Yes! You read the title of this post correctly. It was not in any way a mistake. Google is finally taking action to affirm their stance against rooted Android devices. Google is denying users who have rooted their Android phones the access to install some Apps directly from PlayStore.
Some days back, Android Authoity reported that some users were unable to download and install the Netflix application from Google PlayStore.
While many users could not fathom the reason behind the difficulty encountered on installing the App to their devices, Android Authority suggested that it could be partly due to “Netflix’s adoption of the Google’s Widevine DRM protection”. Mind you, not only Netflix have adopted this protection, some other apps have too.
The Google Widevine DRM protection is a useful tool which also gives developers the power to choose whether their apps are available for download by rooted users on the PlayStore or not.
Google’s motive behind this move isn’t fully known at the moment but several opinions have been made. Some experts have opined that Google’s PlayStore ban on rooted device is a measure to further tighten security.
However, despite this ban, users can still download and install applications that they were denied access of. How? If you were by chance unable to install any application from PlayStore, you can simply visit any third-party website and download the APK file of the application. Afterwards, locate the download APK file in your file manager and install directly.
This move by Google will begin to leave doubts in the minds of Android users planning to root their devices.
As a side note, rooting an Android smartphone opens numerous doors of accessibility, customization, removing in-built bloatware, and so on. It opens your eye to a whole new world of smartphone experience. I doubt rooted users would want to trade this degree of freedom for access to some Apps on Playstore.
