The restrictions on apk access over the past 10 years have already been an annoying pita. Many of the best power user apks have had to gut themselves over their original functionality, all while obtaining root access over your owned devices has become harder or next to impossible.
Let them keep those. I hereby declare that if I don’t own the thing, I ain’t buying it. So no root, no $$$.
Are they talking about the changes that were made that allow a dev to prevent their app from launching if it fails a Play integrity check?
If so I don’t see that as a big deal since it is up to the dev to use it. OSS devs that want to distribute their app via apk download won’t enable it, and anyone distributing cracked apks will just disable that along with whatever other changes they are making.
From what I can tell, all of this shit is on Google versions of Android. If you are on AOSP such as lineage or graphene, from what I understand this has no effect whatsoever.
But this is not the only aspect of Google’s autocratization; Apps who’s developers have enabled the Google Play Integrity APIs will not run on custom roms.
I’m sorry, but in that case, it wasn’t worth running the app to begin with. You can either find a third-party app that lets you access the same content, such as Newpipe and YouTube, or you can use it from a web browser, such as your bank, and if you can’t do either of those, then just don’t fucking use that service.
I was willing to totally switch banks because my previous bank required me to use a mobile app and I did not want to do so. If I must go through some annoyance to use something that works properly, I will.
For me at least, running as much open source as I can possibly do is worth more than the inconvenience caused by not being able to use these shit services.
I use open source whenever I can, but sometimes that just isn’t an option in the real world. I work in IT at a hospital that REQUIRES Duo. I use GrapheneOS. I was able to get it to work, but it was a horrible experience.
I’d be telling them to provide a work phone.
I did honestly think about this, but its honestly more trouble than it’s worth. Carrying around two phones is just kind of am eh experience, plus I’m new, and I don’t wanna be that guy. If I kept having issues with it, that is probably the route I would have ended up taking, but it’s working as expected now. I’m not a FOSS purest or anything either way. I have a librebooted thinkpad, but I also have several proprietary apps on my phone. Its all about usability for me.
cool, any dev who requires that is acting in bad faith against my privacy and doesn’t deserve my support.
The problem comes when it’s not an app you’re using for the app’s sake, but because it’s the app of some company you have a real-world relationship with. Your bank’s app being the most important one that comes to my mind, considering I’ve already heard about some banks trying to restrict users to only Google’s flavour of Android before this.
and that’s important why? pick a different bank, or don’t use the app at all.
I get that some folks think using the app is a requirement. that may be true for some but not all.
don’t support shitty services and these companies won’t continue to abuse us.
K bye
One of the reasons why I got a Android over ios :(
In parallel, Google has rolled out its Play Integrity API, which allows developers to limit app functionality when sideloaded, effectively pushing users to install apps only through the Google Play Store.
All of this while EU forbids Apple to do the same, what is the idea here? Measuring how EU reacts?
Is it the same though? Google is allowing the developers to choose to prevent sideloading. I thought Apple’s issue was that they prevented side loading completely.
In Singapore, lots of boomers are downloading scam apps from facebook lured by promises of discounts and free gifts, handing out accessibility privileges, and they’ll even argue vehemently against loved ones and bank staff when confronted. When it all inevitably blows up, they blame absolutely everyone except themselves, including praising Apple for some reason.
Being the largest voting block, they managed to get banks responsible for reimbursing their losses and there was even an idea floated of getting everyone to contribute to a shitty scam insurance fund. Many major banking apps are paranoid af and block usage from simple things like usb debugging turned on.
Absolutely stupidity. And there’s nothing we can do about it when the politicians love them so much.
Usb debugging is sketchy as shit. You should almost never turn that on, and immediately turn it off once you’re finished with whatever it is you’re doing with that on.
agree completely. But I recently broke my phone screen, the usual Samsung green screen of death, and I wish I had that turned on to copy the data over lol.
Purism is sketchy btw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKegmu0V75s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IjUryQOlgk
(Louis Rossman videos explaining how a customer was denied a refund for a “pre-order” and then they tried to coerce Louis to take down the video.)
Edit: typo
Never had an issue with them. Writing from my Librem 5
As a person who experienced the customer support regrading preorders I can confirm this firm is extremly sketchy.
effectively pushing users to install apps only through the Google Play Store
I wonder what this will mean for Aurora and Fdroid etc.
This is my immediate first thought seeing this. This fucking sucks. Part of the whole benefit of something like LineageOS or e (OS?) was being able to use Fdroid to stay away from Google as much as possible. Now this is going to potentially make things weird.
doesn’t do anything to f-droid, but probably kills aurora a bit. the developer can prevent their app from being sideloaded. why would one prevent that if they are distributing via f-droid too?
I hope f-droid has nothing to do with Google play store, thought they are their own store without connection to Google.
Well, both will be unable to install certain types of apps.
