Sideloading

❗Article Status Notice: This Article is a stub

---

This article is underdeveloped, and needs additional work to meet the wiki's Content Guidelines and be in line with our Mission Statement for comprehensive coverage of consumer protection issues. Learn more ▼

Issues may include:

• This article needs to be expanded to provide meaningful information
• This article requires additional verifiable evidence to demonstrate systemic impact
• More documentation is needed to establish how this reflects broader consumer protection concerns
• The connection between individual incidents and company-wide practices needs to be better established
• The article is simply too short, and lacks sufficient content

How you can help:

• Add documented examples with verifiable sources
• Provide evidence of similar incidents affecting other consumers
• Include relevant company policies or communications that demonstrate systemic practices
• Link to credible reporting that covers these issues
• Flesh out the article with relevant information

This notice will be removed once the article is sufficiently developed. Once you believe the article is ready to have its notice removed, please visit the Moderator's noticeboard, or the Discord (join here) and post to the #appeals channel, or mention its status on the article's talk page.

Sideloading is the act of installing programs you chose on your computer. For example, Android is an open-source operating system and when it was bought by Google in 2005, Google built on top of the android framework. They built a software repository, the Google Play Store, and tried to normalize the idea that most mobile apps would be downloaded from their store. However, it was possible to enable downloading apps from outside of the Play Store by enabling this option in device settings.

On the contrary, some operating systems, such as Apple's iOS, do not allow sideloading. Apple App Store creates a monopoly in the market, letting them censor what programs may do. Without meaningful competition, monopoly providers often become complacent and lack incentive to maintain quality and innovation.

Therefore, the openness of Android has made it a good option for many developers and consumers to do with their devices as they see fit.

Google plans to restrict sideloading of Android apps. Google claims that this will increase security, however they have a history of allowing unsafe and low quality content on their platforms. It is unclear that moving to a single authority for trust will improve user experience on Android devices.