Announcement: Phocid is currently in maintenance mode #185
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Because Google is essentially killing apps distributed outside of Google Play, I have lost interest in Android development and plan to switch to a different OS once my current five-year-old phone dies. As Phocid is a music player built entirely by me for myself, it will be receiving much less development time than before.
I'll continue to fix bugs to the extent possible, but new features will likely not get added by me especially if it's complex (but I may decide to do so arbitrarily), and I might not reply to your post until I decide to work on it.
Q&A
Will you register with Google's developer verification program?
No. It's a blatant insult to me even with their "student and hobbyist" license. You might be able to use ADB to install unverified apps once the restrictions are in effect.
What can I do to help?
If you are an EU citizen, you might be able to contact your authorities to fight Google.
I'm interested in maintaining Phocid. Will you transfer project ownership to me?
No, but feel free to start your own fork.
Should you need any help comprehending my spaghetti code, you can ask me in GitHub discussions.
I won't advertise for your fork because trust is brittle even in OSS. Publishing your fork on F-Droid should be enough of an advertisement.
I completely understand where you're coming from. I hope at some point you do decide to continue your fine work. Not for Google Play Store, but for AOSP. It will need it's own group of talented developers and killer apps that will encourage people to move away from the walled world off Google and Apple. But regardless of the outcome... peace. It's been, and is, a great project, that stands out. Good Luck.
Hi, thanks for your work on Phocid, it's a great app.
A few months back I wanted to create a MediaStore-based player for modern Android versions but I hit an issue where Android's MediaStore gets confused about the character encoding of the metadata for my opus files. I reported on the AOSP bug tracker but sadly got no reply yet, so I ended up halting development.
So I ended up finding your app on F-droid which not only fits my needs for a local player but what matches several of the tech I would use on my own app (such as Jetpack Compose and being Android 11+).
In any case, I do have interest in forking your project, doing some rebranding and resuming development.
I might focus a bit on my own use case (opus 192 kbps-focused local library) but I will try to fit the user's use cases.
I also have published apps on both F-droid and Play Store, so the recent distribution restrictions are not a concern in this case for me (basically I already had to give my ID a while back for my Play Store account =\)
"Based on this feedback and our ongoing conversations with the community, we are building a new advanced flow that allows experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isn't verified."
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-developer-verification-early.html
It seems that Google might go back on the blocking of all non verified apps.
Great news if Google actually mean it, but I'm not buying their pretty promise unless I see it in action - there's nothing stopping Google from calling "submitting your government ID to verify yourself as an experienced user" as "a new advanced flow that allows experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isn't verified".
If Google's actually not playing dirty tricks this time, I'll gladly resume development on Phocid.
The issue is that they may leave what they'll actually do up in the air for the next 12 months. Though tbh at least IMO Phocid is largely feature complete, so the only thing I'm concerned about in the near future is a new Quarterly Update breaking it in some way. Aka maintenance, something you are keeping up anyway.
I personally think they simply couldn't get away with completely closing it that way to begin with. The fact that devs who upload their apps to an alternative appstore would be required to register with Google feels like a blatant violation of EU gatekeeper law. This is of course antitrust legislation and doesn't care about free open source software in principle, but I don't think you can allow any alt stores doing their thing without also allowing single apks.
https://keepandroidopen.org/ has some advice on what people can do to fight back. @TJYSunset have you filled out the Android developer verification requirements survey?
I don't think taking that survey has any effect other than letting Google add my account to an internal blacklist of sorts. They are the ones who brought up the concept to serve their own interests, and they have zero reasons to listen to their intended victims.
Hey all, as TJY has given up on developing this due to Google's restrictions, I will likely start working on my fork soon.
The first step will likely be updating branding (still have to think on a new name) and getting build deps and app dependencies up to date.
This should be enough for a initial release.
Afterwards I will focus on functionality, design and bug fixes.
As I did mention before I have a Google Play Developer account, so I can both publish to Google Play and do the verification needed for sideload.
As well as I currently have 2 moderately successful apps on both Google Play and F-Droid.
