ticesoftware/tice-android

TICE is a secure app for meeting up, sharing locations and locating friends and family in real-time. TICE allows live location sharing on iOS, Android and the Web. Privacy by Design and modern end-to-end-encryption protect the sensitive location data from others.

TICE Software – we build the TICE app

TICE is the secure app for meeting up, sharing locations and locating friends and family in real-time. TICE allows live location sharing on iOS, Android and the Web. Privacy by Design and modern end-to-end-encryption protect the sensitive location data from others.

Quick links to our client repos

• TICESoftware/tice-ios – iOS Client
• TICESoftware/tice-android – Android Client
• TICESoftware/tice-web – Web Client

Open Source Development Goals

Open sourcing TICE follows our goals of making TICE more secure and growing it even further in terms of community, applications and features.

1. Security and transparency

As location information tells a lot about the person, access to it needs to be safeguarded. TICE therefor tries to find a good balance between a practical tool and a safe place for its users location, messaging and meta data. TICE follows the privacy by design path. This means, that we collect only the minimal amount of information needed, encrypting sensitive data in a way that we don't have access to it and be transparent by disclosing the source code behind TICE.

2. Grow further

We put a lot of effort into TICE. By open sourcing it, we want it to grow even further – instead of getting stuck. As the company behind TICE, we will focus on other projects in the future. That is why TICE needs you and your contribution.

3. Feature rich & living

TICE should be a living project and improve over time. The distributed apps over the app stores should always be up to date and accompany the operating system development. There are a lot of features missing from TICE and we want to build those together with the open source community.

How to contribute

This repository should be used to discuss platform independent ideas, feature requests, bugs and other issues. Feel free to create and discuss Issues here.

Development

The TICE app is built natively for the different platforms and consists of several sub components with own repositories.

• TICESoftware/tice-ios – iOS Client
• TICESoftware/tice-android – Android Client
• TICESoftware/tice-web – Web Client

Platform dependent issues should be discussed in their respective repositories.

Code of Conduct

See our Code of Conduct.

Copyright

Copyright © 2019 TICE Software UG (haftungsbeschränkt). All rights reserved.

The source code is licensed under GNU General Public License v3.0. TICE is a registered trademark of the TICE Software UG (haftungsbeschränkt).

tice-android's Issues

Localization

Any plans for multi-language support? I can help translating the app to Turkish

Add alternate map tile providers

F-Droid version of TICE requires manually filling a Mapbox access token, but it's nowhere trivial to get one. Mapbox account registration requires giving out credit card number, which is not great for privacy or accessibility.
Add some other map providers which don't need that.

A quick search brings up this: Leaflet/Leaflet#6336
There's also this example implementation of map viewer with multiple backends: https://osmdroid.github.io/osmdroid/

Move shared preferences used for migration into general shared preferences

Add F-Droid support

Add build flavor without Google Play Services and Beekeeper

Add option to download a local copy of the map

I've noticed that every time I close and re-open Tice, it re-downloads the map of the area around me. It would be nice to be able to download and store the map on my device so it doesn't use as much data. Perhaps it could fetch and update the map only when connected to wifi?

Feature request: Auto-start (always running in the background)

This app doesn't start automatically when the device is restarted. I also note that other users reported extreme battery drain, so perhaps TICE isn't intended to be running all the time. I'd be looking for a simple way to just keep it on permanently without too much battery drain so I don't have to think about it (with a permanent notification icon, so I don't forget it's running and can easily switch it off if I want to).

GPS is always on

The GPS access is on whenever the app is active according to this issue: TICESoftware/TICE#7

We should make sure to only activate GPS when TICE needs it (we share our location).

Is this app still being maintained?

Just wondering whether this app is still being maintained or not. Also, will there be any future development? I am asking this question since the last update was quite some time ago!

Mock DoubleRatchet using mockk

Support for mocking initializers has been added to mockk recently. However the feature doesn't seem to be ready yet to be used for mocking DoubleRatchet in our unit tests. We should check periodically if this is still the case.
The goal is to get rid of the DoubleRatchetProvider.

Independence from Google Play Services

The app still relies on Google Play Services is Push via Firebase when registering initially.
We are currently investigating alternative methods in order to drop the requirement for Google Play Services.

Besides Google Maps needs to be replaced by another service.

Automate creating screenshots

Currently screenshots, e. g. for uploading to the Google Play Store, need to be created manually for every single language. We should introduce a fastlane action that automates that process.

make the server and backend open source, and share what encryption protocol you are using

please make the server and backend open source, and share what protocol for encryption you are using. we would be able to trust tice more then.

Remove edge case handling of version code storage prior to version code 24

In order to support updating from a version prior to version code 24 we use a fallback mechanism that shouldn't be necessary anymore.

Launch screen image is stretched vertically on API level 21

Show user names in meta chat messages

Instead of "Someone" we want to show the user names.

No device id

Can't use the app and when enter public name and hit let's go it said no device id.

*Android 9

Check length of release notes

Google Play Store restricts the release notes to 500 characters. Exceeding this limit causes the release to fail after uploading the build. So the length should be checked beforehand.

Location markers are being removed from the map

When updating other members' locations all markers are being deleted and new markers seem to be added after that. This doesn't look nice.

Additionally when disabling location sharing all current markers get removed.

Investigate advantages of using Hilt for DI

We are currently using Dagger for dependency injection. Maybe using Hilt could give us some benefits.

Support for HarmonyOS

Most Huawei devices are running Android with Google Play Services and can run TICE without an issue.

Current Huawei devices are running Android as well but don't come with Google Play Services. We will support those devices as soon as we resolve #6 and publish the app via the Huawei App Gallery.

Future Huawei smartphones might be shipped running HarmonyOS that we need to support separately.

Re-enable certificate validation

Certificate validation has been disabled for making the transition to the new certificate format easier. Should now be re-enabled for specific member actions.

Check server-side enforced limits in the client

The server limits groups to a specific number of members and messages to a specific size. We should handle those limits in the client app by mentioning them transparently and enforcing them.

Can't create or join group

Steps to reproduce (create group):

• Downloaded app fresh from F-Droid (v2.3)
• Typed a name
• Landed on an empty Groups view
• Pressed (+), landed on Create Group view
• Added a group name (e.g. group) and pressed Continue
• Got message: "Creating group failed."

Steps to reproduce (join group):

• Got a group invite link from another user
• Opened link, app opens
• Got message "Processing group URL failed."

Expected behavior: to have a group

Log: log.txt

Tracking call SessionStart does not count as install

Our beekeeper tracking shows, that since build number 30, there is a problem in sending out SessionStart, when the user installed TICE and opened the app the first time. We are missing all calls of SessionStart where the parameter last is set to null, meaning they never had a session before. There are calls with SessionStart where last is set.

Replace Google Maps with Mapbox

This is another step for getting rid of Google services in the TICE app: #6

Crypto library unmaintained

The obscure libsodium port hasn't been maintained for 9 months as of this writing and the website hosting its documentation has been down for months even though the problem was reported back in June.

Maybe take a look at https://noiseprotocol.org/

I also don't understand why the server source code isn't released. That makes me not want to use this application since I can't realistically rely on this tiny organization existing in the future and as soon as the server goes down the whole thing becomes useless.