Beyond the alphabet
Beyond the alphabet is a weekly chronicle which focuses on the world of technology inside and outside the limits of Mountain View.
Okay, the title can be a little hard, but I have the impression that the Play Store has evolved (or devolved) in one of these massive interior flea markets with each square inch wrapped to the point that it is widespread in the parking lot with people taking place Tables.
To continue this random but appropriate analogy, you will head and see the same stores that have been there for years. You will also see some newcomers who try to integrate while offering a bunch of cheap goodies. Then there are those who do not fully understand the concept of a “flea market” and are there for all bad reasons.
This is roughly the way the play Store shakes, with many usual suspects that hold the ground in the “top charts”. Sometimes a new application or game will arrive slowly (or quickly) with a lot of excitement before nesting with the rest and bumping others. Then we have harmful applications. Those who have a nice layer of paint, but are only there to empty the balance of your game store or worse.
Fortunately, there are a few play alternatives from Play Store that I appreciated to help make applications again exciting.
Enough applications to turn your head
My first problem has just found applications. Beginning in early February 2025, 42Matters complaint There are nearly 2.1 million applications on the Play Store. Apparently, more than 1,100 new applications are published each day, with an average of almost 42,000 applications arriving each month. This brings me to my first issue with the Play Store – Research.
How is it that a search engine can be so bad during research? Of course, it works well if you know the name of the application you are looking for. But try looking for “kwgt” or “icon packs”. You will get a lot of results, but there is no rhyme or reason for the way the options are displayed. And it is not as if you could sort by “recently updated” or by the highest note.
Of course, this problem only surfaces when looking for wider terms, but it is always something that drives me crazy. It also drives me crazy that with a few application lists, it is practically impossible to see the last time it has been updated.
Speaking of this, I cannot tell you how many times I went to open and use an application, to wait for it to be updated, despite the fact that he should have been Updated during the night while my phone loaded and while I was sleeping. No, this is not a revolution problem, but if I check the box of an application or my phone to do something, I expect it to be done.
Oh, and don’t even embark on games. One of the main reasons why I still subscribe to Play Pass is that it surfaces games that are not only looking for ways to extract as much patience and money as possible. What is exactly what most “superior graphics” consist of more. It is not entirely Google’s fault, but Apple and Google are a little to blame here.
Get into the world of Foss
Do you not know, for the 2.1 million applications on the Play Store, there are a whole world of available applications. Many are pits or “free and open source software” and are just a few taps.
F-Droid Is probably something you have heard of before, because it is essentially the play store for FOSS applications. The only “wrestling” is that you first need to put aside the F-Droid app or one of the customers like Neo store And Droid. And honestly, you will probably want to try Neo Store or Droid-Iffiat because the F-Droid application itself seems rather archaic.
This is where my anti-game store trip started, because there are really a lot of fantastic open source applications that do not obtain the recognition they deserve. Yes, there are many more excavations and nuances involved, but in the end, it is worth it.
But what happens if you are like me and you have an organized list of open source applications that you want to download and stay up to date? Well, this is where Gettium comes into play.
Obtained at the rescue
I learned for the first time on OCKROLIUM at the start of last year, while I widen my knowledge of retro games on Android pocket computers. You see, there are a decent number of recommended and reliable emulators on the Play Store, but there are even more. At the time, it was before Nintendo destroyed switching emulation, so Getrium facilitated the update of Yuzu and his forks.
With Gettium, you can bypass F-Droid or the Play Store and obtain applications and updates directly from the source. However, there are “more than a dozen source websites, including Github, Gitlab and F-Droid”.
The process of adding applications can always be tedious, especially if the majority of them come from Github and you end up hitting yourself at the rate limit. This can be resolved by registering for a GitHub and / or Gitlab account and generating a personal access token that is added to Gootium.
However, there is also a solution to be able to keep the list of applications on the devices, without the need to add them manually each time. Gettium allows you to export the list of applications you have organized, with all the specific information you have added, such as name or category. So, as long as you keep the JSON exported back -saved file, you can just download Obstat and import the list when you get a new Android device.
The pleasure does not stop there, however, because you can also add things and define them on “track only”. With this, you will be informed in the event of a new version, but it is not actually an application that can be downloaded. I use this to follow the moment when new pilots are published, as well as the follow -up of several forks of the same application.
Because I got more and more open source applications, and not just those on Android, I also started using Github more and more. So when I learned that I could create a repo and download my application export list, I became quite excited.
In this way, I don’t have to try to remember what cloud storage service I downloaded it while keeping my “open source world” very well linked. In addition, there is a bunch of “Crowdsourced application configurations“This can be added with only a few taps.
Listen, I know that this is not a path that many will venture, and it is good if you don’t really have any problems with the Play Store. But if you are like me and want something better, and that gives you more control, certainly consult Getrium.
