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Literally TODAY someone I know installed an application called “PDF viewer for android” that had a green adobe icon and it started wrecking absolute havoc on their phone with pop ads and redirects to scam support sites.
The AppStore is full of this shit.
i love how google will basically destroy the worlds most popular mobile operating system just to protect youtube premium revenue
thats my theory too.
this is exactly why google should have been broken up.
Honestly at this point they actually likely need to be EVEN MORE strict to deal with how bad the app store is and how many scam apps are floating around.
My grand father has been given like 30 scam apks to install via email that we’re just crypto ransomware basically, and he’s had to reformat his phone at least 10 times this year from installing scam shit from the playstore it self too.
Both the playstore AND scammers are target android like crazy
There’s basically no way to crack down on it short of what they are doing and frankly it’s still not enough.
Anyone who thinks this is just Google being evil is massive fucking out of touch with the reality of what elderly and less it savvy people have to deal with. It fucking SUCKS.
And I fucking hate these changes too, but even I cant say it’s enough. There’s too many fucking shit bag assholes ruining all the good things.
They should just display more warning’s or safeguards, they don’t have to remove it completely. There’s several apps that I use that google would never let register. :(
They also already have installation from external sources turned on by default.
Why the hell are we babying people who turn it off? They read the warning, they know the risks.
i agree
Again not on custom ROMs.
(And could help the push of new alternatives os)
If it’s easy to patch this out, I wonder if there will be manufacturers that will choose to do so for their official ROMs. It would be extra value for the brand, imho. A reason to choose, say, Samsung, over a Pixel phone, if Samsung were to patch this restriction out, for example. After all, they also have the Galaxy Store which is also offering apps that I doubt they’ll want Google to regulate.
I didn’t read the terms but I think this is against Google terms of services, so sure you can patch this out but as a company you would suffer legal actions or would be forced to remove Google services from your devices.
Samsung will just ask Samsung Store devs to be registered
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We really need some money poured into the Linux mobile space because this is a terrible direction to go.
dug my pinephone out of a drawer yesterday and gave it a whirl. still pretty rough unfortunately even after updating postmarket os.
Cool being able to SSH into my phone though
I’m still hoping they can get to a state for more general users. I really want one still. I need a Linux phone doing the old sidekick designs.
The main issue will be application support.
Linux running on the desktop in 2025 is helped immensely by everything being web based. So long as you have a browser you are fine for a lot of general computing.
The phone space is ruled by apps. The phone makers and the companies developing apps prefer it this way.
Getting a banking app, or Uber or Facebook Messenger to work on a Linux phone is going to be a massive pain in the ass (ignoring the rest of the OS which is definitely not even close to useable for the general public).
I would love a Linux phone but we are so far away.
The phone space is ruled by apps. The phone makers and the companies developing apps prefer it this way.
That’s true, but for everything non-free, they always end up having a perfectly working web app that will accept my money.
i’m just gonna switch to steam deck + gsm router
I’m sure there will be some sort of compatibility layer available. Android Linux based after all.
There already is! I had a Furi Labs FLX1 for a while and it was able to run Android apps surprisingly via Andromeda (their fork of Waydroid).
tbh part of the rough experience for me may be down to the hardware. the ubports version of the pinephone i have is quite low power. 2GB memory and a little ARM Cortex-A53
tis sluggish
Cool being able to SSH into my phone though
I thought you could do that on Android?
Yeah, you absolutely can, and without needing root or anything.
Plain AOSP is already pretty brutal. An alternate OS is practically a non-starter. Phones aren’t just web browsers and SMS.
- Tap-to-pay
- Including transit fares
- Bank apps
- RCS messaging
- MFA and security apps
- Work profiles
- Streaming media that’s not 480p
Not to mention that the camera is going to suuuuuuuuck.
Forking or improving AOSP is more viable but none of the more mainstream ROMs want to piss off Google. That’s why most LineageOS forums forbid talking about defeating Play Integrity.
Also no GPU driver, because even if the manufacturer does actually provide it, some nerd within the community will block it for not being “free software” enough and that “for light 2D applications, CPU blitter is more than enough”.
On a mobile device? It’s more likely that only OSS drivers work and the binary blob driver only worked with a pre-Pandemic aged kernel. Or it needed a very specific userspace library that doesn’t work with a minimal libc.
