• @[email protected]
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    2111 months ago

    Material You is a privacy issue. It gives a reason for people to have a custom wallpaper.Because of the WallpaperColors API, any third party app can use the wallpaper to generate a unique ID based on that

    • Paige (she/her)
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      1811 months ago

      Android really needs a sandbox feature for apps you don’t trust (or just any by Meta)

    • @[email protected]
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      711 months ago

      So it doesn’t simply supply the generated palette from the system? (I never tried implementing Material You)

        • @[email protected]
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          111 months ago

          Ah alright, so it is a problem because it can be used as another bit of information to construct a more refined fingerprint of the user?

          • @[email protected]
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            211 months ago

            Uhm… yeah…, sure, could certainly be another data point for that. I think you can also set static colora thought.

            • @[email protected]
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              11 months ago

              Yes, though now that the option exists setting it to anything would discriminate you from the group that set it the other way, I assume that the OP also considered that as problematic

              • @[email protected]
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                111 months ago

                I didn’t throw rocks at Material You for being an actual privacy leak but just thinking about the fact that it gives a reason for users to want to use a custom wallpaper instead of default or unicolor I woild have fell for it if I was not already aware of that WallpaperColors API

      • @[email protected]
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        -111 months ago

        It does. But it also means that if you want to reset the tracking you would need (for every app) to also clear the storage of the app and logging off and log back in with a different account before starting to use the app again

        • @[email protected]
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          111 months ago

          True, but even without your wallpaper fingerprint, the app is still fingerprinting you and tracking you with cookies.

          So that still always applies, material you just means you need to take the extra step of changing your wallpaper when you clean cache and change account.

    • Ghoelian
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      3011 months ago

      Material you changes the android colour palette based on the colours in your background image.

      Looks like pywal does the same for your terminal.

    • VuraniuteOP
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      11 months ago

      Material You: sets all the colours of your phone according to the colours of your wallpaper

      Pywal: sets all the colours of your Linux desktop (terminal colours, GTK theme, config files derived from template files) according to the colours of your wallpaper

      • @[email protected]
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        811 months ago

        What I don’t get is how often are people looking at their wallpapers? I see mine for a couple seconds before all the screen real estate gets taken by apps or monitoring etc.

        • @[email protected]
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          511 months ago

          It’s to get a cohesive theme across all applications, so, even if you don’t see the wallpaper, it overrides the default app themes that would all clash with each other otherwise

        • I use a tiling window manager, and it maximizes that behavior. I still have wallpapers, because I spend most of my time in terminals, and they’re set to something like 90% opacity. I can still see the wallpapers, but it’s subtle. Inactive, non-terminal windows get 80% opacity, so I see it more there.

  • iamak
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    -111 months ago

    Worse. You can’t turn it off :/