Not only that. If you buy an app, you are at the mercy of its creator. If they decide they want to fill it with ads and tracking, or switch to a subscription model, there’s nothing you can do. You can’t rollback updates, you can’t install an older version from the play store. If they decide to remove it from the store, you won’t be able to install it any more.
I had one of the flight tracker apps, used it to identify planes passing my work lunch room’s window, and paid $5 for it to get it ad free. Then it went to subscription and made it’s free tier time limited instead of ad supported, so now I don’t use it. I can’t use an old version as it doesn’t work on newer versions of Android
Edit to add: It’s worth learning how to side load apps. While on a driving holiday in Sicily I was told that it was vital to have the ZTL app so I could know what areas were closed to cars (zero traffic limit), but it was only available on the Italian play store, so I had to download the APK and install it that way
Zona a Traffico Limitato - buy I like the way you made the acronym work in english :)
Edit: Limited traffic area, typically only residents, emergency services, deliveries etc.
On that note, I bought a GIF viewer app’s full version via in-app purchase and about a year later, they updated the app to have ads again regardless and my “full version no ads” app got ads again and now i had to buy a subscription per month to be “ad free” needless to say I uninstalled
Well you can always use https://blokada.org (version 5, which runs on your phone). It stops most ads.
The “best” thing is when someone makes legitimately the best application for its purpose (arguably the only good application for it), so you convince your friends to use it because it’s so useful, and then they cram it full of ads and bloat and make it borderline unusable, but your friends won’t switch to a different app (or even leave the app altogether) because it’s the only way they know how to do the thing
I’m talking about the 5e Companion app on Android. Anyone know any good alternatives? It used to be so good, but then they started adding Unearthed Arcana garbage to it, which almost entirely sucks ass, and when UA gets officially added, they have to add the official version separately because some people have already used the UA version to make characters. I want so badly to switch away from it, but I can’t find any good free alternatives that have all of the content from 5e.
I wish 5e.tools had a character sheet builder
Kinda hard to just trust those sites not to hide malicious shit in there.
Yup, looking at you, Vocabulary.com
