You Want to Visit the UK? You Better Have a Google Play or App Store Account
heltweg.org
heltweg.org
You can search "UK ETA", find the main page: https://www.gov.uk/eta
Then click "Apply for an ETA" and you're brought to this page: https://www.gov.uk/eta/apply
Then there are options for the Apple App Store and also the Google Play Store, with a helpful note: "If you cannot download the app on your phone, you should apply online." Which then has a link to start the online process below.
>> It's really not that many hoops
> That's... What the article is about
I have no idea what you're trying to say here.
(Edit: ah, no, I see: the next steps are quite dark-pattern pushing you towards the app. Yeah, that's quite shitty)
The only point I can see here is that once you are in the app it keeps encouraging you to use it and doesn't keep suggesting you might like to use the online portal instead. But I don't understand the initial premise about not using app stores. If the author didn't want to use an app store, why did he download an app instead of going to gov.uk?
"The easiest way to apply is on the app"
"By applying on the UK ETA app you're more likely to: complete your application quicker; get a faster decision".
"You should apply online if: you cannot download the app on your phone; the person you are applying for is not with you"
All of these are things you see over the course of the THREE (!) pages between https://www.gov.uk/eta and the actual start of the online form, https://apply-for-an-eta.homeoffice.gov.uk/apply/electronic-...
It really gives you the runaround and makes it very clear than the non-app flow is a weird, second-tier option.
They are definitely using a dark pattern to push people towards the app, but it is possible to apply online.
The "Start now" button ought to skip all that.
Dodging the google ads & promoted search results that take you to clones of the application form that charge 2-3x is the hardest part.
Go to https://www.gov.uk/eta/apply
Click "Start Now" under apply online section (that is distinct from the app section)
Get taken to page saying to get the app, scroll to bottom and click small link "I cannot apply on the app"
Get taken to a help getting the app page, scroll to the bottom and click small link "Continue application online"
Finally be in right place
It's not like they are getting some long term benefit of having the app on your phone. It's just because WebNFC can't read passports.
> It's not like they are getting some long term benefit of having the app on your phone. It's just because WebNFC can't read passports.
The same way we complain that Facebook, Tiktok, etc gather too much data from app install, so can a government agency.
Why give up more information than is strictly necessary, so you can tap your passport on your phone? Not convincing imo.
The article is definitely a bit over the top, it is just my personal blog and me trying to write a bit more funny to counter the bland LLMs. Your opinion can vary on if I have succeeded or overshot on that.
It's worse than that. Many municipalities and schools etc only post public notices to Facebook/Twitter or some similarly hostile environment.
> The article is definitely a bit over the top, it is just my personal blog and me trying to write a bit more funny to counter the bland LLMs.
But. Your headline contradicts your story. The only excuse for that (and it is weak) is when writers don't get to write their own headlines (this is common) and the editors who do write the headlines are corrupted for clicks or drama (but I repeat myself).
This way lies madness, the road to hell, etc.
This is not the way of the honest writer.
I'll push back on one point: when I said "contradicts your story", I meant that the headline and the story (article content) are in conflict. So you do have a story/article, and yes your headline is squishy enough to argue misinterpretation, but it's clearly not honest.
So the tension is that the boring but honest headline of "Applying for a UK visa without a smartphone requires a few extra clicks that are easy to overlook" doesn't serve the (apparently higher) purpose of drawing people in.
I was expecting outrage in your article, but I only found inconvenience. That's manipulative in my opinion, and I would avoid reading future articles on your site based on that experience. Do as thou wilt, obviously, but that's my take!
Your topic (smartphone/appstore requirements) is a real issue! I'm glad to hear that the UK hasn't gone all-in, yet.
1. The first hyperlink in the Overview section takes you to this page: https://www.gov.uk/eta/apply
2. Now click the big green button marked "Start now" in the "Apply online" section
3. Then click the link at the bottom of the page marked "I cannot apply on the UK ETA app"
4. Then click again "Continue application online"
And now you can start.
Realistically this is probably 2 clicks too many and, whilst on the face of it it's not that much effort, it might be enough to bamboozle the tech phobic/less capable - of which there are still many (and not just older generations, either), or your grasp of English isn't great. There's just a bit too much going on - too much content - with some of these pages, and I don't really see a good reason to bury the links all the way at the bottom the way they are at present.
> I don't really see a good reason to bury the links all the way at the bottom the way they are at present.
