2y ago

Google removed Island and Shelter apps from the Play Store

Shelter may have been taken down a while ago, not sure if by Google or the developer.

According to the Island developer Island was removed because it's not supposed to use

REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES, so it's probably the same for Shelter. They're appealing but if/when it returns it might be "with limited functionality" which one would be able to restore with an "extension" downloaded on github but at that point why not just install the apk from github in the first place.

As for Shelter and Insular (fork of Island), they're also available on F-Droid.

Wonder if they're cracking down on these "hacks" to leverage the work profile on purpose, like they do local VPNs that block ads.

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Ugh.
Thankfully Island is available on Github, and Shelter and Insular are on F-Droid.
I rely on Island for having two copies of apps like WhatsApp since Google can't be bothered to offer this feature on Pixels like Samsung, OnePlus, etc. do.

... what are these apps? The GitHub project readme for Island doesn't actually say what it does
- Both use android's work profile feature to isolate apps from the main profile, for example, If you install tiktok on island, and whatsapp on main, neither WhatsApp or tiktok will be able to see each other, among other kinds of data
  
  How well does it hide root?
- It allows you to isolate app inside a sandbox, thus limiting the data they can harvest

It's not a hack. I think they don't want things that can install apps in the Play store.
But I'd love to learn more about their reason
- Technically Google Chrome and Google Files can install packages. Wonder if they'll remove those too.
  
  Can wait for Pinephone to go mainstream.

I can see and install Island from Play Store (just did that a minute ago) so idk what's the issue...
- https://github.com/oasisfeng/island/issues/432
  It was removed for 2 weeks, the developer found a workaround. Still sucks that Google removed them at all

Island is great. My wife runs ecommerce and social media accounts for her job (and has her own side business at home) and used to use 2 phones, with Island she can run parallel sandboxed copies of certain apps at the same time (ebay etc). It's the first thing she installs on a new phone and at this point she'd refuse a new phone if she couldn't use Island on it. With the normal work profile, she'd have to constantly switch between profiles and miss out on real time notifications.

I use Shelter and keep it updated direct from the GitHub repo using Obtainium.
- What's Obtainium?
  
  An app to keep your installed github apps up to date
  
  You won't need that for Shelter. It hasn't been updated in years.

I have an easy access to my work profil thanks to CalyxOS. So if I install Waze on this profil, it will be sandboxed? Or it still have access to a lot of my informations ?

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