If you haven’t seen this yet, Google is planning to require mandatory developer identity verification for all Android apps, including apps distributed outside the Play Store, taking effect September 2026. This affects every independent and open source Android developer directly.
This is not just about the Play Store. After September 2026, on any certified Android device, applications from unverified developers will be blocked by default. The only proposed bypass, the “advanced flow”, exists only as a blog post and has not appeared in any beta, dev preview, or canary release. No one outside Google has seen it.
The community has been fighting back at keepandroidopen.org:
- Read the full breakdown of what this means
- Sign the open letter (organisations only)
- Contact your national regulators — contacts listed by country on the site
- Add the countdown banner to your project
September 2026 is closer than it looks. The time to push back is now.
Fuck them. I hope open source / de-googled android can somehow survive this.
So much for their “don’t be evil” policy
L!
I don’t get it… Google‘s main appeal over Apple is that you can install anything on Android. It runs worse, is less stable and sometimes just does dumb stuff. That’s like if Nintendo would get rid of Mario/Pokémon
That was it before they got a solid fanbase. Now the main appeal is that they are mostly cheaper phones.
I hope projects like Postmarket OS and Sailfish get big enough soon and have compatibility in banking apps so we can make the switch to Linux phones. Android is a sinking ship tbh.
I’ve never used a banking app. Don’t they usually have web sites? What am I missing on?
Banks, government apps and main apps (Whatsapp, etc.) are on Google Play. It’s clear governments will stick with Google. What is left to know is how seriously democratic governments take civil liberties.
There have been talks in Europe about how we are dependent on American tech for our digital infrastructure. Some politicians even pushing for an alternative to Apple and Google. I hope everyone else wakes up before it’s too late.
Fuck Google.
I was already looking flashing my Fairphone with Sailfish. But this move of Google is the final straw. Sailfish fully supports android apps. I’m already running every google app in a sandbox and stopped using my contactless payment.
It just occured to me what this is all about: shutting down the ICE tracking app. They won’t carry it on the play store, but its still being shared.
With this, you can’t get it on your phone. And, given how much Google is sucking up to tRump, they want to help him shut this down along with all the other evil.
The governments put pressure on Google to police off play apps and harm because they are attached to Android so they’re being required to build this.
You can still get it, you just need to wait 24h before you can install the first app the first time, and there will be some big scary warnings.
Right, but after this change over?
Ya, this is their new workflow for people who dont authentic themselves.
Turn on developer mode and choose the right setting, reboot phone, wait 24h, then you can install anything. You have the option to stay like this, or revert to 24h wait after 7 days.
Edit: they just announced it in the past few days.
time to figure out how to root my phone
The thing is that will likely break bank apps
I thought they just rolled this back?
Once per device you will need to wait 24 hours before installing unauthorized apps. That’s all the new restrictions do. It will basically not affect power users at all.
For scammers, the 24 hour waiting period completely breaks their scams. They won’t be able to trick people into installing malware if they have to call back to resume the scam the next day. Google said that was their goal and their new solution actually does this without impeding power users.
Google found the balance that we were asking them for, yet people won’t stop complaining and even lying about it in posts like this. Maybe that energy is why the users won this time, but either way, take that energy and fight any of the thousands of real fights.
Sideloading APKs is an easy vector but so is the Google Play Store. It’ll take scammers like 5 minutes to just perma move to GPlay shenanigans, and its already well known to have poor quality control and tons of malware available to download with the useless play protect logo.
This is just Google’s public justification for creating their walled garden. They already pulled this exact scam with Chinese OEMs which is how Huawei got banned, and others stopped selling in the US. They huffed up some story about CCP spyware and then mandated that GPlay be installed in full, otherwise face consequences from congress.
Even Samsung got pulled in and they essentially agreed to use GApps as the de facto communication suite for their phones in exchange for allowing Samsung to continue to use their Galaxy store.
They see stuff like AOSP as a threat because anyone can just fork the OS and make their own non google Android, and they don’t want any OEM to replace GPlay like what Motorola is attempting right now (hence the increased urgency to lock down Android).
Google’s monopoly in the mobile space revolves around every phone using GPlay, so they’ll do anything to maintain their control.
Got a link boss? You’ll excuse me if I don’t take your word for it and all that
The website linked above lays out the change https://keepandroidopen.org/
That is all true, however it seems like a slippery slope to me.
To stop scams, it would instead be a good idea to block app installation (of ANY apps including in the Play Store) when the screen is being monitored or a call is active.
Then when sideloading apps, grey out the install button for 3 seconds to hopefully pull the user out of any mindless flow state a scammer has put them in.