“Free software enough” usually means “has a snowball’s chance of actually working”.
- Tap-to-pay
How long until they patch out getting developer mode working on you phone without a registration, requiring you to pay for it and also take a “short” AI generated crash course in app development and monetization?
Google can go fuck itself.
Hopefully this will put some jet fuel into the Linux phone development.
I’m checking out Graphene OS next week and pretty pumped about it. This Google ratfucking has been just the push I need to get off Android.
And obviously I haven’t stopped telling people around me haha
Most F-Droid users are NOT custom ROMs.
This means that as long as F-Droid does not get their own developer key - it will become useless. F-Droid is privacy focused - both dev and user, and they oppose requiring devs to essentially give up their privacy and sign the APK with their own dev key.Now, if F-Droid is dead, GrapheneOS becomes useless. Who would want to develop apps for the 0.0001% of the population (i.e custom ROM users)
This.
I am the person you are talking about. I’ve looked into graphene before and I do host some of my own services at home. I also work full time and I don’t want to spend all of my free time managing things. I use F-Droid, but I am on stock android on my pixel.
I appreciate the privacy and FOSS nature of F-Droid, but I use things like Android auto Google maps for work, I use banking apps on my phone as well. I know technically micro G and blah blah blah, but like I said: work full time.
Just FYI, absolutely everything you mentioned works absolutely fine OOTB on GrapheneOS with no tinkering.
GrapheneOS will be fine without F-Droid.
Graphene is bult on top of android AOSP, which is owned by google… And of course they are fucking it over.
Check calyxos.org s recent blog posts, it is basically dying (and graphene is the same)
The pause in Calyx updates has nothing to do with Google’s fuckery, and they are not “dying.” They lost a major lead developer and decided they needed to restructure so no one would be so essential going forward.
Google is messing with AOSP pixel drivers: https://calyxos.org/news/2025/06/11/android-16-plans/ Thats what I was referring to, but yeah, that is also a thing.
What happened to the Open Handset Alliance?
The what?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Handset_Alliance
Google doesn’t “own” Android. They (and the OHA) are the maintainers. AOSP is open source.
GrapheneOS isn’t dying. There’s an OEM partnership in the works and they’ll release devices with support for GrapheneOS in a year or two. GrapheneOS still provides updates and while the changes have made some things harder, the project is still going strong.
So… huh, so what’s the alternative then? I guess some other flavour of linux?
For mobile phones that works as a daily driver? Gobbling up iOS. Or gobbling up what’s becoming of Android.
I really wish we had open phones that “just work”. I’d even go with slightly quirky but functional. Unfortunately, that requires strong cooperation between hardware maker and software developers; and it will require a lot of work. But that’s not the main issue. The direction we’re headed toward is “everything need an official app”, and those will mostly only work on “official” phones made by big manufacturers.
Even today, making some bank apps work on non vanilla Android is not always straightforward, and it’s still relatively open and easy to do. The move by Google is going to tighten this even more, and I have no doubt, if they pull through, that this will go in the requirements for the “play protect” validation BS. Meaning if you want that bank app, or whatever state digital ID app (meh) to work, you’ll need a “real” Android or an iOS device. And those apps are becoming more and more mandatory (I can’t log-in to my bank’s online website without their app and proprietary 2FA…).
A niche, open-source OS, Linux or modified AOSP or whatever, will have a hard time filling that gap as things keep moving. Which is really sad.
You are of course aware that Graphene OS is affected just like any other version of Android?
I don’t see why it would need to be affected.
The constraint to require a valid signing isn’t something imposed by the license on the Android code. If you want to distribute a version of Android that doesn’t check for a registered signature, that should work fine.
I mean, the Graphene guys could impose that constraint. But they don’t have to do so.
I think that there’s a larger issue of practicality, though. Stuff like F-Droid works in part because you don’t need to install an alternative firmware on your phone — it’s not hard to install an alternate app store with the stock firmware. If suddenly using a package from a developer that isn’t registered with Google requires installing an alternate firmware, that’s going to severely limit the potential userbase for that package.
Even if you can handle installing the alternate firmware, a lot of developers probably just aren’t going to bother trying to develop software without being registered.
But if Graphene chooses not to do this, they diverge from the Android project. Which will take more time to maintain the project which will ultimately lead to more developers burning out and dropping out of the project.
