Well, that was fast. It looks like Facebook has already taken steps to disable leaked copies of Facebook home that became available recently. Just in case you weren’t following the news earlier today, Facebook home was leaked in a beta build. Surprisingly, the leaked build of the app included support for a plethora of devices like the Nexus 4 and the Nexus 7 tablet. If anything, we know that Facebook Home will be easy to port to devices in the future when it releases.
The leaked apk came from MoDaCo, but it seems the site creator was also one of the first to notice the changes to the app. Paul O’Brien sent out a tweet not too long ago that Facebook has apparently made some server side changes that make the Facebook Home leak unusable. After signing into the app users are presented with an all-black screen, meaning they cannot browse the news feed or see anything, except for their own profile picture.
https://twitter.com/PaulOBrien/statuses/321283016582369282
O’Brien wasn’t the only one experiencing issues with the app because Twitter blew up about it.
@PaulOBrien only my little chat head in the very dark background remains. 🙁
— ⓐⓝⓖⓔⓛ (@angelreality) April 8, 2013
While Facebook Home was pretty cool to use, the early build had some pretty serious issues. That could be why Facebook decided to put an end to folks using the app early. For starters, in order to use Facebook Home you also had to uninstall the official Facebook app- having both installed would cause issues. The infamous Chat Heads function was also disabled and unusable.
Apparently, the Cover Feed, Facebook Home Settings and notifications all worked with no issues. Needless to say, there’s still a lot of work to be done. It’s worth noting that this was a beta build, which means it in no way represents the final product that’s set to debut on April 12th. At least, I hope Facebook developers will be able to iron out all the kinks before the official launch, but stranger things have happened.
Did any of you get the chance to try out Facebook Home before the leaked build was nuked? Personally, I don’t care much for it, but leaked builds are always fun to play around with.