The app is only available on iOS, because it would have to collect information on Android that could put people at risk.
I would be curious to learn more about how the OS requires an app to collect data.
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
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Play store requires a home address for app downloads, both for the publisher and any users, so it would allow precise targeting of people if they ask google to disclose the information. No idea why this isn’t published on F-Droid though .
They're iOS devs and probably don't want or know how to do a java project. This can 100% be on fdroid. If anyone knows kotlin or otherwise wants to build the thing please link the github for us.
Their explanation for why it can't be on Android is that the nature of Android push notifications is such that they (the developers) would need to maintain a database of device IDs that could be tied back to physical devices and potentially be used to deanonymize which users received which alerts.
To me, this sounds lazy and like something that could be mitigated with End-To-End encryption.
Yeah they're Apple devs who don't understand Apple was caught in the same push notification scandal. The small technical differences don't matter. Push notifications can have interchangeable providers or none at all now on android.
Someone please help them, I bet their unit tests are nonexistent.
They mean push notifications where you need to store a device identifying URL to push your notifications to.
If traceability is a concern, using the native iOS notifications is not much better, you just move the burden to Apple (which I assume will be more than happy to cooperate, given they're an American corporate), so nothing is really solved.
The only good solution is your own backend which knows nothing and each app installation maintains a permanent WebSocket connection, then you push them to each client.
Aaron told CNN that ICEBlock doesn't collect personal data, such as device IDs and IP addresses, which TechCrunch has confirmed in a test. The app is only available on iOS, because it would have to collect information on Android that could put people at risk.
Huh? Why? You choose what data you collect…
(Spitballing here) perhaps a Google Play Services location request necessarily returns a unique identifier that can be requested and seized by law enforcement?
CoMaps and plenty of other apps on F-Droid manage to use location services without relying on Google.
This makes perfect sense if they're iOS only devs who have no idea what f-droid is.
Good luck reaching the masses w/o an android version.
needs version of iOS18.? which is too rich for my phone
Is this open source?
The app is only available on iOS,
I feel like the kind of people who are on the Apple walled garden, are the kind of people who like ICE to begin with.
I've only got my family and friends to reference, but it breaks about 70/30 with the MAGA conservatives on Android/iPhone and 80/20 for the liberals/leftists preferring iPhones.
And of my family at least, I suspect a big part of that is the conservatives are not the tech savvy ones who go into a store, knowing what kind of device they want; they just go into their cell phone provider and get whatever is least expensive for a smartphone
(Not intending to smear iOS users with the crying wojak, BTW; just too lazy to edit the template.)
Coded by terrorists and used by terrorists. The apps developers did 9-11. /s
The dev put up a post with more info, according to them it has more to do with anonymity and notifications: https://www.iceblock.app/android
There are ways to work around that, though it requires the developer to create some server infrastructure.
Edit: Also pretending that using Apple is fine is not secure - Apple can provide the data (given it's a US based company) if law enforcement asks, so not knowing them personally doesn't change much.