You might sideload an Android app, or manually install its APK package, if you’re using a custom version of Android that doesn’t include Google’s Play Store. Alternately, the app might be experimental, under development, or perhaps no longer maintained and offered by its developer. Until now, the existence of sideload-ready APKs on the web was something that seemed to be tolerated, if warned against, by Google.
This quiet standstill is being shaken up by a new feature in Google’s Play Integrity API. As reported by Android Authority, developer tools to push “remediation” dialogs during sideloading debuted at Google’s I/O conference in May, have begun showing up on users’ phones. Sideloaders of apps from the British shop Tesco, fandom app BeyBlade X, and ChatGPT have reported “Get this app from Play” prompts, which cannot be worked around. An Android gaming handheld user encountered a similarly worded prompt from Diablo Immortal on their device three months ago.
Google’s Play Integrity API is how apps have previously blocked access when loaded onto phones that are in some way modified from a stock OS with all Google Play integrations intact. Recently, a popular two-factor authentication app blocked access on rooted phones, including the security-minded GrapheneOS. Apps can call the Play Integrity API and get back an “integrity verdict,” relaying if the phone has a “trustworthy” software environment, has Google Play Protect enabled, and passes other software checks.
Graphene has questioned the veracity of Google’s Integrity API and SafetyNet Attestation systems, recommending instead standard Android hardware attestation. Rahman notes that apps do not have to take an all-or-nothing approach to integrity checking. Rather than block installation entirely, apps could call on the API only during sensitive actions, issuing a warning there. But not having a Play Store connection can also deprive developers of metrics, allow for installation on incompatible devices (and resulting bad reviews), and, of course, open the door to paid app piracy.
Just the term “side loading” instantly frames installing software on a device you own as something shady.
Yes, that’s the implication, and it’s certainly intentional for you to think of it like that.
The fact that an entire generation thinks the only proper way to install software is through an app store is absolutely terrible. Talk about a boon for the gatekeepers, Apple and Google did a bang up job training them to trust no one else.
Schools and universities in principle should be the place where they’re introduced to what really means to own a computer. The trend however seems to give out everyone a locked down e-waste with proprietary restrictions all over the place.
I don’t think you appreciate the real reason for “schooling”
As a long time linux user i find it normal to only install apps through a package manager (essentially the same) but you have a defined API for package sources and can add sources as you like. that would be the best solution. manually installing apps IS risky, and opens the door for malware and incompatible packages, but if you have a trustworthy package source that your packa manager can varify its packages against it gets way better.
A package manager and app-store, which looks very similar from the outside, operates very differently with respect to security and privacy.
Microsoft saw Google and Apple do this with phones, and Steam do this with games, and that’s why they made the Windows store a thing starting with 8.
They wanted to go the same direction.
Put steam with the rest of these parasites ain’t fair… For now
“side-loading” is literally the norm on Windows and Linux
I’ve had people clueless about tech tell me that:
using Linux and not buying Windows I rob MS’s developers,
not doing things the way big corporations want I deprive them of profits and thus rob their workers,
using your own device the way you want it is a crime if you have to bypass what the vendor does,
GPL and BSD licenses are not real sovereign citizen stuff, and if I’m not paying someone for software, I’m robbing the working class,
repairing things yourself in your house is robbing people working in those trades,
reading things in the Web is robbing university professors and book store workers and publishers,
having to learn a particular technology while doing my task at work means I’m a fraud and rob my employer or our clients, because apparently I have to keep all the today’s tech in my head before needing any of it,
if I don’t know some single thing another person knows, they are obviously better qualified than me (say, that other person can write Windows device drivers, while the job is about systems integration),
…
and I don’t remember more stupid shit from those people and I don’t want to, but generally being not a dumb ape in today’s world is considered suspicious apparently.
After that wonderful experience I might be silent about my views with people usually, but really I’ll never stop being anarchist (whatever kind of anarchism that is).
I bet they’ll say staying healthy without getting sick equals robbing from hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.
Their views were in general along the lines that there are poor people and there are rich people. Poor people owe nobody nothing (including respect to property rights, personal space, privacy and so on), and are owed everything. Rich people vice versa, it’s them paying with rights for their asocial riches.
