March 28, 2026
Cookie-gate at the White House
I decompiled the White House's new app
White House app nukes cookie pop-ups, stirs privacy fight
TLDR: A researcher says the White House app’s in‑app browser strips cookie pop-ups and some paywalls, and includes switchable location tracking code. Commenters are split: some cheer the banner-killing, others warn about privacy and supply-chain risks, making a government app feel both convenient and concerning.
The internet is losing it over a teardown of the new White House app. A coder popped it open and found it’s basically a slick news portal built with web tech, feeding content from the White House website. The jaw-dropper? Its in-app browser injects code to auto-delete cookie pop-ups, paywalls, and consent boxes — the internet’s most hated nags — while linking out to things like the ICE tip form (link). Cue chaos in the comments.
Some cheered like it’s a public service: killing cookie banners was called “the first unambiguously positive” move for regular folks. Others joked it’s like installing an ad blocker for your brain. But privacy hawks slammed the discovery that location-tracking code is bundled and switchable, with one commenter alleging frequent GPS pings and another flagging that the app loads code from a random developer’s GitHub page — a supply chain nightmare, especially for a government app. Skeptics shrugged that most big apps do worse, while performance complaints (“stutter city on my MacBook”) added fuel. The drama splits three ways: is this normal app stuff, a sketchy surveillance risk, or a rare win against web annoyances? Either way, the comment section turned into a meme war over cookies, paywalls, and trust in government tech.
Key Points
- •The official White House app is a React Native application built with Expo (SDK 54) running on the Hermes JavaScript engine, with a WordPress backend accessed via a custom whitehouse/v1 REST API.
- •The APK’s core logic is a 5.5 MB Hermes bytecode bundle with a thin native wrapper; version 47.0.1 (Build 20) has Hermes and React Native’s New Architecture enabled.
- •Expo config includes withNoLocation and withStripPermissions plugins; OTA updates are disabled though Expo’s update infrastructure is present in the build.
- •The app functions as a content portal with endpoints for home, news, wire, live streams, galleries, issues, priorities, achievements, affordability, and media-bias, and includes a direct link to the ICE tip form.
- •The in-app WebView injects JavaScript on every page load to remove consent dialogs and paywalls, and the APK contains OneSignal SDK location code gated by an _isShared flag controllable via the JavaScript layer.