Google Play Protect Is Making Sideloading Apps More Tedious On Android Phones

The Google Play Store’s integrated Play Protect service has become significantly more robust in protecting your Android phone from malicious apps and services. Now, several users are reporting the addition of another layer of protection that makes sideloading apps a little more troublesome, but it’s a good thing.

Android expert Mishaal Rahman took to X (formerly Twitter) earlier this week to let us know that Google Play Protect now requires you to use your biometrics when sideloading an unsafe APK file. While we already did get to see the “Unsafe app blocked” window previously, tapping on More details -> Install anyway would instantly bypass the warning.

Now, upon hitting Install anyway, an “Install unsafe app?” confirmation window pops up which requires you to use your fingerprint or enter your PIN. But, there’s a catch.

I tried triggering the security measure by installing almost all the fishy apps I knew of. But, to my vain, it just wouldn’t trigger for me. However, I could trigger this window when trying to install a third-party app store or much older versions of apps.

As Mishaal showcased in his X post, when I tried to install the 2018 version of F-Droid, Google Play Protect gave me a warning, stating, “This app was built for an older version of Android and doesn’t include the latest privacy protections. Installing this app may put your device at risk.”

However, turns out, that it is not exactly a new feature, having been around for around two months at this point. Either way, it’s still a great feature to keep users from installing apps that don’t meet Google Play Protect’s current privacy protection criteria.

Most importantly, if someone else has your Android phone for a moment, they can’t do anything fishy with it either. However, what would make this gatekeeping worth it would be when it gets triggered for every such sideload. On top of that, Google can also throw in the option to let users control whether they want this popup to appear for every app install. It just makes more sense to me, this way.

What do you think about Google Play Protect’s latest protection measure? Share your thoughts in the comments down below!