It doesn’t need to be affected, but most open source projects don’t have the resources to keep going against big companies when most of their users aren’t contributing.
They already diverge by having a network permission and a bunch of other differences, and not being allowed to use Google Pay because of those differences
That might be true, I don’t know much about GrapheneOS. But I do know that users of open source projects expecting changes to come out of thin air, and filing bugs when they don’t, is hurting the volunteers behind open source projects. So we should all make sure to volunteer some of our own time or money to keep the projects we love going, instead of just expecting them to fix the things we dislike.
I would guess that it’s probably not much by way of change — theoretically, maybe just a single line patch — to cause this check not to take place.
Theoretically it might be, but it’s another patch you’ll have to maintain
The aosp has been in the process of being gutted, I surmise in preparation of these anti consumer measures, graphene os has its work cut out for it. I imagine that after the dust settles, consumers will have to pick between an immature Linux os or their personal preference of walled garden.
Graphene could sandbox the integrity check, just like they do with the Play Store.
It becomes an integrity check arms race. Graphene OS devs not keen on this idea, but they may not have a choice in the near future
GrapheneOS wasn’t going to be affected anyway and there’s nothing for the GrapheneOS developers to change. The developer verification thing will be done by proprietary Google apps. Those apps cannot get the necessary permissions to block app installs or disable apps.
F-Droid works […]
[…]
[…] that’s going to severely limit the potential userbase for that package.
I don’t think most developers who are putting their Open-Source apps on F-Droid have any minimum user threshold.
GrapheneOS won’t be affected. The developer verification thing will be handled by another app and won’t be part of the OS. That app won’t have permission to block app installs or anything like that.
What?? I was not. I thought it was compatible, or like a fork idk… Guess I’ve got some reading to do.
Developer ID verification will be part of Google Play and won’t be present in GrapheneOS
Straight from the horse’s mouth. The rest of the post is a good reminder that GrapheneOS are morons.
But why would you lie about this?
Get off Android to … Android 🤪
Google can go fuck itself.
Google would much rather go fuck you.
they need thier AI to profit somehow, mining all your data to offeset the cost of those data centers.
Yeah, I’ll switch to absolutely anything that allows open installation of third party apps.
But for such major FOSS development, we usually have to throw money at them in advance, which is the problem.
i wonder if it’s possible for fdroid or another dev to make a linux/windows/osx app which basically uses an adb connection to automatically upload and install applications
Shizuku provides this fully on-device for android 10 or 11 and above, and droid-ify supports using shizuku to install apps.
The one main downside is that it only works when you’re connected to wifi.
Hold up, why all this crap… when most of the malware/infostealers is on Google Playstore… and googe itself is doing it.
It’s called “eliminating competition”.
So now 3rd party app stores need an ADB loopback to work around that.
Not hard to do, but uselessly annoying.
Installing the third party stores would be way harder than it is right now if they do that though. No way the devs of e.g. f-droid are getting a verification on an app that bypasses Google’s new ‘safety measures’
I could imagine something like Sidequest happening on Android.
That’s only if the apps distributed are unverified. Mind, the EU already requires app stores to document the identities of devs, but there are loopholes for Small enterprises. In 2027, manufacturers need to document the identities of their suppliers. There are still exceptions for non-profit open source projects, but that’s not what Google is. Surely, no one here wants Google to avoid regulations by investing in open source.
I believe F-Droid signs the packages it distributes so that creates a painful choke point. Revoke F-Droid’s key and it will break all of F-Droid instantaneously. The only exception for F-Droid’s signing is if the build is reproducible, which is a high bar for a lot of projects, and then F-Droid will use the upstream signature.
Also, they’re trying to close the ADB loophole.
I expect phones in the EU are going to become a lot more locked down in the next 14 months, like Samsung is already showing. But also think that Google will try its best to make developing for Android easy to get into.
I think you can already do that with shizuku and dome fdroid clients. It also makes using 3rd party appstores more convenient just in general.
I hope google fails as a whole in the near future and gets dissolved once and for all. Sick and tired of tech companies trying to be sources of authority, working with authoritarian governments, and dictating what you can and can’t do.
I’ll be honest, tech got us by the balls… and they know it.
No they don’t. There are viable, open source alternatives for 99% of the software/services we use. The fact that people are not aware of it is already like half of the real problem.