I'd not be surprised if the number of issues when using the app is significantly lower than doing it online. Particularly if lots of people are using phones to visit these sites anyway.
100% of smart phone apps are bad. There are NO exceptions to this, by virtue of the fact that you must own and use the smartphone to access them. We stand to lose a lot when we finally lose this fight. (and I'm sure we will)
I once published an app to help people track their budget. It didn't even request any permissions, not even internet. How is it bad?
I wrote an app for a university to let researchers track bat sightings in caves and upload it to a database for population tracking. How is it bad?
Should we get mad at books for requiring you to know how to read? Should we get mad at stores for requiring you to use currency to pay?
I was so stunned I was like, surely this must violate some government rule around universal access and service? But I guess not.
What's more, the app is so buggy reddit is filled with support cases of people not being able to complete the process in time and sometimes having to forfeit hundreds of dollars worth of tickets: https://www.reddit.com/r/AusVisa/comments/1jh2olm/having_an_...
The advice literally boils down to, some models of iPhones don't work so go borrow a friend's phone of a different model and pray that they can process your application for you.
If you are unable to use the app, you can apply online through ImmiAccount for another visa that suits your needs.
This triggered me because I've been to Australia tens of times (albeit not since 2023) and have always used my Immi account. I just logged in to check and sure enough I can still lodge an application there, no app required. Ironically I would prefer an app and will use it for my next visits because I've always found the Immi site cumbersome. But the site is still there.
It is not a very good system. They do seem to respond fast tho!
As problematic as it is to need a contractual relationship with a US company to interact with the UK Government, I'm sure that if you spoke with someone in the Government Digital Service who was involved with this, they'd tell you it was the least bad option.
Generally, this is called a vassal state. Better to keep overlords happy.
It does seem scarily likely, but he still has a few years to really screw things up before we get there. Fingers crossed.
Without a large-scale cock-up, I don't see Starmer as inspiring enough to stop him unfortunately. Lets hope someone else steps up to the plate with a bit more charisma.
About the only thing that can stop them is the Tories holding onto relevance enough to split their vote again.
I have lived in several parts of the UK, have friends in many more. I currently live in a very white village. I am visible ethnic minority. I see no sign of racism. I know of a few overt racists at second or third hand (they know someone who knows someone I know).
There is lots of racism on social media, but even most of that is in reaction to ragebait posts, some posted by people who are not even British.
> Reform would get in and throw out all the "undesirables" (basically anyone without a British Passport at first, sure they won't stop there)
I think that is an exaggerated view from a distance. I see no evidence they can do that, or want to. At the time of the Brexit campaign Farage said he wanted skilled immigrants (he gave the example of Indian doctors immigrating in the 1970s as the wort of thing he wanted). Nor can the country afford to lose skilled people. Its worth remembering that Reform would not agree to what Elon Musk wanted in return for funding so I think its safe to assume Reform would not be as extreme as the current US government.
I am of foreign birth, as is my younger daughter (she was born abroad) and I am not particularly worried. I would worry if Rupert Lowe's Restore party started making gains, or Ben Habib's Advance party.
> I'm really not sure how likely them attaining power
They are doing well in the polls now but my feeling is they are peaking. Letting on too many Conservative defectors makes them look at lot less of an anti-establishment party (a huge part of their appeal) and they are becoming too extreme (I think in reaction to the splash, mostly on social media) made by Advance and Restore (one of those is what Elon Musk endorses, so that gives you an idea where they are).
The net immigration numbers are falling!
I disagree about the public. Its very clear that the opposition to immigration is almost entirely about small boats and illegal entry.
As for skin colour, of the tiny number or racists I have heard of in real life, one comment repeated back to me made it clear the person involved preferred at least some Asians (those with skills etc.) to Eastern Europeans.
No, that's just the current talking point.
A decade ago, small boats not in the news, somehow managed to still be a big talking point on Brexit campaign. Worse, part of the Brexit campaign was scare-mongering that the EU had made it so the UK had no control over its borders, no control over its immigration laws, and even had one poster further scare-mongering that the UK would be forced to allow in the entire population of Turkey* even though Turkey wasn't actually in the EU nor did anyone think it would get in any time soon and the UK had a veto on expansion anyway (plus the more fundamental pretentiousness in thinking they'd want to come en-masse anyway, given that Turkish people are like everyone else, in that almost none of them really care for the idea of moving to the UK).
