An accurate title would read something like: Google wants to make side loading apps more difficult by adding extra steps under the guise of security in order to maintain market dominance and continue spying on the user.
Yay, Google adding another hurdle for alternative app stores and their developers…
F-Droid store/repo is safer than Google Play Store. Google’s own store has many shady apps, including spyware and occasionnal malware.
I don’t get the argument that Play Store is safer than others.
Google play services is spyware
I know my sideloaded apps are safe. I have far less confidence with the apps Google allows in their App Store.
Sure, to make it safer in the same way Microsoft made you safer by making it harder to install Linux with UEFI.
Isn’t it actually easier with UEFI since you can have multiple bootloaders and updating windows doesn’t overwrite any other bootloaders? I think the issue arises from secureboot
Let Android be free, fuck off Google.
They won’t. The banks and govs will bitch and moan until they lock it down.
You can’t convince me this wasn’t Google’s plan from the very beginning.
- Open source it, Gain market share,
- Push ads/capitalize on data harvesting
- Corner OEMs to include their malware
- Gradually make it harder for ROM developers to gain access
- Lock it down
- Profit
They stole tons of features from custom ROMs but never implemented the ability to turn off internet for specific apps so they could push ads and track users.They made turning location “on” a requirement to scan wifi, calling it a security feature. They re-enable “background data” on all apps with an Android update. These are just off the top of my head.
Chromium works towards same goal as well. They never wanted to defeat apple, monopoly, they wanted to become part of the duopoly.
Ridiculous, mother of bullshit! Switching to Linux appears to be the only option left for a personal computing device.
I really hope phones get better Linux support soon… it really isn’t daily driver material for most phones at the moment.
Wait until you find out what Android is under the UI.
While its true Android runs on the Linux kernel, its not Linux. There are many differences and restrictions.
rips off mask
It is a vendor kernel!
In this time and age, do you still doubt that Linux might be outlawed for consumers? To prevent criminal activity, of course /s.
They already consider you a criminal if you use grapheneOS on a pixel. It’s not a joke.
Just turn off Google Play Protect and it’ll let you sideload whatever you want.
You can’t seriously actually trust that turning it off in the Google owned app they control or update will be meaningful. I’m really sick of people claiming it is, and I hope this will get them to realize that.
If you want to crush it fully, disable google play store as a whole, and make sure to tell your friends too because if that solution doesn’t get more popular there might not be third party apps to install since the devs will just quit.
Honestly we need a community OS like Android/Chome OS
I like Linux but it would be really cool to have a OS that was less modular and more purpose built. I feel like there is enough people interested that we could raise some money to hire some developers. On think Chome OS and Android get right is the hassle free unified experience.
There’s GrapheneOS that I think would try to address this problem — secure, proper architecture, compatible with some major app stack (e.g. Android apps). It’s AOSP-based, but they’re already thinking ahead up to a point where they would be forced to fork it and even work with OEMs to create their own phone hardware for it. There are a couple of threads on their Mastodon.
I don’t know how much they would be able to achieve, but I would pay for such system.
Graphene doesn’t play nice with others
At some point that stops being sideloading.
I’ve never wanted to get all my devices totally detached from google until recently.
They are going full mask off right now.
They’re prepping to be the surveillance service for the global fascist oligarchy.
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Fairphone have 7 years of guaranteed support, possibly longer with custom Roms. :P
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Year of the Linux phone in 2026?
Glad i run only LineageOS with no gapps.
I wonder if this will do the same thing that happened to Windows when Windows 11 wouldn’t support older devices and people switched on mass to Linux.
Either way, you’re gonna have a bifurcated Android. One Android for the plebs where Google controls everything, and one Android for those who know where Google controls nothing.
Sounds like this is going to stop things like me telling my friend to install new pipe from afteroid because they can skip YouTube ads.
Every year that goes by mobile computing gets less and less interesting.
Might as well just buy the cheapest one that will do the job and call it done. So sense in spending top dollar very often when it is just a severely limited black box, like a video game console.
In the meantime, we’re already verifying signatures for sideloaded apps. Can’t say the same about play store apps.
Oh I see someone already made a post. I can’t see how this is enforceable except for highly modifying the OS. It would have to be enforced at the device level correct,?
It’ll be part of Google Play “Protect”, part of “gapps” not AOSP. Manufacturers have to ship all of gapps or none. Its not clear if this will block installs/updates, add a nag screen occasionally or fully block running these apps/disable them.
This is the equivalent of Apples Notarization which they just used to block apps after the EU told them to allow users to install apps.
So disable play protect and this goes away
Edit: I do want to add that I HOPE this is what is needed to bypass this… If they block my modded and github APKs I’m going to go fucking nuclear
EDIT: further research shows this will not be based on play protect but will be implemented in the APK itself. I hope this shit can be patched out because you know Google is doing to do this with YouTube to kill revanced
So disable play protect and this goes away
You’ll probably have to disable Play Store for it to go away, Turning off Play Protect isn’t very effective anyway. Even with it off it has still disabled apps automatically and warned me. I disabled Play Store and the behavior went away.
EDIT: further research shows this will not be based on play protect but will be implemented in the APK itself. I hope this shit can be patched out because you know Google is doing to do this with YouTube to kill revanced
I think you might be confusing this with App Integrity which Google offers to developers to include in their apps, this change is to prevent people from installing their own apps, likely with a dialogue to interrupt it. Play Protect can already interrupt installations asking you to agree or not. That’s in all likelihood the mechanic they’ll use to enforce this.
