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Comment by crowbahr | Hacker News Reader

Then build & side load it.

The issue is that he's not respecting the required APIs. It literally does not function on a modern Android device because of the permissions.

Do you want privacy on your phone? Apps are required to implement the new API for better user control of privacy and permissions.

The developer was incapable of maintaining their app to modern API changes. That sucks but it's like complaining that you can't run a Windows 95 program on Win 7 without having to do some work on it yourself.

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> It literally does not function on a modern Android device because of the permissions.

It literally does. I'm using it on Android 12. Far from "not functioning", it has the most reliable IMAP IDLE support of any Android app that I've tried.

> it has the most reliable IMAP IDLE support of any Android app that I've tried.

Sad that this has to be stated in 2022. Android is the only platform I have this problem with

The stuff about APIs is nonsense. The app works fine. It's better and more secure that Google's own email client.

The problem is Google has no place making these decisions. This is textbook anticompetitive behaviour. The developer is based in EU so I hope (and expect) that google gets a hefty fine.

And yes, I will be sideloading it.

I'm sad to see it go as well. It's my main mail client on Android.

The GP on this thread is completely ridiculous. "You're not using Kotlin and instead use Java" is the most ridiculous thing on such an issue I've ever seen. Email clients battery usage is a really hard to get right. Especially since Fairmail gives you so many options on the synching behavior. So much so that a lot of iOS email clients actually store mail credentials on a third party server and sync your emails there to send push notifications. That's an absolutely security nightmare and yet that's somehow ok.

Really sucks to have it pulled and even more disturbing to see people here justify it. I can't help but wonder if the person above is a google employee.

Java vs Kotlin is a maintainability issue.

The reason it's pulled isn't java vs kot: It's refusing to use the modern APIs that are required for it to function on Android 11+.

My outline specifically mentions the use of illegal calls which will literally just crash on later android versions. He even has his call stack pasted as a comment.

> The reason it's pulled isn't java vs kot: It's refusing to use the modern APIs that are required for it to function on Android 11+.

That's not a reason to pull an app. It's a reason to tell users of Android 11+ that the app isn't compatible with their device, but everyone else should still be able to install it.

Great.

When you update to Android 11 or 12 it will cease to work well, because it will crash when requesting a permission. You can get around it by manually adding permissions.

When you encounter those issues I suggest forking it and doing the work he refuses to: Use ActivityResultLauncher with registerForActivityResult to request permissions.

> It's better and more secure that Google's own email client.

Have you or someone else audited the code or what is this based on?

> Do you want privacy on your phone?

lol. There is no privacy on your phone if you have Google's spyware on it. So your point is complete bullshit.

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