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

goo.gle/advance-flow

image version of the information from https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-developer-verification.html
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If you have a fediverse account, you can quote this note from your own instance. Search https://chaos.social/users/grote/statuses/116257002625921666 on your instance and quote it. (Note that quoting is not supported in Mastodon.)

RE: chaos.social/@grote/1162570026

At this point I'm convinced that there's something deeply wrong with how our society treats technology.

Ruining Android for everyone to try to maybe help some rather technologically-hopeless groups of people is the wrong solution. It's unsustainable in the long run. Also, the last thing this world needs right now is even more centralization of power. Especially around yet another US company. (1/2)

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