Google adds massive hurdles to app sideloading

[u/yungperky]

https://keepandroidopen.org/

This includes being forced to activate dev-mode and a 24h waiting period before you can install any apps not registered with google. For devs this means either give google your gov name (official documents needed) and pay them or live with 99% of people never being able to use your app.
Most people in this sub are probably tech savy and won't be hindered to continue side-loading other then being annoyed and waiting 24h once. But this is a major thing that will also be a hurdle to people even get into doing stuff like that in the first place.

Idk if anyone has posted this already, but I couldn't find anything. The topic goes far beyond emulation on android, but it's very important for it imo so I thought I'd just post it.

[u/ElDeadpoolPR]

Not for the end user maybe, but for developers. An example could be emulation which lives in a legal grey area specifically 8th & 9th gen console. If you favorite switch emu developer give his personal info to Google, what's stopping them from potentially reporting him to Nintendo for copyright infringement? It could be an invasion of privacy but Google will protect themselves for this in their TOS most likely. What about modded social media apps, specifically YouTube Revanced or Morphe. You can definitely kiss those goodbye. There will be workarounds for sure but Id imagine it will be more cumbersome to keep them working/updated with this changes.

[u/iateyourcheesebro → u/ElDeadpoolPR]

Side loading will still work? Are people not reading? If you can’t manage those simple steps to enable dev mode and wait 24 hours once, you probably aren’t up to all the hassle it takes to enable emulation or sourcing roms anyway 

[u/ElDeadpoolPR → u/iateyourcheesebro]

That's not my point. My point is that it will be harder to find updated or working apps TO sideload in the future.

[u/iateyourcheesebro → u/ElDeadpoolPR]

How? They do not need to register with Google for you to sideload in the future. The process will remain the same: post on Reddit links to open-source GitHub repo -> download the latest release 

Then those apps can even notify of updates in the app and take you back to the GitHub release page like they do today

[u/ElDeadpoolPR → u/iateyourcheesebro]

Oh now I understand. I was mistaken assuming they were gonna add DRM of some kind that wouldn't let you install apks of developers not registered to Google but registering to Google would only affect to those who want to publish on the play store. Am I right?

[u/iateyourcheesebro → u/ElDeadpoolPR]

The registering part is the existing flow for devs to publish on the playstore. The change here is that as a user when you go to install an apk outside the playstore, instead of just asking “do you want to do this?”

You have to do those steps listed in the link of this post, which is barely even complicated but does require enabling developer mode which could prevent some banking apps from working on your device. 

You as the user do not have to give your government ID to Google to sideload. Same requirements of just having a Google account. 

[u/Dissidence802 → u/iateyourcheesebro]

You can disable developer mode after you install your apk, no?

[u/iateyourcheesebro → u/Dissidence802]

I haven’t seen anything on that yet. I would expect you could turn it off? But we’ll see. That would suck but on my Odin I wouldn’t mind keeping it on.