Apps

Google confirms Android dev verification will have free and paid tiers, no public list of devs

Apps, Google, play store, privacy, Security, Tech / DJ Henderson / October 4, 2025

A lack of trust

Google has an answer for the most problematic elements of its verification plan, but anywhere there’s a gap, it’s easy to see a conspiracy. Why? Well, let’s look at the situation in which Google finds itself.

The courts have ruled that Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in the Play Store—it worked against the interests of developers and users for years to make Google Play the only viable source of Android apps, and for what? The Play Store is an almost unusable mess of sponsored search results and suggested apps, most of which are little more than in-app purchase factories that deliver Google billions of dollars every year.

Google has every reason to protect the status quo (it may take the case all the way to the Supreme Court), and now it has suddenly decided the security risk of sideloaded apps must be addressed. The way it’s being addressed puts Google in the driver’s seat at a time when alternative app stores may finally have a chance to thrive. It’s all very convenient for Google.

Developers across the Internet are expressing wariness about giving Google their personal information. Google, however, has decided anonymity is too risky. We now know a little more about how Google will manage the information it collects on developers, though. While Play Store developer information is listed publicly, the video confirms there will be no public list of sideload developers. However, Google will have the information, and that means it could be demanded by law enforcement or governments.

The current US administration has had harsh words for apps like ICEBlock, which it successfully pulled from the Apple App Store. Google’s new centralized control of app distribution would allow similar censorship on Android, and the real identities of those who developed such an app would also be sitting in a Google database, ready to be subpoenaed. A few years ago, developers might have trusted Google with this data, but now? The goodwill is gone.

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Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps starting next year

android, Apps, Google, play store, smartphones, Tech / Beth Washington / August 26, 2025

An early look at the streamlined Android Developer Console for sideloaded apps. Credit: Google

Google says that only apps with verified identities will be installable on certified Android devices, which is virtually every Android-based device—if it has Google services on it, it’s a certified device. If you have a non-Google build of Android on your phone, none of this applies. However, that’s a vanishingly small fraction of the Android ecosystem outside of China.

Google plans to begin testing this system with early access in October of this year. In March 2026, all developers will have access to the new console to get verified. In September 2026, Google plans to launch this feature in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. The next step is still hazy, but Google is targeting 2027 to expand the verification requirements globally.

A seismic shift

This plan comes at a major crossroads for Android. The ongoing Google Play antitrust case brought by Epic Games may finally force changes to Google Play in the coming months. Google lost its appeal of the verdict several weeks ago, and while it plans to appeal the case to the US Supreme Court, the company will have to begin altering its app distribution scheme, barring further legal maneuvering.

Among other things, the court has ordered that Google must distribute third-party app stores and allow Play Store content to be rehosted in other storefronts. Giving people more ways to get apps could increase choice, which is what Epic and other developers wanted. However, third-party sources won’t have the deep system integration of the Play Store, which means users will be sideloading these apps without Google’s layers of security.

It’s hard to say how much of a genuine security problem this is. On one hand, it makes sense Google would be concerned—most of the major malware threats to Android devices spread via third-party app repositories. However, enforcing an installation whitelist across almost all Android devices is heavy handed. This requires everyone making Android apps to satisfy Google’s requirements before virtually anyone will be able to install their apps, which could help Google retain control as the app market opens up. While the requirements may be minimal right now, there’s no guarantee they will stay that way.

The documentation currently available doesn’t explain what will happen if you try to install a non-verified app, nor how phones will check for verification status. Presumably, Google will distribute this whitelist in Play Services as the implementation date approaches. We’ve reached out for details on that front and will report if we hear anything.

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Echelon kills smart home gym equipment offline capabilities with update

Apps, Smart Home, Tech / DJ Henderson / July 26, 2025

Some might never have purchased Echelon equipment if they knew the machines might one day fail to work without a web connection or Echelon account.

Third-party app connections severed

For some owners of Echelon equipment, QZ, which is currently rated as the No. 9 sports app on Apple’s App Store, has been central to their workouts. QZ connects the equipment to platforms like Zwift, which shows people virtual, scenic worlds while they’re exercising. It has also enabled new features for some machines, like automatic resistance adjustments. Because of this, Viola argued in his blog that QZ has “helped companies grow.”

“A large reason I got the [E]chelon was because of your app and I have put thousands of miles on the bike since 2021,” a Reddit user told the developer on the social media platform on Wednesday.

