Why are there so many apps that could be websites?
Seriously. I don’t want to install something on my phone when the dev is just using a WebView, if that’s what it’s called. When the app is basically just a website with the browser hidden.
What’s the reason for that? To attach the customer? To sell the app for money? Is there more ad revenue that way? Do you reach more people?
(Are there any good reasons for it, too? Security, maybe?)
I’m torn - apps are brutal for privacy but I really like the isolation from browser and all other sites. I typically clear browser cache on every exit so for apps that I use regularly, I am forced to sign in every time if going in through browser.
Wish browser apps had better isolation for multiple sessions.
I have it and use it. It’s great (works for most sites). My point is actually the opposite - there are certain sites/services that become very unpleasant to use if you have to log in everytime you open the browser.
The advantage of apps is that for those particular services you don’t have to reauthenticate each time you open them (the trade off being insecurity.
Using websites would be great if I could have a separate (isolated) instance per site. That way I could kill browse history for general browsing.
(The absolute worst are the apps that hop out to the browser (especially when they hard code Chrome, which I avoid where possible on Android.))
On the PC (by way of example), edge and chrome have web applications that are handy (think YouTube and YouTube music) but… they share credentials! I keep a separate login for YT vs YTM (because google completely misunderstood the reason people keep videos separate from music when they killed the excellent Google Play Music). So… When I log into one, flips the default login for the other. Now, if they were separate apps, like on Android, the sessions are separated - as they ought to be!
I will say that Duck Duck Go’s App Tracking protection is a fantastic way to tackle the way apps ‘phone home’ so much, however, since it leverages a full tunnel (yet local) VPN technique, you have to disable it if you want to connect to another VPN service.
(Bottom line - website based services are great, but, for goodness sake, I wish one had the option to persist various sites, but in isolation.)
OP is talking about apps that are basically links to websites.
They design the website entirely, but it’s not available through a web browser – only the app. But fundamentally, it’s a website that a browser would be able to run.
I know that; when you develop a website, you typically design mobile-first and then design the desktop version afterwards. If you’re just building it as an application you can skip a whole lot of CSS and design nonsense that would go into that process.
They want to wall some of their content off so it’s not easily harvestable on the web by competitors. But most of all, they want to have full control of your user “experience” so you can’t use browser extensions (like ad blockers). It’s all about money and control.
Sensors permission toggle: disallow access to all other sensors not covered by existing Android permissions (Camera, Microphone, Body Sensors, Activity Recognition) including an accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, barometer, thermometer and any other sensors present on a given device.
I’m surprised that’s not commons behaviour now, just look at what people are doing in research papers. With enough of that data, they can figure out quite a lot about you and your life.
Very cool. I just checked Lineage OS and it looks like Google Play Services doesn’t let you disable sensors permission. Can you do it on Graphene OS? Lineage lets you control it on all apps except Google Play Services it looks like, which would actually be one of the top apps to disable it on imo.
I just checked Lineage OS and it looks like Google Play Services doesn’t let you disable sensors permission. Can you do it on Graphene OS?
Yep, there’s a toggle to disable by default globally. I also individually checked Google Play Services, Google Play Store and Google Services Framework, and all three can be denied the Sensors permission.
This is due to Sandboxed Google Play: “GrapheneOS has a compatibility layer providing the option to install and use the official releases of Google Play in the standard app sandbox. Google Play receives absolutely no special access or privileges on GrapheneOS as opposed to bypassing the app sandbox and receiving a massive amount of highly privileged access. Instead, the compatibility layer teaches it how to work within the full app sandbox.”
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