Even for "unlawful entry" of asylum seekers who were still allowed to lawfully claim asylum, the UK was part of the Dublin III system, which oh-so-conveniently meant the UK could argue that all the other countries most people would need to go through to get to the UK should have taken them first, to which I'd like to say this:
J'ai obtenu la note D au GCSE de français, et pourtant j'ai étudié la langue à l'école. À votre avis, comment un demandeur d'asile lambda originaire de l'ancien Empire britannique va-t-il s'en sortir?
Most asylum seekers do, in fact, stop at the first safe country; the UK has always only had a tiny fraction of the total, and loses its collective mind anyway.
* Note my careful phrasing and also their careful phrasing in this specific ad; they note the population to give the implication, I did not say they said all of them will come in**, only that they said all of them must be allowed to, when EU membership never did any such thing: https://www.wsj.com/articles/with-brexit-turkey-loses-its-bi... and https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2018/07/facebook-relea...
** apparently one of the "senior Brexiteers" did, but I can't trivially find any actual citation and don't care to put in the effort to look harder
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/22/reform-uk-i...
The risk profile for "I have indefinite leave to remain" has moved from "this won't be an issue at all" to "we have no trust in the government on this" in a few short years.
Profoundly depressing
It is not a matter of trust. Unless you are a citizen your right to remain in a country is always subject to the approval of the government and rules can change. it is the point of the distinction between "indefinite leave to remain" and citizenship.
I have noticed that only white people commit to living in the UK without becoming citizens. Sindhu Vee is very funny about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8DNgi5Tok4&t=90s
I have plenty of friends who otherwise would apply, and ILR should be sufficient in a democratic government following social and political contracts.
The UK will help circumvent this for current British citizens when they acquire new citizenship in one of those countries (eg. America famously makes you hand over your old passport, but the UK will happily ship you a replacement in an unmarked envelope), but that doesn't really work so well in the other direction.
Alas, you've not discovered a hidden pattern, except maybe a hidden pattern in the kinds of people you socialize with. Chinese nationals cannot hold dual citizenship, and renouncing their Chinese citizenship creates very serious complications, including around property and inheritance when parents die, which you would be aware of if you knew any Chinese person well enough to have had this conversation with them.
Based on gov.uk immigration system statistics data and tables, among those with indefinite leave to remain, the most likely to seek citizenship are British Overseas Citizens, Austrians and Lithuanians. The least likely are Moroccans and Venezuelans.
Weird in the Venezuelans case, as there is no restrictions for double nationality and having only Venezuelan citizenship doesn't have many advantages. I would guess that it is because most Venezuelans living there already have an European passport due to parents/grandparent, so no need/can't get a third
If they are permanently settled in the UK surely it would be better to have British citizenship rather than that of a country they do not live in?
The nationalities listed are all very small groups in the UK. maybe they are not really permanently settled? Someone who moves somewhere for work might end up living there a decade (and in the UK that would mean getting indefinite leave to remain) and then returning.
Could you link to the stats showing that? What about all the other countries? What is the position of BNOs?
Indefinite leave to remain is not the same as permanently settled - there is a difference between long term and the rest of your life.
My personal reason is that I travel a lot, so I never meet the physical presence within the country requirements.
- cost: ~2k
- time: 2 exams
- paperwork required to keep other nationalities in some cases
- after feb 2026, you can only re-enter the UK with a British passport (more cost) or with extra paperwork to enable your other passport (more costs ~500)
The same goes for the cost of British citizenship. once you have it its just the cost of renewing passports (about £100/decade at current rates) for the rest of your life. That £2,000 is much less than the cost of renewing some types or residence visa and gives you the security of being a citizen.
They might tell you that, but that does not mean its true. IMO they do not care about dependence on American services. It is very much Somebody Else's Problem.
They'd tell you that, but they would be lying.
You are not eligible for an ETA if you are a British citizen.
On first glance, that sounds fairly common sense, as if you're a citizen, why would you need/want one? But there's a wrinkle...
It means that British citizens with dual (or more) nationality must have a UK passport, and must travel into the UK using it, and cannot use their other-nationality passport(s) like they used to be able to do.
Which means paying for a British passport if you didn't have one before.
(There is an alternative, but it's silly money, £589 vs £95 for an adult passport).
And IIRC, the whole thing is because of the new electronic border system that's being introduced or something like that.
This is a pretty common practice for most countries.
