{"id":289722,"date":"2026-07-15T06:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T10:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/15\/google-will-allow-third-party-app-stores-on-android-next-week\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T07:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T11:15:10","slug":"google-will-allow-third-party-app-stores-on-android-next-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/15\/google-will-allow-third-party-app-stores-on-android-next-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Will Allow Third-Party App Stores On Android Next Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google Will Allow Third-Party App Stores On Android Next Week<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2215452\/google-allow-third-party-app-stores-android-july-22\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-07-15 06:59:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.engadget.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Third-party app stores are coming to Android phones in the US soon. Google has launched a dedicated page for its\u00a0Play Catalog Access Program, announcing that\u00a0third-party US Android app stores will be able to access the Play store’s catalog of apps starting on July 22. It has also notified developers that the app and game listings they submitted to Google will be made available to external Android app stores, which will be able to offer their products to users.\u00a0<\/p>\n

App downloads through the third-party stores will still be completed through Google Play. The company’s service fees will also apply to apps downloaded through the external stores. Google said in its announcements that it’s implementing the change to comply with a court order, which came from its lengthy legal battle against Epic Games.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Google and Epic reached a settlement in November 2025, filing a modified version of the order US District Judge James Donato originally imposed on Google when it lost the case. In March, they revealed that their modified settlement involved the launch of a\u00a0“Registered App Stores” program.\u00a0 Third-party stores that register with the program “will have a more simplified installation flow” as sideloaded apps. In other words, they’ll be easier to install than unregistered stores, but they’ll still have to be sideloaded. Google is doing away with that plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to The Verge, the companies withdrew their modified settlement and will no longer argue it in court on July 16. With the\u00a0Play Catalog Access Program, third-party app stores will be downloadable from within Google Play itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We’ve agreed with Epic to withdraw our motion to modify the US Court’s injunction rather than prolonging this process which creates uncertainty for the ecosystem,”\u00a0Google spokesperson Dan Jackson told\u00a0The Verge.\u00a0“This allows us to focus on executing our recently announced global business model evolution to deliver greater app…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google Will Allow Third-Party App Stores On Android Next Week https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2215452\/google-allow-third-party-app-stores-android-july-22\/ Publish Date: 2026-07-15 06:59:00…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":289723,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/img\/gallery\/google-will-allow-third-party-app-stores-on-android-next-week\/l-intro-1784113111.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[70],"class_list":["post-289722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-android","tag-google"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289722"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289724,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289722\/revisions\/289724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}