Say that to my banking and credit card apps (some of which don’t even have a web version for seCuRitY reasons)
I’d say ‘change banks’.
For a multitude of reasons, that is a silly suggestion.
The open source alternative to those is currently doing quite well.
Y’all can come in here with a suggestion, too. I’m just saying we are all ears.
What is it ?
What the heck is the open source equivalent of being able to manage the direct debits of one of my specific current credit cards?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’m saying it doesn’t seem like it will matter.
I don’t imagine that paradigm going away at all anytime soon or ever
I have hope. Last time they got hit with an anti monopoly lawsuit that should’ve forced them to sell away chrome, but unfortunately they got bailed out. Here’s hoping next time they aren’t so lucky
The only advantage Android has over iOS is being able to install [any] software.
That’s one of the big ones. Also phones with SD card slots and headphone jacks.
If you can find one.
That’s why I like the Motorola phones. Moto G Power 2025 still has both.
Those barely exist. When I bought my Sony 5V, it was because it was like 1 of 2 or 3 new high end models that still had both the jack and an sd card slot.
*had Fuck google and every piece of shit implementing this for them.
Just about. There used to be more, but if im honest, if it works in iOS then its a decent experience most of the time.
But my custom apps makes or breaks my phone. Its so convenient.
Ill probably get a uconsole or something. Or keep my current phone til all this blows over.
iOS is infinitely more polished than Android. It’s rather stable and at least the main notification system isn’t that bad for privacy.
Edit: I want to enquire: what exactly is wrong about my comments. Android is a piece of shit. iOS is a piece of shit. iOS is smoother because Apple can engineer the parts more smoothly. Android lets you run software. I hate them both but I need to run Termux.
Its terrible for security haha. We were able to 0 day it a couple of times without trying all that hard. So many CVEs that are repeatable. I wil admit the UI is phenominally better (in my opinion). And the official apps (as long as you dont want to do something specific) are perfect at what they do.
Android is a bit better but you can exploit it because people dont update their phones. Google is actually VERY good at keep those up to date…but if no one updates, its kinda a wash.
Again my opinion, im not too attached to either. They both suck in their own unique ways. #1 is you have to use their tool sets which is unique instead of any other computer system. Its such a hassle to keep up with as a software developer.
I was just talking about the notification system which doesn’t require something that uploads your location to Google 24/7
ah ok. Well im not familiar with that other than push notifications, which you can set up outside of googles ecosystem…although everyone likes using firebase for some reason.
Yes that’s why I said “main notification system”
ok.
IIRC notifications can only be delivered reliably via Firebase — anything else gets paused if the phone is in Doze etc.
Really depends which spin of Android you have. I have a Nothing Phone 2 and the OS is arguably more polished than on my SO’s iPhone 14, which frequently has bugs, lag, and crashes. You can’t really generalise about Android when there are so many versions of it.
That being said I’ll probably be looking into Linux phones in the next few years because I’m tired of corporations trying to control my devices.
Well I’m using graphene and it’s so laggy and can’t keep more than one app open at a time, so.
What phone, you must be running one of the first ones they made graphene for
Maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see what phone you have in that post.
Could you clarify?
Also running GrapheneOS (on an older phone) and this is not something I’ve ever experienced, nor seen as an issue in the forums.
I wasn’t denying the fact that you’re experiencing this issue, but since this is the first I’ve heard of something this bad in my 3 years of using GrapheneOS, this does appear to be a fairly unique case.
Provided you are using an otherwise well-functioning and currently supported device (and not an emulator), and that you are using a stable release installed via an official method (and there were no install issues), your best bet would be to ask for help in one of the community chats or forums: https://grapheneos.org/contact#community
You will be asked to share which device you are using though, which you did not seem comfortable doing in the post you linked to.
Unrelated, but I learned about the Android “task manager” (Running Services) from that post of yours, so thanks for sharing that.
Yeah GrapheneOS is open source bro. Probably doesn’t have full compatibility with your phone if I had to guess. That’s really not a like-for-like comparison to iOS.
Grapheme is smooth as can be for me and great for multitasking
“It works on my machine”
The fact of the matter is that Android is hacked on top of Linux and there’s endless problems because of it. One part is that there’s no task manager and system apps eat up well over half my memory which means that once I open one app, the other needs to be immediately evicted from RAM
It is risky to say anything positive about Apple here, true or not.
