Unfortunately I don’t have good news on the state of the android app: I am retiring it. The last release on Github and F-Droid will happen with the December 2024 Syncthing version. Reason is a combination of Google making Play publishing something between hard and impossible and no active maintenance. The app saw no significant development for a long time and without Play releases I do no longer see enough benefit and/or have enough motivation to keep up the ongoing maintenance an app requires ...
Google has been harassing me to push out a new release or have my apps delisted. There is nothing new to add, nothing to fix, they just want a pointless new release.
I’m letting my apps die as well, why should I put up with needless churn.
I hadn’t worked on my app there for a good while and so didn’t really think to check. They sent an email with some deadline before which I must update the app. I promptly forgot about it, assuming the worst that’s going to happen is the app gets unlisted until I push an update.
Fast forward a couple months and I think to check it out. Whoops. Deadline was a week ago. Well, no bother, I can still log in and push and update. And so I did. Half an hour later I get an email: “your account has been closed”
Wtf. I log in.
“Hey, sorry, but your account is closed. No takesie backsies. Want to republish the app? Register anew and cough up twenty bucks again, globwad.” (not an exact quote)
A quick search revealed I’m hardly the first to experience this, and there is no hope for the account. So I thought I might as well be a nuisance about it. I wrote an email to support absolutely demanding my account be reinstated for the very good reason that I did push an update (after the deadline).
I expected nothing but a template “nah” response. But to my surprise a couple days later I got an actual response, saying that my account was reinstated, and may be used again, with a new deadline.
If they nuke it, I’ll let it die. If they don’t want my app thats fine, I’ll publish apks on github or something.
The “old apps need updates” policy makes no sense, until you realise it requires no human intervention. It should be “broken apps need updates”, but that requires someone to test the app.
The privacy policy and other requirements they have added recently have also been pointless exercises in futility as well.
Google has been harassing me to push out a new release or have my apps delisted. There is nothing new to add, nothing to fix, they just want a pointless new release.
I’m letting my apps die as well, why should I put up with needless churn.
So I absolutely get the syncthing guys rationale.
Same here. They actually nuked my account.
I hadn’t worked on my app there for a good while and so didn’t really think to check. They sent an email with some deadline before which I must update the app. I promptly forgot about it, assuming the worst that’s going to happen is the app gets unlisted until I push an update.
Fast forward a couple months and I think to check it out. Whoops. Deadline was a week ago. Well, no bother, I can still log in and push and update. And so I did. Half an hour later I get an email: “your account has been closed”
Wtf. I log in.
“Hey, sorry, but your account is closed. No takesie backsies. Want to republish the app? Register anew and cough up twenty bucks again, globwad.” (not an exact quote)
A quick search revealed I’m hardly the first to experience this, and there is no hope for the account. So I thought I might as well be a nuisance about it. I wrote an email to support absolutely demanding my account be reinstated for the very good reason that I did push an update
(after the deadline).I expected nothing but a template “nah” response. But to my surprise a couple days later I got an actual response, saying that my account was reinstated, and may be used again, with a new deadline.
I fucking hate Google.
If they nuke it, I’ll let it die. If they don’t want my app thats fine, I’ll publish apks on github or something.
The “old apps need updates” policy makes no sense, until you realise it requires no human intervention. It should be “broken apps need updates”, but that requires someone to test the app.
The privacy policy and other requirements they have added recently have also been pointless exercises in futility as well.