However, Echelon’s firmware update likely seeks to regain some of the revenue opportunities that overlap with the capabilities that apps like QZ enable. Echelon’s subscription-based app, which starts at $40 per month, also offers “guided scenic rides,” for example. QZ can allow people to watch Peloton classes from their Echelon device, but Echelon sells its own fitness classes. The Tennessee-headquartered company has been investing in ways to get customers more engaged with its personalized workout platform, too, which requires the machines to be online.

There’s also value in customer data. Getting more customers to exercise with its app means Echelon may gather more data for things like feature development and marketing.

Echelon is a private company, and we don’t know how much money it is making, but it’s likely that its financial goals hinge on subscription sales, which can generate more revenue than expensive equipment purchases. Meanwhile, Echelon is competing with other tech-centric companies offering gym equipment and classes, like the Peloton.

Viola runs QZ, which costs $7 to $8 to download, alone, offering users a lot of support via online communities. He told Ars that revenue from app purchases covers his costs “more or less.”

“It was never my intention to damage anyone’s business. This is just competition. The best product should prevail,” Viola said. “I never created QZ to get rich; I just wanted users to have a great hour of fitness when they choose, without connection issues, subscriptions, or [other limitations].”

In terms of QZ, the user community is “working on a fully open-source Echelon controller to unlock bikes that have already received this update,” per Viola. It’s in the very early stages, he said.

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Dictionary.com “devastated” paid users by abruptly deleting saved words lists

ads, Apps, Tech / Kelly Newman / July 19, 2025

Logophiles are “devastated” after Dictionary.com deleted their logs of favorited words that they carefully crafted for years. The company deleted all accounts, as well as the only ways to use Dictionary.com without seeing ads —even if you previously paid for an ad-free experience.

Dictionary.com offers a free dictionary through its website and free Android and iOS apps. It used to offer paid-for mobile apps, called Dictionary.com Pro, that let users set up accounts, use the app without ads, and enabled other features (like grammar tips and science and rhyming dictionaries) that are gone now. Dictionary.com’s premium apps also let people download an offline dictionary (its free apps used to let you buy a downloadable dictionary as a one-time purchase), but offline the dictionaries aren’t available anymore.

Accounts axed abruptly

About a year ago, claims of Dictionary.com’s apps being buggy surfaced online. We also found at least one person claiming that they were unable to buy an ad-free upgrade at that time.

Reports of Dictionary.com accounts being deleted and the apps not working as expected, and with much of its content removed, started appearing online about two months ago. Users reported being unable to log in and access premium features, like saved words. Soon after, Dictionary.com’s premium apps were removed from Google Play and Apple’s App Store. The premium version was available for download for $6 as recently as March 23, per the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

A Reddit user who described themselves as a premium customer said they reached out to Dictionary.com’s support email and received a response saying, in part:

After careful consideration, user accounts within the Dictionary.com app have been discontinued. As a result, users are no longer able to sign in to their accounts, and any saved word lists are no longer available.

Unfortunately, since the coding technology that was used in the previous app version is different from what is used in the new app, it is not possible to recover word lists.

This change was part of our recent app update to improve the design, speed, and functionality of the Dictionary.com app. While we understand that this changes how you use Dictionary.com, we are hopeful that you will find the overall improvements provide faster search, additional content, and a better design.

Another person online supposedly received a similar message. Some people said they were unable to get in contact with Dictionary.com. Ars Technica tried contacting Dictionary.com through multiple messages to its support team, the press office of parent company IXL Learning, and The Dictionary Media Group, which IXL launched after acquiring Dictionary.com in 2024 and includes websites like Vocabulary.com, Multiplication.com, and HomeschoolMath.net. We didn’t receive any response.

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Gmail’s new subscription management is here to declutter your inbox

Apps, email, Gmail, Google, Tech / Mike M. / July 9, 2025

With decades of online life behind us, many people are using years-old email addresses. Those inboxes are probably packed with subscriptions you’ve picked up over the years, and you probably don’t need all of them. Gmail is going to make it easier to manage them with a new feature rolling out on mobile and web. Google’s existing unsubscribe prompts are evolving into a one-stop shop for all your subscription management needs, a feature that has been in the works for a weirdly long time.

The pitch is simple: The aptly named “Manage subscriptions” feature will list all the emails to which you are currently subscribed—newsletters, promotions, updates for products you no longer use, and more. With a tap, you’ll never see them again. This feature in Gmail will be accessible in the navigation drawer, a UI feature that is increasingly rare in Google’s apps but is essential to managing inboxes and labels in Gmail. Down near the bottom, you’ll soon see the new Manage subscriptions item.

The page will list all email subscriptions with an unsubscribe button. If you’re not sure about letting a newsletter or deal alert remain, you can select the subscription to see all recent messages from that sender. As long as a sender supports Google’s recommended one-click unsubscribe, all you have to do is tap the Unsubscribe button, and you’ll be done. Some senders will redirect you to a website to unsubscribe, but Gmail has a “Block instead” option in those cases.

