Sideloading apps to a BlackBerry 10 device has usually required users to use their PC’s at some point, and sometimes even connect the device to the PC. However, using the recently-released SideSwype utility, you can now sideload entirely from your device – we’ll show you how.
Sideloading?
For those of you unfamiliar, sideloading is the process of bringing an app onto your device without the use of the native marketplace. It’s most-commonly used to run Android apps in the Android Player, since many of these aren’t available in BlackBerry World. However, you can still sideload BlackBerry 10 apps if, for whatever reason, they aren’t available within BlackBerry World either. Keep in mind sideloading is not an officially-supported way of running apps, so not everything you sideload will necessarily end up working. If you’re willing to give it a try, SideSwype is a great way of doing it, as it won’t require you to have your PC around. It should be noted that the app only includes two “install credits”, and if you intend to sideload more than two apps you will need to pay for additional credits – $0.99 for 10 credits, $2.99 for 35 credits, and $4.99 for 60 credits.
Using SideSwype
You’ll need to start by downloading SideSwype from their website on your computer. This will hopefully be the only time you’ll touch your PC during this process. You will end up downloading a ZIP file. Extract it, and you’ll find an executable. This executable is going to sideload the SideSwype app to your device, so you’ll need to connect your device to your PC and put it in Development Mode.
In order to put the device in Development Mode, go to the Settings app. Then, hit Security and Privacy.
At the very bottom, you’ll find Development Mode, as seen in the screenshot above. Enter the menu, and hit the toggle to enable Development Mode. If your device has no password, you’ll be asked to enter one – you’ll need to remember this password for later. If it already has a password, you’ll be asked to confirm it.
Once Development Mode is enabled, you can go ahead and run the executable from SideSwype on your computer. It will prompt you for the device password, and then proceed to sideload the app.
Now that you have SideSwype on your device, you can disconnect it from your computer and run the app. The app will start by asking for your device password, so fill that out. There is an “Enable/Disable Development Mode” button here, which will take you to the Development Mode menu, but if you’ve been following this tutorial then your device should still be in Development Mode. This screen also has the option to enable error reporting, which you can choose to do if you would like to help SideSwype improve in the event that something goes wrong – no personal data is sent to them. Moreover, there is an option to bring over install credits from another device, but if you’re reading this tutorial, chances are you’ve never used the app before. Once you’re done here, hit the back button at the button.
Now, you should be presented with all the Virtual Private Network (VPN) settings you’re going to need – SideSwype uses a VPN in order to sideload onto your device. So, hit the “Open VPN Settings” button and just follow all the instructions SideSwype provides. Once you’ve gone through them all, ignore any options it hasn’t mentioned and just hit “Connect” at the top of the settings page. With that done, go back to SideSwype and hit the back button to bring you to the main page – if you configured the VPN correctly, there will be a green bar at the bottom of the page that says “CONNECTED!” As the app mentions, if you have a Gmail account linked to your device, it may ask you to re-authenticate while you are connected to the VPN as a security measure.
Keep in mind, if you ever need to redo the VPN setup for whatever reason, you can swipe down from the top bezel and hit the “Help” button. Also, if you need to change the Development Mode password, bring over install credits to a new device, or enable/disable error reporting, hit the “Settings” button.
Before we can finally sideload, you’ll need to find a BAR or APK file for the app you want – APK files are the format used by Android, but the app will convert them to BAR automatically. These can be downloaded through the browser on many websites, such as apk2bar.org or androiddrawer.com. Put them in a folder you’ll remember.
Now, go back to SideSwype. Hit the gear-shaped logo in the middle, and it’ll prompt you to select the file you want to install. Once you’ve selected it, just hit “Install”, or you can choose “Install & Launch” if you’d like the app to launch immediately after installing. The app will then upload the file to SideSwype, convert it to BAR if necessary, and send it back to be installed. And there you have it, now you know how to sideload entirely from your device!
Limitations
There are a number of limitations that you should keep in mind, besides the need to purchase install credits mentioned at the start. For one, if you’re not on a WiFi network, it will of course cut into your mobile data usage. If you’re on a slow network, the process of downloading the BAR/APK, uploading it to SideSwype, and then downloading to be installed could take a while too.
If the app you’re installing requires a debug token to function properly, SideSwype doesn’t currently support converting the APK files to work with your debug token. However, they claim to be working on support for this. Until then, the only way you could still use SideSwype to do so is to send your appropriately-converted BAR file to your device, then sideload them like any other app. This will most likely require a PC, so you may as well sideload these apps using traditional methods until SideSwype figures out a way to do it from within the app.
These limitations aside however, SideSwype is a great step forwards for sideloading on BlackBerry 10, and will hopefully improve over time. Enjoy your new apps folks!