App Watcher for Android

App Watcher notifies you about updates of applications from Play Store even the app is not installed currently on your device and provides quick access to the "What's new" section.

With App Watcher you can follow changes of apps you love, know about new features, bug fixes and new levels update for games.

App Watcher checks daily the list for updates in Play Store and will notify you when there is a new version available.

Features

• Add an app from Play Market to watch list (Use Share)
• Manual and automatic updates
• Quick shortcut to see what's new/changelog in app
• Share application
• Update notification
• Google Drive backup
• Filter list by: Installed/Not installed
• Import from PLay Store watchlist

Google Play Store

Build

1. Checkout

   git clone
   git submodule init
   git submodule update

2. Configure

   • Define a valid SDK location
     1. Create local.properties file
     2. Set sdk.dir path (Example: sdk.dir=~/Library/Android/sdk)
   • For debug builds, move and rename google-services.json.debug into app/google-services.json
   • For release builds, keep private files out of git. Gradle reads the release Google Services file directly from APPWATCHER_GOOGLE_SERVICES_FILE in the user's Gradle user home gradle.properties, alongside signing values APPWATCHER_KEYSTORE_FILE, APPWATCHER_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD, APPWATCHER_KEY_ALIAS, and APPWATCHER_KEY_PASSWORD.

3. Build

   ./gradlew installDebug

Dependency updates prefer stable releases. Material3 remains on 1.5.0-beta01 to match Compose Foundation 1.12.x; Material3 1.4.0 targets an older Foundation line. Google Play services Auth remains on 21.6.0 because 22.0.0 removes the Google Sign-In APIs used by Drive backup. Moving that dependency forward requires migrating the sign-in flow to Credential Manager.

Local sync diagnostics

Settings shows the Local diagnostics section only while the selected account is a diagnostic account. Configure the private, comma-separated APPWATCHER_DIAGNOSTIC_ACCOUNTS property in the Gradle user home gradle.properties (GRADLE_USER_HOME, otherwise ~/.gradle). Values are normalized and SHA-256 hashed before entering BuildConfig. The allowlist is a rollout mechanism, not a security boundary. An absent/empty property disables the allowlist. Consent persists on this device and is bound to the selected account. Recording is off by default. When disabled or not allowed, no logging tee is installed.

The section has one switch, Record local diagnostic logs. While it is on, the switch description shows the retained size, oldest entry, dropped lines and write failures, and app log lines are also saved under noBackupFilesDir/diagnostics. Logs may contain package names and error messages. Startup logs include device power/background restrictions, recent process exit reasons and sync work state. Recording is bounded and non-blocking; lines may be truncated or dropped under load. Files rotate with a 30-day retention and a 10 MiB cap, evicting the oldest segments first. Nothing can be logged while Android does not run the app.

While recording is on, the App log screen shows the newest 4,000 recorded lines instead of logcat. Logs stay on the device unless you manually use its Share action. Share creates a snapshot under the narrow diagnostic-exports cache FileProvider path and grants temporary read permission through Android's share sheet. Nothing uploads automatically. Up to three snapshots remain cached (at most 10 MiB beyond the retained-log cap); cached exports expire after 24 hours on the next diagnostic operation. Recipients control their exported copies.

Switching the switch off deletes the retained logs and snapshots; there is no separate delete action. Recording also stops and the logs are deleted when the selected account changes or signs out, and at startup when recording is not enabled for the selected account. Release bundles must be rebuilt to include this feature.

Author

Alex Gavrishev, 2012

License

Project is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/