With so many (old) apps disappearing from the playstore (probably because of EU compliance rules), I wonder why it’s so hard to pirate apks. Is there a source I’m missing?
For example, I’m currently looking for Last Horizon by noodlecake, it’s not available in the playstore. I can’t find it anywhere, I searched all the linked sites in the wiki. This happens everytime I’m looking for an app, it seems like only a very small amount of apps can be found
I have always used APKMirror and APKPure
Thx! Apparently Last Horizon is just not available anywhere, bummer
This isn’t an answer to your main question, but I recently learned that if you don’t release updates at your app for a couple years google deletes your app from the store (and your developer account if you only had one app). That’s a reason why some old apps disappear.
Yeah I developed one, it’s ridiculous how many times I get emails from Google to update some stupid shit. As if anyone cares
Yeah it suddenly made sense why apps seem to always have new updates even when it’s something super basic that doesn’t need more features.
Besides the websites like apkmirror/ApkPure, etc, I save APKs of apps I want to keep using an app like APK Extractor - this extractor will name the file with App Name, Package Name, and Version. Really helps.
I have it extract to a folder on my phone that I keep synced to my server just for extracted APKs.
One down side - an extracted apk may not install on a different phone or new OS, it’s a little trickier these days, downloaded APKs are more specific to phone and OS version now. I’d say maybe 1-2% of my extracted APKs don’t work on newer version of Android, and that’s with having APKs as far back as 2010, I have hundreds (my server says 1400, but there’s a little duplication.)
