App unavailable on non-German Play Store

[AHDGraham]

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• Question: Congrats on your launch. Problem: Google Play store shows my device as incompatible with the app. (One+ 6). I suspect you are limited by Google checking the owner's Google account region. My account is UK but I am permanently living in Germany (resident, citizen, permanent job). If you cannot rectify this, then your app coverage will be limited. It will not be usable by those residents that probably travel the most! These are surely the very people the app needs to track the most. I think a solution to this is therefore needed asap. (As always, apologies if this issue/question is posted elsewhere - I did look before posting ;) )

[boxwood]

Similar issue for me. Swiss play store account. But as a German resident and weekly commuter I should use both apps (Swiss and German) as long there is no code roaming solution in place.

[SebastianWolf-SAP]

Thank you for your message. We are clarifying this with the Robert Koch Institute. I’m sorry for the inconvenience caused by only publishing it in the German Play Store. We keep you updated once we have any news.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen/Best regards,
SW
Corona Warn-App Open Source Team

[mat-l]

I have a similar problem in my German Play Store app. Please find a screenshot of the error message below.
Google deleted some services in the past from my Huawei phone due to the known conflict between Google and Huawei.
I installed the Google apps manually again, but the Corona is not working.

Will you publish the app to Huawei App Gallery with their services as well?

Edit: my phone is registered as a German phone in the Google Play Store:

Anyways the app is not shown as a download to me. But the download is possible by following this link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.rki.coronawarnapp

[SvenLieber]

I have a similar issue in Belgium. When visiting the play store from the Browser I see the error message This app is incompatible with all of your devices.
When visiting the play store from my PlayStore app I see the, luckily more concrete, error message This item is not available in your country.

[abhimishr]

Google play recommends switching countries.
Play Store - Hamburger Menu on left right - Account - Preferences - Country and profiles

Switching to Germany won't show This item is not available in your country message anymore. This is problematic on its own because Google doesn't allow you changing it more than once a year and you'll loose your Google Play credits as well. In EU where we see quite a few people moving around between borders this cannot be a agreed upon solution. From an earlier comment by Sebastian, they are aware of this issue.

[corneliusroemer]

Is it not possible to sideload the APK? From outside the play store? This has worked for me in the past with similar country restrictions.

This may work: https://apkpure.com/de/corona-warn-app/de.rki.coronawarnapp

[boxwood]

Is it not possible to sideload the APK? From outside the play store? This has worked for me in the past with similar country restrictions.

This may work: https://apkpure.com/de/corona-warn-app/de.rki.coronawarnapp

If you have a trustworthy APK yes. but this should be just a temporary workaround. you dont want to sideload from shady apk mirrors. i see no reason why the app shouldn't be published globally?
i guess the architecture can handle this.

[arianvp]

Note that Google actually limits you to only moving one time per year. Which is of course a horrible constraint if you're an EU resident. I currently live in Germany but I cant change my Google accounts country because Google has decided that moving multiple countries per year is not allowed.

Lifting this restriction seems wise to me. Thanks for all the work!

[corneliusroemer]

Is it not possible to sideload the APK? From outside the play store? This has worked for me in the past with similar country restrictions.

This may work: https://apkpure.com/de/corona-warn-app/de.rki.coronawarnapp

If you have a trustworthy APK yes. but this should be just a temporary workaround. you dont want to sideload from shady apk mirrors. i see no reason why the app shouldn't be published globally?
i guess the architecture can handle this.

I think SAP has said they don't want to support sideloading. So I guess you have to trust it. It should still be signed correctly. Otherwise the Exposure API won't work if I'm not wrong. Otherwise there would be no testing issue for non-whitelisted Devs.

[corneliusroemer]

Thank you for your message. We are clarifying this with the Robert Koch Institute. I’m sorry for the inconvenience caused by only publishing it in the German Play Store. We keep you updated once we have any news.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen/Best regards,
SW
Corona Warn-App Open Source Team

All these issues could have been raised earlier had you allowed a beta test of interested members of the public.

