Free software on Android is in danger
2025-02-22

Google is planning to not allow installations of unverified Android apps on devices that are certified. I will give a bit more details on what this will mean for NanoLedger users.

What’s this about?

Like I said, Google is restricting the installation of apps on certified devices to ones that have been verified. Certified Android devices are the majority of Android devices out there. Mostly, only people with custom ROMs or other third-party Android distributions have devices that aren’t certified.

Verification in this case means that the developer of the app needs to register with Google (and pay a fee). After that verification process the developer will be able to tell Google about their signing key, after which that signing key will presumably be put on an allow list.

More details can be found here.

What does this mean for NanoLedger?

I will personally not be complying with this requirement by Google. Aside from the fact that I definitely don’t want to be paying money to Google for any reason, I definitely don’t want to comply with the idea that one needs to be registered with a central authority in order to publish software. I only distribute NanoLedger via F-Droid (and GitHub releases) on purpose and will not be changing that. In one of their posts on this, Google does mention an advanced flow that experienced users will be able to go through to install unverified apps, but it’s unlikely that installing via F-Droid (or things like GitHub Store) will work with that flow.

What can you do?

For this I will refer to the Keep Android Open project website again again. There are a number of resources on that website for what you can do including spreading the message, leaving feedback with Google (especially if you’re a developer) and contacting regulators who should be shutting this initiative down. By publishing this post, I will have done all of those, and I hope anyone reading this will be doing their part as well.

Comments or questions about this post? Feel free to contact me on Mastodon or send me an email.