stop using download manager

[nutpantz]

Download manager has a ton of issues.

I wish i had known you used it.

Because download manager failed to get the files, it's been hammering my system trying to download the last few days killing my battery at 1% every 10 minutes.

I finally figured out why...

Download manager is a nightmare that has no user interface and zero user interaction ability.

[rdoeffinger]

Download manager is supposed to show a notification while downloading and allow cancelling a download this way, which works fine for user interaction.
In addition, downloads can also be cancelled from the app itself.
The app is OpenSource, so if someone wishes to implement a different download solution that is simple and maintainable enough, they are welcome to do so.
From my side personally though, I am not even going to try to work around bugs in the OS, because the 1000s of developers at Google, Samsung etc can add them far faster than I have any chance to keep up without even trying to work on the app itself.
Thus as annoying as this might be to you personally: I can only suggest to ask the ones selling the phone to fix their software. So I have a chance to have some time left to fix mine.

[nutpantz]

"Supposed to" never happens if there is no confirmed internet network connection. So it just hammers the system with zero user interaction.

And 1000 issues from oems is why no one should use Google crap api shortcuts (like download manager) to just Downloading directly.

Just turn off all network connections, start a download via your app . Then try to find any way or even evidence that the system plans to download or hammer the system via download manager for 6 hours...
I have i pixel 8 pro. And even with the most basic Android system there is zero interaction between user and download manager. .

[Danny3]

Could this be the reason why no dictionary is downloading, even though I have give the internet access permissison if AFWall+ application firewall to this app?

[nutpantz]

It could be. It could also be that download manager decided you don't have a good Internet connection so it will not even try to download. Maybe download manager will try next week or maybe download manager will try when you are on vacation and it costs you 40$ in data charges

[Danny3]

It would be really stupid to decide that I don't have good internet connection, considering that I have fiber optics (FFH -GPON), which works fine in Fennec on the same phone and on the laptop from which I'm writing this reply.
But I would not be surprised from what software can decide and things have bugs or are not that well thought.

AFWall+ is also blocking pretty much everything that is not whitelist, so if the app uses a third party tool to download what it needs, that is not whitelisted in AFWall+, then it will be blocked.
I don't know what else to whitelist if I'm not told and I don't like anyway to whitelist third party tools, being Curl, Wget, DownloadManager, whatever as then other apps can use them too and I cannot do anything to stop them.

[rdoeffinger]

Download Manager is an Android system component, so rather a first-party app.
And it is problematic enough that I added the "download in browser" menu item as an alternative way to install (unfortunately the sharing feature in Android is broken too, so it seems to not quite work as intended either...).
Adding networking code to the App not only means adding network permission (admittedly does not do much anymore), but it also means having code that requires regular monitoring of security issues and doing updates for that.
Without someone else picking up that work, that's just not something I can take on with the time I have for this project.

[Danny3]

Even if it's a first-party app, I would still don't trust for 1-2 reasons.

1. If I allow this Download Manager through AFWall+, then pretty much every other app can use this to download whatever it wants.
   And not only download, but possibly eve send something, depending what this manager allows.
   If we are looking at the HTTP protocol, even if you don't use the POST method, you can still send some data through the GET URI and arguments, like:
   GET /user-is/
   GET /user-is/index.php?userid=unique-userid&data2=data2value7data3=data3value

2. If the Download manager is based on Chromium, then it could send even more data as Thorium, Ungoogled-Chromium and other de-Googling projects prove how much spyware Chromium really has in it.

I'm really fine with having apps that don't require network permissions, which is great and me having to download required files with web brosers like:
Mobile Fennec
Desktop LibreWolf

And then importing such files in the app.
I'm doing similar things with other apps too.

BTW, don't feel guilty or sad in anyway.
You do what you can with the time you have and we are very grateful and thankful for that.
The project being created, as open source, being available on Github and also being available on F-droid are really great things!
Nobody can really ask for anything more.
People who want something must contribute with something too.

Great project BTW!

[rdoeffinger]

I made a patch that should address some of the issues, like only downloading from wifi by default, avoiding the downloads that are "stuck" with no UI indication.
Otherwise I can't disagree with not trusting DownloadManager, it has the usual Android low code quality with bad OEM hacks on top.
But the idea, especially for the average user without firewall, was actually pretty good: Downloads would be managed and prioritized in a central place, apps would not have general internet connection, only the ability to download, the user would get clear information on that, and could even detect any attempt to "smuggle" out data by being able to inspect the URL.
But a good idea can clearly fail with a bad enough implementation...