cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19650358
Through an updated Google API, Android app developers can now effectively block sideloading and force downloads from the Play Store.
I guess the next step in piracy is to change the apk enough that it doesn’t get recognized correctly, if that’s possible? Though then everyone will have to worry about malware-ridden apps.
I think this is horrible, aside from piracy, because you may want or need to stay on an older version of an app. I have had to for devices at work that require a specific version or just an easy way to manage the device and ensure devices only got updates we approved through our MDM.
This is going to be a pain in the ass for sometime. Almost all the apps that has sell something through google play will use that API now.
Isn’t that a textbook monopolistic practices lawsuit?
Sounds more like DRM, since it’s for developers to choose whether or not to disable side loading their apps
But the picture I saw said “get this app from play” not, “get this app from a trusted store”. That to me does not read DRM.
So you’re saying it should allow for developers to allow exclusive installation from third party stores as well? Like amazon? Fair.
Well, that will make it easy to uninstall apps.
All my homies download from fdroid
Apps on F-Droid are not using proprietary Google APIs and won’t be affected.
I wonder how that will work for graphene os devices with the sandboxed Google services
This DRM is built in to Play Integrity, and GrapheneOS only passes the basic check, so apps using this DRM won’t work.
Spoofing Play Integrity works with rooted phones, although it breaks from time to time.
I wonder if the latest “play integrity fix” module could solve that problem. Its already allowing me to use bank apps on my rooted phone, so I assume it would let me sideload too if the integrity was “fixed”. Google is making more problems with paid solutions.