Why? What legitimate purpose does this serve?
France had a weird issue recently about the media talking for ages about someone who committed a crime while the state had asked for him to be deported months before on the basis of his foreign passport and it took weeks for someone to finally notice that the guy was actually French. It made the police looks clownish.
I've seen claims this technique was actually recommended by the British consulate, no idea if that's true.
Oh that's an interesting little loophole that might be a[nother] reason. A handful of EU member states disallow dual citizenship, so those taking advantage of "EU and British" might be impacted by this.
eg South Africa allows dual but you’re not allowed to use the other passport at border or within country.
I can kinda understand it from give perspective. Harder to track people when they switch constantly. People flying in on one passport and out with the other etc
Where previously these women could at least travel to their birth country to visit dying relatives on their foreign passport, they are now locked out waiting two months for a £600 entitlement certificate. Meanwhile, non-British visitors can just pay £16 for an ETA on this whizzy app.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/16/border-rule...
It's just take digging in government rules and arguing. As long as it's not the first UK passport it's doable.
My friend went round and round and sent many documents back and forth for over a year trying to renew her British passport, to no eventual avail. UK authorities were extremely unsympathetic and unhelpful. The offending "misnamed" foreign passport was long expired and French authorities required a valid British passport to renew it - she was left without any passport at all for over a year, until the French took pity and provided an alternate path to renew her French passport.
I agree though that the title is too much and less funny in retrospect, I wish I chose a more tame one. Humorous annoyance on personal blog posts translates badly to submissions here.
The UK left the EU a while ago. UK citizens traveling to the EU will require an ETIAS authorization which also comes with an app at the end of the year, but that's not live yet. The website that's been prepared so far does mention the ability to file online, though.
I am not a native speaker, so my interpretation might be wrong, but I tried to evoke the semi-serious but good-natured "You went to the bakery? You better brought me a snack as well!" meaning with "better have", not the "must have" meaning.
/s igned someone very much opposed to having to install an app to travel to and from my partner's country in the EU. I'm decreasingly enjoying 'the future'.
This stuff isn't as rigid as they make it out to be.
For example Ryanair, who went 'fully digital' last year and stopped accepting self-printed passes, will provide a free of charge boarding pass at the airport so long as you have already checked-in online before arriving at the airport.
They've a safety record that's beyond reproach, and where else are you going to get flights for ~€50 across Europe?
If nothing else they disrupted a predatory pricing cartel. I'm old enough to remember when a flight England->Ireland or Spain->Portugal could be the guts of €300 or €400. Now we have a complete revision on pricing and it paved the way for multiple good budget carriers like Transavia.
Not to mention Michael O'Leary being an absolute rogue with his PR - particularly the recent spat with Elon Musk
https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/01/21/big-idiot-boost...
Native apps make it much smoother (or just possible at all / with much lower friction) than webapps to do things like taking photos, scanning NFC, doing payments etc. (which the visa apps are doing)
Apps are also natural "storage point" for data, and a "bookmark on the phone" (the latter is partly due to vendors not making it easy to add non-apps to your home page on the phone).
As much as I hate the push to apps for things like Reddit for monetisation purposes (and I don't install such apps), in many cases for specialized apps the experience is actually much better in the app.
And as you can read in op's article, there's a web fallback possible.
The main drawback for me is that apps take 100s of MBs those days.
you can use only one bank card per person - the payment would be rejected w/o any reason given, so going through the process few times to no avail. Getting visas for the family would require multiple bank cards.
I don't get the problem with my credit card. Might just be switching cards until you find one that isn't crap.
Athens is another one that got me last year.
In all seriousness this is likely the exact scenario here. Same thing with covid track and trace and p much any current government it contract. Minister receives backhand to push through overpriced underbaked tech solution (when existing solution was ok, and probably just needed improving over replacing). Then to avoid ministerial embarrassment and too much financial scrutiny, civil service must bend over backwards to improve uptake of new solution. Love living in Victorian Britain tbh.
In all fairness, based on my interactions with Visa Applications, the UK government website is the best so far. I love their Design Systems, consistency, and UX predictability.
https://www.gov.uk/eta/apply also follows the same design language. I’d happier facing this one than many others.
We had a nice family vacation last year in the UK (beach town in Wales). One day, we wanted to make reservations in a restaurant just a few blocks away. This was only possible by calling them. They asked for my phone number, then replied: "Sorry, is this a UK number?" When I said no, we are tourists here, the reply was that they could not make reservations for us, sorry! Same experience with two other restaurants.
