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.
Yeah at least it’s better than Apple’s approach, where you have to connect your phone to a PC once every 7 days to reactivate Developer Mode. Don’t have a computer? Fuck you!
That said, I have zero faith in Google sticking with the compromise solution in the long run. They’re going to try to force the change on everyone again in the future, once they’ve broken us down a bit more.
Meanwhile at least we have a little longer than September before they actually ruin the platform completely… How long? Who could say but I’ll take what small victories I can get