One reason is that Python is not built-in on macOS anymore, so it’s hard to justify using it for management scripts. Particularly when you do not have control of the execution environment to begin with. I’ve written some obnoxiously complicated bash (or zsh) scripts because I want to make sure it will run on a vanilla Mac with no additional dependencies. 10 years ago I would’ve done all that stuff in Python, but not anymore. Thanks, Apple!

From a technical perspective, sure, I could push out a portable python environment and it wouldn’t affect the rest of the system. But that comes at a cost. I don’t want to fight for it, and I don’t want to be responsible for maintaining it. It’s easier to just use bash/zsh.

Python is also too heavy for some embedded devices. Not sure if I can count on Amber scripts to run in a busybox environment but maybe?

That said, if the question is “is it worth learning a whole new thing when I already know bash/zsh”, I am not so sure. But in principle, I dig it, regardless of how practical it is with my specific background and needs. I mean, if I learned about this 20 years ago I feel like I might still be reaping rewards.

I get that they don’t want to deal with Google Play

Was that the reason? Shame they didn’t just leave it on F-Droid and GitHub then. Nobody needs to use Google Play (at least not yet…)

To elaborate on this a little, you can use Flatseal to specify which directories a Flatpak app can have access to directly. For example, in a music player that stores the path of your music library, you’d want to use Flatseal to be sure it has direct access to that folder. This is similar to GrapheneOS’s storage scopes.

Aside from that, apps can also call on a file picker that lets you choose any file/folder on your system, and flatpak then creates a virtual path to bridge to that file/folder without exposing the entire rest of the filesystem. This is nice for one-time open/save commands, but doesn’t work for apps that need persistent access to a specific directory like in the music player example. This is similar to Android’s file provider API.

I don’t recall off the top of my head what flatpak apps have access to by default. Some subset of the home folder, I think?

Thanks for the info. I have not really tested Seedvault myself so this is all good to know.

Ironically, one of the main reasons I switched to GrapheneOS was because Google’s backups were so frustrating and I was hoping Seedvault would be more comprehensive.

What’s wrong with Seedvault?