If you haven’t seen this yet, Google is planning to require mandatory developer identity verification for all Android apps, including apps distributed outside the Play Store, taking effect September 2026. This affects every independent and open source Android developer directly.
This is not just about the Play Store. After September 2026, on any certified Android device, applications from unverified developers will be blocked by default. The only proposed bypass, the “advanced flow”, exists only as a blog post and has not appeared in any beta, dev preview, or canary release. No one outside Google has seen it.
The community has been fighting back at keepandroidopen.org:
- Read the full breakdown of what this means
- Sign the open letter (organisations only)
- Contact your national regulators — contacts listed by country on the site
- Add the countdown banner to your project
September 2026 is closer than it looks. The time to push back is now.
How would you test android apps that you develop?
They’ve recently announced the flow to enable unverified apps. It’s a one time process which will require waiting 24hr after enabling unverified apps but after that 24hr installing APKs will work exactly the same as today. It’s annoying Google has single-handedly decided to implement this rather than going through a more transparent method built into AOSP, but if this is as far as they take it I doubt any power users will be seriously impacted. Of course with how Google has handled this I have no confidence that this is as far as they’ll take it.
is it 24 hours “per APK” or for all APKs?
Once and done. It’ll be an option on Developer Mode with a 24-hour cooloff and forced reboot (to disconnect any ongoing scam calls).