Premium subscription without Google Play Services
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It would be great if it was possible to subscribe to premium without needing Google Play Services. You could for example take payment via your website.
This would help people running all sorts of non-Google Android flavours such as Huawei devices, e os devices, Amazon devices, LineageOS, CalyxOS, Graphene OS and more.
I'd love to be a paying subscriber but don't currently have a device I can be on.
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@db579 Hi. We offer subscription on desktop and Huawei devices via FastSpring. If you subscribe to premium you should be able to access premium on all your devices.
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K Korina moved this topic from Your Feedback and Suggestions on
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@MarkNagy oh great I hadn't realised that was possible. Just to confirm, is that specifically for Huawei devices or will it work on any Android device without a Google account?
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@db579 The official Windy application can be downloaded only from Play Store or Huawei appgallery. I don't think that it is possible to install the official Windy application on devices without one of these installed. I understand that unofficial versions of the applications could be downloaded and installed, however I do not recommend doing so. These versions could be easily modified and may contain viruses.
The official application from google play store supports purchases via google play services and the application from huawei appgallery supports purchases via FastSrping.
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@MarkNagy Ah I see. It's also possible to download the official Google Play Store app without having it installed through the open source Aurora store. In this case though that premium option doesn't work since it still expects Play Services to be present.
It seems if the FastSpring version was made available elsewhere the problem would be solved. Might it be possible to host the apk on the website somewhere other users could download it?
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@db579 Hi. Unfortunatelly no, we do not intend to build an apk available to download from other sources. It would be a security risk, that is why Windy is available only from Play Store and Appgallery, sorry. As I mentioned earlier, if you purchase premium on website it should be accessed on your mobile device once you have logged in to your premium account.
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@MarkNagy I've been able to subscribe and it does work perfectly on my mobile device without Google Play Services installed as you said so thank you very much for that tip.
Perhaps the text in the app could be a little clearer as it specifically refers to Google accounts and I wouldn't have realised a desktop subscription would work fine without your help.
I'm not sure what security risk there would be with having the app hosted by Windy on the Windy.com website, given that the apk can already be extracted from other places. It could include a warning that most users should continue to download it from the play store. https://signal.org/android/apk/ is a good example of this.
