Judging by the comments sideloading plays a major part in everyone's life. What apps do you sideload guys? Why those apps are not in a store?

F-Droid. And also by Google's definition, everything I install from F-Droid. So Antennapod (Podcasts), ConnectBot, DAVx (sync my Fastmail calendar to my phone), Etar (Calendar app), Jellyfin (media player), Jiten (JP dictionary), KOReader (ebook reader), OsmAnd~ (Maps), VLC.

Meanwhile from the Play Store I have Bitwarden, Firefox, 2 banking apps, a few airline apps, Wireguard and Whatsapp. So I actually have more from F-Droid than the Play Store from what I regularly use.

Every non-stock app on my phone was installed from an APK directly downloaded from the manufacturer or open source developer's site / Github releases. I've never had a Google Play account and have never used any Android "app store".

I switched from iOS to Android about three years ago. I saved all the APKs for everything I installed (or updated). When I got a new phone last fall it was pleasantly like geting a new PC. I imported my SMS and contacts from my last backup, then installed all the apps I use and imported or manually set any settings I wanted to customize.

The biggest pain was having to manually logon the couple of sites I allow to keep persistent cookies since device owners aren't allowed to just import/export cookies from mobile Chrome.

> What apps do you sideload guys?

I sideload no apps. I install most apps from either F-Droid main, or an other repo.

> Why those apps are not in a store?

All of them are in a repository. Just only the state sponsored ID-app is only available via the ad-infected Google RAT delivery service, also known as Google Play.

> Why those apps are not in a store?

Why'd I put my app into their store if I don't agree with the store owner's policies?

Apart from why "those apps are not in a store", there's very good reason to want to use an alternative source for your applications. F-droid is a far safer source than google play is, because they actually vet the source code and project and build it themselves. You are far more likely to download malware from google's official 'safe' sources than from F-droid, and hence it's my first option when searching for simple utility applications because the top results on google play will be utterly infested with ads and tracking at minimum.

Would Obtainium continue to work? I like the freedom of entrusting developers I know and installing APKs from repositories instead of restricting myself to app stores whose publishers have to be identified and approved by an advertising company.

Can I keep this freedom?

I primarily go for apps via obtainium and fdroid. I go to Aura if I have to. GPlay if absolutely required (and I actually have to have the app)

I install from F-Droid when possible. It has less noise, and all apps are free as in software.

There are some true gems such as: