Provide APK download links (on our Github releases page, FTP)
Opened this issue · 13 comments
There doesn't appear to be a good TV browser on Google Play for Android TV, except Puffin (which doesn't work in all countries).
After making signed builds:
- We could provide download links (for people to sideload) [cheap]
- Could release on Play Store (but requires release drivers) [requires other teams]
@ekager (being our unofficial tech PR) mentioned that there are people with Android TVs who ask about getting Firefox on Android TVs.
Seems like this should probably just work, but a few thoughts:
- It shouldn't be hard to provide (unofficial) signed apks on archive.mozilla.org, or directly on the github, especially if we only do major releases - we probably don't want to ship this on Google Play
- For sideloading, this would be a tiny group of people, so this doesn't provide much organizational value, but we could see if people like it enough to consider shipping on Google Play eventually (when/if we have more resources, and can respond to feature/bugs if there are inconsistencies between Fire TV and Android TV)
- On the other hand if there's no competition then we'll just automatically be the best browser out there?
https://forum.xda-developers.com/shield-tv/themes-apps/app-firefox-android-tv-t3725470
https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidTV/comments/7q3myj/firefox_for_android_tv_is_a_nice_remotefriendly/
"It's an extracted Fire TV app that happens to work on mainline Android TV, so they likely have an exclusivity deal with Amazon or something"
^ don't love this sentiment :(
That would be really cool! +vote+
When this is done will builds also appear on the Mozilla FTP?
We intend to also upload these builds to archive.mozilla.org – if it doesn't get done in this issue, we'll file another issue to do it.
We added an Amazon-specific permission in #937: <uses-permission-sdk-23 android:name="com.amazon.permission.media.session.voicecommandcontrol" />
We should make sure this doesn't create problems on non-Amazon devices.
Puffin also has a "send link to tv" using QR codes.
"Me too" comment here.
I picked up a Nvidia Shield TV over black friday this year and was surprised to not find Firefox available in the Play Store, having seen the news about Firefox TV a while back. I managed to get it installed from one of the apk mirror sites while writing this comment, and it seems to work without issue.
@yoasif Which APK mirror site did you use? We're curious where our APKs are being hosted. :)
Note: we currently post our release APKs to our GitHub Releases about every two weeks and while these APKs can be used to sideload, they are intended for project developers. One side effect of this is that we sign them with different keys each time, which users from being able to install the app without first uninstalling it. We're also not officially supporting builds outside of the Amazon store (though feel free to file issues).
In the near future (end of Q3, early Q4?), we hope to post consistent signed APKs to Mozilla's archive and GitHub releases.
Note: we currently post our release APKs to our GitHub Releases about every two weeks and while these APKs can be used to sideload, they are intended for project developers. One side effect of this is that we sign them with different keys each time, which users from being able to install the app without first uninstalling it. We're also not officially supporting builds outside of the Amazon store (though feel free to file issues).
In the near future (end of Q3, early Q4?), we hope to post consistent signed APKs to Mozilla's archive and GitHub releases.
Awesome to see the releases now in the github rls section!
Any news to this? Are there plans to release this for the google:play store or better (for me) the f-droid. Mozilla has already Firefox Klar there:
https://f-droid.org/de/packages/org.mozilla.klar/
Unfortunately, we don't have any current plans to ship FFTV to the Play Store or f-droid.
Why not? Is it a complex process?