"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 Alternately, the app might be experimental, under development, or perhaps no longer maintained and offered by its developer.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
    1461·
    2 months ago

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

    • SlothMama@lemmy.worldEnglish
      68·
      2 months ago

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

      • doctortran@lemm.eeEnglish
        53·
        2 months 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
          19·
          2 months 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
          7·
          2 months 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.

          • xavier666@lemm.eeEnglish
            3·
            2 months ago

            A package manager and app-store, which looks very similar from the outside, operates very differently with respect to security and privacy.

        • SlothMama@lemmy.worldEnglish
          61·
          2 months 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
      403·
      2 months 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
        14·
        2 months ago

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

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
          34·
          2 months 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
        10·
        2 months 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·
          2 months 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

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            2 months ago

            “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”.