Bypassing app stores

Google and Amazon would like to be the only places you get apps from: Google through the Google Play Store and Amazon through the Amazon Appstore. But it isn't that easy.

Not all device manufacturers have a licence for Google Play.
Google Play refuse to sell to various countries.
In some places, Google Play refuse even to download free apps.
The Amazon Appstore is available on every Kindle Fire, but Amazon have decided to sell apps in only a handful of countries.

If you want the Catholic Calendar app, read on, and we will explain how you can download it directly from us.

If you want the Universalis app, get the Catholic Calendar app and use it for a month. It has exactly the same features as the Universalis app. Once you are absolutely sure that Catholic Calendar works on your device and it is what you want, get a registration code (instructions are here) and enter the code into the app (instructions are here). Once you have a registration code, you can also install Universalis onto your computer and on any other compatible devices you may have.

To get the app

Latest version: 2.191

Click here to download

Once the download has completed, look in your Downloads folder. You will see a file called app-Calendar-bare-release.apk, about 41 MB in size.

Tap on that file to install Catholic Calendar.

You may need to turn on the "Unknown Sources: allow installation of apps" option in the Device Administration section of your device's settings. The system should automatically ask you to do this if it is necessary.

If you want to check the integrity of the downloaded file, the hashes are as follows:

MD5: 205d066175a794d10e27963bf601c454
SHA1: 09111dca57b0010916f25455f6282b3c6020641a
SHA256: 032a513db11ff34a977f6cf69cdf1dda1b351004cf9d732853cd27b13aba340d

Limitations

Some of the things offered in Universalis require an additional payment. One or two of the Daily Books are like this; so is much of the sung and spoken audio, most of which requires a subscription. We have no way of taking money from you directly, so these features are not available if you download directly, bypassing the app stores.

Application updates

The app stores automatically download and install updates. If you bypass the app stores, this automatic update does not happen and there is no way to find out when a new version is available. All we can suggest is to reinstall every few months to get the latest bug fixes and updates.