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Deutsche Fassung

04 — Markt: an app store without a Google account

Without a Google account there is no Play Store on the watch — and therefore no apps. Markt (“market”) closes that gap: it signs in to Google Play anonymously and installs apps straight onto the watch.

How the anonymous sign-in works

Markt uses gplayapi, the same library as Aurora Store:

1. Markt collects the watch’s real properties (33 mandatory fields: model, display, ABIs, system features …) — see Geraet.java.
2. These go to Aurora’s token service (https://auroraoss.com/api/auth), which returns an anonymous Play account.
3. AuthHelper.build(...) turns that into a complete sign-in (device check-in, uploading the configuration).
4. The sign-in is stored locally, so that a new device is not registered with Google on every start.

Because the watch’s real properties get uploaded, Play serves the watch variants of apps by itself (for example the Samsung Browser for Wear OS).

Showing only Wear OS apps — measured, not guessed

The obvious approaches do not work:

• The native Play search returns zero results under a watch profile.
• restriction, compatibility and even a successful delivery test do not distinguish between a phone app and a watch app (Play will happily deliver WhatsApp to the watch).

What does work reliably is Google’s own Wear category:

• /store/apps/category/ANDROID_WEAR — apps for the watch
• /store/apps/category/WATCH_FACE — watch faces

Markt pages deeply through these categories using the web helpers and builds a catalog of ~1000 watch apps from them, which is cached on the watch (refreshed daily). The browse lists are fed from that catalog — no phone app can end up there.

Search additionally goes through the Play web search, so that apps which are not listed in the categories can be found as well.

Installing

Through a PackageInstaller session (Installer.java, Ladedienst.java): download → open session → write the APK into it → confirm.

Once per app the user confirms on the watch (“Do you want to install this app?”). Android requires this of every store except the Play Store.

Important: Without turning off Factory Reset Protection, every installation fails. See 07-findings.md.

Updates

“My apps” queries all self-installed apps from Play in one call (bulkDetails), compares the versions and offers individual updates or “Update all”.

Installing a specific version

market://details?id=<paket>&vc=<versionCode> installs an older version on purpose — useful when the latest one requires a newer Wear OS than you have.

Limits

• Paid apps do not work: without an account you cannot buy anything.
• Some apps Play does not deliver to an account-less device at all (AppNotSupported). Markt then shows “Not available for this watch”.
• Apps that need Google push (FCM) only work in a limited way: without a Google device registration, no push messages arrive.

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