MAYBE operating systems shouldn't have gatekeepers which can deny access to billions of customers for any and no reason at all. Apple and Google are WELL past due for regulation in this space. The fact that we cannot download and install software from the internet onto our phones JUST like we can do with our computers is a symbol of our inept and ineffective politicians.
And before someone says "well akshully you can technically do it on Android," Google has been working tirelessly to make it as onerous as possible for both developers and customers. For example, users need to separately authorise each app (browser, files manager, alternative store, etc) to install an APK from outside the Play Store. Google also does background scans using "Play Protect" which will periodically delete apps Google doesn't approve of. This happened to me with SmartTubeNext. I have a dozen other ways Google ensures users are discouraged from stepping outside the Play Store.
And what should we do about apps' getting hacked, sending out malicious updates that get auto-updated and thereby infecting tens of millions or billions of phones simultaneously?
I'm not saying we have the perfect system but anything that slants the system towards "easier downloads" or "less gatekeeping" brings large, obvious risks. I don't see how regulation would address them.
2. still review apps uploaded to Google Play, but don't force users to use Google Play
If the concern is what if users use an alternate source for apps and those have viruses, then.... okay. If the user wants to stay with strictly Google-vetted apps, they can. If desired, you could have an option on setup that users could choose to select that would put the device in a restricted mode that can only use apps installed from Google Play.
But the motivation here isn't just security, it's control. Google doesn't want anyone to have an Android device that is independent of Google services.
If libraries didn't exist could not be created today. People tend to say that "it is impossible" when it actually only needs to be well organized.
Splitting git tech-monopolies it is a survival need. Or we do it, or we will end up with a collapsed society. Entities that spy on all citizens and gatekeep access to news and services are contrary to basic human rights and democracy.
People accidentally hurt themselves with kitchen knives every day. They are also very often used for violent crimes.
Clearly we need to regulate the kitchen knife industry more. There should be a central authority that sells authorized kitchen knives with at max 6cm length and all other knives should only be available to certified chefs.
Once we have outlawed the longer knives and strong restrictions on ordinary kitchen tools become normal we should just outlaw knives altogether. You can still hurt yourself with a short knife. Only chefs should ever be allowed to own such a dangerous tool. Just buy or order readily prepared food. Why would you do this weird nerd thing called cooking anyway? Just choose from the official list of allowed foods.
The idea that we have to prevent people from being in control of their own computers — that's what a smartphone is — is deeply dystopian and authoritarian.
How about treating people like adults for a start? How about starting public awareness campaigns about proper digital hygiene. Not everything has to be nanny state garbage.
At some point computers need to stop being treated as magical boxes that no reasonable person can learn how to use safely. We expect people who use cars to learn how to use them safely, we expect people who use lawnmowers to not stick their fingers in them. Computers have been a part of daily life for normies for decades at this point, it's infantilizing to suggest that average, non-tech savvy people can't learn to use (not necessarily build, repair, etc.) them properly and need to be protected from them.
People have to successfully get through a state exam in order to drive cars in first place, can be jailed, get fined when not driving them safely, or forbidden for life to ever drive again.
People that accidentality cut their fingers in lawnmowers due to lack of safety features are allowed to sue the lawnmower company.
What I would agree is that it is about time computing gets the same liability laws that the rest of the world already has in place and no EULAs that work around local laws should be considered valid in any form or shape.
The computer itself won't really do anything. But I'm sure suicides go up when people lose all their money, or get personal private details leaked, and so on.
We could force Google to operate its app review service independently. Users could use it and pay for it, or alternatives. Currently Google forces everyone to use their own mediocre service and pay for it without knowing exactly where and how much you pay.
I wonder if people would be happy replacing the "Google approves developers" system with a "government requires your ID and address on file so you can be held liable for your apps" system. I suspect not.
> "Apple and Google are WELL past due for regulation in this space."
There is major regulation in place already. EU's Digital Markets Act forces these OS gatekeepers to allow alternative app stores and external payment methods. It also prevents Apple from playing anti-competitive games with App Store rules, like banning hyperlinks within apps that could be used to allow the user to make a payment elsewhere.
The current US government won't do anything to follow suit, but hopefully a future one might.
> There is major regulation in place already. EU's Digital Markets Act forces these OS gatekeepers to allow alternative app stores
So does that mean:
1. People in the EU can continue to use F-Droid etc. exactly as they have in the past, permanently? No Google verification of developers needed?
