Starting in August, installing APKs from unverified developers will require a new procedure called Advanced Flow. It involves enabling developer mode, rebooting the device, and waiting 24 hours with biometric verification.

After that, you choose: allow the APK installation for 7 days or indefinitely. The procedure is a one-time process and applies to all versions of Android.

Will the 24-hour wait stop you from installing APKs outside the store?

Over the years I've tested out pretty much all the Android keyboards, but swipe typing always kept me on GBoard, even though GBoard did not support voice typing for anything except Google, so I had to switch keyboards for that.

Recently I learned that HeliBoard has support for gesture typing with the Google library. But I couldn't find any instructions on where to get the necessary files or how to do it. Well, someone posted a link to the file elsewhere so I'll share it here. And it works! Extremely well. I can also pin a button for voice typing and then select Transcribro for that (which uses OpenAI Whisper locally and works super well.

Another gripe I had with GBoard was the cursor moves way too fast when swiping on the space bar. Not so with Heliboard. You can also swipe backwards from the backspace key and it will highlight text and then delete it when you let go.

Trust me, I push Signal hard and even donate to it monthly. As I'm sure many of you know, there are always a few contacts who unfortunately refuse to use it.

In this case: do you prefer to use insecure SMS in something like QUIK SMS or Fossify Messages, or do you prefer to bite the Google bullet to get end-to-end encrypted messages (even if the metadata isn't encrypted)?

I can see good arguments for both sides, so I am curious what Lemmy's take is.

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.

I'm using e/os and I want to be sure that, when connected to my local network, my local dns server is used, however, no matter what I do, my phone always use google's one. Is there any way to fix this?

Screenshots:

and Gesture navigation is now enabled by default

Quote from Proton VPN:

Google has known about a bug that breaks VPN apps for 7 months, leaving users exposed with no warning or error, just a VPN app that stopped working in the background.

If you're using ANY VPN on Android, you can help us by getting Google's attention to fix it.

We first reported this bug to Google in September 2025.

Others like Mullvad and Wireguard reported it even earlier, in August.

Google's response? "I don't see anything unusual."

The bug corrupts Android's network stack at the system level after a VPN update, causing users to blame their VPN provider.

Restarting the app doesn't help, with the only fix being a full device reboot or VPN app reinstall, something which most users never figure out.

This affects several VPN providers on Android 16, and only Google has the access to diagnose it properly.

After 7 months of waiting, we're now asking publicly: Google, when are you fixing this?

Issue Tracker Links:

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/441315112

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/4474331

Trying to remove the FRP on my phone, but so far just able to get it to load google.com

cannot sign in, or install any apps.

https://i.imgur.com/Pa1pRkR.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/AHXKLAy.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/U9vnMII.jpeg

Any tips

Link to the app: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.jksalcedo.librefind/

Hi everyone,

So I am looking for a phone[^Floss]:

• around 100-150€/$
• screen ~6.50'
• a mini jack 🎧
• Easy to install/Flash another ROM ! ( let's dream, maybe the vendor itself guide/help in order to do so )
• Bootloader not locked !?
• Easy to be the root [^root]
• Not need to be the newer model

[^Floss]: Floss
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software

[^root]: And by the way, why we should struggle and trick so much just to gain root access? Do are we not the owner of our phones? Why not a simple option that asks to be root? And the user will take its own responsibility for it !?

Hello everyone! Is there any alternative to android auto for a degoogled phone running microG? I mean, one that can connect on " android auto ready” devices.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/60496784

It all goes well until brunch, when I get tons of errors about missing manifest xml's. I can browse to the folder where the xml file should be (the folder exists) but the folder is empty. Where am I supposed to get them??

EDIT: to be clear, this device has been dropped from LOS support. I have an installation zip and got the proprietary blobs tho...

I learned only yesterday that Google is going to effectively shut down open android. So I'm gonna have to move away from there. But what are my options? Is there a nice website that lists and compares alternatives?

I hear that Graphene is the goat, but I'm not on a pixel phone. Currently I'm on a Samsung galaxy a15

I hear about lineageOS as a good second, but it sounds like Google's decision to close down android might affect lineage too.

I hear about others, but I'm not too well versed in running obscure OS.

I've been wanting to Curb my Doom Scrolling Habits as of Recent as I've been wasting waaaay to much time opening the Same Apps 5 Times in 10 Minutes.

One Method thats been Said to Work wonders in that Regard is to have Apps only be accessible after typing in a Password. After doing a bit of Light research it seems I'll need an App for this as I don't wanna deal with Samsungs "Safe Folder" needing a Samsung Account stuff.

Do any of you have Suggestions for Trust Worthy Apps for this?

Over the last three years I've had a lot of folks ask me questions about using GrapheneOS. Let's answer them!

I'm looking for a file manager or gallery app that will let me browse to particular directories easily (prefer a file manager interface for this), look at images I find in them, and (this seems to be the really hard part) easily rename them while I'm looking at them. I don't want a conventional gallery app that just presents one huge list of all the folders it found anywhere on my device, as there can be several with the same name, and it's tedious to figure out what directory each one is under. I need to be able to go to a particular directory, look at the images within, and rename them while looking at them - the quicker & easier the better.

Help?