A Little Explanation of How LocalBar Works to Locally Install Bar Files

In case you have been playing with LocalBar on your PlayBook all weekend you may be interested in this. Yohan, the developer of LocalBar, posted on his blog offering a bit of insight into how LocalBar works and what it does. In essence he is replicating the sideloading process from a PC by performing it using the PlayBook NDK to load apps from Localhost. This is a hack RIM could probably easily block by blocking sideloading from Localhost but I really hope they DO NOT decide to do that. If anything RIM should be promoting OTA downloads since that is the only way for Beta Testing and even their own Beta Zone concept to work on the PlayBook.

Here is how Yohan describes LocalBar:

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LocalBar App Installs BAR Files Directly from your BlackBerry PlayBook

 

We are getting one step closer to being able to easily install PlayBook applications OTA just like current BlackBerry smartphone apps. Until now RIM has forced us to load apps only through App World or by using a convoluted sideloading method which requires a PC and quite a few steps. Now Yohan aka TinyHack has managed to bypass quite a few of those steps. He has released a small program called LocalBar that lets you sideload any BAR file for an application onto your PlayBook directly from your PlayBook. The only downside is that you need to first sideload the LocalBar application but after that you can use LocalBar to simply install any app from the device storage. That means you can download or transfer BAR files over Wi-Fi and then install them using LocalBar. In other words you get a sort of OTA download in two steps.

Yohan was kind enough to provide some great instructions on how to use LocalBar along with a download link for LocalBar. Check it out at this link or below:

You need to sideload LocalBar using your PC/Mac. There are many guides on the Internet like this one or this one.

Next time when the upgrade of this app is available, you can install the upgrade directly from PlayBook using this app.

You MUST enable development mode before installing the apps (you should have done this step when you sideload LocalBar.

You will need to grant some privileges to this app after first install.

Here is the main screen after you grant the privileges.

Swipe down from the top bezel to show the menu.

Choose “Install”. It will show the list of bar files that you have. It will automatically scan all your documents folder (including downloads folder from the browser).

Select a bar file, a confirmation dialog will appear.

Click OK to confirm. A password dialog will appear. Just ignore the user field. This is the PlayBook standard login dialog, and I haven’t explored yet how to disable the username field. And you need to press the OK button (the “Return” key doesn’t work yet).

After you fill in the password, it will start the installation. If everything is fine, then this dialog should appear.

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Crowdsourced List of Android Apps That Work on the PlayBook OS 2.0 Beta (Sideloading)

Since the Android Player for the PlayBook leaked out and then officially came out in the public OS 2.0 beta users have been looking for which Android apps work on the PlayBook. There were quite a few lists being created and a few repositories of popular apps but now we seem to have something better. A group of hardworking enthusiasts over at CrackBerry forums created a public Google spreadsheet that lists all of the Android apps they have managed to get working on the BlackBerry PlayBook. It also includes links to download most of them so you can sideload them without having to convert and sign them yourself.

*** The credit goes out to quite a few people and I wish I could name all of them but since I don’t want to offend any of them I will just say you guys know who you are. Keep up the good work! ***

Here is how it works (instructions provided by Technomensch and in one of the original threads by Erandhawa)

Let us know if you find any other solid resources!

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How to Get Android Marketplace Working on the PlayBook Video Tutorial

Since we saw the leak of an early build of the Android App Player for the BlackBerry PlayBook there have been quite a few users tinkering with it. We saw some screenshots of it running Android Marketplace but until now there were no instructions. For the brave BlackBerry PlayBook owners who like to tinker there is now a tutorial video put up by HaTaX from CrackBerry forums detailing how to get the Marketplace to work. You already need to have the Android Player sideloaded for this to work but you can find quite a few tutorials for that.

Check out the directions at CrackBerry forums and blog and the instructional video below. Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Desktop Video Link | Mobile Video Link

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Share Your PlayBook Android Player Working App List & Tips!

We told you earlier today about how you can easily use Keepers DDPB installer on Windows to sideload Android apps onto the leaked BlackBerry PlayBook Android Player. Luis started a thread in the forums asking all of you who are playing with the leaked beta to share your experiences. To add a larger appeal I thought I would ask all of you who are testing it out to share the apps you get working in this forum thread. Let us know what you find!

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Easily Sideload Android APK Apps to PlayBook with DDPb Installer

One of our long time forum contributors, Keeper, has released an updated version of his DDPb Installer app this weekend. This new version simplifies the process of sideloading Android APK installer files onto the BlackBerry PlayBook to use with the leaked Android App Player. This is still not the simplest of processes but it works like a charm and just points out how much easier RIM needs to make the process outside of App World.

Instructions are also included and I highly recommend checking out this forum thread for instructions and a link to install the DDPb Installer. Here are the basic use instructions:

If you want to install .apk Android package:

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How to Sideload Android Apps for PlayBook Android Player (Netflix Example)

Things are really heating up with the leak of the Android Player for the BlackBerry PlayBook. Devs and hacks have been trying all day to get apps on the Android Player and it looks like there is finally a solution. N4BB discovered that by using the Android SDK and Java SDK they managed to side load Android apps on the PlayBook. We have been trying a similar method but did not have much luck using the Android Development Bridge but N4BB is claiming it works a good portion of the time if you use these instructions:

Here are the steps but PLEASE PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK. We take no responsibility if you mess up your device!

Here are N4BB’s instructions:

Software you’ll need to download:

C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb connect 169.254.0.1:5555

connected to 169.254.0.1:5555

C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb root
restarting adbd as root

C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb connect 169.254.0.1:5555

connected to 169.254.0.1:5555

C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb install com.netflix.medi
aclient.1.3.apk
2533 KB/s (7378353 bytes in 2.843s)
pkg: /data/local/tmp/com.netflix.mediaclient.1.3.apk

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How to Install Country Restricted PlayBook Apps in App World

Most people who live outside of the US and Canada have usually experienced BlackBerry smartphone and PlayBook apps that are not available in their country. While there are a few drastic things you can do to change that on BlackBerry smartphones there is a relatively easy way to bypass this restriction on the BlackBerry PlayBook. It all involves using HTTP proxies to make RIM’s App World servers think you are in the country where the app is restricted to.

Keeper was kind enough to list out how exactly to pull this off in the forums and I highly recommend you check it out if you have a PlayBook and live outside the US. It involves using free or paid HTTP proxies and is pretty easy to setup. Let us know if it works for you!

PS: If you already pay for a VPN service to access content in the US (Hulu, Pandora, etc) you may want to try it out instead.

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