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Provider of covert surveillance app spills passwords for 62,000 users

android, Apps, Biz & IT, privacy, Security, surveillance / Mike M. / July 4, 2025

The maker of a phone app that is advertised as providing a stealthy means for monitoring all activities on an Android device spilled email addresses, plain-text passwords, and other sensitive data belonging to 62,000 users, a researcher discovered recently.

A security flaw in the app, branded Catwatchful, allowed researcher Eric Daigle to download a trove of sensitive data, which belonged to account holders who used the covert app to monitor phones. The leak, made possible by a SQL injection vulnerability, allowed anyone who exploited it to access the accounts and all data stored in them.

Unstoppable

Catwatchful creators emphasize the app’s stealth and security. While the promoters claim the app is legal and intended for parents monitoring their children’s online activities, the emphasis on stealth has raised concerns that it’s being aimed at people with other agendas.

“Catwatchful is invisible,” a page promoting the app says. “It cannot be detected. It cannot be uninstalled. It cannot be stopped. It cannot be closed. Only you can access the information it collects.”

The promoters go on to say users “can monitor a phone without [owners] knowing with mobile phone monitoring software. The app is invisible and undetectable on the phone. It works in a hidden and stealth mode.”

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Another one for the graveyard: Google to kill Instant Apps in December

android, Apps, Google, Tech / Mike M. / June 13, 2025

But that was then, and this is now. Today, an increasing number of mobile apps are functionally identical to the mobile websites they are intended to replace, and developer uptake of Instant Apps was minimal. Even in 2017, loading an app instead of a website had limited utility. As a result, most of us probably only encountered Instant Apps a handful of times in all the years it was an option for developers.

To use the feature, which was delivered to virtually all Android devices by Google Play Services, developers had to create a special “instant” version of their app that was under 15MB. The additional legwork to get an app in front of a subset of new users meant this was always going to be a steep climb, and Google struggles to incentivize developers to adopt new features. Plus, there’s no way to cram in generative AI! So it’s not a shock to see Google retiring the feature.

This feature is currently listed in the collection of Google services in your phone settings as “Google Play Instant.” Unfortunately, there aren’t many examples still available if you’re curious about what Instant Apps were like—the Finnish publisher Ilta-Sanomat is one of the few still offering it. Make sure the settings toggle for Instant Apps is on if you want a little dose of nostalgia.

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Adobe finally releases Photoshop for Android, and it’s free (for now)

adobe, Adobe Photoshop, android, Apps, Google, smartphones, Tech / Mike M. / June 3, 2025

Adobe has spent years releasing mobile apps that aren’t Photoshop, and now it’s finally giving people what they want. Yes, real Photoshop. After releasing a mobile version of Photoshop on iPhone earlier this year, the promised Android release has finally arrived. You can download it right now in beta, and it’s free to use for the duration of the beta period.

The mobile app includes a reasonably broad selection of tools from the desktop version of Adobe’s iconic image editor, including masks, clone stamp, layers, transformations, cropping, and an array of generative AI tools. The app looks rather barebones when you first start using it, but the toolbar surfaces features as you select areas and manipulate layers.

Depending on how you count, this is Adobe’s third attempt to do Photoshop on phones. So far, it appears to be the most comprehensive, though. It’s much more capable than Photoshop Express or the ancient Photoshop Touch app, which Adobe unpublished almost a decade ago. If you’re not familiar with the ins and outs of Photoshop, the new app comes with a robust collection of tutorials—just tap the light bulb icon to peruse them.

Photoshop on Android makes a big deal about Adobe’s generative AI features, which let you easily select subjects or backgrounds, remove objects, and insert new content based on a text prompt. This works about as well as the desktop version of Photoshop because it’s relying on the same cloud service to do the heavy lifting. This would have been impressive to see in a mobile app a year ago, but OEM features like Google’s Magic Editor have since become more widespread.

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Google teases NotebookLM app in the Play Store ahead of I/O release

AI, Apps, Google, google notebookLM, Tech / 9u50fv / May 2, 2025

After several years of escalating AI hysteria, we are all familiar with Google’s desire to put Gemini in every one of its products. That can be annoying, but NotebookLM is not—this one actually works. NotebookLM, which helps you parse documents, videos, and more using Google’s advanced AI models, has been available on the web since 2023, but Google recently confirmed it would finally get an Android app. You can get a look at the app now, but it’s not yet available to install.

