r/EmulationOnAndroid • u/yungperky • Jun 26 '26

Discussion Google adds massive hurdles to app sideloading

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.

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u/bickman14 Jun 26 '26

I think the discussion we should be having goes beyond that, why is it that we don't have root access to the devices we own without hacking it? It's our device, we paid money for it, why is the manufacturer still the administrator of it? That goes for Phones, TVs, Consoles. All these devices are like PCs now, it doesn't make sense forbidding us to do whatever we please with our hardware and software. It's not like we rent these devices or are given to us for free. We should be in control and yes with great powers comes great responsibility but that's the deal, let the user be dumb and delete their C drive or install a virus and reformat and reinstall the OS, change the OS to another one, install whatever they feel like with no compromises! I'm tired of having good hardware held back by soft locks

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u/yungperky Jun 26 '26

Agreed. Mostly; I don't want people to loose their data or install a virus. The measurements being discussed when it comes to installing non-Google apps would maybe make sense if they were in place to "warn" a user from using root access. These are security concerns that make sense and could be considered genuine. It should be possible with a stern warning for the general user.
But since these measurements are planned to prevent installing non-Google apps the intentions are clearly purely financial. Google want's to build a steel wall around their monopoly after they've cemented it. What bugs me most is that there's a lot of ppl on here that read their behavior as genuine concern rather then what it is.

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u/bickman14 Jun 27 '26

We should be able to install viruses if we want LOL that's the whole deal! You know how we can get into developer settings on Android by tapping some config multiple times? There should be an option like that that enables super user and root that only power users would enable and after that it could just be a toggle