Good to hear it seems only a bureaucratic mistake - and not one imposed by Google. So please fix this asap.

Example of a professor having this issue: https://twitter.com/vicgrinberg/status/1272797354656227329?s=20

[Flo082002]

Maybe it is possible to upload the apk in the releases here on github

[lennarto]

On your iPhone you are able to use more than one Apple ID per Device - Therefore I have a US-Apple ID as well as a german Apple ID to download specific apps.

[boxwood]

On your iPhone you are able to use more than one Apple ID per Device - Therefore I have a US-Apple ID as well as a german Apple ID to download specific apps.

very useful hint for android users ;-) but maybe senor google will consider such a flexibility in future releases. like IOS supports multi user scenarios (not)

[L-E]

My whole family has the same problem as we moved a few month ago from the UK to Germany and our phones are still stuck on the UK Google Play store. Despite talking to Google support I haven't been able to manually change the country. And Google only allows this a maximum of once a year anyway.

RKI should change the country distribution for the app in the Play store to all countries to avoid that someone travelling to Germany or living in Germany isn't able to download the app.

[cooldaniel1991]

Same problem with the Italian play store. Don't forget Germany has 10 million foreigners.

[caugner]

Workaround

1. Download and install F-Droid.
2. Install Aurora Store via F-Droid.
3. Open Aurora and use "Anonymous" login.
4. Change location to "Germany / Berlin".
5. Restart app.
6. Search for "corona warn app rki".

[RexJarvis]

Same problem, UK Play Store - Please just publish the official APK.

[kurthuwig]

Same here in France. As the play store uses the country of the credit card and you cannot change it easily - and not at all if you have a family account.

It does not make any sense to restrict the app to any country. The virus is not restricted by borders, so why is the app?

[tegk]

Please fix this ASAP!

[gcampionpae]

Same issue here :(

[MartinKuhne]

I would like to thank the developers for taking up the feedback and taking steps to address the issue.

[flennic]

I would also like @SebastianWolf-SAP for taking on this issue and all your work done so far. If you have further information about this issue, it would be nice if you let us know.

@corneliusroemer While I think it is okay to point out issues with the app, I don't see any reason for your saucy behaviour, even if you don't agree with some decisions. In my opinion, this is not the right place for discussing these kinds of problems. You also have to consider in which short amount of time the application has been released and that yesterday way release day which means there is a heck of things to handle. There will be issues. But they can be addressed appropriately. I also don't think that immediately ranting on Twitter or other GitHub issues is advantageous. Also, degenerating @SebastianWolf-SAP to "you are a company employee defending company decisions" is not kind considering he is a human being like all of us and I assume you don't know him personally to justify this kind of behaviour. Notice, I am not saying your statements are wrong per default, but how you address them is a bit of an issue in my opinion.

I will not further participate in this "personal" discussion and will focus on the technical side. But I felt this had to be said, considering you specifically asked for feedback.

[gerritholl]

I have just installed the app and I don't think I have the German Play Store. Under Play Store -> Preferences -> Country and profiles, no country is listed at all, just "Switch to the Germany play store" is listed, implying I don't have the Germany play store at all. I have no payment information associated to my Google Account, perhaps this issue is only a problem for users who do?

[fhajji]

A little update: I've sent a query to the RKI regarding this issue, and in their reply, RKI confirmed what @SebastianWolf-SAP said: SAP is looking into the legal issues to make Corona WarnApp globally available.

In other words: this is obviously a legal and/or bureaucratic snafu, there is nothing we can do as outsiders at this point except waiting or trying some workarounds.

@corneliusroemer, while I understand your frustration, please keep it civil and professional. If the issue doesn't resolve by itself in the near future, we can all take it to the German Government / Bundestag, which is ultimately responsible for the legal framework which causes this unfortunate geoblocking issue. @SebastianWolf-SAP is doing his best to help us here.

[corneliusroemer]

Thanks @flennic for your extensive comment.

