Four years ago I asked whether "Google Pass" was a thing that I needed to give a shit about and consensus was, "no, nobody uses that."
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Four years ago I asked whether "Google Pass" was a thing that I needed to give a shit about and consensus was, "no, nobody uses that." But I have heard anecdotally, recently, that this might no longer be true. Thoughts?
The goal here is, "reduce the amount of time it takes for someone standing in front of my nightclub to wave their QR code at the door staff."
Note: I don't use Android and know as little about its ecosystem as possible, so please use small words.
https://jwz.org/b/yk45@jwz I'm not familiar with the name Google Pass, but I do use the hell out of Google's "Add to wallet" support for tickets.
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Four years ago I asked whether "Google Pass" was a thing that I needed to give a shit about and consensus was, "no, nobody uses that." But I have heard anecdotally, recently, that this might no longer be true. Thoughts?
The goal here is, "reduce the amount of time it takes for someone standing in front of my nightclub to wave their QR code at the door staff."
Note: I don't use Android and know as little about its ecosystem as possible, so please use small words.
https://jwz.org/b/yk45@jwz Anecdotally, I've used it to get into/on movies (Atom tickets uses it), flights, plays, and museums.
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@jwz Google Play Services can ingest the .pkpass file directly and show it in Wallet. This is apparently new as of 2 years ago. It makes you click a few more buttons than the native Google Pass button but it absolutely works.
(It also tries to trick you into downloading an app named "Google Wallet" even though all of this functionality is part of Play Services.)
@jleedev If this were generally true, that would be great news, because it would mean that my existing passes work on Android without me having to do anything.
But I cannot reproduce.
In the Android emulator, clicking on a .pkpass link (content-type application/vnd.apple.pkpass) downloads it and says "cannot open file".
This is Android 16 sending UA "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; K) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/133.0.0.0 Mobile Safari/537.36".
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@jleedev If this were generally true, that would be great news, because it would mean that my existing passes work on Android without me having to do anything.
But I cannot reproduce.
In the Android emulator, clicking on a .pkpass link (content-type application/vnd.apple.pkpass) downloads it and says "cannot open file".
This is Android 16 sending UA "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; K) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/133.0.0.0 Mobile Safari/537.36".
@jwz If I had to guess, the emulator system image being "Google Play" or "Google APIs" has something to do with this; I'm on Pixel 4a with Android 13.
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@jwz If I had to guess, the emulator system image being "Google Play" or "Google APIs" has something to do with this; I'm on Pixel 4a with Android 13.
@jleedev I switched the emulator from "Google APIs" to "Google Play Store" and it had slightly different behavior; the pkpass file still shows up in Downloads, and it doesn't say "can't open file" any more but neither does it open it.
There is some crud in "adb logcat" about "com.google.android.gms/com.google.android.gms.pay.deeplink.AliasSavePkPassActivity" so maybe it's trying?
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@jleedev If this were generally true, that would be great news, because it would mean that my existing passes work on Android without me having to do anything.
But I cannot reproduce.
In the Android emulator, clicking on a .pkpass link (content-type application/vnd.apple.pkpass) downloads it and says "cannot open file".
This is Android 16 sending UA "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; K) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/133.0.0.0 Mobile Safari/537.36".
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Four years ago I asked whether "Google Pass" was a thing that I needed to give a shit about and consensus was, "no, nobody uses that." But I have heard anecdotally, recently, that this might no longer be true. Thoughts?
The goal here is, "reduce the amount of time it takes for someone standing in front of my nightclub to wave their QR code at the door staff."
Note: I don't use Android and know as little about its ecosystem as possible, so please use small words.
https://jwz.org/b/yk45If those of you using Android could click on this link and tell me whether it does anything even remotely useful, and if so, some detail about how horrible/stupid the whole experience is, that would be helpful: https://www.jwz.org/images/2026/test.pkpass
And tell me what version you're using, obviously. Possibly this requires some "Play" [sic] stuff to work.
UPDATE: Thanks! You can stop now.
(Unless you have read the dozens of replies and have had a materially different experience than those.)
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If those of you using Android could click on this link and tell me whether it does anything even remotely useful, and if so, some detail about how horrible/stupid the whole experience is, that would be helpful: https://www.jwz.org/images/2026/test.pkpass
And tell me what version you're using, obviously. Possibly this requires some "Play" [sic] stuff to work.
UPDATE: Thanks! You can stop now.
(Unless you have read the dozens of replies and have had a materially different experience than those.)
@jwz nothing remotely useful - I get a dialog as for any unrecognized file for download.
Edit: Android13/lineageOS/google play from microg/fennec browser (firefox)
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If those of you using Android could click on this link and tell me whether it does anything even remotely useful, and if so, some detail about how horrible/stupid the whole experience is, that would be helpful: https://www.jwz.org/images/2026/test.pkpass
And tell me what version you're using, obviously. Possibly this requires some "Play" [sic] stuff to work.
UPDATE: Thanks! You can stop now.
(Unless you have read the dozens of replies and have had a materially different experience than those.)
@jwz Downloads a pkpass file. That's it.
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If those of you using Android could click on this link and tell me whether it does anything even remotely useful, and if so, some detail about how horrible/stupid the whole experience is, that would be helpful: https://www.jwz.org/images/2026/test.pkpass
And tell me what version you're using, obviously. Possibly this requires some "Play" [sic] stuff to work.
UPDATE: Thanks! You can stop now.
(Unless you have read the dozens of replies and have had a materially different experience than those.)
@jwz asks to download the test.pkpass file. (Using a browser with no script enabled, didn't go any farther than the prompt)
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If those of you using Android could click on this link and tell me whether it does anything even remotely useful, and if so, some detail about how horrible/stupid the whole experience is, that would be helpful: https://www.jwz.org/images/2026/test.pkpass
And tell me what version you're using, obviously. Possibly this requires some "Play" [sic] stuff to work.
UPDATE: Thanks! You can stop now.
(Unless you have read the dozens of replies and have had a materially different experience than those.)
@jwz the file is downloaded, nothing more
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If those of you using Android could click on this link and tell me whether it does anything even remotely useful, and if so, some detail about how horrible/stupid the whole experience is, that would be helpful: https://www.jwz.org/images/2026/test.pkpass
And tell me what version you're using, obviously. Possibly this requires some "Play" [sic] stuff to work.
UPDATE: Thanks! You can stop now.
(Unless you have read the dozens of replies and have had a materially different experience than those.)
@jwz Apparently I now have a pass to an event. It went pretty seamlessly apart from me having to say Yes to things I haven't used before. Galaxy Tab A9, Android 16.
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If those of you using Android could click on this link and tell me whether it does anything even remotely useful, and if so, some detail about how horrible/stupid the whole experience is, that would be helpful: https://www.jwz.org/images/2026/test.pkpass
And tell me what version you're using, obviously. Possibly this requires some "Play" [sic] stuff to work.
UPDATE: Thanks! You can stop now.
(Unless you have read the dozens of replies and have had a materially different experience than those.)
@jwz Unsupported file type error on Android 13 (opened on Google Wallet)

