Google removed Island and Shelter apps from the Play Store
Shelter may have been taken down a while ago, not sure if by Google or the developer.
According to the Island developer Island was removed because it's not supposed to use
REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES, so it's probably the same for Shelter. They're appealing but if/when it returns it might be "with limited functionality" which one would be able to restore with an "extension" downloaded on github but at that point why not just install the apk from github in the first place.
As for Shelter and Insular (fork of Island), they're also available on F-Droid.
Wonder if they're cracking down on these "hacks" to leverage the work profile on purpose, like they do local VPNs that block ads.
Ugh.
Thankfully Island is available on Github, and Shelter and Insular are on F-Droid.
I rely on Island for having two copies of apps like WhatsApp since Google can't be bothered to offer this feature on Pixels like Samsung, OnePlus, etc. do.
... what are these apps? The GitHub project readme for Island doesn't actually say what it does
Both use android's work profile feature to isolate apps from the main profile, for example, If you install tiktok on island, and whatsapp on main, neither WhatsApp or tiktok will be able to see each other, among other kinds of data
How well does it hide root?
It doesn't directly, but some banking apps detect magisk in the app list, so even if you've added the apps to the exception list in magisk they'll refuse to launch.
Installing the same apps in the work profile makes the magisk app inaccessible/invisible to them, which allows them to start up normally.
I use shamiko so that does it more
Thanks, that answers my question
It allows you to isolate app inside a sandbox, thus limiting the data they can harvest
It's not a hack. I think they don't want things that can install apps in the Play store.
But I'd love to learn more about their reason
Technically Google Chrome and Google Files can install packages. Wonder if they'll remove those too.
Can wait for Pinephone to go mainstream.
I really wanted to upgrade from my S5 to a linux phone, but the NAND died on me. I'm on a Fairphone now, hopefully the Linux phone ecosystem gets better so I can make the jump there next in a few years time π
Island is great. My wife runs ecommerce and social media accounts for her job (and has her own side business at home) and used to use 2 phones, with Island she can run parallel sandboxed copies of certain apps at the same time (ebay etc). It's the first thing she installs on a new phone and at this point she'd refuse a new phone if she couldn't use Island on it. With the normal work profile, she'd have to constantly switch between profiles and miss out on real time notifications.
I can see and install Island from Play Store (just did that a minute ago) so idk what's the issue...
https://github.com/oasisfeng/island/issues/432
It was removed for 2 weeks, the developer found a workaround. Still sucks that Google removed them at all
I use Shelter and keep it updated direct from the GitHub repo using Obtainium.
What's Obtainium?
An app to keep your installed github apps up to date
That's nice.
You won't need that for Shelter. It hasn't been updated in years.
Lol - it has been a while. A little less than a year. That said, it does what it says on the wrapper so there's probably no need for any major updates. If Google mucks around with Work profiles, the dev may reappear when we need him most - just like Batman.
Glad its still working. I've been using Island for a while now. Maybe it is because I used Shelter for a long time but I like it better. I'm going to switch back if its still working :--)
I have an easy access to my work profil thanks to CalyxOS. So if I install Waze on this profil, it will be sandboxed? Or it still have access to a lot of my informations ?