Comment by degamad

As an Android user, although I'm not too happy about the Sept 2026 upcoming changes, but also the impact is far overstated in these comments over here.

First of all, it's simply a trial, a whole year from now, in Sept 2026, and only in 4 mid-sized countries around the world.

Second, they'll only be verifying developers, not users. They won't be reviewing the apps any more than they already do today. They already do scan all third-party apps, which is partly why people are upset about the needless doxxing of the devs.

Also, as far as I understand it, an app store like F-Droid already does app signing on behalf of other developers, to ensure funny stuff couldn't simply slip through undetected, so, as such, F-Droid probably already "owns" the Aurora Store and all the other apps you can download through the F-Droid app store, so, it would be my expectation that even in those 4 countries in Sept 2026 during the trial, you could still sideload the same apps the same way I do today.

In turn, the apps installed by Aurora Store are signed by the Play Store; this ensures that the private data cannot be hijacked through modified updates of the app, since the developer profile won't match. So, there's no concern there, either, since everything is signed.

Basically, it's not a good precedent, but at the same time, nothing will really change at least for my own workflow (as a non-publisher), where I don't install anything outside of F-Droid or Aurora Store anyways.

Keep in mind, it's still just a trial. And even if it goes worldwide in 2 years in 2027 (which is still a big if), it's still FAR more consumer-friendly than anything Apple has ever allowed on iOS in any jurisdiction I'm aware of.