Essentially the apps have same package name but different signatures and the app store that installed it should be the only one to recognize and update it.
But Google is likely trying this dark pattern to sway people away from F-Droid or alt stores by making users uninstall these apps and install it from the Google Play Store.
It’s been going on for a while and is annoying af.
Since I found out about F-Droid and Aurora Store, I’m actively dodging the Play Store. No one will ever make me use it. Ads, promos, junk everywhere! And their shitty way of updating.
How do I get F Droid?
either download the official APK from f-droid.org or use the NeoStore app which is a better client imho. from there its some simple setup and basically works like the play store.
Droid-ify is my personal favorite client. You can opt in to many other repos like IzzyOnDroid (pic below) It’s also material design, which I like aha.
Has Aurora been improved since last year?
I tried to love it, but it was such a pita to actually update things. Like, it hardly actually updated without errors or issues. When it did “update” an app, I wouldn’t be able to actually open it. After it broke some important apps I was using, I uninstalled it.
It’s because they are using like 10 disposable Google accounts shared between all the users in the world, so access is throttled
Aurora has been fine for me so far.
My experience might be better as I logged into the account of someone else to access some paid apps. Haven’t had much trouble with the disposable accounts either, may also because I haven’t used it that often.
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This is an f-droid problem. If they use the same package name, they need to use the same signature. That has been the case since long before f-droid existed.
They could just build apks with alternate package names and this wouldn’t be an issue.
It’s no problem, since you don’t want 2 stores to update the same app.
It’s a problem of trust. Differing signature is an indication of third party tampering. People shouldn’t start to see difference in signatures as an ordinary occurrence. It should be an high alert event.
Nope.
Often versions on Play Store are slightly different (telemetry). Sometimes they even have different versioning.Then, using a different package name should be a good solution, wouldn’t it?
The they should rename the package? Either way, F-Droid is the problem here.
Yeah the worst part of it is that the version on Google Play is actually the older version.
They are shown on the update page for Google’s benefits only. This is anti customer.
yea, and people here suggesting f-droid to change package names are crazy. F-Droid’s goal is not to mess with developers code at all and provide builds as is from the source code.
Why would anyone who actively chose to install F-droid, reinstall their apps as Play Store apps?
Fedilab and Thumb-key are not free on Google Play, I would reinstall them there if it was possible
Actually, I had it just the other way around. I had an app that had an old, orphaned version on F-Droid and a newer one on Play Store, so I installed the one from the Play store, but F-Droid desperately tried to update it constantly, always failing, always spamming me with messages about it
Remove it from F-Droid (ideally first) to avoid this
Yep, this has been happening for a long long time already. It’s due to F-Droid using the same package name but a different signature.
So from the perspective of any other store, it looks like someone tampered with this app.
The same happens in reverse. It’s the natural result of not naming the packages differently as a dev.
Yes because they are signed with different keys
I don’t care that it can’t update these apps, since I use Obtainium. But, FFS, at least let users have an option to ignore or hide those apps.
I use F-Droid and i don’t care that it can’t update theese apps over google play. I can still use fdroid to update
Yes exactly.
I have this happening on Sync for Lemmy. Every time I open it if there’s an update available, with no way to tell Play to fuck off.
Samsung store does that too. It’s quite annoying
You could get rid of Google play
