A Xiaomi developer has submitted a patch to the Android Open Source Project that should prevent users from extracting installed apps as APK files. However, Google does not agree with such a change.
Credits: PixabayThe ability to install apps via APK files on Android is a great feature for developers and users, who can experience new app updates easily and quickly, as is possible to extract the APK file of an application and install it on another smartphone.
However, the Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi recently objected to this measure. Indeed, Guowei Du, an employee of Xiaomi, suggested the change to the Android source code, noting that “the .apk files may contain confidential data, so we should not allow others to restore them”. Fortunately, Google is not of the same opinion.
Google quickly rejected Xiaomi’s proposal Indeed, Google developers claim that the contents of a .apk should not be kept secret, and those who really want to extract a .apk can always use a debug build of Android to get it. There are also many sites where .apk files can be downloaded. Even if Xiaomi’s change was accepted, users would have had no trouble getting around the new restrictions† Although Xiaomi wants to stop extracting APK files, it doesn’t mean they will stop.
Android smartphone users can still extract and redistribute APK files until Google says otherwise However, you should be careful and always download APKs from trusted sites as they may contain malware. This is also the reason why Google will make the installation of APKs more complicated with its new Android 13 version of its operating system. Apple, for its part, simply refuses to allow iPhone users to install applications outside of the App Store, as it sees sideloading as a danger. It is for this reason that Apple had explained in a document why iOS was more secure than Android.
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