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Android won't kill sideloading after all, but new verification rules will make it harder
(www.techspot.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2026
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IIRC we already had to enable a setting and confirm a warning popup. What are they gonna do? Add more popups? A captcha-"puzzle"? Less easy to accept dialogs?
Probably a captcha puzzle, or some other thing that requires you to connect to them and surrender your data for free for their commercial purposes.
how about a $20 development license!
My guess is they'll enforce a xiaomi-style thing where you have to login, wait, go through hoops, wait again,...
that would be fine, without the login and sim card requirement
Honestly a less easy to accept dialog would go a long way.
Just make it require ADB. Iv had my grandfather fall victim to a crypto scam that got him to install a app on his phone.
As much as we hate it, google is the only one who has any power to prevent abuse of the stupid, elderly and gullible. Someone has too.
There is a line of going to far to protect people that just makes things worse for everyone. But the reality is, our freedom comes at the expense of others freedom.
Finding the balance is hard.
Hot take: We shouldn't lock down devices by default to a point where they protect even the most vulnerable.
Child safety locks exist for a reason and can also be used for the elderly.
Prescription pill bottles are a perfect balance.
You can put the cap on one way to lock them in place to keep kids out, requiring the lid to be pressed down and twisted to open, or you can flip the lid over over to make the pills easily accessible by simply unscrewing it. I'd be 100% okay with a step on phone setup (that can also be run at any other time) that allows the phone to be set up similarly.
Nah screw needing adb, that absolutely kills free and open source software stores like fdroid, and fdroid have said as much that Google's then planned signing requirements would lead fdroid to stop.
The only way I'd even be remotely OK with another adb requirement is if
I think whatever is required for third party apps and stores should also be required for play store. No special treatment for their own files.
Eg: "Warning: Are you sure you trust GooglePlayStore.apk? This software might be harmful."
I reckon that Google would magically get the messaging exactly right with that requirement.
At least with something like shizuku one can effectively adb to your own phone, so even if adb became required to install non-google-approved apps on one's own phone... It will not block FOSS for long.
and how do you enable shizuku? you need a PC for that too
You do not, it can connect with your own wireless debugging session. https://shizuku.rikka.app/guide/setup/#start-via-wireless-debugging Works since android 11
Couldn't they just refuse to sign shizuku and you'd be stuck in a recursive loop of needing a pc anyways?
Then you'd need to run adb once for the first install of fdroid/shizuku. Admittedly not great, but doing that once will not stop many OSS enthousiasts. It would widen the gap between power user and normal user considerably which also isn't great.
Not far enough. We should require a government agent to be with people to verify there isn't any fraud before allowing any money transactions to happen.
Wanna buy food at the grocery store? Please wait for your assigned NSA agent to verify that you're not being scammed.
(Is /s even needed?)
In today's society everything needs to be baby proofed. Protect this protect that. People need to take responsibility for their actions.
Your grandpa got greedy and wanted to invest money to make more money. Now he got scammed and he learned his lesson. Next time guided by prior experience he should/will be more careful. If not he will loose more money until he realises he shouldn't be clicking and installing everything he sees.
And that applies to everyone. You alone are responsible for your actions, not anybody else
Until he has early dementia and forgets the lessons learned, but of course he'll forget he invested anything tomorrow and do it again!
I'm all for holding people personally responsible, but sometimes we gotta help each other out. Also blaming the victim for being scammed is not helpful. Scammers do so many underhand tactics its impossible for any us to keep track of it all alone.
I'm okay with more tools to help us protect people. Maybe instead of needing ADB, you have to boot into save mode, and can enable 3rd party sources from there? This way you can still enable it on the phone while preventing a script or app can't automate enabling it. Oh and because there's more scam shit on google play than Fdroid, we'll need google play to be enabled via the same method too.
Í get what you are saying, I also have an elderly mother that is bad with technology. But she ask anything that is outside of her usual usage.
If she starts doing some stupid stuff and she isn't aware of her problem then I'm responsible for her actions. Because its not only her problem then but all of ours family. And again usually I'm the one that is stuck with the problem.
Then when dialogue doesn't help I'm locking the device and make sure she doesn't do something stupid like that again.
I need the company to provide the necessary tools to prevent fraund so that I can use it.
Not that the company polices what I can or can't do with my device that I paid