Google Play Safety Measures Coming To Android In 2025 

Google today previewed upcoming safety features coming to Google Play and Android apps in 2025.

Google Play Protect’s live threat detection already works to warn users about stalkerware (or collecting personal/sensitive data to monitor users without consent) by looking at an app’s activity patterns. It will be expanding to “target malicious applications that try to impersonate financial apps,” with Google looking for malicious apps that lay dormant or try to obscure their behavior.

These warnings (“Unsafe app found” notification) happen on-device (using Private Compute Core) and launched in November for the Pixel 6 and newer. 

Another focus for end users this year is making it “even harder for malicious actors to hide or trick users into harmful installs.” Google says its “most recent analysis found over 50 times more Android malware from Internet-sideloaded sources (like browsers and messaging apps) than on Google Play.” 

Users can also expect more Google Play badges, like “Verified” for VPNs, in additional app categories. 

The Play Integrity API will see “stronger protection for even more users” this year along with a way to “re-identify abusive and risky devices in a way that also preserves user privacy.” 

In fact, apps that use Play Integrity features to detect suspicious activity are seeing an 80% drop in unauthorized usage on average compared to other apps.

Developers will get more pre-review checks via Android Studio this year to help avoid common policy pitfalls.

Google also wants to improve its communication with developers with a new method through the Play Console and making the Google Play Developer Help Community available in Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and other languages. That website saw 2.7 million visits last year.

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