Now who’s poor is not absolute, it’s who owns less than deserved, and what’s deserved is big for their friends and similar-minded people. And who’s rich is the same, but owning more than deserved, and if they don’t like you, you deserve less.
It’s the kind of people who love Stalin.
Out of curiosity, where and in which social groups did you hear this? I have never heard such thoughts here in Germany, and we tend to be idiots.
Keep fighting the good fight, we have to keep the lights on in free soft- and hardware to provide a harbor for people who want to escape this shit.
Russia, the social group - eh, schoolteachers
Interesting, thank you!
Angle sphere got a special relationship with the “poors” theybare dirty, stupid and they deserve to get fucked.
Hearing this shit being said in earnest with that class bravado is so fucking cringe
Usually biggest bootlicker is himself 3 pay checks from being homeless too lol
“This shit” was said in the context of a society exactly opposite to anglosphere, where being “poor” is an indulgence for violating every moral rule, every promise, every obligation and every law.
More than that, it was said about the exact people who are, relatively speaking, not poor, rather almost privileged, but are hateful and envious of everyone actually doing useful work, and consider corruption good because in their opinion a bureaucracy worker stealing something entrusted to them is “a respected in the society person collecting rent from their position” or something like that.
The profession of a schoolteacher in Russia pays shit, which is why 3 kinds of people want that - those who are too dumb for other work, those who are idealistic, and those who want to feel that they are important and powerful (power over children) even more than to be paid well.
There are more people of the 2nd kind than you think, but those were of the 3rd undoubtedly. 1st kind is almost extinct - it’s not hard to find a job that pays better, if you don’t want power over children.
I think it’s clear how the 3rd kind intersects with sympathies to sociopathic behavior, and sympathies for corruption and organized crime.
EDIT: Oh, I just realized you thought they were bootlickers and hateful of poor people in this memory of mine. No, they considered that BS to be good for poor people. Basically hateful of capitalism most when it’s many small businesses honestly competing, but thinking oligopoly and state capitalism would be better. They considered me to be on the side of some “rich” people who hurt the poor. While big company owners and such were not, because they are apparently doing lots of charity etc and are respected people. So the “rich” they’d hate would be the “middle class”, not the “boss class”.
Where do find such bootlickers?
Half of America
This poster gets it!
Google and Apple have come out against legislation that would broaden sideloading rights for smartphone owners, citing security and reliability concerns.
Fuck off google.
…as I upvote you from my Pixel. ☹️ I give the sad face because Google isn’t who they once were and I’m just going to have to deal with that.
Never ask a company to pick between the right thing and profit. It was all a matter of time till Google needed to stop growing and start producing profit for investors.
To make it worse the Pixel 9 starts at $800 just like iPhone. So if you’re buying Android you don’t really save money over an iPhone like you used to.
Never ask a company to pick between the right thing and profit.
It’s fundamentally impossible for a publicly traded company not to choose profit over ‘The Right Thing’, fullstop. Shareholders feel that have a fundamental right to growth, and if Google’s CEO were to choose ‘The Right Thing’ over profit, the shareholders can oust them in favor of a CEO willing to choose profits.
Enshittification is where every public company ends up, because the line MUST go up, no other alternative is acceptable.
Google and apple you can let us worry about our security ourselves, thank you, though I’m sure you have our best interests in mind and only that
The EU is going to be furious about this
I hope so. I don’t want Android to become the new Apple
Nah, I doubt it. The app developers are freely adding this themselves.
The EU should limit Google giving developers this ability is what they mean
I also dislike DRM but I don’t think it makes any sense to make it illegal.
Haha, gross: We can’t control the devices we own.
I genuinely don’t even know where to buy an affordable device that is free from this kind of control. Some company always has outsized control (and in some cases arguably surveillance) over anything you can find on the market. It sucks so bad.
Ironically, it might be Pixel + Graphene
How tricky is this to install and use? I have a samsung and use lots of the usual apps. Wondering if it would be feasible for that purpose.
Haven’t tried yet but it’s becoming increasingly appealing to me lol
So the EU’s been forcing Apple to allow sideloading and Google goes Nah, it’ll be fine?
