Fyi mine was under "apps from unverified developers" in developer options.

It must be stated: Google is malicious! The language used here and elsewhere conceals the fact that: a) Google is a for-profit company with no morals (they work with militaries and surveillance-agencies to kill); b) they operate in a monopolistic manner; c) they're eroding control of your personal-property.

This is just another move by Google to consolidate control over the AOSP. It doesn't matter that this convoluted sequence can temporarily 'bypass' Google's wishes--in fact I would state this is clearly worse. Removing the ability to install non-Google-endorsed software on your own private-property could be illegal. This is perhaps the only thing they could do to prevent lawsuits, only they've made it so asininely convoluted that only 0.01% will actually complete the process that it should be illegal monopolistic behaviour. American courts have absolutely failed everyone by allowing this rampant malicious behaviour to be the norm in American-software.

Google's Android already created friction for installing software outside their ecosystem. There is no justification for this behaviour. It cannot be defended. Stop following their market-speak. This is belligerent and malicious behaviour!

To put a finer point on this: Google is charging a recurring fee to anyone who wants to distribute software to phones--Android-phones. If you have a need to distribute software to your organisation's mobile-computers you now need to pay a recurring fee to Google, or... jump on one foot, spin around, touch the ground and hope Google doesn't bully you further. Oh, and you have to do this dance personally for all 438 mobile-computers you manage. The absurdity of the situation is appalling! The fact you have users defending--and that is what these sort of responses are doing: defending one of the most profitable companies in existence--"oh, just do the dance now so it won't inconvenience you later".

The "escape hatch" is down that corridor, to the left, left, right, left, left, up, right & behind the book-case; take the stairs up, down five flights; depart at Washington D.C. and on arrival you'll see a button. Press it. It might not do anything.

--Google

Thank you. Truly insane they added all those steps to the process.

Mine was also named "Apps from unverified developers". However, I'm not sure it actually got applied when I did it just now. Pressing on that quickly flashed something on the screen, but it disappeared before I could see what it was. I didn't get to flip a toggle nor enter the PIN. Pressing "Apps from unverified developers" again doesn't do anything now (not even the quick flash from the first time).

Appreciate any help!

EDIT: I restarted my phone just in case it did work, and checked again, the option is just gone. I'm unsure if this means something went wrong, or if it means it did work, and I'm currently in the 24 hour cooldown period.

[Angry ISO-8601 noises]

F-Droid and Obtanium are going away for normal android users.

It is deliberately difficult, and this whole thing is absolutely about Google making more money by tightening control of the ecosystem, not about security.

A nice summary from https://keepandroidopen.org/

Nine steps, 24-hour wait, buried in Developer Options, delivered through a proprietary service that Google can revoke whenever they want. That's not sideloading. That's a deterrence mechanism built to ensure almost nobody completes it. And since it runs through Play Services rather than the OS, Google can tighten or kill it silently

I can't believe the Lemmyverse let me believe that F-Droid and Obtanium were effectively going away for normal Android users

I mean, that was Google's original plan, until the backlash led them to introduce this option for "advanced users"

Yeah, I'm also planning to switch to PostmarketOS. I was running Ubuntu Touch when my carrier changed things to where my phone didn't work as a phone without VoLTE. Ubuntu Touch doesn't support VoLTE on my Pixel 3a so I reluctantly switched to stock.

It wasn't until after I switched to stock firmware that I found out that PostmarketOS has experimental support for VoLTE on my device. I'm hoping "experimental" is good enough for my purposes, but we'll see when I get around to doing it.

You have my respect!

I'm assuming, then, though, that you do have a computer, in order to receive emails and such. Too much in society is attached to having other stuff: mailing address, email, phone number, two factor authentication, running privacy violating software on Windows, etc...

If you've been doing it since the 80s, have there been eras that have really challenged your desire or whatever to not have a mobile phone?

Do you think life would be much easier if you did have a mobile phone?

Why do you not have a mobile phone?

Do you think other or younger people should follow your lead?

I'm so curious about your story. I've thought about it many times, and as much as I think the technology is super cool and amazing, I also really wish it wasn't all but legally required to participate in so many aspects of society. It makes me wonder where you're from and where you live and if you're American or not.

See: https://keepandroidopen.org/

TL;DR: it will get harder to distribute android apps to the majority of the users. You can still do whatever you want with your device, for now, if you go through all the new extra steps.

We need to pressure every tech reviewer to mention whether or not a phone model has an unlocked bootloader.