We ended up preparing some hamburgers from Aldi UK that evening.
There are things like premium rate phone lines (which you can dial for entering competitions) and special SMS short codes that allow you to send small amounts which get charged to your phone bill (typically used for charity campaigns - eg. "Text 'GIVE £5' to 71234").
But both of those systems require you to take specific action - there's nothing that would allow someone else to apply a charge to your bill on your behalf without your direct involvement. OfCom would have kittens if anyone were ever to suggest setting up something like that.
It's likely that the restaurants in this case were simply confused by a number starting with a + rather than a digit.
Someone else commented on this already, but I had to fly Ryan Air while I was there and after booking the tickets, I found out that the only way to get a boarding pass is by installing their app.
It's quite bleak.
I miss the good old green Visa Waiver forms that we had to illegibly scribble on during the flight over :)
As a dual citizen living outside the UK, to visit Britain I cannot apply for an ETA. Instead I must have a British passport, OR apply for a waiver document for an eye watering £500.
Obviously this makes no sense, because if the ETA is suitable for a non-British citizen it ought to be fine for a British citizen who happens to have a non-British passport, but objections have all received non-answer-answers that strongly suggest the bureaucrats didn't think of it and can't be bothered to implement support for the situation.
I hate paperwork...
She also had to go through a very expensive process to renew her British passport last minute.
Silly system.
Frankly it strikes me as being rather silly to not have a British passport as a British citizen.
Yes, I personally am not deeply inconvenienced by this, but that doesn't make it ok. Others are on much tighter budgets than me.
If obtaining a passport from a country where you are a citizen is such a hassle for you, you must focus on the only logical solution.
Some of that, though, is a side-effect of the ubiquitous "Bank ID" identity tool - which suffers from the same dependency on Apple/Google that the article complains about. Given the current political climate I think the EU is going to have to figure something out to address this sort of thing.
Also, I suppose that the complaint comes only from people who live in countries that have visa-free travel to the UK and/or EU countries and who were just saving a little/money hassle otherwise they would already have an up-to-date British passport.
Note that this is an active change to the status quo. Up to and including today I had no need for my UK passport when entering the UK on my Swedish passport. From tomorrow I cannot do that and there's no reasonable explanation given for why this must change.
Edit: And while obviously this is not a big deal for me financially, there are a bunch of pensioners in the 3 million Brits living abroad and for many of them the £100 fee is a significant and unnecessary outlay.
Nothing to complain about, really.
I'm a dual US/UK citizen, and the US has always required citizens to present their US passport to enter the US. The UK is doing the same. It's not a big ask.
that waiver document is ridiculous though. what does it cost to get a new passport at a british embassy? as a german i can get a temporary passport within a day at any german embassy for about 30€ or 60€. enough to travel back home.
Completely untrue. I have done so perfectly legally.
"Pissed off" here meaning that you were likely to get "randomly selected" for secondary screening.
It absolutely has been the convention that you use the local form of identity if you have one. This ETA issue is just them pushing that a bit harder.
The law is 8 U.S.C. 1185 - "it shall be unlawful for any citizen of the United States to depart from or enter, or attempt to depart from or enter, the United States unless he bears a valid United States passport."
In the past, the penalty for violating this has generally just been "a stern talking to," like you said. But no guarantees on that.
This changed on Feb 25, 2026 for the UK. :)
UK citizens must now enter on their UK passport (or a citizenship certificate thing + foreign passport), and are not eligible for visa waiver programs (because they're only eligible for people using certain passports, which UK citizens obviously now can't be using).
I was announced in Nov '25, and has cause a mad scramble for lots of people as the passport office has been massively backlogged by the predictable queue of people needing passports suddenly, when they didn't need them before.
Bullshit. Each country makes their own rules on this (being a sovereign country) and there is absolutely not a “global convention”
A violation of what law?
I get the annoyance of being asked multiple times, but it's not that bad.
- a remainer
I even got flak in this discussion for referring to the UK government multiple times as "EU government" because I can not let go :(.
The flow is pretty straightforward if you ask me. It’s a few clicks and one page digests of your options.
It’s a decision tree to let most people in the world who have either an Android or iOS device easily submit their form quickly, or just proceed with the guidance to just apply online (your preference obviously).
