KDE Connect and Android

-  Nicolas Fella

As most of you know KDE Connect has recently been removed from Google Play due to a policy violation with regard to our SMS and telephony features. While the public outcry helped to get it back in with all features remaining this is just yet another example of how new Android policies make it harder for us to maintain the level of quality and features you expect from KDE Connect. Android Oreo forced us to drop support for older Android versions and imposed restrictions on background services which force us to have an annoying persistent notification. It is to be expected that Google will further restrict background services which will impose more problems for us. With each new Android versions new restrictions and problems arise which we have to work around, if possible. For example, the upcoming Android Q imposes restrictions on accessing the phone’s clipboard. It is unclear whether the clipboard sync in it’s current form is feasible on Android Q. Those are just examples of the problems with the direction Android is moving towards.

With Plasma Mobile KDE has been working on an alternative mobile platform for a while now. We now consider Plasma Mobile stable and suitable for everyone to use. Therefore we decided to stop developing KDE Connect for Android and focus on the Plasma Mobile experience. We have removed the app from Google Play and F-Droid as well as removed the public repositories. We are also in contact with Google about removing the active installations from devices.

We hope that this steps contributes to a better mobile experience in the long term beginning today, April 1st 2019.