I created this simple Android app so that I could view the kbin.social in a dedicated browser.

It’s not a dedicated app like, for example, is RIF for Reddit, it’s simply a dedicated browser for kbin.social: once you open the app you will see the kbin.social site as you would see it in any browser.

I created this app for myself, because I wanted to interact with the kbin.social site in a browser other than the default browser on my phone, and I am sharing it in case it might be useful to others.

You can get the code and the apk from github: https://github.com/anemomylos/shell4kbin

  • abff08f4813c
    1•1 year ago

    This would have been superhandy in the days when kbin.social was on cloudflare and that stopped the PWA from working on android.

    What’s the difference between a PWA and this app btw? I know that technically a PWA uses the other browser but it appears as an entirely separate app from that browser and you can have them open on different sites and so forth.

    • anemomylosOP
      1•1 year ago

      In that case it would not have changed anything. Instead of seeing the Cloudflare page in your regular browser you would have seen the same page in this app, since this app is only a dedicated browser for kbin.social, nothing more.
      This app is like Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Opera, but unlike them it only loads by default kbin.social. I think Datas_Cat_Spot’s comment explains the only advantage this app has over any other browser for browsing the site.

      • abff08f4813c
        2•1 year ago

        So on iOS I had no issues with the PWA when cloudflare was on.

        With android though, I couldn’t get the PWA to install - the system refused to recognize that a PWA was available until cloudflare was turned off. (I checked with Lighthouse and the report couldn’t run to determine PWA compliance.)

        I’m assuming I could install your app regardless of the status of cloudflare usage. So for that along it would have made a big difference.