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.
That’s not the single solution. You can put dozens of ROMs on dozens of other devices. I buy older devices at cheap prices and put custom ROMs on them and then sell them. It’s fairly lucrative; more so as time goes on. Plenty of people want this kind of privacy but don’t have the skills or confidence to modify their devices. Motorola and Samsung the most by far, but also LG and various others occasionally.
Yeah the real issue is ease of access and simplicity. GrapheneOS is appealing to me, but 1. I don’t want to buy a google pixel just to get it and 2. I don’t have the confidence to replace the OS, no matter how easy the guide says it is. If I had someone in person to help me I’d maybe consider it, but I’m just so worried I’d mess it up and brick the phone
I was planning to get an android phone in a few months since I unfortunately still have my old iPhone, but with this GrapheneOS Motorola phone coming out in 2027 I might see if I can make this phone last till that comes out if android is gonna be locked down too
Other ROMs are usually very bad at security with many being late to secuity updates, not supporting bootloader relocking, and not using the secure element. I would not trust them in the hands of someone who isn’t tech savvy or is at high risk of hackers.