apkdl.dietdroid.com received a steady stream of DMCA takedown notices and was using more bandwidth than I can justify paying for. This was always meant as a demo for the open-source self-hosting project — not a long-running public service.
I'm one person with too many other responsibilities to keep moderating takedowns, handling abuse, and paying the bandwidth bill. Shutting it down is the only sensible call.
Everything you saw here is on GitHub. Clone it, run ./setup.sh, and you've got your own private instance in a few minutes.
Because you can run it locally on your own machine — no DMCA, no bandwidth cost, no public exposure, no third party in the middle. That's how this was meant to be used.
I am explicitly not recommending the following. On a self-hosted instance, every app blocked here was blocked because a rights holder asked. Removing those blocks puts you in the position of distributing their content without authorization. That's on you, not on the project, not on me. You may receive DMCA notices, your hosting may be terminated, and depending on your jurisdiction you may face civil or criminal liability. Don't do this.
Documenting how the mechanism works for transparency only:
Again: do not do this. The blacklist exists for a reason. Self-hosters are responsible for their own compliance.