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Install Solid Share

Solid Share holds your Solid accounts so every Solid-aware app on your phone can use them. You install it once.

For app developers

You need this installed to develop against the client library, because that library talks to it. If you are building with api instead, you do not — see Client or API?.

Not the Android Solid Services app

The Android Solid Services app was the host until 0.7.2 and is discontinued. The 0.8.0 SDK never binds to it, because it cannot scope what an app may do. Install Solid Share instead; a device that carries only the old app fails every call with SolidAppNotFoundException.

Get it

Get it on Google Play Get it on F-Droid

The APKs are also on GitHub Releases, if you install them yourself.

Android 8.0 (API 26) or newer.

In your own app, check before you launch sign-in:

if (!Solid.isHostInstalled(context)) {
    startActivity(Solid.hostInstallIntent(context))   // the store, or solidshare.app
}

Sign in

Open Solid Share, tap Add account and pick your pod provider, or type its URL if it is not listed. You are taken to your provider's own sign-in page — your password is entered there, never in Solid Share.

You can add several accounts from different providers and keep them all signed in. Apps ask for a specific one by WebID.

Which provider do I use?

If you do not have a pod yet, solidcommunity.net and solidweb.org both hand out free ones. Inrupt's PodSpaces is the commercial option. Any server implementing the Solid protocol works.

Granting apps access

When another app first asks for your pod, Solid Share shows you which account it wants, what it wants to do, and where. Nothing reaches your pod until you allow it.

An app asks for a level — View, Add, Edit or Full access — on the whole pod, on specific folders, or on a data module such as your contacts. You can narrow what it asked for before you approve it.

Review, narrow and revoke those grants at any time from the Apps tab on Solid Share's Share page. Revoking is immediate: the app keeps running, but its calls start failing.

Your accounts also appear in Android's Settings → Accounts, alongside every other account on the device. Removing one there signs it out here.

What leaves your device

Your tokens and signing keys never do. They are generated in the Android Keystore, bound to this device, and encrypted at rest. Other apps receive the results of pod calls, never a credential they could reuse.

See Solid Share's privacy policy for the full account, and Troubleshooting if sign-in misbehaves.