Retrieve app icons for non-installed apps

[omeritzics]

Description

Currently, the App Catalogue only displays icons for apps that are already installed on the device. To provide a full-featured "Store-like" experience, Updatium needs to retrieve and display icons for all apps listed in the catalogue, regardless of their installation status.

This is a core component of Improve App Catalogue #21 and is essential for the upcoming Grid View.

Proposed Solution: Pre-fetching & Caching

To avoid slow loading times and UI "blank spots," we will implement a proactive fetching system:

1. Metadata Integration: Modify the sync process to extract icon URLs for all apps provided by the upstream source.
2. Persistent Caching: Use a dedicated caching library to store these icons locally once fetched.
3. Proactive Pre-fetching:
   • Immediately after metadata sync, pre-fetch icons for the top 40 apps in the catalogue.
   • This ensures that the most relevant apps have their icons ready before the user even starts scrolling.
4. Placeholder Support: Use a generic placeholder icon or a shimmer effect while the specific app icon is being retrieved.

Technical Tasks

• Update the App model to include a remoteIconUrl field.
• Implement a background service/worker for pre-fetching.
• Integrate a disk-based caching mechanism.
• Update the UI (List/Grid view) to bind these remote icons.

[awaismalikA]

#92

[omeritzics]

Hi Muhammad, thank you for checking out Updatium!
I'm not sure I understood your comment. Could you please clarify what you meant?