, destructive friction when a 10-15 year old platform reduces the functionality available to its apps. Security models do need to evolve, but Android was introduced as a platform suitable for deep personal customization with few mandatory boundaries.
This was a competitive distinction against Apple's closed "safety first" platform design in iOS and led to an ecosystem of applications that took advantage of all these extra possibilities. As Google tightens its grip over the platform and pursues more aggressive limitations for security reasons (and whatever other ones), it's inevitable that many publishers and users are going to be deeply frustrated when the features that made their device theirs are no longer available.
(And incidentally, the restrictions on the Apple side have nothing to do with the application development language. I don't know where you would get that idea from or how to even make sense of it. It's just the nature of Apple's original design philosophy for iOS, where apps were deeply isolated and had no more capabilities than were necessary. Largely, Apple has been gradually adding capabilities to heavily-restricted apps over the lifetime of iOS, while Google has been moving in the opposite direction because they each started from opposite ends of the design space.)
Android is fine. There are many, many complaint syncing applications in the wild that use the sanctioned APIs.
The truth is Syncthing doesn’t have the resources to keep up with Android platform changes and Google’s review process.
Two examples that recently bothered me: * I can't grant an application permission to read and store files in existing folders. This means I can't store file transfers through KDE connect in my Downloads or Documents folder. * I can't access the Android/ folder without a PC at hand. This means I'm unable to mod Android games without my laptop. Not a big deal - but it's still frustrating.
4 years ago, there would have been zero friction for these use cases.
> I can't grant an application permission to read and store files in existing folders. This means I can't store file transfers through KDE connect in my Downloads or Documents folder.
That's not true at all though, `ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT_TREE` gives app permanent access to shared directory using the file chooser dialog. It needs no extra privileges or permissions outside user choice of dir.
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Correct. A big part of the issue here is that Syncthing's Android app is more of a wrapper over the desktop app than an actual native Android implementation, so a lot of the code assumes the availability of certain features (like full filesystem access, and the ability to run continuously in the background[1]) that are suboptimal to have on a modern mobile OS.
Android has been pushing to restrict the usage of such features for a while. It sounds like now they finally pushed hard enough that Syncthing broke.
As a longtime Syncthing user I'm personally fine with this. I think its fair for Google to demand a certain minimum bar of polish for apps on the Play Store. I'll continue to use Syncthing on F-Droid so long as its feature set continues to make it superior to those more polished alternatives. Hopefully the absence of Syncthing on the Play Store will create an opportunity for another file syncing app to fill that void, or incentivize contributors to eventually bring Syncthing up to snuff to get back on the Play Store. (Or possibly, incentivize Google to develop tools to make it easier for low-budget apps like Syncthing to meet their quality standards.)
[1]: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-android/issues/1048#i...
Why is Android moving so fast?
Most changes seem to come down to "the sandbox APIs aren't sufficiently isolated, let's lock down the sandbox further".
Most file system API changes aren't exactly recent, they're just inconvenient. Most changes were introduced in Android 11, with some going back all the way to Android 4.4. App developers tried to use workarounds, exceptions, and special permissions to work around API restrictions as long as they could and now the holes in the sandbox are finally being closed.
The Syncthing for Android app hasn't had much development in the past few years, so years of minor changes have added up to tech debt that's (too) expensive to fix.
SAF was first released as part of Android 4.4, back in 2013.
This change is a decade old :)
Google's app process requires active developers and just makes it plain impossible to make an app and have it work with minimal updates. You're not allowed to "feature complete" an app and just exist. Every few months they threaten me to upgrade this, upgrade that, fill out this form, submit this info and I eventually gave up this year and they've already deleted my developer account and removed the app from search.
I feel like theyr'e doing this just to minimize storage costs or something lol. Android dev sucks for a hobbyist
It sucks for small software entrepreneurs too, as the cost of keeping a trustworthy developer on retainer for that kind of maintenance work can easily eat the modest revenue for a good niche app. And iOS is fundamentally no better.
It's why both App Stores are now dominated by corporatized growth chasers compromising their UX with endless feature treadmills and pushing for subscription IAP to fund it all.
Building a personal/family lifestyle business from the long tail on a few good niche apps, sold at a modest and respectful upfront cost, is pretty much a thing of the past now; and all the software we loved has been delisted or sold to those corporatized growth chasers.
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have you considered publishing on f-droid ?
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