I'll do my best to stay objective. And I will address the maintainers in the future and use @SebastianWolf-SAP only as a generic mention meaning "SAP maintainers" to make it non-personal.

This is the wrong forum for general criticism of the organisation. Suffice it to say, there was a month to anticipate and solve this problem, those who should have thought about it didn't. Now it's up for the lawyers to solve it and the media to criticise.

Now I'll get back to finding and fixing technical issues.

Edit: I continue to observe maintainers closing issues single and heavy handedly without discussion and against community wishes. I implore maintainers to stop this. I discuss the problem in more detail here: #513

I will probably open a separate general community/maintainer cooperation issue at some point to keep the discussion separate from any specific technical issue.

[sschuldenzucker]

@SebastianWolf-SAP agreeing with everything @corneliusroemer said. I don't want anyone threatened with vague references to "some of his behavior" and Github's code is conduct. A bit AfD style tbh. :/ (I came here because I got the same problem, of course)

[dalbre]

Hey everybody,
special thanks @corneliusroemer for being perseverant in his demand, which is pure straightforward logic. I cannot see any "saucy" whatsoever and if the point of this forum is to simply and plainly shut down suggestions that should have been part of a common sense requirements assessment in the first place, I believe, we are all wasting our time.

So, we do not have a European corona app for the reasons we all know.

The national apps do not talk to each other.

Some national apps can be downloaded in other countries.

And one national cannot even do that.

What this app should protect against has obviously come from abroad at some point, so it does escape any logic to not include users of countries visiting Germany and who are willing to go through the effort of researching, installing and using the app. It's a no-brainer to foresee this functionality and every second spent on discussing the need and holding reasonable contributors to account over their perceived language is an obvious waste of time and effort urgently required for making these various European apps talk to each other before the holiday season.

[treysis]

I don't buy this "required by Germany's particularly weird laws". Our laws aren't that different, and after all a lot is covered by EU legislation.

This was just a mishap by the maintainers (which aren't necessarily the developers) who didn't think sufficiently about the impact of their actions. You can observe this negligence with other app vendors (e.g. Swiss PostFinance doesn't think there could be account holders residing outside Switzerland that would like to manage their account on their phone - while there is no restriction to manage it from a PC).

I am 100% convinced someone just thought 'well, this app is for Germany, right? So let's tick this checkbox!'.

[dalbre]

@treysis that's exactly it!

[fhajji]

@treysis, I don't think so. If RKI and SAP, independently of each others, are mentioning legal issues, then they are probably right.

This doesn't look like an oversight by the dev-team. If it were so, they would have fixed the issue by now in an expedient, non-bureaucratic way, by un-ticking the geo-lock checkbox. It looks like it runs deeper than this, i.e. into the muddy realm of byzantine laws and regulations.

We don't know exactly what the show-stopper is, but if you're interested, lawmakers and politicians do have contact addresses. We'll lobby them ask them in due time what's going on, if this issue persists. But before doing this, let's give RKI and SAP some time to sort that mess out by themselves.

[treysis]

@fhajji Independently? I don't think so. You can come up with a lot of excuses if you need a scapegoat ;) If not, what are those legal issues? So far, this has been a very vague statement. Why am I also reacting a bit harsh on this (please remember, this is not personal)? Because I really dislike region locks and they don't do what developers think they do, and in this particular case it's even more counterproductive.

Ask them in due time? When? In two months? Time? This is a non-issue that could be solved within a day. It's not like all people suddenly have to quit whatever they're doing. Assign one person to this "bug" and make her/him solve it.

[corneliusroemer]

@fhajji it's an oversight that this didn't get flagged way in the past to be resolved by now. No one thought of it.

It does seem to be a bureaucratic issue now, but that could have been done in the past.

Since it is a bureaucratic issue, pressure does work! It's urgent so we should lobby NOW.

The maintainers have a conflict of interest to cover up their oversight. So they may not escalate as quickly as would be in the interest of the public.

Likewise, the RKI probably also screwed up and wants to cover up their mistakes. Mistakes happen, no question, but they should be resolved asap.