Until now, NotebookLM was only a website. You can visit it on your phone, but the interface is clunky compared to the desktop version. The arrival of the mobile app will change that. Google said it plans to release the app at Google I/O in late May, but the listing is live in the Play Store early. You can pre-register to be notified when the download is live, but you’ll have to tide yourself over with the screenshots for the time being.

NotebookLM relies on the same underlying technology as Google’s other chatbots and AI projects, but instead of a general purpose robot, NotebookLM is only concerned with the documents you upload. It can assimilate text files, websites, and videos, including multiple files and source types for a single agent. It has a hefty context window of 500,000 tokens and supports document uploads as large as 200MB. Google says this creates a queryable “AI expert” that can answer detailed questions and brainstorm ideas based on the source data.

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Google Messages can now blur unwanted nudes, remind people not to send them

Apps, Google, messaging, Tech / 9u50fv / April 22, 2025

Google announced last year that it would deploy safety tools in Google Messages to help users avoid unwanted nudes by automatically blurring the content. Now, that feature is finally beginning to roll out. Spicy image-blurring may be enabled by default on some devices, but others will need to turn it on manually. If you don’t see the option yet, don’t fret. Sensitive Content Warnings will arrive on most of the world’s Android phones soon enough.

If you’re an adult using an unrestricted phone, Sensitive Content Warnings will be disabled by default. For teenagers using unsupervised phones, the feature is enabled but can be disabled in the Messages settings. On supervised kids’ phones, the feature is enabled and cannot be disabled on-device. Only the Family Link administrator can do that. For everyone else, the settings are available in the Messages app settings under Protection and Safety.

To make the feature sufficiently private, all the detection happens on the device. As a result, there was some consternation among Android users when the necessary components began rolling out over the last few months. For people who carefully control the software installed on their mobile devices, the sudden appearance of a package called SafetyCore was an affront to the sanctity of their phones. While you can remove the app (it’s listed under “Android System SafetyCore”), it doesn’t take up much space and won’t be active unless you enable Sensitive Content Warnings.

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Chrome’s new dynamic bottom bar gives websites a little more room to breathe

Apps, chrome, Google, Tech / 9u50fv / April 12, 2025

The Internet might look a bit different on Android soon. Last month, Google announced its intent to make Chrome for Android a more immersive experience by hiding the navigation bar background. The promised edge-to-edge update is now rolling out to devices on Chrome version 135, giving you a touch more screen real estate. However, some websites may also be a bit harder to use.

Moving from button to gesture navigation reduced the amount of screen real estate devoted to the system UI, which leaves more room for apps. Google’s move to a “dynamic bottom bar” in Chrome creates even more space for web content. When this feature shows up, the pages you visit will be able to draw all the way to the bottom of the screen instead of stopping at the navigation area, which Google calls the “chin.”

As you scroll down a page, Chrome hides the address bar. With the addition of the dynamic bottom bar, the chin also vanishes. The gesture handle itself remains visible, shifting between white and black based on what is immediately behind it to maintain visibility. Unfortunately, this feature will not work if you have chosen to stick with the classic three-button navigation option.

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“Nightmare” Zipcar outage is a warning against complete app dependency

Apps, outage, Software, Tech, Zipcar / Beth Washington / December 3, 2024

Zipcar’s rep declined to specify how many people were affected by the outage.

A warning against total app reliance

Zipcar’s app problems have not only cost it money but also traumatized some users who may think twice before using Zipcar again. The convenience of using apps to control physical products only exists if said apps are functioning and prepared for high-volume time periods, such as Thanksgiving weekend.

Despite Zipcar’s claims of a “small percentage” of users being affected, the company’s customer support system seemed overwhelmed. Long wait times coupled with misinformation regarding things like fees make already perturbed customers feel more deserted.

Those are the pitfalls of completely relying on apps for basic functionality. There was a time when Zipcar members automatically received physical “Zipcards” for opening doors. Now, they’re not really advertised, and users have to request one.

Zipcars also used to include keys inside of locked cars more frequently. Reducing these physical aspects may have saved the company money but effectively put all of Zipcar’s eggs in one basket.

Nightmarish app problems like the one Zipcar experienced can be a deal-breaker. Just look at Sonos, whose botched app update is costing it millions. Further, turning something like car rentals into a virtually app-only service is a risky endeavor that can quickly overcomplicate simple tasks. Some New Zealand gas stations were out of luck earlier this year, for example, when a Leap Day glitch caused payment processing software to stop working. Gas stations that needed apps for payments weren’t able to make sales, and drivers were inconvenienced.

Apps can simplify and streamline while delivering ingenuity. But that doesn’t mean traditional, app-free measures should be eliminated as backups.

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