The Future of Accrescent
blog.accrescent.app
Accrescent is a novel Android app store focused on security, privacy, and usability. We’ve been building Accrescent since 2021 to improve the security and freedom of everyday Android users by providing an alternative to Google Play which doesn’t compromise on technical excellence and protecting our users. Aligned with this mission, over 42,000 people worldwide trust Accrescent to deliver their apps safely. Now, we need your help to continue. Accrescent has always been free to use because we believe security shouldn’t have to come at a price. We also understand we’re trusted by our users to secure a sensitive and significant portion of their lives — the apps they use — so we’ve built Accrescent transparently, making our code open source so others can run and inspect it as they please.

Accrescent, for those who don’t know, is an alternative android app store. They aim to compete directly with the play store, so unlike F-Droid they include both FOSS and proprietary apps. They are also very security focused. They’re still small but I find their approach interesting and their ambition worth supporting.

Unfortunately, as with many FOSS projects, funding is a challenge. If you believe they are worth supporting, please read the linked blog post.

Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with the project in any way, just a fan trying to raise awareness.

    • SorryImLate@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      3·
      18 days ago

      Yes. I assume that’s partly what this is about.

      To date the majority of the coding has been done by one person after work. Their infrastructure was also too slow.

      They released a progress update and roadmap a few days ago. They’ve already implemented some infrastructure upgrades and are prioritising back-end updates. Presumably this will make the store more attractive for app developers.

      The funding push is to make it possible to have a developer working on the project fulltime.

      Edit: a word

      2nd edit to add: I found this thread from about a year ago, when they only had 10 apps. Relevant quotes from the developer:

      Developer of Accrescent here. Yes, there are only a handful of apps available right now. The reason for this is that the recent focus hasn’t been directed on getting more apps in the store, but instead on internal changes to allow Accrescent to include more features and scale to more users. It will be able to include more apps once more of those changes are implemented.

      Yes, we may take on some additional apps over time. This depends on how much the project can handle maintenance-wise and how willing those app developers are to deal with the early and changing nature of Accrescent. We’re not directly reaching out to any developers at this time, however.

      So apparently it’s a deliberate choice.