Google will extend the developers’ verification to all Android applications, not only those installed in the Play Store, starting with Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand in September 2026, and followed by a global deployment in 2027 and beyond.
Currently, the developer verification is already required for the Play Store but not for applications installed from other sources. Today, developers do not need to register with Google to deploy an Android application.
It changes. Developers will now need an Android developer console account, which, like a Play Store account, requires unique costs of $ 25.00, linked to a Google payment profile.
The accounts can be either personal or organizational, both of which require the submission of identity documents issued by the government and verified telephone numbers. Organizations must also submit business registration documents and have an verified website. Finally, each application package name must be saved from Google with a public key certificate of the application signature pair, verified by downloading a package signed with the private key, to connect it to the verified developer, although it is not necessary to download the real Android package kit (APK) which will be distributed.
This information is likely to change, being based on a preview presentation [PDF] Explain the process. The company also said that there will be a less heavy process, at no cost, for “students and amateurs”, but the details have not yet been revealed. The existing developers recorded to use the Play Store will not need a separate account because they are already verified.
Android today allows the installation of unknown applications subject to a warning
Restrictions will apply to Certified Android devicesThis means approved by Google and including the main Google applications and services. Most Android devices are part of this category, although there are niche options, such as movals running / e / boneA de-googled version of Android, or open source Lineage. The disadvantage of the use of non -Google Android from the consumer’s point of view is that certain applications may not install, such as those using the Integrity game API To verify that the application is “installed by Google Play, running on a real Android device”.
Examples of applications that might not work on / E / OS or Android Lineageos devices include WhatsApp de Meta and the revolut banking application, and users have no control over if other official applications could refuse to run. Frictions like this makes it unlikely that fully open source Android devices will never be common, despite the existence of Android open source project (AOSP).
According to Google, changes are necessary for safety. Suzanne Fey Product VP said That a recent analysis has found more than 50 times more malicious software from “Sources de Sideladed Internet” than on Google Play applications.
Fey said that Android remains an open system despite the new process and that “developers will have the same freedom to distribute their applications directly to users by putting it by or to use any application store they prefer”.
The developers do not agree. “I can install an application on a Windows computer from any source without checking by Microsoft. An Android device is a computer, like any other computer. It does not need to be so. It is so because a giant company controls it and decides that they wish”, ” A Reddit user wrote.
Another developer who has built an Android application to be listed with a side The register That Google’s actions “really bother me”. He added: “Google makes it more difficult to create applications. Each year, they do something to make it more difficult to make chrome extensions, additional documents of documents, etc. – everything that works in something of them becomes more difficult to distribute.
“For example, it was the case that if you just create a chrome extension for yourself and some colleagues, you can easily submit it to Chrome Store as not listed. But now, even if you have changed a private or not listed line of other people.”
The changes announced will make Android more similar to Apple iOS, in terms of ease of installation of applications from any source. ®
