Google recently announced that starting next year, Android will require all apps to be registered by verified developers for users to install them on their devices, i.e., all apps must be registered by a developer who has performed identity verification with Google or else they won’t be installable on certified Android devices. While users have asked us about this new requirement (specifically about how it affects Accrescent), we have been waiting to provide an official response until more information became available. Now, although we are still waiting on Google to provide more details on how the program will work in the context of third-party app stores, we have enough information to explain how it will affect Accrescent and how we are responding to the change.

Three months ago, we published an update on our development progress as well as our roadmap for the next three months and beyond. Now that those three months are over, we want to share the development progress we’ve made in that time, the impact it has on Accrescent going forward, and our next priorities as we shift into a new development cycle.

Progress update

App store API

The first task on our roadmap was developing and migrating to the directory service, or as we now refer to it, the app store API — a massive overhaul to how Accrescent finds apps, calculates app compatibility, fetches app information, and checks for updates. This task has been completed successfully, and while it took longer than expected to implement, we believe that taking the additional time necessary to implement it correctly has resulted in a robust solution that is well-designed and built to last long into Accrescent’s future.

In our recent post about Accrescent’s financial future and sustainability, we announced that to build trust and transparency with our community, we’d be publishing a follow-up blog post about what we’ve been working on lately and where we’ve been setting our sights, i.e., what our roadmap is. This is that post.

If you haven’t already read our post about Accrescent’s future, we highly recommend reading through it for context. The items planned on our long-term roadmap cannot be accomplished unless we reach our funding goal, so any time you spend reading or sharing our post is deeply appreciated.

Accrescent is a novel Android app store focused on security, privacy, and usability. We’ve been building Accrescent since 2021 to improve the security and freedom of everyday Android users by providing an alternative to Google Play which doesn’t compromise on technical excellence and protecting our users. Aligned with this mission, over 42,000 people worldwide trust Accrescent to deliver their apps safely. Now, we need your help to continue.

Accrescent has always been free to use because we believe security shouldn’t have to come at a price. We also understand we’re trusted by our users to secure a sensitive and significant portion of their lives — the apps they use — so we’ve built Accrescent transparently, making our code open source so others can run and inspect it as they please.