2. People are free to install apps from any APK they choose?
The US government acts here in favour of a monopoly market. Trump violates free market principles; quite interesting how Trump works against core capitalistic means, in favour of personal corruption.
Your complaint about Android .apk install is... similar to unsigned software installs on Windows in some cases (not a great argument, I know, but the same as the vast majority of users would be used to).
As for SmartTube, their keys were compromised. Inconvenient, but it wasn't about hostility to self-installed applications.
Key compromise sucks and is hard to protect against. That said the Apple/Google app stores are also full of scams where people lose a lot of real money:
Web apps can't fully replace native apps. This would be a bandaid fix, we need a fully open ecosystem for apps, like what is available on PCs. Native apps can run offline, they can be much more deeply integrated into the OS (you can't have a web app Android launcher, for instance), and they have a performance overhead due to having more layers between them and the hardware, which is important for games or anything complex.
Web apps can run offline. Google could figure out web app android launchers if they wanted to. The performance overhead exists but is slight. It doesn't matter to 90+% of applications, including many games.
I have high hopes for the Rust UI ecosystem in this regard. It's implementing pretty much everything from scratch, which means that it should be able to support a standalone GUI ecosystem that doesn't depend on a system GUI toolkit being available (while also being able to target existing OS's).
Open Web Advocacy's goal is Chrome on all platforms, which just means the Play Store problem gets even worse. The moment OWA wins, the open web dies. These are people with a truly bad astroturfy goal, clothed in charitable nonprofit status.
Paradoxically, as long as WebKit is mandatory on iOS, the open web is safe: Websites have to build for a lowest common denominator standard instead of building for Chrome proprietary APIs.
Anyone can put up a PWA. The only org that hates this is Apple.
The complaint is about a shared resource, which would require governments to adopt open source policies and _pay_ for it just like they do the post office.
Security at its core comes down to trusting the supply chain that provides the software that runs on your hardware. There are many alternative secure supply chain models, but ultimately users often are incapable of making great choices on what is trustworthy. It does generally make sense that the OS vendor needs to play a key part in helping ensure trusted parties are involved in the supply chain.
Comparing phones to PCs isn't a great comparison because PCs don't have a great track record and the amount of personal data and ease of installing lots of apps is quite different. Of course the current arrangement is far from perfect, but acknowledging the problems it's trying to solve is an important step towards trying to find a solution that is better.
In the last month, I had to go through the review process twice, and twice I needed to contact them personally after waiting for 1 week of waiting. It did however helped, after every human contact I was reviewed within a few hours.
I got this explanation from them...
> We are currently experiencing a higher-than-normal amount of inquiries and have been unable to respond in the time frame that we would prefer. During these periods of high volume, the app review time will take longer than average, and we cannot currently provide a concrete timeline for when your specific app(s) will be finished with the process
I've had same experience. Brand new iOS apps are taking weeks. My latest all took 3 weeks to get reviewed and approved. Updates to existing apps are fast though (1-2 days).
Also, sometimes, apps will go in review and then just stay in that state for 3-4 days before approval. No idea why.
With Signal, the biggest issue we have is that review times are extremely inconsistent. Sometimes it's 4 hours, sometimes it's 5 days, and there's no visibility as to why. Our working theory is that there's automated and manual queues, and occasionally, for whatever reason, we fall into the manual queue. But when you work on an app that has weekly updates, randomly getting hit with a review time of several days really throws off your groove. And it can obviously be terrible for moments where you're fixing a critical issue.
Has it ever happened where your submission goes to review and then just sits in the "In Review" state for many days? I am talking 4-5 days? or sometimes longer than a week? And then it gets approved?
Team effort, but thank you!! I've just taken the next month and a half off to work on things full time. I'm excited!
The next update won't be huge, (Google required us to make all screens 'edge to edge'[0], which took up most of my time last month). I'm hoping for some solid improvements now that's out the way, once the release pipeline has returned to normal.
Feel free to get in touch if you fancy contributing.
If you can get your agent of choice to run up the app in an emulator and navigate the whole thing taking screenshots then tasks like edge-to-edge can be pretty hands off.
The way I did it was to firstly get accessibility identifiers on everything. Then have it record everything I do on an emulator to navigate the entire app. Then left it for a while to work out how to actually use the app via the emulator. Once you have this sort of baseline. A lot of changes are really quite pleasant. I often ask for an HTML gallery of screenshots covering a few device sizes as the step before I bother running it on a device myself.
