AskFoodi on your phone

Getting on Google Play means a developer account, a review queue and a set of ongoing requirements that don't yet make sense for a free site serving one island. That may change. For now, the app is handed out the way software was handed out before app stores existed: as a file, from the site that made it.

That works perfectly well on Android. The phone just asks a few more questions along the way — and this page walks through every single one of them, in the order you'll meet them.

If AskFoodi ever does appear on Google Play, an app you installed from here keeps working.

Four steps, about a minute. Your phone will warn you once or twice on the way through. Those warnings are routine, and the section after this one explains precisely what they mean and what they don't. The messages are quoted below as Android words them; your phone shows them in whatever language it is set to, and phone makers reword some of them, so match the shape of each screen rather than the exact sentence.

1. 1

   Tap Download

   Chrome asks before it saves the file. Depending on your Android and Chrome version you'll get either “File might be harmful” with a Download anyway button, or the milder “Download from this site?” with Download. Either way, choose the button that continues.

   Chrome shows this for every .apk from every website — including apps from very large companies. It's a warning about the type of file, not about this file.

2. 2

   Open the downloaded file

   Chrome shows a “File downloaded” bar with an Open link. Tap it. If it disappears before you get there, the file is in your Downloads folder — open it from there instead.

3. 3

   Let your browser install it, once

   Android may say “For your security, your phone currently isn't allowed to install unknown apps from this source.” Tap Settings, turn on “Allow from this source”, then press Back. The install continues on its own.

   You're giving that permission to Chrome, not to AskFoodi, and only once. You can take it back afterwards: Settings › Apps › Special app access › Install unknown apps. On a Samsung it's Settings › Security and privacy › More security settings › Install unknown apps.

4. 4

   Confirm the install

   “Do you want to install this app?” → Install. When it says “App installed.”, tap Open. AskFoodi is on your home screen.

The short answer: they're about how the app reached your phone, not about what the app does once it's there.

Android draws a hard line between “installed from a store” and “installed from a file”. A file could have come from anywhere and been changed by anyone on the way, so the phone makes certain a human meant to install it, and it uses strong language to do that. The wording is identical whether the file is genuine malware or a restaurant guide from Curaçao — it isn't a judgement about this app, because at that moment the phone has no way to form one.

Here is what the phone can't tell you, and what you can check. Every release is signed with a key only we hold. Android will refuse to install an update signed with any other key, so once this app is on your phone, only we can replace it — that signature is the link between the app you installed and the site you got it from. Alongside each download this page publishes the file's SHA-256 checksum, and the app verifies that checksum itself before it will install an update.

Being cautious about installing files is a good instinct, and we'd rather you kept it than dropped it here. If anything on this page doesn't match what your phone actually shows you, that's a reason to stop and ask, not to push through.

• ✓It asks for four things, all listed below — Android's own list shows five, because it counts precise and approximate location separately — and none of them touch your photos, contacts or messages.
• ✓There is no advertising, no analytics SDK and no third-party tracking in it.
• ✓The only pages it opens are askfoodi.com pages — every other link, a restaurant's own site, WhatsApp, maps, opens in your normal browser or the app that owns it. A photo on a listing can still load from the restaurant's own site, exactly as it does in a browser.
• ✓It's built from the same codebase as the website, by the same people, and signed with the same key every time.
• ✓Uninstalling it is a long-press and Uninstall, like anything else, and nothing is left behind except anything you downloaded through it, which stays in your Downloads folder.

Four things, and each one is here for something you can point at on the screen.

Internet

To load the site. Without a connection the app says so instead of showing you a blank page.

Location

Only when you tap “near me”, and only after Android asks you and you say yes. It's used to sort restaurants by distance and goes nowhere else.

Install apps

So the app can install its own updates. There's no store to do it for us — and Android still shows you its own confirmation every single time.

Network state

To tell “you're offline” apart from “the site is being slow”, so the app shows you the right message.

It does not ask for your contacts, your photo library, your microphone, your messages — or even the camera permission. A menu photo is taken by your own camera app, which hands back the one picture you took and nothing else.

Every few hours, in the background, the app asks askfoodi.com whether there's a newer version. Almost always the answer is no and you never know it happened. When the answer is yes, a small card appears at the bottom of the screen. Nothing is downloaded until you tap Update.

When you do, the app downloads the new version, checks it against the checksum published here, and refuses to install it if a single byte is different. Then Android shows its own “Do you want to update this app?” confirmation — which only you can accept. An app that could replace itself without asking would be a far worse thing to have installed.

Later hides that one version, not updates in general. The release after it will ask you again.

The first time you update, Android will ask you to let AskFoodi install apps — the same switch you gave Chrome during the install, this time for the app itself. That's a one-time thing.

If an update ever fails, nothing is broken: the version you already have carries on working, and you can always come back here and install the newest file by hand. An update installed by hand is exactly the same app as one the app installed itself.

Apple doesn't allow apps to be installed from outside the App Store, so there's no iPhone file to download and no setting that changes that. What you can do takes about ten seconds and puts the same icon on the same home screen:

1. 1

   Open askfoodi.com in Safari

   Safari is the simplest route. Chrome, Edge and Firefox can do it too on iOS 16.4 and later, from their own share menus.

2. 2

   Open the share menu

   On recent iOS, tap the ⋯ button next to the address bar, then Share. On older versions the share icon sits in the toolbar instead.

3. 3

   Add to Home Screen

   Scroll down the list, tap Add to Home Screen, then Add.

It opens full screen with no browser chrome, and it stays signed in. The one thing it can't do is update itself the way the Android app does — but a web app is always the current version, so it never needs to.