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Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

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Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#121

Post by Zak »

gruez wrote: post #33
HiPhish wrote: post #4

We need to stop calling it "sideloading", we should call it freely installing software. The term "sideloading" makes it sound shady and hacky when in reality it is what we have been able to do on our computers since forever. These are not phones, they are computers shaped like phones, computer which we fully bought with our money, and I we shall install what we want on our own computers.

>The term "sideloading" makes it sound shady and hacky "side" refers to the fact that it's not going through the first party app store, and doesn't have any negative connotations beyond that. Maybe if it was called "backloading" you'd have a point, but this whole language thing feels like a kerfuffle over nothing.

Language strongly influences how people perceive things. For example, people shown videos of a car crash estimated higher speeds and falsely remembered seeing broken glass if the crash was described as "smashed" or "collided" rather than "hit" or "contacted"[0].

"Direct installation" sounds neutral to me, but "sideloading" sounds advanced or maybe even sneaky.

[0] https://www.simplypsychology.org/loftus-palmer.html

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#122

Post by iamnothere »

ivanmontillam wrote: post #13
kypro wrote: post #9

As someone who doesn't really care about apps, if I wanted to move away from Android what phones and OSs are worth considering?

You don't really have a choice: it's either Android or Apple iOS.

PostmarketOS, Mobian, and GrapheneOS all seem to be good choices. Or simply not carrying a phone as I often do.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#123

Post by dinkleberg »

miclill wrote: post #114

My hope is that this lets some more people wake up and finally make Linux on the smartphone a reality.

If that ever does happen I really hope they just focus on making a proper phone, not trying to make it a hybrid phone and workstation. When they were working on Ubuntu touch (or whatever their phone version was called), they would show off how cool it was that you could just plug your monitor and input devices into it and boom you’ve got an all in one device.

But who wants that? It’s cool. But I’d rather just have a fully functional phone that happens to be Linux.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#124

Post by glenstein »

Can anyone say exactly what this would mean for F-Droid? For instance, not that I want this to happen but if F-Droid really wanted, they could conceivably get verified developer status.

And then they could offer apps, which (again I don't want this, just asking), could also be distributed if verified. F-Droid would have to be verified and would only be able to distribute apps from developers that are also verified.

And so conceivably you could still install apps from outside the Play store if they're verified. Unless the Play store is administering verification.

I'm not saying that would work, in fact, I think in practice it wouldn't. I'm just trying to play out what that would look like to understand the specifics of how F-Droid is being effectively dismantled. But I'm all ears if someone has a different interpretation about how F-Droid lives through this. It would seem that it would only survive on degoogled phones.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#125

Post by marcprux »

glenstein wrote: post #124

Can anyone say exactly what this would mean for F-Droid? For instance, not that I want this to happen but if F-Droid really wanted, they could conceivably get verified developer status. And then they could offer apps, which (again I don't want this, just asking), could also be distributed if verified. F-Droid would have to be verified and would only be able to distribute apps from developers that are also verified. A…

We wrote about what it means for F-Droid at:

https://f-droid.org/en/2025/09/29/google-developer-registrat...

And it has been discussed in a couple of HN threads:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45409794

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507173

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#126

Post by bigwheels »

user2722 wrote: post #82
freefaler wrote: post #60

Yes, it's a very unfriendly decision by Google. However, I don't think they haven't measured the number of users installing apps outside of the Play store. May be they just don't care about the small % of total users who are a large % here on HN. This is a part of a bigger trend, Cory Doctorow spoke about 13 years ago in his "The coming war on general computing": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg And this w…

Check Stallman's The Right to Read short story.

Link: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

Meta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Read

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#127

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

omnimus wrote: post #120
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you are completely ignoring viruses, ransomware, keyloggers, the 50 toolbars etc that has been the staple of Windows and before that DOS for over 40 years. Scam apps are rife in the iOS App Store. But what they can’t do easily install viruses that affect anything out of its sandbox, keyloggers, etc

Sandboxing isn't feature dependent on Apple being a big curator is it? These are orthogonal but not the same issues. I've never said that PCs don't have viruses or that it isn't a problem, only that I should be able to install software from developer I trust if I want to. I agree let's have sandboxed app instalations on platforms. Flatpak is already going this way. But it looks like big players Microsoft,Apple and Go…

And then there will still be complaints about Google limiting what apps can do and take away “your freedom”. What happens when a third party app wants to be able to read in other apps internal storage to create a back up solution like iCloud? Should that be allowed? What about if they want to create an app that autocompletes what you type when working in another app requiring key logger like capabilities?

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#128

Post by wkat4242 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #91
mariusor wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any of the BSDs (well 2BSD is the oldest on a quick search), the linux project, the GNU C lib and GCC, etc. Just because you can't think of it, it does not mean it doesn't exist.

> Any of the BSDs (well 2BSD is the oldest on a quick search), the linux project, the GNU C lib, etc. Just because you can't think of it, it does not mean it doesn't exist. Did BSD defeat Linux? No. Which BSD is even the right one? BSD's biggest success is living on as the foundation of Apple's Cathedral in XNU, and PlayStation's Cathedral in the PS4 and PS5. Did Linux stay a bazaar vendor? No - 90% of code has been…

That's such an American take. Something doesn't have to be a "winner" to be useful. I enjoy using FreeBSD on my desktop and I don't care about the 0.01% marketshare.

I really dislike all the corporate involvement in Linux. I don't believe in win-win with commercial. That was the main reason for my choice though there's other things I like too such as full ZFS support and great documentation.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#129

Post by dang »

marcprux wrote: post #125
glenstein wrote: post #124

Can anyone say exactly what this would mean for F-Droid? For instance, not that I want this to happen but if F-Droid really wanted, they could conceivably get verified developer status. And then they could offer apps, which (again I don't want this, just asking), could also be distributed if verified. F-Droid would have to be verified and would only be able to distribute apps from developers that are also verified. A…

We wrote about what it means for F-Droid at: https://f-droid.org/en/2025/09/29/google-developer-registrat... And it has been discussed in a couple of HN threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45409794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507173

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Google's requirement for developers to be verified threatens app store F-Droid - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507173 - Oct 2025 (152 comments)

F-Droid and Google’s developer registration decree - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45409794 - Sept 2025 (564 comments)

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