No but you see we at Google aren’t locking down sideloading. It’s the individual app developers. With the api we gave them for that express purpose. Totally not us locking stuff down though, so EU please ignore us trying to indirectly close doors in our walled garden?
the same API that helps your app ASO
Ehh, this is basically just another form of DRM. No different than you having a Steam and GOG model. You can make your apps using DRM and enforce certain constraints
GOG model
wut? The main selling point of GOG is that games purchased from them are DRM-free.
Yes, that’s my point. Android “doesn’t” have to use Google Play Store, but it is convenient. Other store fronts exist like F-droid and many vendor specific one. Google just provide the DRM mechanism like steam does provide DRM via steamworks
DRM is to prevent piracy. This does not prevent piracy unless it only applies to apps that cost money.
There already exists a “Google Play licence check” permission apps can use to verify whether or not the app has been bought on a Google account that’s present on the device.
If people can crack the app to remove this (which is a thing for some of the popular apps), they’ll also figure out how to patch this out. This is strictly useful for free apps, and only serves to make it unviable to distribute verifiably clean apk’s outside of Google Play (so rip APKMirror)
Yup. This isn’t an anti-piracy thing, it’s a fuck-over-people-who-don’t-like-google thing.
What I mean by that is, this is just an API/SDK for app developers to use. Google does not enforce the use of such things. Much like steam does not force the use of their drm for example (please note the difference between the marketplace and the drm). App developers can always choose how they make and distribute their app.
What legitimate reason would an app developer have for not wanting to let people install their app from sources other than the play store?
Enforcing payment comes to mind without resorting to in-app purchase or any account creation. A lot of desktop software is a good example of those. Sure, you can still have cracks and whatnot, but then again, that’s not the point. Might as well ask what is the point of Denuvo. That is a whole other discussion.
That’s a very legitimate reason! I was talking about free apps, but I failed to mention that in my comment. My bad. Any legit reason for free apps?
Nothing comes to mind. DRM literally means digital rights management and unless you wanted to be petty, like blocking a certain person from using your app, then DRM for something free is not something that I can think of a use case for.
Google is allowing the app developers to choose (for now?). With Apple, developers never had the option to allow other stores or sideloading.
They’re still pissed that people won’t put up with their shitty YouTube app and use Revanced instead, eh?
That’s not on Google Play so it doesn’t affect it. I honestly don’t know what the point of this is.
Oh I see, so it only affects modded apks… They probably want to crack down on all those slightly-shady “spotify premium free”-apks.
No, it only affects vanilla apks where the dev implemented the check. For some reason the dev might forbid to run the app to users that side loaded the app instead of getting it from play store
Patched/modded apks are unaffected because the check is patched out
That seems likely. The question comes down to where the line should be drawn. Allow the apps the be installed and then when the data is eventually reported/found by the app owners to have them file law suits against those who are “stealing” from them, or to not allow the cracked application to be loaded in the first place, which is easily disguised as a security protocol because if an app has code in it that is not originally supposed to be there, it is very possibly a form of malware, which then can hurt the users in the long run or short run if it actually acts malicious and starts doing shit like old school viruses did on PC.
People want to say we own the device so we should be able to do whatever we want, but blatantly allowing people to install cracked apps with keyloggers onto their phones unintentionally will get them sued, and ultimately hurt how many people stay using their products.
Imagine every user and password with the site listed was suddenly just accessible by everyone. It would be a hellscape of credit card companies trying to stop accounts because you order 18 pizzas off the dominos app in Georgia, and another 13 sandwiches in the burger king app at the same time in Jersey.
We need to have the freedom to load apps we trust, but if you look at the standard user base, that’s who they have to make the phones for.
Could do something like make the users agree to terms by taking the phone into developer mode that makes them non responsible somehow? Might not hold up in court when they get sued though. “All the photos I took on my phone got shared online”
People want to say we own the device so we should be able to do whatever we want, but blatantly allowing people to install cracked apps with keyloggers onto their phones unintentionally will get them sued, and ultimately hurt how many people stay using their products.
Imagine every user and password with the site listed was suddenly just accessible by everyone. It would be a hellscape of credit card companies trying to stop accounts because you order 18 pizzas off the dominos app in Georgia, and another 13 sandwiches in the burger king app at the same time in Jersey.
