Comment by advisedwang
1 month ago
Seems like there's a few android equivalents:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.panshen.mo...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid...
And even one that claims to work with sound:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.a1...
EDIT: Actually there's an enormous number of apps like this, many released very recently with similar style etc. Weird.
If you're like me and want an open or non-google-play alternative to these, this is available on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/dev.davidv.motionsickness/
I can't vouch for it (yet) but am going to give it a try!
This one works well. Small, simple, no ads, open source.
It does have weird jumps if you tilt your phone though. Something's not quite right with its algorithm.
It's been rumored that Google would build it into Android for years:
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-motion-cues-pixels-n...
I've tried some of those Android equivalents and they seemed to work on any motion, not on acceleration like the Apple one.
That's physically impossible.
I think what he means is that the iPhone dots seem to move based on vehicle acceleration and deceleration, whereas the android ones use all phone motion.
If I move my iPhone around in my hands the dots don't move, but on my android they do (ie are simulating a stable horizon as the phone tilts, immediately). I don't know which is more effective. I thought the iPhone one was broken at first and didn't have the best results from it, I'm hoping the less-subtle android ones will work better for me.
Edit: I read from the docs that Apple's works best when facing forward, and I was often sitting sideways on a train
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Yeah, probably could have phrased that better.
They are using completely different approaches. Apple seems to be mostly using the accelerometer, to draw dots and visualize inertia. The Android apps are using the gyroscope, to draw a horizon.
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I've found Kinestop to be much more effective and immediate than Apple's, highly recommend.
Same, +1 for KineStop.
Be careful with these apps. The permissions they ask for are quite expansive.
You're correct, but there's a good reason: they need to draw over other apps to do what they do. So it's not necessarily nefarious. But it is an excellent reason to build the functionality into the OS.
(The reason the permission is so dangerous is they can trick you into pressing the wrong button by relabeling dangerous text with innocuous text.)
The presence of a good reason is exactly why you have to be so careful. Creating an app with a legitimate reason to request permission, only to also abuse it, is a great strategy for an attacker.
Absolutely, which is why I really appreciate the network permission on GrapheneOS. It makes me more comfortable to allow other permissions knowing no data can be exfiltrated.
It's wild to me that "internet access" is not revokable or even displayed in the Play Store in stock Android. It's such a huge security and privacy concern, even if most apps semi-legitimately need it.
Or, it would be wild, if it weren't fairly obvious that this is just Google protecting their mobile ad revenue.
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>no data can be exfiltrated.
Well, that depends on the other apps you have installed. Unless things have changed in newer versions, apps with no networking can still do IPC, so any app can for example use Cronet to make network requests via Google Play Services, regardless of the toggle, as long as sandboxed Google Play Services has network permission.
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Network permissions could be used to avoid ads on Android. The horror!
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Funnily enough, the Huawei P30 Pro I was using previously (back when these things could run Android with GMS) had network toggles for all apps. They weren't in the permissions menu, as they were meant for data saving purposes but you had the additional granularity of choosing if an app could access mobile data or Wi-Fi separately.
That solved the problem of ads in games much better than DNS :D
Any self-respecting OS has packet filtering, this isn't unique to or surprising from GrapheneOS. On my Samsung/OneUI I use AFWall+ which sets iptables rules iirc
KineStop at least claims to collect no user data, and has no ads: https://play.google.com/store/apps/datasafety?id=com.urbandr...
> EDIT: Actually there's an enormous number of apps like this, many released very recently with similar style etc. Weird.
It's mostly just Devs copying apples feature, nothing too weird about it
You may be wrong here and Apple seems to be the one copying the feature. Someone mentioned KineStop in this thread and that's been around since 2018.
Tried the first one and it doesn't seem to work (dots don't respond to motion), and is absolutely riddled with intrusive ads. The one that another commenter left which is on F-droid is much better
Read the reviews on that first one. They seem to have gone over to the dark side.
I found my Xiaomi 13 (Hyper OS 3) also has this feature.