Why tf it requires playstore to be installed?

[tisupe]

I uninstalled playstore and just cant use it now, it says it enable playstore eachtime, bruh

[zac15987]

This issue is caused by the device environment, not by the app itself.

On standard Android devices, Google Play Store / Google Play Services are system components.

The app does not require Play Store to be manually installed, but it expects the standard Android environment to be intact. Re-enabling or reinstalling Google Play Store / Google Play Services will resolve this.

Since this is a system configuration issue rather than an app bug, I will close this issue.
Feel free to reopen if the problem still occurs on a standard Android environment.

[tisupe]

bleehh.. so u hvnt thought of someone using it on a degoogled rom (/--)/

[zac15987]

Reopening this thread with what I found after a proper investigation — apologies for the earlier dismissive close.

Dependency audit: Ran gradle :app:dependencies | grep play|gms|firebase on the project. No transitive Google Play Services dependencies. The app code itself does not link against Play Services.

Actual cause: The image picker uses ActivityResultContracts.GetContent() which fires ACTION_GET_CONTENT image/*. On Android 11–13 the system framework auto-routes this intent to the backported Photo Picker, which is delivered via Google Play System Update. On a de-Googled ROM the backport is absent, so the system shows the "enable Play Store" prompt as a fallback.

References:

• https://www.esper.io/blog/android-photo-picker-backport
• https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/shared/photo-picker

Planned fix: Switch to ActivityResultContracts.OpenDocument which routes through SAF / DocumentsUI (AOSP core, present on every de-Googled ROM). I've opened a tracking issue for this work and will ship it in a future release. Thanks for pointing out the de-Googled use case — it's a legitimate scenario that the app should support.

[zac15987]

@tisupe — quick update: v1.2.2 is out and should resolve this on de-Googled ROMs.

Migrated the image picker from GetContent() to OpenDocument(), so it now routes through SAF / DocumentsUI (AOSP core) instead of the Play-Services-backed Photo Picker backport. As a side benefit, the app no longer declares any storage permissions at all.

📦 APK: https://github.com/zac15987/LockView/releases/tag/v1.2.2

If you get a chance to try it on your setup, I'd really appreciate hearing whether the Play Store prompt is gone. Happy to keep the issue open until you confirm.

Also — sincerely sorry about my first reply on this thread. Closing the issue and blaming your device environment without actually investigating was unprofessional, and exactly the kind of dismissive maintainer response I'd hate to receive myself. Thanks for pushing back; you were right to call it out.