submitted 8 months ago by Confining@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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TLDR: I love sideloaded apps and they r a godsend

So I’ve been using sideloaded yt and Spotify and now I can NEVER go back. Makes me feel like a PEASANT if I do.

So a couple weeks ago I went on a 4 hour drive and sadly my sidestore time expired and I couldn’t renew due to ap ID it so I had to wait a week and by the time I would drive another 4 hours back. And let me tell you FREE SPOTIFY SUCKS ASS. I can’t go back or scrub through the songs, I can only do 6 skips per hour and replay COUNTS AS THE 6, luckily I use a vpn which blocked other company ads but SPOTIFY HAS THEIR OWN DAMN STUPID ADS EVERY 3 SONGS. And I couldn’t add songs to queue by swiping and I had to tap on the three dots and add to queue which I can’t do while on the highway. And of course I can’t play a specific song, I can’t even decide whether I want shuffle or not. And I didn’t even wanna try yt with no playing off the app or while the phone is off.

It’s as if getting into sideloading, piracy, and modding made me feel true online freedom and I can’t wait or imagine the feeling I’m going to have when I start self hosting. I’m definitely going to donate to these projects due to the improvement in my life they contributed to.

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[-] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 103 points 8 months ago

You shouldn't use the term sideloading to describe installing apps from alternative sources, that just makes it seem like it's some weird and different, possibly unintended thing. When it is an intended part of an open ecosystem.

[-] Steve@communick.news 37 points 8 months ago

Agreed.
Alternative app stores aren't sideloading.

[-] prenatal_confusion@feddit.org 5 points 8 months ago

No? Please educate me

[-] idriss@lemmy.ml 41 points 8 months ago

Side loading is a made up word by mega corpo which implies installing software on the device you paid for is wrong and makes you feel like a pirate

[-] prenatal_confusion@feddit.org 6 points 8 months ago

I agree. I didn't see the first line of your comments when I replied.

[-] Ulrich@feddit.org 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It's nonsense. These people expect you to say "installing apps from outside the first-party app store" every time you refer to sideloading and suggest that somehow the word has a negative connotation and was made up by corpos to keep you in their silos, even though the word predates the concept altogether.

[-] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 5 points 8 months ago

When I think of sideloading, it's installing software without using an app store, because that's the name of the command in adb. You plug your phone into your computer, open a terminal, and do adb sideload path/to/my/app.

this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026

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