this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2025
748 points (99.7% liked)

Privacy

41983 readers
722 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Opening my weather app this morning I was greeted by this warning:

Google has announced that, starting in 2026/2027, all apps on certified Android devices will require the developer to submit personal identity details directly to Google. Since the developers of this app do not agree to this requirement, this app will no longer work on certified Android devices after that time.

It's the first time I hear about this, seems to be about:

Tech crunch article from august, "google will require developer verification for android apps outside the play store"

Cirrus app: Github

Was this a big thing I somehow missed? I hope more devs will follow suit.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

How easy is it to convert an Android app to a Linux mobile app of you're the developer? If it's written in JVM languages it shouldn't be that hard right?

[–] nomadjoanne@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Just use a custom ROM. This sadly will affect app developers. But if you are on a custom ROM without GMS it will continue to work just fine.

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Google is trying to kill custom ROMs too. Also I thought the majority of modern phones aren't bootloader unlockable.

[–] MML@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago

You can unlock the bootloader on just about every phone, just depends on how much effort you want to spend.

[–] nomadjoanne@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Ehhhh... sorta maybe. Ultimately they can't, but they can make development more difficult.

Also Google has nothing to do with whether or not you're bootloader is unlockable. Get a phone that is.

If you rally want to go down the whole FOSS path it does ultimately become a bit of a lifestyle.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

End-users can use e.g. waydro.id to run Android apps on Linux.

I'm not deep into Android development, but I doubt it's possible to just port an app without basically a complete rewrite. Android has an own layer on top of the JVM, called Zygote, and there's presumably lots of system libraries which the Android apps implicitly depend on, for handling graphics and whatnot, which make tons of assumptions about running on an Android device.