We use Roborazzi[0], which is an excellent screenshot library, but:
* We target minSdk 24
* We're still using XML views
* We target a large variety of form factors
* We have a lot of screens, and these have a lot of configuration options.
I really wish it was "point an agent at it, and walk away", but many screens ended up being hours of iteration with Fable driving my phone/an emulator to produce an acceptable outcome.
Given that my Pixel 9 Pro has system screens which are still broken under edge to edge, it's not an easy change, and takes up time which could have been going towards feature development.
If you know how many get rich quick guru online are teaching people vibes code and submit apps and faceshift to other apps later, you won’t be surprised the App Store model is no longer sustainable.
I'm partly to blame. I accidentally ran an illegal unregulated money transference service over Google Play.
It let users cash out their Google Play Credits for real cash, which I automatically wired them.
Someone then hacked in to a major bookstore chain, stole piles of Google Play Gift cards, activated them using their access, and used my app to get cash for them.
Likely, the whole thing blew up on me before I got in serious trouble, rightfully so, and the app was removed by Google, then an investigation followed. A ton of copycat apps popped up immediately after, then a few months months later Google announced their app review process.
Some reviews are clearly automated, some get a light human review, and some involve a human really looking hard. New apps seem to get a more rigorous human review for their first 2-4 submissions. Or at least humans looking over automated test screenshots etc. One reviewer apparently only looked at screenshots because they missed something that would be blindingly obvious on the prior screen if they did it themselves.
The explosion in LLM app development has clearly created a bottleneck at the human review steps. Not only delays but much more “dumb” rejections from likely over-stressed humans.
FWIW, this has not been my experience. Google Play usually approves within 24 hours for me still. Apple has been taking over a week though.
When Shopify announced their shift from React Native, this is actually what was on top of mind for me. Week+ delays for critical bugfixes is insane. Being able to patch things with OTA updates is tablestakes at this point.
Strong argument in favor of web vs native apps. If you need bluetooth on iOS checkout the web bluetooth iOS safari extension i've been working on recently: https://beacio.com
Yes, a truly Open Web is the solution that we need. It already works everywhere with a single codebase, and is more secure and private than native apps.
But Apple prevents that by forcing all browsers to use terrible WebKit on iOS.
The Google Play review process has been slower and more painful than the App Store review process for 5+ years at this point. At least you get to communicate with real people at Apple; it’s all bot-driven with Google.
Yeap latest CoMaps update took ~16 days to review (the longest wait for us so far) and two support tickets (submitted first after ~9 days and got "we have expedited it", 5 days later still in review, so submitted one more ticket).
Before that we had a hotfix update (a very small change) and still it took longer than a week and a support ticket (after which it had been approved in a day)...
Part of the value of F-Droid is the curated distribution model that hopefully catches the worst behaving developers that think they have a god given right to your data though.
We push updates for our app pretty frequently and they've been passing review in an average time of 1 hour (around 7 updates in the last 60 days). Hope it stays that way.
Not sure how it works behind the scene, but our app (present on the store since 2018) is taking a couple hours at best with Google, and usually less than 24h with Apple.
Very much likely an automated triage based on code change or complexity.
I believe the App Store has switched to automated reviews, at least for updates. I've had my app updates approved in <1h on a regular basis starting this summer.
From what I was able to see from the outside, App Store has had semi-automated reviews for updates in basically forever (+ some random spot checks), presumably based on some introspection that only triggers a human review if a new system API was used.
On the flip side, googles release infra provides much more functionality for apps that already has scale. I wish apple were more production oriented too.
Apple's App Review has also been slipping over the past few months. I have multiple apps that have taken days, up to a week to be approved.
What's most galling is that if you use CapacitorJS or similar you can ship app updates instantly to your users but if you write native first-class OS citizen apps you are penalized.
There is nothing quite so annoying as having a fix for a bug people are running into and have zero control over when it will get out to them.
Everyone that ingests code is seeing an order of magnitude more of it thanks to LLMs, even existing apps are producing more updates. It's the same sort of thing github keeps failing to keep up with.
For all the complaining about Apple's store, the Play Store has always been worse imo. You can't even release an app without first doing a beta test with at least a dozen people.
> You can't even release an app without first doing a beta test with at least a dozen people.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you are saying here but less than a month ago I released a brand new app with no beta period, direct to production (white labeled app, which is why I didn't need a beta)
I'm just working on my first app (thanks to AI...) and if you have a new dev account created sometime after 2023 they are making you do a 12 person, 14 day beta run before anything else occurs, apparently.
