Unofficial android app

Building Glimesh Dev
#1

I wanted to brush up my Android dev skills so I put together a little app for viewing Glimesh streams. It was meant to just be a little throwaway prototype but it was fun to use and work on so I cleaned it up a bit. At this point I’m interested in sharing it out with the community.

This is completely separate than the official flutter-based cross-platform app being developed at GitHub - Glimesh/glimesh_app: Extremely early, completely un-testable Glimesh Mobile App. That creates some issues which make me hesitate to take the plunge of publishing what I’ve done on the Google Play Store so others can use it.

My main question is about use of the Glimesh name, logo, and other branding. The app is ready to publish, but I do not want to use any branding without approval and don’t want to create confusion in the future when the flutter-based app is published. (In fact once the flutter app is published and reaches feature parity I’ll consider pulling this app from the store to avoid confusion)

This leaves me in a lurch though. I’d like to share what I’ve done and would like the app to drive increased interest and support of glimesh.tv. For that reason I’d like permission to use some amount of branding like the logo, some help coming up with an app name that would be suitable, and suggestions for any other text/links I should add to the app to credit and support Glimesh.

So my ask is who can give approval to use Glimesh branding, what amount of branding can (and should) I use, and if this gets published should I be promote it in Discord etc or is that no beuno.

Currently the best idea for an app name is “GlimDroid”. Or maybe “Glim - the unofficial Glimesh.tv app”. Names are hard! Especially on Android where only the first eight or so characters of the app name are shown on the home screen.

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#2

In addition to the branding question there are some other practical issues with trying to publish an unofficial app, the main one is how to enable users to support streamers.

Google is very strict about in-app payments or even linking to websites where donations/payments/subscriptions can be made. Everything must be done through their Play Store (cynically this is so they can take a cut, less cynically it lets them monitor for abuse). My reading is that even a “Support” button linking to the glimesh.tv site would be against their terms and would likely get the app taken down. Only non-profits are allowed to do that for donation links.

An official Glimesh app can get around this issue and I’m sure that’s already been discussed elsewhere. With a big chunk of development it would be possible to support subscribing to streams through subscriptions in the Google Play Store (or Apple store for iOS).

As a third-party app there is no way I can do that, so I don’t see a good way to drive subscriptions from such an app. That is a big reason I’m hesitant to publish what I’ve done at all, or if this gets published I would strongly consider pulling the app once the official one is ready and has a solution for supporting streamers better than users just knowing they need to go to the website to setup a subscription.

#3

I’m starting to like the name “GlimDroid” and the following is a first attempt at making a new icon. It is distinctly different than the Glimesh logo while having some slight visual callbacks. I’ll continue to iterate but personally I think this is good enough to ship as a beta. The store link will be https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tv.glimesh.android once it is published.

image

However, I’d still appreciate a quick approval that this is distinct enough from the Glimesh brand that it will not cause problems, and if there is anything else branding wise I should do. Thanks in advance!

#4

Hey Dan,

Haven’t had a chance to think or talk about this with the team yet, but regarding your previous post “GlimDroid” is perfectly fine and does not violate our trademark, along with your proposed logo you attached. I think however you should change the app’s namespace, as tv.glimesh.android could be misleading until we figure out if this should be “official” or not.

#5

Thanks for the quick reply @clone1018. Good point about the application ID, I choose that back when I was hoping this app could have some semi-official capacity.

I’m happy to change it, probably to com.danielstiner.glimdroid. It will mean creating a new listing in the Google Play Store as it is not possible to change the ID of a published app, but I’m happy to do that. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.

#6

Right, until we either make it official, or clarify it’s 3rd party position, it’s probably best to use a namespace that wont conflict or confuse us in the future.

#7

Yep agreed, thanks for the catch on that! I’ve re-published as https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.danielstiner.glimdroid.

Waiting on Google to review the app which may take up to a week, after that happens I’d like to publish the app if that’s okay.

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#8

Good by me! If you tweet about it let us know and we can throw an retweet at it!

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#9

Published and tweeted :slight_smile:

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