I'm with @dalbre, @treysis, @sschuldenzucker

We can't trust the legality explanation without further explanation to support, this could just be a convenient excuse/smoke grenade for why it's not the maintainers fault.

Disclaimer: I'm not blaming any single person. This is not personal. It is also not unprofessional to represent the public interest.

[kbobrowski]

This is an exact place in Google Play console to set up country availability, I guess someone who was uploading APK just selected Germany here, instead all countries. I hardly believe there is a legal requirement to allow only people with German Play Store to participate in contact tracing or use any other app developed by SAP / RKI. Play Store country has nothing to do with citizenship / residence / tax residence etc, especially in Europe where it is very easy to have multiple bank accounts in couple of countries / multiple residences and just assign some Google products like Play Store to countries which are most convenient for some purpose.

[fhajji]

@treysis, I'm obviously not happy about this stupid geo-lock. My dad is in his eighties, and has diabetes type II, so he's even more at risk then myself. That his phone can't install this app while my phone can, is mindbogglingly stupid, considering that we live together and therefore count as one, as far as the risk of infection goes. This is definitively not a scenario that was intended by the politicians that are promoting this app.

Speaking from experience, I think, a week or two would be a good measure to wait. That's what it usually takes in such big organizations to reach a decision. After all, they need feedback from lawyers etc, and this does take time. It's not like our workflow, where we quickly fix bugs with a quick commit.

[kbobrowski]

But let's not try to judge institutions / specific people who were responsible for this screw-up, I'm sure it's very stressful time for everyone involved and mistakes like this unfortunately happen, we are all only people

[corneliusroemer]

@kbobrowski Interesting view, so you are suggesting that the legality is after all a lie? Who knows. I'm not sure
It's not primarily important who is to blamed of course! But this needs to be resolved asap. And it seems there is a lack of accountability towards the community. Otherwise, why no update all day today?

@fhajji A week or two? I disagree, should have been fixed within 24hr, at most. If not, provide update on progress.

Dear maintainers, please provide an update on this issue. Or at least an update when there will be an update. @SebastianWolf-SAP @tkowark @jakobmoellersap

[kbobrowski]

@corneliusroemer I'm suggesting that if there is a legal requirement which limits apps developed by SAP / RKI only to "German Play Store" then legislative body which implemented this requirement is extremely incompetent, since having "German Play Store" does not imply German citizenship / residence or tax residence, and not having "German Play Store" does not mean that someone is not German citizen / resident or tax resident.

Since I believe that we have competent legislative bodies - it's hard to believe in any such legal requirement on the apps.

[treysis]

@fhajji You could sideload the app, but that would exclude it from future updates via PlayStore.

[arianvp]

Also if such a legal requirement is indeed there which leads to processing of certain personal data (your billing address), it should have been part of the DPIA.

However the DPIA assessment says the following about the app store install procedure: the only data that is processed is "limitations on age" and "login credentials for the respective app store". Billing address restrictions is not mentioned as a required processing of data in the DPIA in order to install the app.

https://www.coronawarn.app/assets/documents/cwa-datenschutz-folgenabschaetzung.pdf

If it were a requirement to have Google process and check your billing information (which is what they basically enabled now) this should've been something that must have been explicitly noted in the DPIA; just like the other data processing Google performs (age, login data, IP addresses during download from the play store).

Either way. I'm sure people are hard at work to get this fixed. I'll try to stay positive and constructive here. However I agree that this being a "legal requirement" sounds very fuzzy to me.
I also agree that this is an issue that shouldn't wait too long to be fixed, as it will hinder adoption.

[fhajji]

@corneliusroemer : The maintainers have a conflict of interest to cover up their oversight.

What I fail so see is this: what would be the interest of the maintainers to geo-lock the app, and even worse, to keep it geo-locked? The app makers have already been paid, and the app is free to use. What would be the point in geo-locking it?

