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Google's plan to restrict sideloading on Android has a potential escape hatch for users
(www.androidauthority.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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tl;dr you can still "sideload" via adb.
This is so incredibly inconvenient as to be meaningless.
It's not completely meaningless because if it's truly the only option I'm going to be using it until I eventually replace my current phone with one with an unlocked bootloader.
I'm afraid that won't help. There will be even fewer people developing apps specifically for the 0.01% of us using custom ROMs.
They're already developing the apps for the 1% of us not just using proprietary apps from the play store. I don't think this just kills open source app development.
That's not who we're talking about. We're talking about the 0.1% who have custom ROMs.
It won't kill it completely but it will severely hurt it. The more complicated it becomes, the smaller the userbase becomes.
Apps like Syncthing have already discontinued development due to Google shenanigans + lack of users. That'll only get worse as the userbase shrinks.
There are plenty of people developing apps that require root, and users who run those are already jumping through a million hoops of cat and mouse to keep their fucking mcdonalds app detecting it so they can get cheaper coffees and free fries.
Like seriously, wtf McDonalds, your app is like the ultimate root/safetynet/device id detection tool, I don't think there exists even a banking app that is as hard to fool.
When my current phone dies I'll be buying a flip phone.
Guess what!? Those are all Android too!
Nope, some of them run KaiOS
Guess what!? KaiOS is Android!
They can go back to being a Linux OS much easier than anybody else
But I guess those don’t have Google Play or anything Google, they’re more like a limited Android.
Rimjob_steve moment
It will be stupid, but I presume there will be a rise in desktop apps or webapps that require you to only plug the phone in and it will handle the rest.
Yeah, if something like Obtanium needs to run on my desktop instead of my phone and I have to plug it in every once in a while, that's not the end of the world.
I think adb can also work over Wi-Fi, just like Android Studio can connect to the phone and build and install without plugging it.
There are already android apps that allow you to ADB into your own phone without root, so you could VERY EASILY just make an app store that utilises that, you only need to install the app from desktop once
good luck updating all your apps that way...
Exactly
Not at all, just get comfortable with ADB and use Claude to walk you through the steps.
I see this as an absolute win. /s
Edit: Y'all, ADB isn't hard to use. At all.
No one thinks it's hard. It is, however, as I said, extremely inconvenient and time-consuming to do this every day, and no one wants to do that.
Every day? Who needs to install an app every day?
Not saying this isn't annoying AF, it is, but it's not the absolute lockdown that we all feared.
My guy, have you ever heard of "updates"? How do you suppose they get installed?
So just take one day a month and do your maintance. Anything that isn't from the Play store isn't exactly getting Dev work every day to patch whatever.
Whatever, I don't love this either, but it's not some absolute deal breaker IMO. Maybe 6/10 dealbreaker. We disagree and thats fine. Now please downvote like you were going to do anyway.
I get several updates/day from FDroid, Obtainium and Accrescent. Some of them are security updates.
Perhaps someone could write an 'adb loopback' app -- get that into the official app store, and said app would then squirt other .apk files through adb on the phone to itself, thus sideloading it.
ADB loopback apps already exist, such as Shizuku
As far as I know, ADB needs to be run on another device which is plugged into the phone.
I suppose one could write a script/app that detects the device is plugged in, and automatically looks for and installs updates using adb. That would be the least amount of friction.
I think you can run ADB on another Android device, so maybe an Obtainium+ADB device that stays at home.
We already have to do that to install older apps. It's inconvenient, but not as bad as having to boot up an ancient phone every time you need to use the app.