Freedom and Privacy, Technology, Ubuntu

How to go around Google’s market/play: Manual installs of .apk files

This post is more for myself but if it works then I’ll leave it up for others.

Goal: To be able to put any .apk file on my Android phone without having to use a google account and use their servers

Problem summary: It seems as though Android doesn’t come with a .apk file installer, even though it is widely known that it’s possible.

Details of problem:

I want to be able to avoid needing Google to use my phone the way I want.  I paid a lot of my hard earned money for it and I don’t want someone telling me how I’m going to use it.  That’s why I bought Bondage Bot instead of the Fruit Company in the first place.  It was the lesser of two evils, I heard.  And Ubuntu Touch is not quite ready for this phone so triple lame.

My buddy told me about a .apk file that will allow me to download and install basically anything – both bad and good.  So, I got the .apk file on my SD card in my phone but couldn’t figure out how to install it.  It seems there is not an installer.  Lame. During the research I also found out that it seems Bondage Bot also does not have a file browser in the OS so I can’t just search for the file and click on it.

The Plan

Apparently if i download a .apk file from the internet it will prompt me to install it (as long as I’ve allowed my phone to do so).  So, I’m going to

1. upload the .apk file browser to this blog post

*FAIL! .apk is apparently not allowed to be uploaded ‘for security reasons’. Sheesh.

*Now uploaded to another site: see below

2. Upload the .apk file that allows me to get files in the future and attach to this blog post

3. Make sure my settings of phone allow installing of third party apps

4. Download the file browser .apk file (#1) through my phone’s web browser which will hopefully prompt me to download then even more hopefully, install it

5. open file browser app and search/find the ‘fake market’ app and install it

6. put any .apk file on the SD card and be able to install it with the file browser I installed.

Wish me luck.  If it worked, then I’ll leave post as is.  If not, I’ll come back and do some edits.

The Files

FILE BROWSER –File removed as you can search it and install it once you get the file below installed–

FAKE MARKET

 

Notes:

-Update: Almost worked. but says ‘has a problem parsing the package’ for file browser.

HOWEVER! the second one worked and now I will try to get the astro browser through the fake market.

– Update: Amazing. it worked.  I just searched ‘astro file manager’ in the Black mart app and now I’m downloading the file.  Hopefully it will install from there but if not I guess I don’t really need it anyways since I can get stuff through this app.

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