Google's plan to restrict sideloading on Android has a potential escape hatch for users

Since Google’s goal is to improve security

This is an obvious lie.

They never specified who’s security…
- Their revenue probably felt very threatened.
- Whose*
  Who's = who + is
  Whose = an indication of possession
they want to improve thier AI and datamining capabilities.
- What am I not seeing? How does this improve datamining capabilities?

Call sideloading what it is, installing apps.

Found the Rossman subrsciber. 📎
Sideload refers to moving files between two devices, like P2P

Like "Jaywalking", suddenly, walking is no longer the norm, but the car is preferred. The victims are seen as perpetrators.
- And "littering" is the "real" culprit why we all drawn in uneccesey plastic. We should blame consumers not the polluters.
  Corporations do it all the time.
- ~~preferred~~ *required
  FTFY, at least here in a certain country...
It is, because it's actually the term that defines the process of transferring files not from an external networked device - downloading - or to an external networked device - uploading - but between two local devices - sideloading.
It's over two decades old, you downloaded an mp3 from kazaa, and then sideloaded it to your player.
For android apps, I believe the term originates from the method of using ADB to directly write the app to the phone memory, the command of which is "adb sideload filename"
- And companies ofted do it. Thay recoined jaywalking to put the blaim of the accidents to pedestrians and take away the road from them. They change what littering means in attrmpt to delute the responsibility for polution... We are better than that this time, right?
What would you call it?
- "installing" as in "installing software"
Don't forget "side effects", when really, medications only have "effects". Whether the effects are intended or not doesn't change the fact that they happen.
- Cough medicine can induce drowsiness, but you probably shouldn't be taking it as a sleep aid. The distinction between intended vs unintended effects is an important distinction to make, in my opinion, to prevent drugs from being unintentionally misused.
- Wait, so now I have to talk to a doctor before installing from F-Droid? Well, shit.
  For all intents and purposes, your comment actually invalidates the premise of using 'sideloading' as a term for installing from outside the 'official' method.
  You buy cough syrup because you're coughing, not because you want to be drowsy (I would hope that's the case). In the same way, you install Spotify to listen to music, not to get all your data extracted and sold. Getting drowsy is an inconvenient side effect of the medication, the same way that data grab and ads are an inconvenient side effect of the app.
  You're not 'side-medicating'.
- you shouldnt be taking medication not for his intended purpose, it has many warnings.

I'm not sure why google is over engineering this, proper mainline distros have this solved since forever. Let the community setup trusted repos with gpg keys, then let me trust the repos. If Fdroid trusts the package and I trust Fdroid, who should care?

Because it was never actually about security to begin with. That's obviously BS. Google just wants control.
Probably because they want to target software that cracks theirs to avoid ads, like ReVanced.
- Ding ding ding ding ding. It's so obvious, it's because Google wants to be in control and block apps it would rather not exist. Newpipe, FreeTube, Revanced and the like.
- Then why aren't they already doing that by blocking DuckDuckGo?
  The DuckDuckGo app blocks all apps from sending to Google (and other advertisers) tracking/ad data on a system level. And it's freely available on the Play Store (has been for years.
  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.duckduckgo.mobile.android
  If they wanted to prevent apps from blocking their ad abilities, this app would never have been allowed on the Play Store.

Since Google’s goal is to improve security

Is it though? Really?

The security of their bank balance.
No.
This publication is always repeating Google's nonsense.
What ulterior motive do they have for blocking sideloading?
- Essentially banning any apps that would hurt googles profits.
  I thought that was pretty obvious.

This is actually worse than integration in Play Protect which can be disabled very easily. Now you can only install unsigned apps via ADB which means just developers can do it.

And very annoying too since some government apps don't like it when you have developer mode on.
- Not only government. I can't see my daughter's insulin pump status if I don't disable developer mode.
Or anyone with a computer who installs ADB. You don't have to be a developer.
- Nah you can't realistically distribute your app with adb requirement. No one will bother to go through such friction.
Leaving ADB open to unverified apps is more than I was expecting. ADB is reasonably straightforward to use even without actually being an Android developer.
There was never any way they'd integrate it to play protect and still allow play protect to be disabled. I prefer this to being required to use play protect personally, though the services do seem somewhat redundant. Presumably the whole point of doing this is to create an Apple style walled garden (which is of course very profitable). Google likely doesn't want to fully lock it down and risk legal trouble, they just need to make it difficult enough that the masses don't bother installing unapproved apps that may not act in Google's interests.
I still hope the EU takes legal action against this anyway.
- I don't think this adds anything tbh as peoppe with adb would always be able to bypass this. The issue is that this kills distribution and thats exactly what Google wants - have full competitive control. Once they don't like your app they'll block your account and what do you do with your customer base? Give them adb install instructions? That's basically a death sentence for any app.

tl;dr you can still "sideload" via adb.

This is so incredibly inconvenient as to be meaningless.

