Mastodawn

Google has news on what you will need to do for still being able to sideload apps:

* enable developer options
* confirm that you are not tricked
* restart phone and re-authenticate
* wait one day
* confirm with biometrics that you know what you are doing
* decide if you only want unrestricted installs for 1 week or forever
* confirm that you accept the risks
* enjoy the few apps that still have developers motivated to develop for a user-base willing to put up with this

https://goo.gle/advance-flow

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Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE 1d ago

@grote But what about companies that develop their own internal apps to interface with their own internal systems to be installed on company-supplied devices?

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Torsten Grote 1d ago

@TimWardCam That's not my main concern, but I think there's exceptions for device management solutions. Also they could just register with Google if needed.

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Ted Mielczarek 1d ago

@grote @TimWardCam Google has a whole "Managed Google Play" as part of Enterprise Android support: https://support.google.com/work/android/answer/9495634?hl=en
I don't think companies doing such things will be fussed by this at all. A company using Android devices but not using enterprise management would already be in a pretty self-inflicted state of badness.
Edit: https://developer.android.com/developer-verification/guides/faq explicitly says this doesn't affect enterprise apps.

Distribute private apps - Android Enterprise Help

Private apps are automatically approved for distribution via all EMM bindings associated with the same Google Workspace or Cloud Identity account when they're published. They can be distributed just l

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Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE 1d ago

@tedmielczarek @grote I'm thinking of a small company with a dozen or so developers who have one Android app that talks to their back end, for use by a few dozen installation crews. Anything with "enterprise" in its name would be *vastly* too expensive to be of any use to a company like that.

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Ted Mielczarek 1d ago

@TimWardCam @grote I feel like you're inventing a weird fictional scenario here to be mad about, but Google Play already has support for limited distribution of apps for internal testing without requiring all of the steps required to publish an app in the Play Store: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9845334?hl=en

Set up an open, closed, or internal test - Play Console Help

Important: Developers with personal accounts created after November 13, 2023, must meet specific testing requirements before they can make their app available on Google Play. Read

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Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE 1d ago

@tedmielczarek @grote No, it was a real job I had at a real company. I just wondered whether people would still be able to do that.

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derptron

@TimWardCam @tedmielczarek @grote Looks to me like you'd disable this silly stuff on all the phones you manage and call it good...you're just back to the situation as it exists.

The real pain here is that people install fdroid from the play store thinking they can then install apps but they won't be able to without "disabling security". Other than that it seems like it's a one time annoyance -- less than if you just load lineage or something to begin with.