🚀 GitHub Store 1.8.0 — Backend, Imports & a Faster China

The release where GitHub Store grew its own backend, learned to recognize every GitHub-sourced app already on your device, and shipped a download-mirror system that finally makes installs fast for users behind the Great Firewall.

☁️ A backend, behind everything

GitHub Store now runs on its own service at api.github-store.org. It's quiet — most users will never notice it — but it makes a lot of new things possible:

• GitHub auth that works in China. The OAuth device flow now goes through our backend by default, so the sign-in browser dance no longer fails for users on networks where github.com is throttled. Falls back to direct GitHub for everyone else, transparently.
• Faster discovery. Search and explore queries are routed through a curated discovery layer, with the live GitHub passthrough as a backup. Caching is honest about freshness — every result you see is either fresh-from-GitHub or clearly cached, never stale-without-saying-so.
• Anonymous-by-design. No account needed. No personal data sent. No tracking IDs tied to your library. Backend is open source under Apache 2.0 — you can self-host it, and we're committing to keeping that path real.

This is the foundation for everything else in 1.8.0 and a lot of what's coming next.

🔭 Library Imports — see every GitHub app you already have

Install GitHub Store on a phone that already has Obtainium-, browser-, F-Droid-, or sideload-installed GitHub apps and GitHub Store now recognizes them automatically.

• Three match strategies. Manifest hint (deterministic), signing-cert fingerprint matched against an F-Droid-seeded database, and backend-assisted name search. High-confidence matches link silently; the rest land in a one-tap review wizard.
• Honest permission prompt. We ask for QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES on Android 11+ with a screen that lists every field the optional backend lookup carries — and only that. The match always runs on your device first.
• Auto-import summary with full per-card undo. Skipped something? Tap Undo. Linked the wrong repo? Open Details → Unlink.
• Overflow → Scan for GitHub apps runs the wizard manually whenever you want.

This is the single most-requested feature from the user survey and the foundation for everything else around update tracking. Install GitHub Store, hit Apps, see your stuff.

🌐 Download Mirror System — for the GFW and everyone behind a slow CDN

Asset downloads from GitHub's CDN are notoriously throttled in mainland China. GitHub Store now ships a real mirror system to fix that.

• Multi-source race. When a mirror is selected, downloads race the direct GitHub URL and the mirror in parallel — whichever responds first wins. Reliability up, time-to-first-byte down.
• End-to-end SHA-256 verification. Every mirrored download is verified against GitHub's published asset digest after completion. Mismatch → file deleted, error surfaced. We trust the math, not the mirror.
• Curated community mirror list, updateable from the backend without an app release. Dead mirrors get swapped out within hours instead of waiting for the next version bump.
• Custom mirror URL. Run your own gh-proxy-style instance? Paste the template, done.
• Auto-suggest sheet. Three sustained slow downloads in a row → a one-time prompt asking if you want to switch to a faster mirror. Dismissable. Doesn't nag.
• Tweaks → Network → Download Mirror. Test connection button shows real latency to the selected mirror.

🔑 Personal Access Token sign-in

For users whose network blocks the GitHub OAuth browser flow entirely — paste a Personal Access Token (classic or fine-grained) instead. Validates locally, signs you in, full feature parity with the OAuth path. No browser round-trip required.

💬 Send feedback — without leaving the app

New Send feedback entry under Tweaks → About. Pick a category (bug / feature / change / other), choose a topic (Install, Search, Auth, UI, etc.), fill in the relevant fields, and ship it as either an email or a pre-filled GitHub issue. Diagnostics card shows you exactly what's being sent before you send it. Toggle off if you don't want to include them.

🌀 Pre-release channel UX, redesigned

• Channel chip on Details for tracked apps: toggle "Include betas" / "Stable only" with a tap.
• "Switch to stable v1.2.3" rollback chip when you're on a pre-release and a clean stable exists.
• Stalled-project warning. "No stable release in 8 months — betas may not converge to a stable build." Surfaces only when the project is actively shipping pre-releases on top of a long-stale stable.
• Merged "What's changed since v1.0" card concatenates release notes for every version you skipped between updates. No more digging through release pages.

🐧 Arch Linux support

Native .pkg.tar.zst packages for Arch / Manjaro / EndeavourOS / CachyOS / Garuda — install with sudo pacman -U github-store-1.8.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst. Generated by the build pipeline alongside the existing .deb, .rpm, .AppImage, and the Windows / macOS installers.

🐛 Important bug fixes

• Linux Desktop data loss fixed. Settings, tracked-app library, and database now persist correctly under ~/.local/share/GitHub-Store/ (or your XDG_DATA_HOME equivalent), not /tmp where they used to silently get wiped on reboot or by tmpfs cleanup. If you've lost your library on Linux before, this is for you.
• macOS accessibility crash fixed (Compose Multiplatform updated to 1.10.3).
• Apps with null release authors no longer crash deserialization (e.g., termux-tasker shipping with a deleted-account author). Long-tail of older releases now installable.
• Asset picking honored. When you explicitly choose a variant, that's the one that gets installed — no more silent override (#382).
• External app updates. Updating an app outside GitHub Store now correctly reflects the new version on the next launch — no more stale "update available" badges for apps you already updated.
• Version normalization — v3.1.3 and 3.1.3 are now treated as the same version everywhere. No more spurious "downgrade" warnings on tag-prefix mismatches.
• Auth resilience. Auth path resets to Backend on process restart so a stale Direct escalation doesn't strand users on github-blocked networks. Mid-session transitions remain one-way (Backend → Direct).
• Localization. Newline escaping fixed across all 12 translated locales — multi-paragraph dialogs now render with real line breaks instead of literal \n. Percentage signs no longer render as 92%%.
• Mirror security. Authorization header is stripped when redirecting through a mirror (so your GitHub token never leaks to a third-party proxy). Mirror only rewrites release-asset URLs — API calls always go direct.
• Apps FAB no longer overlaps the navigation bar at the bottom of the Apps screen.

🎬 Meet the author

I made a short video about GitHub Store, what it does, and where it's going. Two minutes, no fluff.

Watch on YouTube → | Watch on Bilibili →

📋 Tell me what to build next

Three minutes of your time helps me prioritize what ships in 1.9. The questions are short, the answers shape the roadmap.

Take the Survey →

Full Changelog: 1.7.0...1.8.0

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