This is going to hurt legitimate sideloading way more than actually necessary to reduce scams:

- Must enable developer mode -- some apps (e.g., banking apps) will refuse to operate and such when developer mode is on, and so if you depend on such apps, I guess you just can't sideload?

- One-day (day!!!) waiting period to activate (one-time) -- the vast majority of people who need to sideload something will probably not be willing to wait a day, and will thus just not sideload unless they really have no choice for what they need. This kills the pathway for new users to sideload apps that have similar functionality to those on the Play Store.

The rest -- restarting, confirming you aren't being coached, and per-install warnings -- would be just as effective alone to "protect users," but with those prior two points, it's clear that this is just simply intended to make sideloading so inconvenient that many won't bother or can't (dev mode req.).

>- Must enable developer mode -- some apps (e.g., banking apps) will refuse to operate and such when developer mode is on, and so if you depend on such apps, I guess you just can't sideload?

Hi, I'm the community engagement manager @ Android. It's my understanding that you don't have to keep developer options enabled after you enable the advanced flow. Once you make the change on your device, it's enabled.

If you turn off developer options, then to turn off the advanced flow, you would first have to turn developer options back on.

>- One-day (day!!!) waiting period to activate (one-time) -- the vast majority of people who need to sideload something will probably not be willing to wait a day, and will thus just not sideload unless they really have no choice for what they need.

ADB installs are not impacted by the waiting period, so that is an option if you need to install certain unregistered applications immediately.

> ADB installs are not impacted by the waiting period, so that is an option if you need to install certain unregistered applications immediately.

Someone is just going to make a nice GUI application for sideloading apks with a single drag-and-drop, so if your idea is that ADB is a way to ensure only "users who know what they're doing" are gonna sideload, you've done nothing. This is all security theatre.

> “For a lot of people in the world, their phone is their only computer, and it stores some of their most private information,” Samat said.

Not applying the policy to adb installs makes a lot more sense if the people this is trying to protect don't have a computer