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If those of you using Android could click on this link and tell me whether it does anything even remotely useful, and if so, some detail about how horrible/stupid the whole experience is, that would be helpful: https://www.jwz.org/images/2026/test.pkpass
And tell me what version you're using, obviously. Possibly this requires some "Play" [sic] stuff to work.
UPDATE: Thanks! You can stop now.
(Unless you have read the dozens of replies and have had a materially different experience than those.)
@jwz it:
1. asks if I want to download a file
2. downloads a file with a .pkpass extension
3. asks if I want to open the file
4. opens the file in Google Wallet and asks if I was to add
5. asks if I want to add a ticket to Powerman 5000 at DNA lounge -
If those of you using Android could click on this link and tell me whether it does anything even remotely useful, and if so, some detail about how horrible/stupid the whole experience is, that would be helpful: https://www.jwz.org/images/2026/test.pkpass
And tell me what version you're using, obviously. Possibly this requires some "Play" [sic] stuff to work.
UPDATE: Thanks! You can stop now.
(Unless you have read the dozens of replies and have had a materially different experience than those.)
@jwz Downloaded the pkpass file using Samsung Internet, I then tried to open the file and got this

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If those of you using Android could click on this link and tell me whether it does anything even remotely useful, and if so, some detail about how horrible/stupid the whole experience is, that would be helpful: https://www.jwz.org/images/2026/test.pkpass
And tell me what version you're using, obviously. Possibly this requires some "Play" [sic] stuff to work.
UPDATE: Thanks! You can stop now.
(Unless you have read the dozens of replies and have had a materially different experience than those.)
@jwz android 11, downloads the file and imports successfully in google wallet
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@jwz it:
1. asks if I want to download a file
2. downloads a file with a .pkpass extension
3. asks if I want to open the file
4. opens the file in Google Wallet and asks if I was to add
5. asks if I want to add a ticket to Powerman 5000 at DNA lounge@jwz I can send a picture of the QR code and now think you now own my phone
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If those of you using Android could click on this link and tell me whether it does anything even remotely useful, and if so, some detail about how horrible/stupid the whole experience is, that would be helpful: https://www.jwz.org/images/2026/test.pkpass
And tell me what version you're using, obviously. Possibly this requires some "Play" [sic] stuff to work.
UPDATE: Thanks! You can stop now.
(Unless you have read the dozens of replies and have had a materially different experience than those.)
@jwz just downloaded, nothing else. Pixel 6a, latest Android
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@jwz Downloaded the pkpass file using Samsung Internet, I then tried to open the file and got this

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@jwz Downloaded the pkpass file using Samsung Internet, I then tried to open the file and got this

@jwz I mean, I could have done the thing but it's a lot of text and warning, some people might not?