Google Play makes weird decision to ban call-recording apps

 Google has announced a weird coverage that efficiently bans call-recording apps from the play Store. As part of Google's crackdown on apps that use android's accessibility APIs for non-accessibility motives, google says name recording is now not allowed thru the accessibility APIs. Because the accessibility APIs are the only way for 1/3-party apps to document calls on android, name-recording apps are dead on google play.

NLL apps—the developer of a name-recording phone app with a million downloads at the play shop—has been monitoring the policy exchange. The google play help web page lays down the brand new regulation, saying: "the accessibility a API is not designed and can not be asked for faraway call audio recording. Google's ban might be on 11, the first day of google I/O, oddly.

There's no clean motive why google is banning call recording from the play Store. Many jurisdictions require the consent of 1 or greater individuals of a call which will start recording, however when you meet that requirement, recording is completely criminal and beneficial. The google recorder app is a product constructed entirely around the usefulness of recording conversations. Google would not appear to have a trouble with call recording with regards to its very own apps, either—the google smartphone app on pixel phones supports call recording in a few international locations. Google just would not offer the right APIs to allow 3rd Party app developers compete with it on this market, and now it's shutting down their tried workarounds.

The android accessibility APIs are extremely powerful and permit all sorts of manipulate over the android OS. Google has said inside the beyond it would decide on if the accessibility APIs had been handiest used by apps supposed for people with disabilities, but due to the fact no non-accessibility options exist for the various supported features, many power-person apps plug into the accessibility APIs anyway. Google has stated it desires to crack down on non-accessibility accessibility apps however also that it wanted to don't forget "responsible and innovative makes use of of accessibility offerings."

Inside the beyond, google has weened apps off the accessibility APIs with the aid of helping a specific use case with a more scoped set of official APIs, and it looks as if that become the plan at one factor for call recording, however google sooner or later deserted those plans. In 2020, the second android eleven developer preview briefly delivered an "access_call_audio" API for recording, however this API in no way made it right into a very last release of android. It looks as if going via with this would were an affordable strategy: first guide call recording with a proper API, then a few years later block apps from using the accessibility API for call recording. Instead, the manner google went approximately it efficiently bans all name-recording apps from the play shop. The best information is, you could continually sideload!

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