While I cannot guarantee getting it done in May, it likely can done between June and July.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earless_seal (phocid)
based on that, a couple name suggestions: "Otariid" (or just "Otarid"), or "Odobenid"
Hey, I have been initially thinking on naming it something related to Hedgehogs (as I am particularly a Sonic fan and could do some of the branding related to that) however I have some difficulties on pronouncing "Hedgehog" some times so I would prefer need to fix or workaround that difficulty.
However if I were to do the rebranding on some animal somewhat closely related to seals, I think I would choose Otters (IMHO, Ash's Buizel left a strong impression on me).
Completely? Even maintenance? Would be a pity.
But assuming you take over, thanks and good luck! Regarding names and mascots, maybe don't be TOO quirky, a lot of potential users are a bit squeemish. I'd personally really stick to cute water critters. Otters, beavers, maybe a capybara or the humble pygmy hippo, lol.
Regarding logistics, do you plan to keep the backup format the same, at least for the first few releases, for the sake of an easy transition? Also, I assume you keep the latest packages available on both GitHub and FDroid the same way as Phocid was?
I didn't say that... but unfortunately that's likely becoming true. Google isn't budging (they even started requiring a "certified" Android device to get past their captchas on desktop), and companies other than Google are also hindering Android usage for me (a few critical regional services outright lock my account if I dare to login on LineageOS). Using OEM Android is a big no personally, so I'll be forced to switch to iOS, and then I won't even be using Phocid anymore.
If miracles do happen after the fork, I'll be happy to contribute to it (unless I highly disagree with its decisions). No reason to do duplicate work.
Grapheneos might be a good option, especially with the motorola phones coming out that will support it. Or of course, a used pixel
Hey.
Seems like so, you may be lucky if he decides to release one more version before the lockdown in September.
Good point, Capybara is also a cool name since I am Brazilian.
I don't really know how the backup and restore logic currently works. But IMHO I will either do no changes or do the work required for backwards compatibility.
About distribution, the plan is to always distribute on Google Play, F-Droid and GitHub.
Honestly the things I plan to do right now are:
Otherwise as far as Phocid goes as a MediaStore-based Material Design offline-only music player, most of the rest of the work would be keeping up to date with newer restrictions, features or UX updates of the Android ecosystem and implementing some user requested features and fixing reported bugs.
Or to put it simply, the core functionality is solid enough that I see no issue in mostly making under the hood changes or superficial changes that optimistically don't detract from the use experience but keep things running smoothly.
If you do implement a full face lift regarding base design and font, a toggle for the old "classic" one would be greatly appreciated. Though I'd of course also look forward to your take on Material 3.
Well, that's about it from me. Thanks for the answers and Boa tarde to Brazil!
Heads up that I thought for a bit and I will likely use the portuguese word for Otter, so the app will likely be called "Lontra" or "Lontra Music". I'm still thinking over on that, it's not set in stone.
I do not have any idea for an icon except maybe using a off-brand "Buizel".
I do not know yet how to do Material Expressive, I barely managed recently to do Material You decently. Though, yeah, if it's possible to keep multiple themes then I will try to make it work.
I'll advise against blindly following Google's M3 Expressive
guidelinesmarketing materials:I'd say just update the easing functions and add a shape morphing animation to the play/pause button would be enough "Expressive".
Although I think Fira is a readable font, I also strongly recommend an option to use the system font for accessibility reasons.
Just a heads up that I am hitting some issues combining com.jaredsburrows.license with Gradle 9 and AGP 9. This seems https://github.com/jaredsburrows/gradle-license-plugin/issues/734 and it seems require
android.newDsl=falsefor now.Since that project seems to have been discontinued, I believe I will end up migrating your whole license code to AboutLibraries
In that case, you should get rid of the files in
app/src/main/assets/as they're no longer used.app/src/main/assets/LicenseMappings.jsoncontains two additional license entries that you need to take care of; One for vendored code (search for the name for source), and another for the submodule.Maybe move to Discussions for this kind of... discussion? I believe this issue's subscribers aren't that interested in technical jargons.