Hacker News Reader

Comment by pyeri | Hacker News Reader

Not a very clean solution but if someone (power user) wants to avoid the playstore entirely, they can perhaps do so by simply force-disabling the app (using tools like adb), and then use something like apkmirror[1] or apkpure[2] or aptoide to install the APKs for the apps directly and bypass the store entirely?

[1] https://www.apkmirror.com/

[2] https://m.apkpure.com/

View on HN

Have you looked at Obtainium? https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium It can use apkmirror and apkpure as sources. Along with lots of others.

I'm not particularly security conscious, but this seems very vulnerable to malware.

How so?

How does one verify the integrity of the APK's?

I mean, no more than getting things from apkmirror/apkpure? This is just an easier way of doing it.

Personally I mostly just use it with github, and checking the integrity of those apks is easy enough.

The problem with installing APKs directly is that you probably never update these apps again, as you'd have to manually check if you still have the current version and then download the new APK and install it again. At least that's what happened with the apps I installed that way.

As someone who loathes auto-updating applications of any sort, this is more of a win than a loss.

But it's not just auto-update. I can disable auto-update in the Google Play Store, but at least I easily see if updates are available and can still selectively update apps with the press of one button.

For me, the better solution would be F-Droid. Easy update process but the apps are mostly open-source etc.

Ah, good point. That convenience is not terribly important to me, so I didn't consider it.

fair :)

It is a win for me not to auto-update, as Termux is very precious (to me) and I would hate to see it lose more functionality or completely stop working.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com