Google, the company that owns Android, has decided for security reasons that applications that are not up to date stop appearing to users. This change will apply from November, and we tell you all the details of it.
Google is willing to improve its operating system, Android, and this time it has decided to tighten the minimum requirements for applications in its Play Store app store.
The company that owns Android has warned on its official blog that as of November 1, those applications that are not adapted to the Android 11 API they will be hidden and their installation will be blockedthough not for all users.
This change seeks that all applications are minimally compatible with the new security features that are added each year to Android, in order to take advantage of the maximum number of available functions offered by the system.
To be more exact, Google’s intention, as they explain to us, is that the applications will have to be adapted to the Android API of at least, two years prior to the latest Android version available.
Since November of last year, Google force new apps and updates to be at least at the API level of the Android version one year prior to the latest available.
It should be noted that the fact that an application or game is optimized for an API of a recent version of Android does not remove that it is not compatible with previous versions of Androidif not, it makes use of everything available up to the API that the application supports.
If everything goes according to plan, Android 13 will be officially available in August, so applications should, by default, adapt to the API of this version from November 1.
According to this new requirements system, the supported APIs will be Android 11, Android 12, and Android 13 (default) and all of the above would not comply with the regulations. Once Android 14 comes out next year, the same count as of November 1, only the Android 12 API is compatible, Android 13 and by default it will become Android 14.
This means that if we assume that it is November 1, 2022 and Android 13 has already been released, a version of which great news is expected, if an application has support for the Android 11 API, and it is not updated for any reason, it will be will show users until November 1, 2023, when Android 14 comes out.
This it will only affect new users who are going to download an outdated and outdated application for the first time. In the event that you had already downloaded the application or game before, you can continue doing so, but those that do not meet the requirements and have not been installed will not appear in the Play Store search engine.
According to what they tell us, most of the games and applications that are available in the Google Play Store are already adapted to the latest versions of Androidfor which we should not worry, since it will affect a small number of them.
We are happy to see that Google is taking this section so seriously and that it seeks to improve the overall quality of its operating system starting with Android 13.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism