My account got closed for inactivity while I had multiple apps published. Google does not understand the concept of a finished app apparently, and requires you to continuously push updates or else you permanently lose your account with no way of reopening it.
It gets better, I too had my account closed for inactivity, but I STILL get emails from them I can't stop because I can't log in to change email preferences.
They also love keeping malware apps on the play store as well. I tried reporting an app that took over one of my parents phone. It stayed up for quite a while. I'm sure it's still up.
"App store experience" was continually degrading. I used to be able to find small apps and games I liked a lot and basically binge downloading. The last few times I tried, I ended up with nothing useable.
Fortunately PWA are well supported on android, half the apps on my phone are PWA and I didn't need an app store or hacking my device to install them. But I moved from native android to PWA after having hellish issues with their automated developer nightmare system.
Why does anyone even dev for G or A - unless you get a big pay check from either ? Every time I look into mobile dev I just go “yep, NOPE!” and go to have a shower. And it seems to just get worse and worse? Are both app stores going to be full of just unusable vibe coded crap in few years time?
Either because their vision of what they want to make needs a mobile form factor and can't be a website (possibly due to marketing causing users to reject mobile websites), or (and I suspect that this is the bigger driver) the pay from the stores (even after the ridiculous 30% cut + bureaucratic insanity) makes it worth it (possibly under the category of getting "a big pay check", but it sounds more like you mean employment).
The app I am trying to publish is a PWA but needs a CORS policy bypass for which I have created a small proxy. This proxy needs to be running natively on the device.
Because personal computers are a legacy platform for nerds and programmers, and smartphones are the most widely used consumer computing platform in the world. This desperately needs regulation. Unfortunately the EU is currently regulating the duopoly into law, making their phones necessary for ID verification, so we're probably completely fucked for at least a decade or two before we even have a chance, but that's still not a reason to shrug our shoulders and accept it.
Honestly, beyond my deGoogled Android smartphone and a GNU/Linux laptop I am looking around for pocketable device between those. Mecha Comet looks like a perfect fit, but it is not released yet.
Yes, fuck it. This is beyond insane, apparently I cant distribute apps just in GitHub "releases" section anymore without Google's approval. I hope some EU antimonopoly something will fry their asses.
Had the exact same thing. Developed a small game, pushed it to iOS without much fanfare (well, other than having to pay the insanely high toll to get into the garden) and then turned to Android to do the same. Another toll gate at only a quarter the price - sure, lets pay that as well. But then we get to the point where they require images of government issued id and address verification. You can have my money, buddy, but that level of personal data for something small like a game? How about no…
Google take $25 once, Apple takes $100 every year. For hobby projects, the former is reasonable, and the latter is a dealbreaker.
I'm surprised Apple doesn't make you scan your ID since there are laws that force both Apple and Google to publish real names of developers on app store pages. And address too, if you charge money.
Sounds like a perfect job to automate by an always-on LLM.
Probably not. Google is notoriously bad at customer support (for both devs and consumers)
Wait, what was the question again?
Now if it is plain old CRUD style application, many that are webviews packaged as APK, sure.
https://progressier.com/what-web-can-do-today
Because personal computers are a legacy platform for nerds and programmers, and smartphones are the most widely used consumer computing platform in the world. This desperately needs regulation. Unfortunately the EU is currently regulating the duopoly into law, making their phones necessary for ID verification, so we're probably completely fucked for at least a decade or two before we even have a chance, but that's still not a reason to shrug our shoulders and accept it.
I'm surprised Apple doesn't make you scan your ID since there are laws that force both Apple and Google to publish real names of developers on app store pages. And address too, if you charge money.
That you were still free to write code, put it out there and have people use it freely?
A decade ago, I made a joke comment to a friend that you were soon going to need a carry permit to operate a compiler.
Joke's not so funny in 2026.
Richard Stallman's Right to Read (1997) made a similar observation.