Android Developers Blog

Posted by Patrick Mutchler and Meghan Kelly , Android Security & Privacy Team Helping Android app developers build secure apps, free of known vulnerabilities, means helping the overall ecosystem thrive. This is why we launched the Application Security Improvement Program five years ago, and why we're still so invested in its success today. What the Android Security Improvement Program does When an app is submitted to the Google Play store, we scan it to determine if a variety of vulnerabilities are present. If we find something concerning, we flag it to the developer and then help them to remedy the situation. Think of it like a routine physical. If there are no problems, the app runs through our normal tests and continues on the process to being published in the Play Store. If there is a problem, however, we provide a diagnosis and next steps to get back to healthy form. Over its lifetime, the program has helped more than 300,000 developers to fix more than 1,000,000 apps on ...

Posted by Rahul Mishra and Tom Watkins, Android Security & Privacy Team In 2018, Google Play Protect made Android devices running Google Play some of the most secure smartphones available, scanning over 50 billion apps everyday for harmful behaviour. Android devices can genuinely improve people's lives through our accessibility features, Google Assistant, digital wellbeing, Family Link, and more — but we can only do this if they are safe and secure enough to earn users' long term trust. This is Google Play Protect's charter and we're encouraged by this past year's advancements. Google Play Protect, a refresher Google Play Protect is the technology we use to ensure that any device shipping with the Google Play Store is secured against potentially harmful applications (PHA). It is made up of a giant backend scanning engine to aid our analysts in sourcing and vetting applications made available on the Play Store, and built-in protection that scans apps on users...

Posted by Edward Cunningham, Android Security & Privacy Team In a previous blog we described how API behavior changes advance the security and privacy protections of Android, and include user experience improvements that prevent apps from accidentally overusing resources like battery and memory. Since November 2018, all app updates on Google Play have been required to target API level 26 (Android 8.0) or higher. Thanks to the efforts of thousands of app developers, Android users now enjoy more apps using modern APIs than ever before, bringing significant security and privacy benefits. For example, during 2018 over 150,000 apps added support for runtime permissions, giving users granular control over the data they share. Today we're providing more information about the Google Play requirements for 2019, and announcing some changes that affect apps distributed via other stores. Google Play requirements for 2019 In order to provide users with the best Android experience possible,...

Posted by Andrew Ahn, Product Manager, Google Play Google Play is committed to providing a secure and safe platform for billions of Android users on their journey discovering and experiencing the apps they love and enjoy. To deliver against this commitment, we worked last year to improve our abuse detection technologies and systems, and significantly increased our team of product managers, engineers, policy experts, and operations leaders to fight against bad actors. In 2018, we introduced a series of new policies to protect users from new abuse trends, detected and removed malicious developers faster, and stopped more malicious apps from entering the Google Play Store than ever before. The number of rejected app submissions increased by more than 55 percent, and we increased app suspensions by more than 66 percent. These increases can be attributed to our continued efforts to tighten policies to reduce the number of harmful apps on the Play Store, as well as our investments in automat...

Posted by Dave Smith , Developer Advocate for IoT Over the past year, Google has worked closely with partners to create consumer products powered by Android Things with the Google Assistant built-in. Given the successes we have seen with our partners in smart speakers and smart displays, we are refocusing Android Things as a platform for OEM partners to build devices in those categories moving forward. Therefore, support for production System on Modules (SoMs) based on NXP, Qualcomm, and MediaTek hardware will not be made available through the public developer platform at this time. Android Things continues to be a platform for experimenting with and building smart, connected devices using the Android Things SDK on top of popular hardware like the NXP i.MX7D and Raspberry Pi 3B. System images for these boards will remain available through the Android Things console where developers can create new builds and push app updates for up to 100 devices for non-commercial use. We remain dedi...