Aaaaand now I’m carrying around a laptop again, at least mini pcs are tiny now, maybe a small handheld would do…
if any of this shit hinders me, I’ll get a dumb phone and the cheapest iphone available for manditory work-based things and say so-long to being a mobile OS user.
I recently started carrying a GPD microPC because of this bullshit.
It’s like a very bulky phone. Pocketable but kinda chonk. Thumb typing kinda thing.
But it runs Fedora + gnome with no problems.
My phone is now just for quick stuff and a way to make a WiFi hotspot.
That doesnt appear to be true, the restriction seems to be on apps being installed from file managers, web browsers, messaging, etc.
F-droid and the like are not part of that list.
This still isn’t good, but it doesnt stop you from having F-droid manage your messaging apps it would seem.
Edit: If you’re down voting because you think its using the same method as a file manager as the user that replied to me, this is incorrect. This is also an issue going back several versions.
F-Droid uses a session installer method for 3rd party app stores, it does not use the same method as a file manager.
For an article about a similar issue brought up by similar restrictions in previous updates, you can refer to this article:
https://www.androidauthority.com/android-15-restricted-settings-sideloading-3481098/
You can also refer to this thread in the F-Droid forums which covers this as well, from 2 1/2 years ago:
Which also includes a merged discussion from the last time this came up 9 months ago.
F-Droid has been using the session installer method for quite some time.
F-Droid uses the same way to install packages as the file manager does.
F-Droid uses Session Installer, which is an “app store” method.
This is not a new issue:
https://www.androidauthority.com/android-15-restricted-settings-sideloading-3481098/
That sounds illegal.
Depends. Are you from the EU or not?
I am, that’s why it sounds illegal. :D
Yikes this really doesn’t look good. Is there any reporting on it from independent journalists (or anyone else who isn’t also advertising their own competing operating system)?
I haven’t seen proper reporting but the Play Integrity install source thing is accurate. There’s a reasonably good overview straight from the devil himself.
Lots of things that have very valid reasons on paper that also just happen to give Google a stupid amount of control and will backfire for a somewhat small percentage of people in very bad ways. We’ve been at “you can’t use pretty much any bank unless you agree to either Google or Apple terms” for quite some years now, now we’re giving those same app developers ways to detect if their device has accessibility APIs enabled (useful to protect against bot farms, but also a functional check for “you’re able-bodied”) or is in security support (also a functional check for “not reliant on hand-me-downs”).
Not that I’ve seen and I’d take what Purism say with a grain of salt: they’ve acted like pretty shitty gatekeepers themselves. Nothing they mentioned in the article seems too egregious in truth and they’re exaggerating the scale of it: Play Store app DRM exists already, and the restrictions on browser-downloaded apps they mention can be bypassed (albeit by having to go into settings) and don’t apply to apps installed through other apps stores (F-Droid, etc).
Nothing they mentioned in the article seems too egregious in truth
Doesn’t it? To be honest, if the article is telling the truth and not exaggerated, I find this pretty egregious. How you installed an app should be irrelevant, so the idea of an API to say “did this come from the Play Store” is fucking shit. And the ability to block installation of apps that call certain APIs entirely is even worse.
well, it sucks
From the article it sounds like the limitations come for some app types downloaded directly from a browser. I think this doesn’t affect alternate app stores like f-droid where you are effectively delegating approval to their process.
I have come across the other limitations mentioned with the Home Assistant companion app which I could only get matter registration to work with the version downloaded from the Play store.
Well, but where do you get F-Droid? Or stuff like ReVanced Manager.
Or Epic’s stuff. Wasn’t Google just now sued for this shit and nobody understood why Google lost and Apple didn’t because you can easily sideload on Android.
I completely agree. Unless Google is forced to install more than one app store by default, or forced to have multiple app stores downloadable on Play Store, three is no realistic way to install a third party app store on a phone. In both cases, Google’s cooperation is required.
The article says it only applied to apps requesting certain permissions. I agree I’m an ideal world it would be nice to get f-droid directly from the Play store but at least according to the article the ability to install it isn’t being blocked here.
Allowing fdroid from to come from the play store is NOT a solution by any means. Users should have the right to never touch the play store or agree to googles TOS.
one could argue that installing packages is a dangerous permission
Maybe for the Singapore thing. For the play integrity thing, it applies to apps from anywhere except the play store directly. I use Aurora to install apps that say “not compatible with your device” for no reason. But a week or two ago ago, they started blocking access and saying I needed to install from the play store.
Fortunately I was able to downgrade and they kept working, but I don’t know how long that will last. At some point the server side will change the API.
So you can’t use banking apps, or you mean like you cant even use F-Droid FOSS apps at all?
Fortunately I haven’t had to do this for anything like my bank app or its multifactor code app, but yeah it would be like that. For apps not published on the play store, they continue working.
