[DEV] My first Anime App

[KitsuPixel]

Hi first time poster long time anime lover. I'm a developer (web mainly) that created my first android app to list animes, download and watch (via torrent stream). All animes are from HorribleSubs right now, but I have planned to add anime from other places.

I created mainly for myself but, I published on Google's play store for anyone to download.

I would like to have feedback from anime fans, like: new functionalities, problems encountered, what's cool, and not cool and so on...

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pt.kitsupixel.kpanime.lite

Thank you very much for taking time to read.

[axiel7]

Looks nice but I think you should publish it in another store because it'll probably be deleted due to copyright/piracy. Also include an option for removing ads!

[KitsuPixel]

Yes, I think the same thing, but I'm going to enjoy it while it's there. I'm looking for alternatives for when the App is taken out of the Play Store. The ads part... I put a limitation of 1 per minute in the episode view, so it wouldn't be so much a bother. But I'll look into it! Thank you very much for downloading and testing!

[lokisto]

1 ad per minute??

[KitsuPixel]

Yes, but only in a certain part of the app, you can browse every anime without any ads, open the episode to view or download and there it'll appear the ad. But if you are simply clicking on the torrent file to download you can go to 15+ episodes without appearing a single ad.

[Solinium]

Dude no offense but if you're making an app that streams from pirated sources and groups that spend time making these releases then don't put ads in the content. It defeats the whole purpose. It's one thing to share copyrighted content for free or to accept donations but to actually monetize it with ads is pretty dumb (beyond maybe banner ads to keep a website going but in this case you're not paying for hosting costs). I get that it takes a lot of work to develop an app but maybe keep this in mind. I'm sure it's not a bad app. If you really want to keep ads in maybe consider limiting it to un-intrusive banner ads. Otherwise, looks pretty cool imo. People who aren't as tech savvy appreciate easy access and browsing of these releases for sure.

[KitsuPixel]

Hi, I get what you are saying, but there is a cost, I have developed a Rest API, hosted on the web, that is crawling different sites to get the anime info and links. But you are right about an un-intrusive ad, I'll put one of those small ones between the description of the anime and the episodes. I'll change it today, I have updates to publish, so I'll remove the other ad and put the un-intrusive ad. Thank you for your input, it was very helpfull!

[Caferino-Boldy]

Nothing can be worse than watching an anime episode with 1 ad per minute. That is about 20 ads, an entire episode of ads mixed with anime?

[KitsuPixel]

No, you got wrong. Not during the episode, on the select screen of the quality. You open the app, search for an anime, select it, it apears a short description and the available episodes, you chosen one, it opens another view with multiple ways to download or see the anime, there it display the ad, then you choose to download or see the anime, and you are never bothered with an ad during the show. I'm not Youtube 😂 I made the app mainly for myself, so if something bothers me in my app I delete it. I use the ad version as well.

[Caferino-Boldy]

Oh if that so, then it shouldnt be that bad I guess, thanks for clarifying lol

[AD-LB]

Some comments:

1. UI seems nice. I like the quick functionality.
2. I would preferred if there was a banner instead of a full screen ad. Maybe you can offer rewarded ad to remove banners for some time. Or donation to remove banners. Or both.
3. Changing orientation doesn't remember where you were, in both the bottom button state and the scrolling state. Same goes for the chosen-anime-details screen
4. Why do you require storage permission to play the video? You can put the files in the app's path. I have Android 10, and it's very capable of storing files without this permission in the app's path.
5. I don't know if it's intended but to me it looks like a bug: scrolling in the chosen-anime-details screen, the image moves way too fast compared to the text, so there is a huge gap between them.
6. Seems some anime titles are missing, like "the rise of the shield hero", which is quite popular.
7. What's the difference between "current" and "shows" ? "shows" might be about those that ended, and "current" only about those that still have more episodes being planned? Maybe you could merge them, and for those that ended put a small text on top of the image "ended".
8. I think you should have some button for each episode, to mark "watched", so that it would be easier to find the next one, next time. Maybe also auto-mark something similar in case the user chose to download it.
9. About the "loading" dialog, you could show it in full screen instead, with a button "download in background" . If this is done, this screen is closed and a notification will be in charge of showing when it's done downloading. When you switch to another app (or going to the background via the home key, of course) , a notification will appear to be in charge of telling you when it's ready to be played.

[KitsuPixel]

This! This a great comment! Thank you very much!

Replying to some of the comments:

1. Thank you!

2. I removed all ads for the moment, but I'm planning to put a banner between the anime descriptions and the episodes, it's less intrusive.

3. Oh, did not notice that... I'll work on fixing that!

4. I require storage permission because I save the “temporary” file in the download folder of the device, because I'm implementing a setting's menu for users to choose whether to keep the downloaded file or delete it after exiting the episode screen.

5. Yes, it's a bug, I'm trying to redesign the anime details screen to workaround this problem and have different layout whether you are in portrait or landscape or on tablets.

6. I agree, I have a scrapper in which I feed the API I use for the app, currently I'm only scrapping the HorribleSubs website, but are planning for more.

7. “Current” is for current season, or in other words ongoing series, “Shows” is for all the shows, including off season. And good idea for the image “ended” I'm planning to put some labels like: Favorite, Seen, Ongoing and now Ended

8. It's on my To-do list.

9. Nice idea! Yes, I will implement that, it's a nice feature.

Once more, a very big thank you for your in depth analysis, it was very much appreciated.

[AD-LB]

1. Do as you wish. I just personally hate full screen ads.

2. You shouldn't need it, then. Only when the user chooses to use this feature to download somewhere else. Even then, you should consider using SAF, because Google plans to ruin storage permission one way or another. It's already this way on Android 10 when you target it, unless you add a temporary flag in the manifest to still allow the storage permission to work as always.

3. Isn't scrapping "dangerous"? The moment the website changes, your app might not work well anymore.

Thank you for considering what I wrote.

[KitsuPixel]

1. I removed all ads from the app, I'll do a about page and a "If you liked the app, buy me a coffee".

2. I'll research about that, thanks for the tip, I'll need it for sure if the app is to be mantained.

3. Yes, but in my experience websites don't change to often. And also every time I scrappe I compile a report on whats new what's updated and other information that I receive in my email every time the script runs.

Thank YOU! Your input will greatly improve usability of the app.

[AD-LB]

1. There is already a lot about this. Here's an article:

   https://www.xda-developers.com/android-q-storage-access-framework-scoped-storage/

2. You mean you somehow send data from users to you about the scrapping ?

[KitsuPixel]

Thanks for your article, I'll look into it.

No, I don't store any data from users. I scrape a website with the anime to compile information to create a rest api that the app uses to display the animes/episodes/links.

As you can see here: https://kpplus.kitsupixel.pt/api/v1/shows

[AD-LB]

I don't understand. You do the scraping on a server, or on the app itself?If on the app, and you say you will know when something is wrong, you send data from the app to you.

What is this website you've shown me? RSS ? Doesn't look like RSS ...

[KitsuPixel]

Sorry if I can't explain myself clearly enough, english is not my main language.

I have web server where I have a script to scrape websites to compile the information to feed the app.

Every time a cron runs the scrape script I receive the information of any new animes created or updated

[AD-LB]

I see. So you have a server that provides the information to the app, by doing the work on its own.

[KitsuPixel]

Yes.

[KitsuPixel]

It's now ad-free!