Can't use nearby sharing

I want to share apps with people without internet, so the nearby feature seems to be the right approach.

However, I encounter several problems. The main one is an error message when trying to ‘connect’ with the other phone by QR code.

Attempt to invoke virtual method ‘java.lang.String org.fdroid.database.Repository.getAdress()’ on a null object reference

Here’s what we’ve tried.

  1. Enable on my phone the ‘hotspot’ (my phone as a WiFi ‘provider’).
  2. My friend’s phone connected to my hotspot over WiFi.
  3. Just in case we both enabled bluetooth.
  4. Opened F-Droid tab Nearby and we faced several situations.

On the first time, my friend (he/him) was on version 1.19 and I was on 1.20. After some unsuccessful attempts, I thought it may be because of the old version, so I tried the ‘Send F-Droid’ button and it did allow me to transfer via bluetooth, I think. He installed the new version and we tried again.

Sometimes we could see each other on the nearby list, sometimes not — I couldn’t tell why. So it was not possible to achieve Step 3 on the tutorial. Location permission is not used, so I discarded that.

We then tried the QR code, both ways. If I showed the QR, there was the null:8888 URL, so we tried the other way around. So I scanned his QR code and then I got on my phone the message I quoted.

We also tried enabling the hotspot on my friend’s phone and F-Droid crashed. But if he enabled the hotspot from ‘within’ F-Droid Nearby, then it wouldn’t crash, but didn’t allow us to exchange apps. We couldn’t see each other on the list.

Another thing was that I got a message ‘Not visible via WiFi’, but if I enabled that switch, the app stopped searching for nearby people. So I did not turned it on. And bluetooth seemed not to take any part/role on this feature.

Sorry for the lengthy post, any ideas? We got to the Step 6, but then the error message. So I don’t know if that happens because we couldn’t get through Step 3 ‘properly’ as explained on the tutorial.

Devices used: Moto E2 and Moto E6.

I’ve personally never had it work once since forever.

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