Opening my weather app this morning I was greeted by this warning:
Google has announced that, starting in 2026/2027, all apps on certified Android devices will require the developer to submit personal identity details directly to Google. Since the developers of this app do not agree to this requirement, this app will no longer work on certified Android devices after that time.
It’s the first time I hear about this, seems to be about:
Cirrus app: Github
Was this a big thing I somehow missed? I hope more devs will follow suit.
End-users can use e.g. waydro.id to run Android apps on Linux.
I’m not deep into Android development, but I doubt it’s possible to just port an app without basically a complete rewrite. Android has an own layer on top of the JVM, called Zygote, and there’s presumably lots of system libraries which the Android apps implicitly depend on, for handling graphics and whatnot, which make tons of assumptions about running on an Android device.