I feel like everyone I’m responding to just hates Apple/Google and is running GrapheneOS without play services so they hate public apps.
Both iOS and Android have APIs for this, you (as the app developer) just mark the relevant fields in the app as login/password/etc, and the OS will interact with your chosen password manager to autofill and/or save them.
Why are we willingly placing private companies – private companies subject to foreign jurisdictions, even! – in the role of gatekeepers of public services? We have surely completely lost our minds!
Over half of the world’s population is using an Android or iOS device. Most people visiting a country in the UK or have the means to afford a trip, most likely have a functioning mobile phone.
I find it somewhat amusing you think I’m “insane” for suggesting most of the modern world has a relatively accessible Android or iOS device to apply for a visa.
This whole story is about how they're trying to pressure you into using the app.
> Over half of the world’s population is using an Android or iOS device. Most people visiting a country like the UK or have the means to afford a trip, most likely have a functioning mobile phone.
That does not in any way affect any of what I wrote. I'll try to write it differently: Do you think it's OK that Google and Apple decide (at worst on their very own without oversight, at best with the oversight of a foreign country that isn't the one you're travelling to or from) who gets to do these things and under what conditions?
> I find it someone amusing you think I’m “insane” for suggesting most of the modern world has a relatively accessible android or iOS device to apply for a visa.
I find it insane that you think that because Google and Apple happen to grace most people with access to Android and iOS, then it's fine that we all live by their mercy.
Critical reading and thinking would lead you through the flow to click on the “continue application online” form.
Here’s my workflow:
- Visit the main ETA site: https://www.gov.uk/eta/apply
- You scroll down just a teeny tiny bit until you see “Apply online”
- You select “Start now”
- Submit
The online route for that goes through a couple of pages then says "now switch to the app on your smartphone". In theory you can also go to a Post Office to get your documents checked but it didn't work for me.
And there is a web fallback. And it's right there on the page. Honestly, I think they did a pretty good job.
I think that about a lot of the cancellation flows posted on here that people consider "dark patterns". Skip an upsell or two, decline a pause offer, bam, cancellation page.
I mean it's literally a page of guidance for using the app so it's not really that surprising that there isn't a direct heading saying "how to not use the app" and that the link for not using it is under the bit about having problems.
If you visit the gov.uk page from a mobile, you get a suggestion for the app.
If you visit on _desktop_, you get https://www.gov.uk/eta/apply ( reached from https://www.gov.uk/eta ) which offers app and online (browser) options just beneath each other.
Also, the author here isn't looking at the ETA main page, they're looking specifically at the _help page for the app_ which, yes, talks about the app (but tells you that you can apply online if it doesn't work).
https://apply-for-an-eta.homeoffice.gov.uk/apply/electronic-...
And if my device doesn't have a camera I don't need to scan my face? wtf?
(another example of this is that you cannot submit your taxes or do anything even slightly weird in relation to city hall in France or Belgium without Ios or Android) (needed for identification)
This is the combination of 2 effects: You CAN go to city hall or the tax office and identify yourself there without a phone (for now). However, for many not-quite-the-most-normal-thing-ever-stuff like birth certificate, past-years-how-much-tax-you-paid certificate, ... they no longer staff city hall or the tax office for these things. People working there now have only the most minimal knowledge of procedures. Hence you cannot go there for most things, you must do them remotely. Only really common stuff. To identify yourself remotely, you need Apple or Android. So you can go down and get a domicile certificate, but not, say a birth certificate or a "I'm safe to work with kids" certificate, or ... they no longer let you do this. The fucking constitution and god knows how many laws clearly state they MUST allow you to do that there and cannot ask for things like a phone, but they don't let you anyway.
I must say I wonder how this works for people who can't or won't do that ... say unemployed, or people in prison, or ...
I mean this means they must allow mobile phones in prison now, for example, doesn't it? In hospitals, including psychiatric. Or on any secret military facilities where people sleep, like ships or subs. Or, at least, sooner or later some judge will be forced to tell them to allow it.
It just seems so stupid to do this for a great many reasons, not just that this gives Trump a way to shut down the EU economy. But, as usual, saving a quick buck clearly matters more to politicians than little details like people, or security.
A government requiring emails and then giving complete control of the email infrastructure to two US companies (Google for Gmail and Microsoft for Outlook) would be exactly what I was trying to write about.
I'm certain 95% of the population would be using Apple or Android, and the instructions on the Gov UK site are made for the majority, not for the edge cases.
