"Select Play Partners" can block unofficial installation of their apps.

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 Alternately, the app might be experimental, under development, or perhaps no longer maintained and offered by its developer.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.

  • bad_alloc@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1181·
    6 days ago

    Just the term “side loading” instantly frames installing software on a device you own as something shady.

    • SlothMama@lemmy.worldEnglish
      56·
      6 days ago

      Yes, that’s the implication, and it’s certainly intentional for you to think of it like that.

      • doctortran@lemm.eeEnglish
        38·
        5 days ago

        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.

        • quant@leminal.spaceEnglish
          13·
          5 days ago

          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.

        • ceiphas@feddit.orgEnglish
          5·
          5 days ago

          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.

        • SlothMama@lemmy.worldEnglish
          41·
          6 days ago

          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.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
      352·
      6 days ago

      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).

      • quant@leminal.spaceEnglish
        12·
        5 days ago

        I bet they’ll say staying healthy without getting sick equals robbing from hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
          33·
          5 days ago

          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.

      • bad_alloc@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        8·
        5 days ago

        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.

        • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
          12·
          4 days ago

          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