Google made some noises in a blog post, but beyond that there is no evidence that they have changed direction. I guess you can take them at their word if you want, but that seems rather naive given the context.
They came out with more information on what their walk back looks like. More information is on the website https://keepandroidopen.org/
This entire flow is delivered through Google Play Services, not the Android OS, meaning Google can modify, restrict, or remove it at any time without an OS update and without any user consent. The advanced flow has still not appeared in any Android beta, dev preview, or canary release. As of the date of this update, it exists only as a blog post and UI mockups. The community is being asked to accept a product announcement as a functional safeguard five months before the mandate takes effect.
Until Google provides a shipping implementation that can be independently verified, our position remains unchanged: all apps from non-registered developers will be blocked once their lockdown goes into effect in September 2026.
As far as I’m aware, there’s only the advanced flow thing that is mentioned in this post?
If that’s the only solution, I wouldn’t call that “rolling back.”
For a while they were completely removing the ability to install unsigned apps altogether. So continuing to allow it albeit with more steps is indeed stepping back somewhat from what their plans were.
They did, but why talk about that when we can just fearmonger about things that aren’t happening?
There is more information on the website. This was Google’s “solution”:
Update: Google has revealed the “advanced flow” — it is not a solution
On March 19, 2026, Google published details ↗ of the “advanced flow” mechanism intended for “power users” to allow installation of applications from unverified developers after the lockdown takes effect. It goes like this:
- Enable Developer Mode ↗ by tapping the software build number in About Phone seven times
- In Settings > System, open Developer Options and scroll down to “Allow Unverified Packages.”
- Flip the toggle and answer a scare screen confirming that you are not being coerced
- Enter your device unlock pin/password
- Restart your device
- Wait 24 hours
- Return to the unverified packages menu at the end of the security delay
- Scroll past additional scare screen warnings and select either “Allow temporarily” (seven days) or “Allow indefinitely.”
- On the next scare screen, confirm that you understand the risks.
- You can now install unverified packages on the device by tapping the “Install anyway” option in the package manager.
This entire flow is delivered through Google Play Services, not the Android OS, meaning Google can modify, restrict, or remove it at any time without an OS update and without any user consent. The advanced flow has still not appeared in any Android beta, dev preview, or canary release. As of the date of this update, it exists only as a blog post and UI mockups. The community is being asked to accept a product announcement as a functional safeguard five months before the mandate takes effect.
Until Google provides a shipping implementation that can be independently verified, our position remains unchanged: all apps from non-registered developers will be blocked once their lockdown goes into effect in September 2026.
I’m gonna stick to pre-owned devices with alternate ROMs like Lineage, Cyanogen, RR, Havoc, Bliss, cr, Viper, AOSP, KP, ISP, etc. or any of the other hundred brews. I don’t anticipate getting a phone that runs android and is not able to be modified EVER. Eventually if the time comes that the tech changed so vastly that they’re not usable anymore (like 3G now) by then hopefully there will be full Linux phones or some other varieties. Maybe many.
But the thing is the mainstream masses just don’t give a shit. Their rights and liberties have been getting chewed away at for decades and they just can’t seem to care. As long as they are entertained enough and the culture like ours - ie geek subculture / hacking community continues to be mocked and vilified, they’re certainly not gonna listen to us.
But what’s new about that? Nada.
We are forever going to remain a fringe community and I just accept that. When a family member has Alexa devices and I show them all the analytics and tests and records from all the various sources that provide empirical evidence of constant surveillance and spying and uploading of eavesdropped audio and the folks just go eh oh well eh yeah but ah useful eh I have nothing to hide ehhh urrrgh … I start to see them with sunken eye sockets and protruding brow ridges. They are the fools and the suckers and the sheep. They’re the ones who will line up to be implanted with a chip, they’re the ones who will pay to have their brains mapped and catalogued. You can’t cure fucking stupid. Meanwhile people like us will remain the fringe “undesirables” as long as our hearts beat.
The solution is GrapheneOS. You can install it on Google Pixels today, and Motorola is going to release some devices with official support for it in 2027.
They’re really working hard at distancing themselves from that “Don’t be evil” motto.
they did that years ago
they stopped as soon as they stopped blocking eleciton denial content YT. they were preparing to support trump with propaganda 1-2 years before his election.
We need a platform like Framework in mobile sector.
There was almost one, many years ago, but Google bought and killed it
I get that you can get around this but there are 2 major problems I see.
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Google now has a flag on my phone they can control remotely to keep me from accessing the apps I want to use.
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Alternative app stores like F-Droid will never be any more popular than they are today. This raises the barrier to entry so much that we can effectively consider the open source phone app movement to be dead in the water.
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