My comment falls exactly within that, for most people, they define email as Gmail or Outlook. There are people who use Proton, iCloud, or personal domain emails, but the instructions will always mention what the average person would know and identify.
So in your email example, I think the governments messaging must be neutrally on email (and arguably the government should provide free Email accounts to citizens), but they could add convenience buttons to open GMail or similar.
But I recognize my opinion is probably an outlier, especially on hackernews. I can see your point as well and taken with an open mind :).
>> EU customs also shits in your shoes
I'm not sure if, without Brexit, the UK would have ended up with ETIAS anyway - it's a "mostly Schengen but not exactly" thing so it would have depended on what agreement they came to.
(lol, I sound like an LLM apologizing for getting something wrong but I promise I'm human :) )
ETA is a visa to the entire world in all but name. I'm not looking forward to the future where every county implements is and visa-free travel becomes a thing of the past.
USA, Canada, Australia all have a small fee to process a visa. Some even have tourist/hotel taxes if you really want to get a huff on.
And people will say "it's not a visa bro. You just need to upload your photo, personal info, pay a fee, and they'll get back to you in a few days to tell you whether you're allowed in." Indonesia and India have identical processes with 5 minute turnaround times. Know what they call them? E-Visas. And if you're not eligible for an evisa, you go get a normal one.
It's tedious because you search for whether a country needs a visa, and results will say "nope", but it turns out if you're from specific nationalities that get visa free travel (but not all), you don't need a visa, but you need some random application for something named with a random combination of letters. And if you don't know that specific name, a shallow search might say you're fine.
Just quit the BS. Call it an evisa. And countries that call their process evisas handle them cheaper, faster, and more easily than ESTA or whatever other scam/visa workaround other countries have.
I've never been rejected yet, but it's a pain in the ass needing to do a deep search, thinking I'm fine since no visa is required, then finding out 3 days before my flight while browsing travel forums there is some secret application I need to submit and their webpage is slow and buggy as hell.
(Even that 'direct link' has a whole page of "ok here's what you need - click to continue" !)
So this isn't really an exception, and is to be expected if you're familiar with govuk
I think it needs to be scaled back, but with a party in power famous for paternalism, and a long history of their interaction design in this direction, I don't see it happening
gov.uk has a tendancy to treat everyone like a 5 year old
Look, I know it's a hard problem, and GDS have a lot of talented, smart people. I appreciate making something work for both an 18 year old and an 89 year old is a hard requiement.
IMHO there is nothing wrong with having those help docs easily available so you can read at your leisure, rather than being 'forced' to wade through it each time
Perhaps we can agree to disagree that it's not a 'bug' based on the Government's general approach to how it treats its citizens and what it deems as a requirement (as compared to eg the Netherlands/Germany which is a bit more 'it's not our fault you're stupid', 'go read the docs!')
Adding more guidance and nudges doesn’t prevent capable users from succeeding, it just annoys them. But it means the lowest common denominators have a higher chance to succeed, which is much more valuable than level of annoyance.
And that’s pretty the point of accessibility.
Not just 89 year old you. Also, you on a bad day when you were ill/had 5 hours of sleep/were distracted.
Interacting with other governments feels like a minefield designed to catch you out, in comparison.
1) gov.uk, search for 'file confirmation statement'
2) Despite there being a sole autocomplete result and clicking on it, taken to the search results page
3) Click the first result. Turns out it's the guidance page
4) Go back, click the second result. We're getting warmer
5) Click "Start Now"
6) Get redirected to the 'Sign in to WebFiling' landing page. You can't actually sign on on this page.
7) Click 'Continue'
8) Another landing/explainer page! ("We're taking you to GOV.UK One Login to sign in to this service")
9) Click 'Go to GOV.UK One Login'
10) You think we're done yet? Think again. Another landing page!
11) Click "Sign in"
12) Think they'd let you just enter an email and password on one page? Nope! Enter email
13) Click Continue
14) Enter password
Finally...
No idea how anyone who doesn't work for GDS can justify this. It's mad
I’ve had only good experiences with gov.uk while I was living there, It’s significantly better than my home country’s digital infrastructure.
Is that excellent interaction design and good customer service? (edit: not a rhetorical question fwiw)
I notice you're not the person I asked btw. No need to start a vendetta just because I have a different opinion about one aspect of gov.uk. That's a bad look, for you.
