The assault on a user’s freedom to install whatever they want on what is supposed to be their phone continues. This time, it’s Samsung adding an additional blocker to users installing applications from outside the Play Store and its own mostly useless Galaxy Store.
Technically, Android already blocks sideloading by default at an operating system level. The permission that’s needed to silently install new apps without prompting the user,
INSTALL_PACKAGES, can only be granted to preinstalled app stores like the Google Play Store, and it’s granted automatically to apps that request it. The permission that most third-party app stores end up using,REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES, has to be granted explicitly by the user. Even then, Android will prompt the user every time an app with this permission tries to install a new app.Samsung’s Auto Blocker feature takes things a bit further. The feature, first introduced in One UI 6.0, fully blocks the installation of apps from unauthorized sources, even if those sources were granted the
↫ Mishaal RahmanREQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGESpermission.
I’m not entirely sure why Samsung felt the need to add an additional, Samsung-specific blocking mechanism, but at least for now, you can turn it off in the Settings application. This means that in order to install an application from outside of the Play Store and the Galaxy Store on brand new Samsung phones – the ones shipping with OneUI 6.1.1 – you need to both give the regular Android permission to do so, but also turn off this nag feature.
Having two variants of every application on your Samsung phone wasn’t enough, apparently.