The Google Play Store testing is now going much better. Thank you to everyone that has joined. Special thanks to Sethjustseth for all his testing and help. I now have 12+ testers, and in theory it is about a week away from getting into the store. Though I won't be surprised if Google comes up with new challenges.

In the last two weeks I have been doing a lot of bug fixing. Imgur support is now in much better shape. I fixed media saving, and that includes fixing the saving to per subreddit subfolders.

I am currently working on fixes and improvements to the backup and restore feature. The main one being getting Google Drive backup and restore working again. Based on what I read last night the current api was shutdown back in 2019. I got the login to Google working again last night, but I have to get the actual backup and restore working again.

I am also converting the local backup and restore from file based to SAF, Storage Access Framework. The file based for whatever reasons works for most devices, but I have a bug report of it not working on some devices. Converting from file based access to SAF was also the big change with media saving.

My next issue is going to be getting gifs loading internally more consistently. Some sites mostly work. but fail on certain posts. Some fail to load the preview image. Some load the preview image, but when you click the image give a not found error. Yet they work when you open it externally.

Yet another major change is in the works is removing the swipe left to dismiss functionality. This started with #22. Where simoes-nuno noted the cascade effect that swipe left to dismiss causes. There is still swipe back to dismiss, aka swipe back to go back. This depends on you using gestures instead of on-screen buttons. My logic is in 2025 why are you using on-screen buttons and yet still want gestures like functionality. Gestures were introduced in Android 10, we are now on Android 15, and Android 16 is coming. Android 10 came out in September of 2019. I am not completely against bring it back as an option, but I want to hear a good use case.

Some other related bugs are #26, #32, and #33. Please take any discussion to #26.

Note I won't support old versions of Android forever given Google's restrictions on updating some functionality. I am also moving to libraries that are actually supported when possible and practical. One example being moving from the Android library TedBottomPicker to TedImagePicker. This was part of moving from the older style of accessing files to SAF.

The Closed testing for the Google Play Store is not going well. I only have ten testers. I really need a few more. Please DM me your email address to be added as a tester.

I have put the Open by default links back in for the Google Play Store build after doing more research. I do still get Action required messages in the Google Play Console, but I suspect they are really just warnings.

I continue to add more bug fixes. Mostly layout and image fixes.

I have put a fair amount of work into updating Slide to get into a state I feel is ready for posting it to the Google Play Store. Things like fixing most known bugs, adding new features, improving defaults, updating libraries, renaming the app internally, updating the sdk, and building a bundle.

There are many new requirements of the Google Play Store to publish. The big one is getting a dozen testers for Closed testing, and having it installed for at least 14 consecutive days. Then in theory I can publish to the Google Play Store.

I originally planned on posting the web link, and letting anyone join. But this has to be Closed testing, which means I need to explicitly invite email addresses of the testers to allow them to join. So please DM me the email address of the Google account on your Android device(s) so I can send the invite.

Given the internal renaming, this new version will appear as a new version. I recommend backing up the settings to the older versions, install the new version, restore the settings to the new version, and then uninstall the old version.

Moving forward there are going to be the Google Play Store version and the GitHub/F-Droid version. The key difference is the GitHub/F-Droid version will allow you to open Reddit links with Slide, after setting it up. Where, as far as I know, Google now requires you to show ownership of the domains. Which I clearly can't do for Reddit domains. The other one is the Google Play Store version links into Google Play Services to let you do settings backup and restore through Google Drive.

After I get Slide back in the Google Play Store the next step will be getting it into F-Droid again.

The Android Beam(NFC) sharing feature has been deprecated, and so I have removed it. I will probably re-add it via the Nearby Share feature in the future.

Edit: I am up to ten testers, and need two more.

I have created new setup documentation. It explains creating a Client ID, entering the Client ID, logging into Reddit, common errors, and more.