The fact that it’s slightly more tiring for users like you who already know all the details and just want to get to the point is at most a minor drawback that’s easily justifiable by the accessibility gains.
To answer your question specifically: No, for a newspaper vendor that’s not great interaction design, but if you replace newspaper with any government service and shop owner with the government, it sounds perfect to me. I also struggle to imagine a scenario in which you’d need to access those services every single day, but I may be missing something there.
Pages are snappy, terse, consistent, clear and unsurprising. I agree this specific example feels a bit dark-patterny and occasionally stuff like self-assesment can have more steps than necessary, but overall it's really high quality.
In comparison the process for getting a DUNS number felt like going through some kind of a psychological experiment.
Finally, this:
> a party in power famous for paternalism
is just enclowning yourself with a partisan and non-sequitous point.
I'm allowed to be frustrated and to criticise it - I'm a tax-paying British citizen.
> is just enclowning yourself with a partisan and non-sequitous point.
It's sequitous and highly relevant as GDS is part of the Government. Your comment just reads like a reflexive defensive reply by someone who can't stand any criticism of something they personally like.
The idea that a Labour Secretary of State would be phoning up the Cabinet Office screaming down the phone at them about interaction design on the website while a Tory one would just have their feet up is ludicrous and you know it.
Pages are snappy, terse, consistent, clear and unsurprising
Although, I'll have to admit it's been getting worse lately. My latest annoyance is the "GOV.UK One Login" they introduced in addition to the existing "Government Gateway" login. I never know which I'm supposed to use on which page, and some pages accept either. Not great UX.
It's incredibly hard to cater for a wide audience, and they do it pretty damn well. Just because you fit in the "I know what I'm doing category" it doesn't mean they should strip away all the bits that help those not in that category.
The web is not a panacea. All the above is a hack job if you do it there. But there is still the backup option which was clearly found. Hell I just googled it and it went straight to the page.
Apart from NFC all of that can be handled by a 1990s PHP application.
> The web is not a panacea but there is still the backup option which was clearly found.
Where by "clearly" you mean "multiple clicks to get there while being aggressively upselled the app like it was a commercial website".
Yes it's aggressive but you'll have fewer problems on the app so why the hell wouldn't they push you through it?
I never knew you can only upload one photo to a website ever. Or that you can only process one photo at a time on the server.
> Yes it's aggressive but you'll have fewer problems on the app so why the hell wouldn't they push you through it
Because gov.uk's own team has multiple talks and articles on how not everyone has access to latest and greatest tech, accesses government services through weird devices etc.
One guy shepherding an MR is cheaper than whatever contracted out app would cost, and you need the website anyway.
They are not "dragging their feet". Chrome implemented NFC, vomited out a semblance of a standard and said "there, it's standard now". Who cares about objections from other vendors.
Basically, as a US Citizen, even though I will only be transiting via the shthole of an airport (LHR, obviously), I need this ETA.
The process seemed* painless when described, but is rather painful. Essentially, they WANT you to use the mobile app. They do everything to make that happen (unless you are applying for someone else, in which case you may use your PC/laptop).
So I downloaded the iOS app; you have to take a selfie (so, obviously, as well lit place, neutral background, etc etc). The selfie itself took a few tries. Then you pay GBP 16 (USD ~21).
Then, the worst experience was matching the NFC-enabled US passport with the app, so that it reads the stored info from the passport chip. My US passport is recent (renewed within last 6 months). Try as I might, I just couldn't get the app to "read" the NFC-stored info (on the back cover of the passport). I tried 15 times, with the passport held at various angles, touching the iPhone here and there. It worked on the 16th try (= the passport backcover has to be held EXACTLY halfway down).
"You are holding it wrong" x 10000
I almost gave up half way thru this extremely frustrating @#$@@!!!! experience. Even as I write this I am cursing the app developers.
I can only imagine how somebody else -- say a senior citizen, who may not know tech enough, or whose fingers are not nimble enough, etc -- can easily give up this process after just a couple of tries. The usability experience is just plain shitty. Think about the consequences.
I hope the app developers are reading this.
I'm just glad I dont have to do this for 2 more years.
but then I'm not on social media^[1]. Gave up on those things way before social media fatigue became en vogue.
I was just frustrated with the whole app experience. Some people had a smoother experience, which is fine. Mine was terrible, and I'm sure my parents would not have been able to use this at all.
[1] I am still on LI... which is something I want to give up next.