Re: Are Playstore app updates tested before release?

Arno Welzel wrote on Fri, 12 Jul 2024 15:37:14 +0200 :

Apps can just be published without any test at all. Google only checks
for known malicious elements with automated tests and blocks apps which
are considedered to be harmful.
But testing with real devices and different Android versions is still
the responsibility of the publisher. You may just have bad luck since
Xiaomi also implements their own UI including changing the behaviour of
the graphics output (e.g. custom "dark mode" even for apps which do not
support that etc.). Maybe this causes some problems with that game.
 
You can report this to the publisher - maybe they will provide an update
to fix this. However if no one ever reports issues like this, they will
never get fixed.

Arno and Andy know a lot more than I ever will about Android, so I will
defer to them - but there is on-device scanning also that Google does.

As I recall, every app that is installed, no matter how it's installed and
nor matter where it came from, is scanned by default upon installation.

This is, of course, with the default Google Play Store client settings,
even though the app may have nothing whatsoever to do with the Play Store.

In addition, once a day, by default, it's my understanding that Google
scans again every app on your device for malicious signatures.

We could dig up more if people are interested - although we've covered this
a few times in the past - so I'm confident those statements above are true.

But, as Arno mentioned also - these scans are only malware signature scans.