[Android Apps and Games] GalaxyA325G:
Woo hoo!

Problem solved!

Thanks to the developer's kind and patient care & diligence!

The developer of App Finder (AF) kindly worked with me in the DM system and AF now works flawlessly with the Aurora Store (AS) on my unrooted Android 12 Galaxy A32-5G [which has NO ACCOUNTS WHATSOEVER on it - so I can only install apps from the Google Play Store repository using the AS app].

Note: Since I've owned many Android phones, and since AS automatically saves the APK (well, it has a setting to "not delete" them after installation) - in general I don't need much in the Google Play Store repository since I already have all the APKs autoarchived on my NAS (where my entire Android phone is assigned a Windows drive letter over the Wi-Fi LAN using a free WebDAV server and the Windows "net use" commands). On Android, I use the last-known-good-version of the free Nova launcher to back up the exact location of all the homescreen icons and restore them to the new phone, and then I use the FOSS screencopy utility to mirror my Android phone onto my PC monitor (which makes the phone 20 inches high and 9 inches wide!) and I use the PC mouse and keyboard to slide the APKs from Windows to the phone which instantly populates the phone with all the APKs from the prior phone - and they all go into exactly the same well-organized homescreen hierarchy as in the prior phone).

While I completely understand you, I would characterize the two apps slightly differently for those who haven't used AS before.

Both AF & AS apps do the task of SEARCHING for apps in the Google Play Store repository based on search terms and set filters.

However, AF has far more extensive and quite useful additional filters - which makes AF a better search app!

Caveat: There is at least one filter in AS that isn't yet on AF

(i.e., the GSF spyware filter - which is required by many apps)

AF doesn't download, install or save the APK

AS does all 3 tasks (download, install & not delete the APK)

(which no other app can do!)

(even the Google Play Store can't do all three things!)

In summary, with those added details, the author's summary is more succinct in that he supplied a user model melding AF & AS together.

AF is a great search engine to the Google Play Store repo

AS is mostly a downloading, installation & APK archival tool

Note: For completeness, it should be noted that there is always a saved APK (in the system hierarchy) for every single app (even default apps) on every single Android phone (bar none) - which is why the app extractors can work - but that always-archived APK is (usually) stripped down specifically for that phone hardware while the original APK downloaded from the Google Play Store repository "may" be a more complete APK - and hence is worth "not deleting" after installation.

Ah. Nice. When I first found this thread, I skimmed the 9 pages; but I just went back today and read every post and see you mentioned those planned enhancements.

BTW, I took the liberty of advertising for the developer on the Android Usenet newsgroup today (hope it's OK to spread the joy).

Skyica App Finder is the best search engine for the Google Play Store repository

Woo hoo! That latest version of AF worked flawlessly with that new AS version (even with no Google Account set up on my phone)!

Thank you for (a) writing this wonderful AF app and allowing us the pleasure of using it for increased search efficiency, and (b) for caring enough to debug why AS did not show up in AF and for (c) improving the AF product for everyone as a result!