Its not really a positive thing. More like bad and worse.
I agree. But you phrased it positively, and for that you must pay with digital schmeckles.
Aw :( now I won’t be able to buy some big fake boobiez.
How is the notification system better for privacy on iOS? On android you have notification groups to toggle and you can set which notifications show up on the lock screen and how much of them is visible there. The notification system is to me arguably the best designed thing on android and one of the worst on iOS
I meant the backend sorry. Google Play services vs Apple’s stuff.
Interesting, I’m not too familiar with how they work, what makes Apple’s more privacy-friendly than Google’s?
Apple doesn’t know who is subscribed to what notification channel. Its similar to Signal’s sealed sender. Meanwhile Google does.
I was able to set custom APN settings on my Pixel to bypass the tethering block that MetroPCS puts on their cheapest plan.
There is nothing in iOS that lets you do that.
I also can’t run WiFi scanners on iOS.
And Android will still have ADB sideloading. On iOS I have to run shit like Sideloadly to re-sign applications every 7 days.
If you’re a true Android fan, there is still a lot to keep you on the platform.
Literally all of this is being able to run whatever software you want
So if Android loses that you go to the other place that also NOT lets you do that? That makes sense… Get a fairphone, install Ubuntu touch and stop rolling over like a good little dog.
Did I say I’d go to IOS? Did I say that at any point?
I was able to set custom APN settings on my Pixel
What custom software is this?
It’s built-in.
Yes, I’m just trying to point that out to the above person.
Which part of having access to the built-in APN settings has to do with running whatever software I want?
Ok, fuck this crap. This was the main reason to prefer Android over iOS. Going to start trying out some of the FOSS Android forks
Another example of Embrace, extend, and extinguish
Google has stopped releasing parts of android as open source and it releases some as a code dump without the modification history to make harder to use. Android forks are going to struggle to keep up.
I wonder if any and everyone who has ever contributed code under whichever open license was used could sue the tits off google, not as a class, but thousands upon thousands of individual lawsuits, for breach of terms of said licence/contract.
GNU only stipulates that the code must be released. Whether it is as an inconvenient dump of a well structured code history is not specified.
I’m just skimming through the license on my phone and they include LGPL, apache, BSD, Mozilla public license, eclipse public license, w3c, MIT, apple, and GNu.
IANAPOLL (The extra POL is for patent or licensing) so I don’t know the intricacies of each type.
But there are a lot.
Get fucked
Is this even legal in the EU? The majority of phones in the EU are Android phones so this effectively gives Google control over what apps can be installed to the majority of phones. I thought the Digital Markets Act was designed to prevent exactly this.
Google will become the exact same as apple, third party stores are technically “allowed”, but requires Google’s official stamp (digital signature), it’s same with Apple. Its probably legal since Apple is already like this.
A corporation like Epic Games will be left alone since they can afford lawyers. An open source volunteer dev making a Youtube alternative client will get their certificates revoked under dubious “ToS Violation” claims and they won’t have money to sue.
It’ll be a battle and then they’ll get knocked and so on and so forth until we get these lazy cunts out of politics and break up the fuckin tech companies.
I think some recent EU proposals that make Google responsible for ensuring users can’t install malicious apps is what have caused this to happen though. I could be wrong but I think I remember hearing about that.
This is essentially Google moving to do what I always thought was Apple’s malicious compliance on the DMA, but which European courts seem to have accepted as just fine. I’m pretty miffed at Google for sinking to Apple’s level on this.
Free market and openness my ass.
this seems to be going the shittitest direction it could…fuck Google
ps: loving the apple simps coming out to claim iPhones aren’t perfect just because you can’t “sideload” lool
fuck google for spyware google play services and severe integration of them into android thiugh ^^
They literally have to be more shitty to make money. Side loading allows individuals to choose not to give their money and data to Google. Companies must grow year over year. It doesn’t matter if the growth is unnecessary, imaginary line must go up. So remove standard features and then charge a premium for that feature to return, or cut pay/benefits/hours, or layoffs. Those are what’s left for our corporations to grow. No new ideas. Just shit.
loving the apple simps coming out to claim iPhones aren’t perfect just because you can’t “sideload” lool
Confused ape noises
