Does anyone here actually support Google's Developer Verification?
I don’t. I’ve put a warning about it in my repo because I’m against policies like sideloading restrictions, forced ID verification.
Curious what other devs here think. Is Play Store still worth the hassle?
It is what I would call "functionally true". You have to enable developer mode to install unverified apps. A very, very small subset of users are going to do that.
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-developer-verification.html?m=1
If you have more information on this, please share.
You have to enable it. And I would love a dedicated switch.
Currently, you need to enable third party install sources.
And one could argue that the fact that most people will not enable developer mode is a clear sign that this is a protection.
In my very very personal opinion: people that do not want to enable developer mode should maybe not install apps from third parties. Developer mode itself unlocks a few switches, and none of them is enabled per default. This is a pretty safe action IMHO.
There is a way to avoid this, but this is the device owner mode. You need an app that takes full control over device ownership, and those apps are allowed to do anything including installing any app.
One example is OwnDroid.
An opensource app that is signed by a dev and allows to manage install sources would be a working solution with better security.
If someone builds it
IMO the answer from a security perspective is that the Linux distro "official repo" model is about as good as it gets. However somehow we still have Fedora COPR, openSUSE OBS, Arch AUR, etc. Those are essentially like FDroid. If someone can solve the problem of why apps can't be easily just added and controlled in the official repos, maybe we'd be getting somewhere. Seems to be an industry issue.