this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2026
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Android

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DROID DOES

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The app ID is com.google.android.verifier, which I assume will be used for the upcoming developer verification program for installing 3rd party apps.

Starting September 30, developers (signing authors) need to be verified from Google to distribute apps in the following app stores:

  • Google Play Store
  • Honor App Market
  • OPPO App Market
  • Samsung Galaxy Store
  • Transsion Palm Store
  • vivo V-Appstore and
  • Xiaomi GetApps

only in the countries of Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand.

F-Droid is not included for this time.

It is planned to be rolled out globally across all markets/app stores by January of 2027.

Relevant sources:
https://developer.android.com/developer-verification/guides
https://keepandroidopen.org/

I used App Manager (io.github.muntashirakon.AppManager) for the screenshot; you can use your regular 'Installed Apps'/'Apps' menu to see if it's been rolled out automatically for you as well.

edit: First link was originally a typo, my bad. Fixed it.

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[–] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

My kids' phones (Pinwheel-managed Moto G Play models) attempted to install this in the background as well. I only found out about it because I got an app request from the devices; the kids had zero knowledge of it.

I blocked the installation.

[–] bampop@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (8 children)

Hold up, what magic is this? You can gatekeep installations of any app on their phones? I've looked into doing this with Google Play but as far as I can tell they only enable it for mature content. Which doesn't help to stop my old father in law from installing trash "security" apps on his phone.

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[–] Anti_Iridium@lemmy.world 16 points 6 days ago (1 children)

When it rolled out, it removed my root as well. I guess I may be jumping ship to lineageos soon. I like root features too much.

[–] majster@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 days ago (3 children)

What do you in practice do with root? Extracting data from apps?

[–] Redjard@reddthat.com 8 points 6 days ago

Not op, but I use it to make automated proper backups of all important apps. Androids own backup system does not catch a lot of stuff, some apps don't support or allow it at all, and it's limited. I just get a full package of all the apps data, every morning, then synced to my nas via syncthing.

I also remove a long list of annoyances:
󠀀- Apps setting brightness (youtube when going fullscreen increases it a bit, some apps do it when showing qr codes (making them hard to scan) ) 󠀀- Make all notifications editeable (The wifi portal ones are anoying in countries that have login websites for all public wifi)
󠀀- Let me screenshot everything
󠀀- Let me downgrade apps and change certificates (e.g. going from a github to fdroid release without reinstall)
󠀀- Apply my vector app-icon pack to systemui, i.e. the app switcher (and app details)
󠀀- Force apps to allow reverse portrait orientations when they inexplicably forbid it (I use reverse portrait while charging sometimes when the charger is behind/above me)
󠀀- Make my notification drawer transparent
󠀀- Mod the home button out of firefox (fennec), and severely mod discord
󠀀- Record calls (my memory is bad, I protocol details afterwards sometimes. Recordings auto-delete after a bit)
󠀀- Remove all drm support from my phone, just in case
󠀀- Let Adaway work in hosts mode, to improve performance and so it doesn't influence an active vpn
󠀀- Morphe modded youtube without its own microg app (while I still have gsm)
󠀀- Lets me select all paths in those app share storage dialogues, so I can make an app save directly to downloads and don't have to make a subfolder for example
󠀀- Make fdroid install just like playstore can, without any forced popups or dialogues, having full system permissions and the ability to downgrade apps.
󠀀- I may have used root to disable the thin gesture bar hint thing at the bottom of the screen in gesture navigation. I don't have it in any case.
󠀀- I also use root to change adb settings on my phone conveniently, like thinner back gesture triggers, using the full 4k resolution of my screen, changing screen locking procedures, hide some icons in my status bar, hide the popup whwn rotating the phone on locked rotation, hide thepopup for screenshots, hide the popup for copy, disable googles play protect scanning and background app killer, change connectivity checker and time server to urls not tracked by google, ... 󠀀- I use root to easily set up and manage a second profile, have my file manager access the entire filesystem inclusing system files, enable the olde GameGuardian (similar to CheatEngine, arguably even more powerful, and for android), and to view and share my wifi passwords regardless of what my specific rom happens to think of that at the moment.
󠀀- I also use it for shizuku, which could work rootless via adb but would be some effort to maintain like that, while for me it's been chugging away for years by itself.

[–] 0x0@infosec.pub 5 points 5 days ago

Delete Googles pushed shit apps like this lol

[–] Anti_Iridium@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

Mostly AdAway and Morpho, but also ColorBlendr.

[–] lechekaflan@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago

Pichai, you fucking banchode.

had it on my tablet uninstalled that shit so fast

[–] ReluctantZen@feddit.nl 4 points 6 days ago

Thanks for sharing. It was installed for me as well on the 14th apparently, even though my phone's not getting updates anymore. I was hoping I wouldn't get it because of that, but I guess it's purely a play services thing.

[–] vogi@piefed.social 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

What happens if you try to install an unverified apk now? Like is there a message or something? Does it go away after just uninstalling the developer verifier?

[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

This app also got silently installed on my device, but I just updated YouTube Morphe and there was no issue. So for now the app doesn't appear to do anything. I disabled it and will be uninstalling with ADB soon.

[–] vogi@piefed.social 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Ah okey, thanks for the info :)
Better hope they do not merge it into Google Play Services then and that I didn't just jinx that to happen...

The amount of high-ranking spam reviews for that program is astounding.

It looks like Google hijacked their own project "Google Package Verifier" that has been dormant in the Play Store since 2012, and hadn't been touched in 13 years until 2025.

Google is no better than the spammers this process purports to protect against.

The original:

https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/google-package-verifier/variant-%7B%22arches_slug%22%3A%5B%5D%2C%22minapi_slug%22%3A%22minapi-14%22%7D/

[–] Uri@infosec.pub 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

You can't without ADB but you can disable it.

[–] Uri@infosec.pub 2 points 6 days ago

I don't have a "googled" device, but this looks like a user app so you should be able to uninstall it?

[–] Ripley_Tripley@lemmus.org 2 points 6 days ago

What I feel no one is asking is, and what I'm still confused about, would MicroG still be working wthin all of this? Its a sandbox, I get it, but that dosent mean it could have the ability to stop working since it can't access apps. Like if that gets closed off, then what? There are still some app that are not fully stock android that a lot of people need to use unless you have them on computer or tablet ( For banking for example, I use my apps for all my finances on my iPad)

Maybe I don't get how the sandboxing works for MicroG but, if its using google, I would avoid it as much as I can.

[–] Willie169@infosec.pub 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I block system update immediately when I heard this. Though I could use Shizuku, who knows when they will block loop back ADB. And the recent CVE-2026-43499 exploits are another reason to keep me holding my kernel version. BTW, I now have 0 app are my phone that receives update from Google Play or those OEMs stores now. Some still use APKPure over Obtainium or Aurora Store, but most are FOSS.

[–] Nickelalloy@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

As it should be, well done!

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