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Google today announced a series of rule updates for apps distributed through the Play Store. The most impactful sees Google restricting most developers from seeing what Android apps are installed on your device.
As part of its ongoing work to restrict the use of high-risk / sensitive permissions, Google restricts which apps can use the QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES permission which “gives visibility into the inventory of apps installed on a given device”. This applies to apps that target API 30+ on devices running Android 11 and newer. The app was originally supposed to happen earlier, but delayed in light of COVID-19.
Play considers the inventory of apps installed on the device queried from a user’s device to be personal and sensitive information, and use of the permission is only allowed when the functionality or purpose of the primary user of your app requires wide visibility of the apps installed on the user’s device.
Applications that can continue to use permission include device scan, antivirus, file managers, and browsers. Developers are asked to “justify sufficiently why a less intrusive method of application visibility will not sufficiently activate the core functionality of your application, in accordance with the policy, in front of users”.
The visibility of the inventory of apps installed on a device should relate directly to the primary purpose or primary features that users access in your app.
Meanwhile, temporary exceptions will be given to dedicated banking and digital wallet apps so that they can “get wide visibility of apps installed only for security purposes.”
Invalid use cases explicitly referenced by Google today include:
- When the use of the authorization is not directly related to the main purpose of the application.
- This includes Peer-to-Peer (P2P) sharing. P2P must be the main objective of the application to be considered an authorized use.
- When the data is acquired for the purpose of sale.
- When the required task can be performed with a less wide application visibility method.
This policy of limiting access to the list of installed Android applications will come into effect on May 5, 2021.
Dylan Roussel contributed to this article.
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