It's not completely meaningless because if it's truly the only option I'm going to be using it until I eventually replace my current phone with one with an unlocked bootloader.
- I'm afraid that won't help. There will be even fewer people developing apps specifically for the 0.01% of us using custom ROMs.
- When my current phone dies I'll be buying a flip phone.
- Rimjob_steve moment
good luck updating all your apps that way...
- Exactly
It will be stupid, but I presume there will be a rise in desktop apps or webapps that require you to only plug the phone in and it will handle the rest.
- Yeah, if something like Obtanium needs to run on my desktop instead of my phone and I have to plug it in every once in a while, that's not the end of the world.
- There are already android apps that allow you to ADB into your own phone without root, so you could VERY EASILY just make an app store that utilises that, you only need to install the app from desktop once
Perhaps someone could write an 'adb loopback' app -- get that into the official app store, and said app would then squirt other .apk files through adb on the phone to itself, thus sideloading it.
- ADB loopback apps already exist, such as Shizuku
- As far as I know, ADB needs to be run on another device which is plugged into the phone.
  I suppose one could write a script/app that detects the device is plugged in, and automatically looks for and installs updates using adb. That would be the least amount of friction.
We already have to do that to install older apps. It's inconvenient, but not as bad as having to boot up an ancient phone every time you need to use the app.
Not at all, just get comfortable with ADB and use Claude to walk you through the steps.
I see this as an absolute win. /s
Edit: Y'all, ADB isn't hard to use. At all.
- No one thinks it's hard. It is, however, as I said, extremely inconvenient and time-consuming to do this every day, and no one wants to do that.

they always do this to gaslight us into accepting things we would not. when blocking installs from outside gplay is a possibility, further restricting it is a relief, not the outrage it should still be.

that or they got a feel for it and decided to settle with less restriction. for now.

the permanent solution as always is deposing them from this position of enormous power and monopoly. easy said.

So a lot of speculation and we don't know much except 2 paragraphs in the FAQ... I'd like to mention though, they've recently stripped the Pixel devices of their status as developer devices and now push for their emulator for development. Once they follow that kind of logic, there isn't really a reason to keep ADB working as is, at least not on real devices.

Which means I can make an app for this "Sideloading" by shizuku..

I heard of shizuku before how does it work? Does it need root?
- It uses adb

If Google wanted to add developer verification without being evil, it could use SSL certificates connected to domain names. I think the whole concept is ill-conceived, though I'll admit to a modest bias against protecting people from themselves.

They couldn't. Domains and SSL certificates can be obtained very easily anonymously and thus wouldn't let Google identify the developers of malicious apps, which is the goal of this
- The trouble is Google’s definition of malicious apps. Are adblockers malicious? How about alternative apps for YouTube? Based on the recent history, I don’t think you will be able to install those apps on the phone you purchased.
- It provides a way to open an investigation into a malicious developer without giving Google the ability to ban anyone it doesn't like.
- Yeah I mean some form of asymmetric encryption/validation would work but it stops the real reason why Google wants to implement this.
The problem with that is that certificates expire before someone would want to keep using the app.
- Code signing certificates work a little differently than SSL certificates. A timestamp is included in the signature so the certificate only needs to be valid at the time of signing. The executable will remain valid forever, even if the certificate later expires. (This is how it works on Windows)
- It need only check at install time.

We hope that Google keeps its word and preserves ADB installation

lol, adb is the first loophole that will be closed.

I don’t know, even people here are already considering it a loss of the only way is through ADB, because it’s not practical for everyday usage. But it’s better than nothing.

why can google not just code something like this into android:

allow apps from:
( ) All sources (how it is now; allow each app to install apps from external sources)
( ) Just Google Play
( ) Apps which have been verified by Google Developer Program

Because they want to stop people from using ad blockers.
Option 1 is a potential cause of "lost" revenue.
Late stage capitalism absolutely forbids anything that could cause that, even if the cost of implementation outweighs any potential gain.
I can see it already:
() Just Google Play (safe)
() Verified apps (not recommended)
Advanced settings
click on Advanced settings
() All sources (Unsafe. Will probably kill your cat and burn down your house)
tick the box
Are you sure?
click yes
ARE YOU SURE?
click yes again
ONE HUNDRED PERCENT SURE?
wait for the 30 seconds timer to count down
click yes
( ) I do not love my cat and want him to die.
tick the box
( ) I accept the very real risk of my house burning down
tick the box
Please wait 24 hours for the change to apply. You can reverse it at any time from this menu.
get spammed every hour for the next 24 hours with notifications asking me to fix my security settings
get a bigass ⚠️ every time I turn on the phone
every once in a while the change just straight up reverses and I have to do it all over again
That would give users choice, and corporations want as many people as possible to be incapable of making decisions for themselves.
Because it's Google
- bing! thy turkey's done
Taking Google at their word for a moment, it's far too easy to scam the clueless masses into selecting the first one. Might work okay if it's strictly an ADB command, tho.
- Taking Google at their word for a moment
  And why should we do that?
- I'm inclined to think that's not the job of an OS vendor to prevent. Sure, put a warning label on it, but it's the user's device; once they say they know what they're doing, that should be that.
- If someone can be socially engineered into disabling security mechanisms, then that should just be their fate. There's no sense in fucking everyone else in order to protect them.
- but they could make it be google play or samsung store only as the default as a compromise

We should embrace oldschool SciFy and go for (DIY) Cyberdecks.

Thankfully, for those of us without the time for all that there are Linux phones such as this one I'm considering.
- I’d love to play around with something like this, as a programmer myself, but unfortunately the cost is prohibitive in my country.
- Yo I've never seen this one. Thanks for the link!

I honestly think that this is just not going to happen. It's already a giant pain in the ass to install apps from anywhere else than Play Store. With Shizuku it got much, much better.

You may want to re-evaluate how you're installing non-Play apps. I use F-droid all the time and never had anything even approach "inconvenient."
- Like I said, Samsung does this crap in certain regions, specifically South Korea. I'm using Shizuku now and couldn't be happier.
Huh? Downloading an apk and clicking open with -> package installer is nothing but straightforward.
- It nags me a lot, sometimes downright blocks me from installing without adb shit. Samsung.
- This simply doesn't work anymore for all apps on my Pixel 8.
  Many I installed manually just redirect to the Play store with the message it could harm your device and you should download from Play.