We need to have the freedom to load apps we trust, but if you look at the standard user base, that’s who they have to make the phones for.
It has been 16 years since Android came on the scene. Why do you think that these things are going to become such a big issue now in 2024 and beyond?
I think things are fine the way they are, we don’t need to interfere, unless for profits ofcourse.
The only reason I’m still sticking with Android is the ability to sideload
I have no reason to use an android if this is the road Google wants to follow and expect my next phone to be an iPhone SE
I’m in this boat. I really liked using Android and tinkering with it. If I do so now I cannot even use my banking app without doing aftercare each update
May as well sideload on iOS~
The only caveat is you Gotta pay yearly $99 for dev account or be limited to 3 apps.
Looks like you’re someone who doesn’t read but it uses DNS filters to use revoked certificates.
I read through your tutorial. One thing it doesn’t mention(probably, ADHD means sometimes I skip a line or two and don’t realise) is if there’s a lower limit for iOS version. Does it assume the person following along has a device <X years old?
Works fine on latest version.
What’s the oldest version it works on?
I am not really sure, iOS 13 I suppose?
Cool, thanks.
yup they are tightening their grip again
Turing in to Apple
Waging war against ad blockers and third party clients and now this it seems?
Amazing that they can’t seem to see that they are not going to win any customers by trying to out Apple Apple.
Good that most apps I use now are open source but for those few that I still get from Aurora Store it might be a death sentence but perhaps this API could be spoofed?
From where does the aurora store get the binaries?
From the Play store
I get most of my stuff via F-Droid or I could use Obtainium. My tablet is Google-free. This sounds like my phone should be Google-free as well.
Yeah but banking apps are starting to check integritynet, and (in France, at least) they’re pretty much mandatory to do anything useful with your bank account/credit card online… I think Uber does too, I boycott them but others might follow suit…
Currently running lineageos, but I think I’ll just give up and go for a Pixel for my next phone… Sucks to let google win but I like to do useful things with my phone…
You can still pass play integrity with a rooted phone/custom ROM. Mine is currently passing with strong while rooted.
What do you use? I rooted my phone precisely for this, but google pay and my bank still see I’m not on the stock ROM : (
I’m currently using APatch, PIFork in script-only mode, and Tricky Store with a leaked keybox.
If you need to spoof for apps you’ll need some other stuff. For APatch there’s a thing called Cherish Peekaboo, for KernelSU you can use Shamiko. These will do their best to hide the fact that you’re rooted from apps. There are some detector apps that can help you fix things that apps might see, but there not entirely needed.
Also since you’re not on the stock ROM, you’ll need to spoof your props so just use the regular Play Integrity fix.
I use a hardware TAN generator though I also have a banking app as a fallback on my Lineage OS phone. If I ever buy a Pixel it’s only to install Graphene OS on it.
Sadly most French banks use a custom validation process which requires you to use their app to validate a transaction. And my main bank’s app has warned me that it will “soon” stop working on custom ROMs…
for me for example i just use the web version of navy federal, works pretty fine.
You can’t in some countries. Like if you want to wire something, or setup a payment you have to use the app. It’s mandatory. If you go through the website it ask to open the app to confirm it’s you.
So people that only have a computer and not a smart phone can’t do those things at all?
Yes. They to go to a physical location. Then ask an employee there… Sounds so stupid to me but 🤷♂️
They have to call, mail or physically go to the bank I guess.
i feel like if you switch to the desktop version of the website, it wont pester you.
Unfortunately it will, if I want to add a new transfer recipient or make a payment on a 3D secure website, the app is mandatory, even on desktop.
Was always inching closer, but looks like android has fully outstayed its welcome. The revolving door of executives hit its last person with any integrity on the ass on their way out the door.
Ew. Fuck google
I hate having to be on the side of “Defending” google… but this is the app makers fault, They are the ones using whats provided and installing the artificial limitations.
Google just provided the capability to do it. The app makers are executing it.
No, thanks for the clarification. I misunderstood that part.
Yeah, it happens to Spotify mods as well. This isn’t good
Long live custom degoogled ROM.
