"This is Android's new 'advanced flow' for INSTALLING apps without verification". Sideloading is such a bullshit term made only to confuse consumers. They can wrap that in sparkling wrapper, but it's still security theater at best and definetly misleading. Apps from F-Droid or any other app 'store' are not any less safe than the ones at googles own offering.
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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Without verification by Google. I am very much capable of verifying the origin and trustworthiness of the apps I install.
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(9 replies)
This is not a solution at all. They want to make sick of users who have to wait a whole day ust to install a fucking app. Fuck them.
Important to note ADB is still unaffected
Do usual dev mode shit...
You then have to confirm that you aren’t being coached/guided/instructed by a bad actor to turn off the security measures.
This is followed by a device restart and re-authentication that “cuts off any remote access or active phone calls a scammer might be using to watch what you’re doing.”
A required “Security wait” takes one day to “confirm that this is really you who’s making this change with our biometric authentication (fingerprint or face unlock) or device PIN.” This is a one-time wait.
Afterwards, you can install apps from unverified developers indefinitely, while there’s also a 7-day “Turn on temporarily” option.
I don't think the wait is necessary. If someone were to continue being scammed after a reboot, they'd continue to be scamme tomorrow. An additional education piece after the reboot would be more effective.
Jfc, the apps scammers usually use are on the fucking play store. Good fucking dammit this is stupid.
This is the salient point that's hard to communicate.
We've moved to fdroid and others because we're trying to avoid the scammers on the Play Store.
So now what's is my motivation to move back to android from iPhone if they are gonna do the same bullshit as apple, hopefully some manufacturers switch to more open android versions like lineage or something
iOS is not any better than Android... We gotta wait for other operating systems to emerge.
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They already showed their hand. Doesn't matter if they've backed down. My new phone is going to use GrapheneOS and if this shit trickles down (Graphene is still based on Android) I'm going full Linux phone.
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