If we speculated that the Government made a contract with the makers which specifically geo-locked the app (why would they do that?), then the maintainers would have absolutely no leeway whatsoever to unlock this app anyway, even if they wanted to. No amount of complaining here would change anything, and we'll have to take it to the politicians and to the press. But we don't know that yet, so let's give em some time to resolve the issue among themselves. Maybe they are currently negotiating with the Government to update their contract to lift the geo-locks... and we all know how long THAT would take.

So my point is: this is a multi-organizations project, and such projects are by nature slow to react. We have to live with this unfortunate fact of life.

[courtiol]

FYI: I am in Germany and I did manage to trick the Play store to display the app by adding it to the wishlist on the web, and then going to the wishlist inside the Play store on my phone. It does show the App but displays: "This item is not available in your country" despite location functionalities being activated for the Play store... How can one check which Play store on uses and how to switch between Play store. Does anyone know?

[piratenkatzerrr]

The communication around this product rollout is... a bit of a clusterf*uck?
The CWA website is hard to find, it appears nobody thought it neither necessary to do some Google SEO, nor to have links set from the RKI's (https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/WarnApp/Warn_App.html) or Bundesregierung's website (https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/themen/corona-warn-app) or vice versa.
On the other hand, the CWA website is the only site displaying the hotline phone numbers (but only if you scroll aaaaalll the way to the bottom...).
The Bundesregierung's site has FAQs and explainers in sign language and easy language. Which the RKI's and CWA's site don’t.
The FAQs on the various website explain how the app works, but all lack a troubleshooting section and also do not address questions that have been raised here since early last morning regarding e.g. what data Goggle gathers through the required location activation (in plain layman's terms/language) or why the app is only available through the German Google Play Store (and what to do about that) or how to proceed contact tracing app wise, if you are frequently in several EU countries.

If you do go to the Play Store, try to install the app, run into problems and click on the link for developer’s website in hope of getting help, the first thing you see on the CWA website is a referrer to GitHub.
And with all due respect to GitHub, it’s not the right place for consumers who just want their consumer product/app to work and are looking for a quick fix to their problem or answer to their question, preferably in German, without having to have prior knowledge or spending a lot of time acquiring said knowledge.

The moment this app went live, an accompanying consumer needs focused website should have gone live with it. One that integrated accessibility needs (sign language, easy language) and troubleshooting.
Just because it's OpenSource, doesn't mean you have to turn a product launch into an accidental nationwide beta test and let the friendly (unpaid) folks on GitHub handle customer support.

[tkowark]

Sorry, but we have to lock this conversation for now. @SebastianWolf-SAP already told you that we're working on a resolution and sometimes these things just take time.

Suggesting cover ups or using profane language doesn't help the matter and are in violation of our code of conduct.

Again, we're doing everything we can to resolve this issue and will let you know once we have a solution. Until then, we kindly ask for your patience.

[tkowark]

Finally we have an official statement from the Robert Koch-Institute which is also reflected in our FAQ: https://www.coronawarn.app/en/faq/#international and https://www.coronawarn.app/de/faq/#international

After a detailed examination of the situation it was determined that for legal reasons any publication of the Corona-Warn-App in App Stores outside of Germany is currently only possible after a case-by-case assessment. Legal consultations have shown that in the case of publication in international App Stores, the law of the respective country must be considered and applied to the Corona-Warn-App. This applies in particular to data protection, any necessary claims for information by local authorities and other contractual and consumer protection regulations.

The Robert Koch-Institute as publisher of the app will trigger this check for the respective countries and release the app after successful legal examination. In a first step, the RKI will release the app for some European countries. These are: Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Denmark, Romania and Bulgaria. It may still take a few hours to a few days until the app is available for the individual countries. We kindly ask you for your patience.

More countries are currently being checked and will be released in the App Stores step by step. The Robert Koch-Institute asks for your understanding that it cannot provide any information on specific countries and the status of their release during the ongoing review process.

We will move this issue to corona-warn-app/cwa-backlog#9 and add comments for each country or set of countries which are added over time.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen/Best regards,
TK
Corona Warn-App Open Source Team