Same happened to me yesterday, I published a new app and it was reviewed and published within a few hours without any beta testing. but I think this is why I see people ready to buy old playstore accounts for real money, maybe this only affects new accounts
For new accounts yes, for older accounts it's much faster in my experience.
Apple has it's own issues, they often just answer with a random question so they can kick the review down the line. "Are you sure this is your pricing?" "Can you confifrm you have not selected that country" and then you have to wait another 2 days.
TFA is a post from an established developer and showing a screenshot for the submission of an update to a longstanding app (Conversations XMPP chat client).
And before someone says "well akshully you can technically do it on Android," Google has been working tirelessly to make it as onerous as possible for both developers and customers. For example, users need to separately authorise each app (browser, files manager, alternative store, etc) to install an APK from outside the Play Store. Google also does background scans using "Play Protect" which will periodically delete apps Google doesn't approve of. This happened to me with SmartTubeNext. I have a dozen other ways Google ensures users are discouraged from stepping outside the Play Store.
I'm not saying we have the perfect system but anything that slants the system towards "easier downloads" or "less gatekeeping" brings large, obvious risks. I don't see how regulation would address them.
1. don't force auto-updates
2. still review apps uploaded to Google Play, but don't force users to use Google Play
If the concern is what if users use an alternate source for apps and those have viruses, then.... okay. If the user wants to stay with strictly Google-vetted apps, they can. If desired, you could have an option on setup that users could choose to select that would put the device in a restricted mode that can only use apps installed from Google Play.
But the motivation here isn't just security, it's control. Google doesn't want anyone to have an Android device that is independent of Google services.
Splitting git tech-monopolies it is a survival need. Or we do it, or we will end up with a collapsed society. Entities that spy on all citizens and gatekeep access to news and services are contrary to basic human rights and democracy.
Clearly we need to regulate the kitchen knife industry more. There should be a central authority that sells authorized kitchen knives with at max 6cm length and all other knives should only be available to certified chefs.
Once we have outlawed the longer knives and strong restrictions on ordinary kitchen tools become normal we should just outlaw knives altogether. You can still hurt yourself with a short knife. Only chefs should ever be allowed to own such a dangerous tool. Just buy or order readily prepared food. Why would you do this weird nerd thing called cooking anyway? Just choose from the official list of allowed foods.
The idea that we have to prevent people from being in control of their own computers — that's what a smartphone is — is deeply dystopian and authoritarian.
People that accidentality cut their fingers in lawnmowers due to lack of safety features are allowed to sue the lawnmower company.
What I would agree is that it is about time computing gets the same liability laws that the rest of the world already has in place and no EULAs that work around local laws should be considered valid in any form or shape.
The computer itself won't really do anything. But I'm sure suicides go up when people lose all their money, or get personal private details leaked, and so on.
And, honestly, if you think the endpoint safety problem doesn't apply to you, you are part of the problem.
For free (like for real no microtransactions) that is different. For the rest, they already have that.
There is major regulation in place already. EU's Digital Markets Act forces these OS gatekeepers to allow alternative app stores and external payment methods. It also prevents Apple from playing anti-competitive games with App Store rules, like banning hyperlinks within apps that could be used to allow the user to make a payment elsewhere.
The current US government won't do anything to follow suit, but hopefully a future one might.
So does that mean:
1. People in the EU can continue to use F-Droid etc. exactly as they have in the past, permanently? No Google verification of developers needed? 2. People are free to install apps from any APK they choose?
As for SmartTube, their keys were compromised. Inconvenient, but it wasn't about hostility to self-installed applications.
Key compromise sucks and is hard to protect against. That said the Apple/Google app stores are also full of scams where people lose a lot of real money:
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/07/27/apple-app-store-fake-bi...
And yes, they also have apps besides games on their stores, and support external keyboards and mices.
Paradoxically, as long as WebKit is mandatory on iOS, the open web is safe: Websites have to build for a lowest common denominator standard instead of building for Chrome proprietary APIs.
1. to allow users of any device to choose whichever browser they want. If that's (for some masochistic reason) Safari, so be it.
2. Deeper OS integration
3. remove all artificial barriers
Anyone can put up a PWA. The only org that hates this is Apple.
The complaint is about a shared resource, which would require governments to adopt open source policies and _pay_ for it just like they do the post office.
But ya'll hate government, so here we are.
