Copyleft Curator

So, I recently decided to try de-Googling my phone, and one of the services I came across was the Aurora Store, an alternative to to the Play Store. This was great because some of the apps I need to use on a daily basis I can't get on F-Droid alone. The Aurora Store allows you to use the services anonymously, through one of the various token dispensers (which provide dummy credentials). If you'd like to help out the Aurora Project, hosting a token dispenser looks to be a good way.

All great in theory, but as soon as I opened the app, I ran into a major issue. The search function is outright non-functional with the anonymous account, as it runs into rate-limiting:

I looked online, and I was far from the only person to have this issue. Others who used their Google accounts to sign in didn't have this issue, but I didn't want to use my Google account.

There is a way to work around this, however. If you go into Settings —> Apps —> Aurora Store —> Open By Default, toggle Open Supported Links, you can select both the options given for links, which will make it so any time you access any Play Store URL in your browser, it will take you directly to the Aurora Store page in the app you need in order to install.

All you have to do is search it up, and once you have the URL:

• If you're using a Chromium-based browser, you can directly open the link and it should automatically redirect
• If you're using a Firefox-based browser, long-hold the link and select the “Open Link in External Link” app option when it comes up. Otherwise you can go onto the page itself, hit the three-dots menu, and select the “Open in App” option directly.

This means that your app-search is now your web browser, and the rest of Aurora Store works fine.