I mostly use apps installed from F-Droid, so I’m not sure how I’ll use the phone, except that it’s sometimes required as a contact method.
I mostly use apps installed from F-Droid, so I’m not sure how I’ll use the phone, except that it’s sometimes required as a contact method.
Depends on your comfort with CLI tools. Here’s the process (assumes Windows):
set PATH=%PATH%;C:\your\path\here\<- Temporary, just for the current sessionsetx /M path "%path%;C:\your\path\here\"<- PermanentOn your device, go to
Settings -> Aboutand look forBuild Numberit can sometimes be buried inSoftware InformationTap
Build Numberrepeatedly until a message appearsYou are now a developerYou should now have a new
Developer optionsmenu item somewhere in your settings. Sometimes it’s top level, sometimes it’s buried underAdditional SettingsorAdvanced Settingsor the likeMake sure
USB Debuggingis turned onConnect the device over USB
Back on WIndows type:
adb devicesadb devicesagain. You should see your device listedadb install C:/path/to/app.apk<- ifadb devicesonly returns one deviceadb -s <device_id> install C:/path/to/app.apk<- specific deviceYou can install updates the same way, just download the updated APK and add the
-rflagadb install -r C:/path/to/app.apkMore useful adb commands
So no
Most of that stuff is automatable - except the bit about activating Developer mode and USB Debugging on the device (steps 3 to 6) which only needs to be done once per device - so I expect we will soon see several nice GUI tools that automate the rest and eventually we might even just see stuff that talks directly to the phone over USB via libusb and using the same protocol as ADB, so installing the Android Platform Tools won’t at all be needed.
But yeah, at this point it requires people to at the very least be familiar with using the command line.
Someone suggested elsewhere (I can’t remember where) that Shizuku could be messed around with to allow installation without any computer’s involvement at all, to emulate
adbon the phone itself. Would you know anything about this workaround?A quick look through its documentation shows that it instructs the user how to go through a subset of the instructions the original user provided (or an alternative set of instructions if using Android 11+ as there it can use a different mechanism) plus a few more, in order to run a Shizuku service as user “adb”.
From then on, that Shizuku service can then be used by other apps to do everything the “adb” user can, including installing and updating applications.
So I guess it could be used by something like F-Droid to go around Google’s new mechanism to close down app installs.
For Android < 11 it’s is no more non-expert friendly than the instructions already provided by the original user, though it’s better in Android 11+ as there it’s all interacting with menus on the Android side (see here under Start Shizuku)
That’s why I posted it. So people can decide for themselves. Doesn’t seem that bad to me, but then I’m a dev, so it’s really hard to judge what a non dev would be comfortable with
yes actually, it’s just not that practical.
which i think might be the entire point anyway.