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Comment by realusername | Hacker News Reader

Side loading on Android is just a legal argument in courts, its made too complicated for normal users to use it.

Side loading on android is laughably easy, probably easier than installing a program on a Windows device. If we can consider the installers that Windows users need to use to get something as simple as Chrome installed easy to use, downloading an .apk file and opening it and pressing install should seem trivial by comparison.

Even Fortnite gave up on the standalone install, we don't need to speculate, we know this method doesn't scale from past experience.

The only apps I know which are exclusively distributed this way are stuff banned from the store or developer tools.

F-Droid and all the apps there.

As much as I love F-Droid, I'll put it firmly into the developer community as well.

We all know that sideloading is a well-established method used by millions of people to gain access to software that is not available on the dominant stores.

I didn't think branding them as developers would change anything.

Do we? Which common app is exclusively distributed though a standalone install and used by millions? I can't think of a single example which would validate that.

Porn apps, gambling apps.

Isn't that part of the "stuff banned from the store or developer tools" which I said before though? Specifically the banned stuff.

Nobody which has a real choice seems to distribute this way despite lots of potential gains avoiding the Google tax.

Amongst my non-tech-savvy friends, most people have a few sideloaded apps.

Usually hacked apps to remove ads or give them premium features or all power ups for free.

Or sometimes malware that wouldn't pass store review.

What? Are we thinking of the same sideloading? You literally download an app (.apk) like any other file and then open it to start the installation.

OK, and the first time you do it, you get a warning and you have to enable loading apps from 3rd party sources.

You can't just open the apk directly, you have to enable installations for the browser and also go to deep in the settings and go past the scary warnings. That's not possible for the average user, not everybody is a developer.

That's not a viable distribution channel at scale and that's intended.

When I open an .apk file from a new application for the first time, I get a popup that asks me if I want to allow installations from unknown sources for this app, with a button that directly takes me to the setting to toggle this, and then immediately allows me to install the application.

I think he must be talking about the US users (:

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