Comparing phones to PCs isn't a great comparison because PCs don't have a great track record and the amount of personal data and ease of installing lots of apps is quite different. Of course the current arrangement is far from perfect, but acknowledging the problems it's trying to solve is an important step towards trying to find a solution that is better.
I imagine nearly all the security review is automated scans, and not the source of the delays.
this position of privilege is what the OS vendor (google in this case) wants, because it spells profit.
I dont trust it.
The only trust i have is community trust. Piracy works on this trust, and it has worked for very long.
Their review process is advocated as usually within 24 hours (and heavily advertised by Apple as such, see https://developer.apple.com/distribute/app-review/) and it is taking now much longer.
In the last month, I had to go through the review process twice, and twice I needed to contact them personally after waiting for 1 week of waiting. It did however helped, after every human contact I was reviewed within a few hours.
I got this explanation from them...
> We are currently experiencing a higher-than-normal amount of inquiries and have been unable to respond in the time frame that we would prefer. During these periods of high volume, the app review time will take longer than average, and we cannot currently provide a concrete timeline for when your specific app(s) will be finished with the process
I'm guessing, AI slots invading the store.
Also, sometimes, apps will go in review and then just stay in that state for 3-4 days before approval. No idea why.
That's been happening randomly to me.
The next update won't be huge, (Google required us to make all screens 'edge to edge'[0], which took up most of my time last month). I'm hoping for some solid improvements now that's out the way, once the release pipeline has returned to normal.
Feel free to get in touch if you fancy contributing.
[0] https://developer.android.com/develop/ui/views/layout/edge-t...
The way I did it was to firstly get accessibility identifiers on everything. Then have it record everything I do on an emulator to navigate the entire app. Then left it for a while to work out how to actually use the app via the emulator. Once you have this sort of baseline. A lot of changes are really quite pleasant. I often ask for an HTML gallery of screenshots covering a few device sizes as the step before I bother running it on a device myself.
* We target minSdk 24
* We're still using XML views
* We target a large variety of form factors
* We have a lot of screens, and these have a lot of configuration options.
I really wish it was "point an agent at it, and walk away", but many screens ended up being hours of iteration with Fable driving my phone/an emulator to produce an acceptable outcome.
Given that my Pixel 9 Pro has system screens which are still broken under edge to edge, it's not an easy change, and takes up time which could have been going towards feature development.
[0] https://github.com/takahirom/roborazzi/
It let users cash out their Google Play Credits for real cash, which I automatically wired them.
Someone then hacked in to a major bookstore chain, stole piles of Google Play Gift cards, activated them using their access, and used my app to get cash for them.
Likely, the whole thing blew up on me before I got in serious trouble, rightfully so, and the app was removed by Google, then an investigation followed. A ton of copycat apps popped up immediately after, then a few months months later Google announced their app review process.
The explosion in LLM app development has clearly created a bottleneck at the human review steps. Not only delays but much more “dumb” rejections from likely over-stressed humans.
Was only 48-72 hours until this year, where it randomly jumped to 2 weeks or longer like it still is.
It's really frustrating, and makes it very difficult to develop with, let alone reliably release features across platforms.
When Shopify announced their shift from React Native, this is actually what was on top of mind for me. Week+ delays for critical bugfixes is insane. Being able to patch things with OTA updates is tablestakes at this point.
Endless more information on all of this at
https://infrequently.org/series/browser-choice-must-matter/
https://open-web-advocacy.org
FYI Samsung's is even worse.. 6-8 weeks. Hope you get it right the first time you submit your app.
I submitted Signage Sync (https://signagesync.app) last year, still on my third review. Fingers crossed:)
Before that we had a hotfix update (a very small change) and still it took longer than a week and a support ticket (after which it had been approved in a day)...
This is fight for big dogs now.
Google Play is regularly slower now than App Store Connect, which never used to be the case
Very much likely an automated triage based on code change or complexity.
On the flip side, googles release infra provides much more functionality for apps that already has scale. I wish apple were more production oriented too.
What's most galling is that if you use CapacitorJS or similar you can ship app updates instantly to your users but if you write native first-class OS citizen apps you are penalized.
There is nothing quite so annoying as having a fix for a bug people are running into and have zero control over when it will get out to them.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you are saying here but less than a month ago I released a brand new app with no beta period, direct to production (white labeled app, which is why I didn't need a beta)
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
Apple has it's own issues, they often just answer with a random question so they can kick the review down the line. "Are you sure this is your pricing?" "Can you confifrm you have not selected that country" and then you have to wait another 2 days.