Google Is Cracking Down On Third-Party Call Recording

Google’s been cleansing home within the Play Store to weed out dangerous apps, however it’s breaking some options within the course of. If you relied on a specific third-party app to do name recording, you may not have entry to it quickly.

As reported by Android Police, the developer of the well-known Call Record ACR app has posted to Reddit to air their grievances over an upcoming Play Store coverage change. Earlier this month, Google introduced that Android apps could be prohibited from utilizing the Accessibility API for name recording outdoors of its supposed use. That’s the precise API builders use to create these apps, although it wasn’t made for this objective. As the title states, it’s truly an accessibility function.

Google’s coverage for the Accessibility API is that it’s “not designed [for] and cannot be requested for remote call audio recording.” In different phrases, the apps presently utilizing it for this specific perform are technically going in opposition to its supposed use. The new guidelines go into impact on May 11, which is, very coincidentally, additionally the primary day of Google’s developer convention.

In a follow-up webinar for builders, Google expanded on its coverage adjustments. An worker moderating the occasion defined that the brand new coverage impacts apps that file calls with out making it specific to the opposite particular person on the road, which may run up in opposition to numerous state legal guidelines. Developers who need to preserve that entry should add a disclaimer and require specific consent earlier than the decision is recorded or use a special methodology of recording calls.

As a journalist who depends on recording every little thing to get it on the file, I can perceive how irritating this information is for the parents who should determine a brand new means round a routine workflow. I additionally see why Google is making this transfer. As I discussed, the corporate’s been buttoning down its Play Store insurance policies, all to promote extra folks on Android gadgets and the remainder of the ecosystem.

Google nonetheless permits name recording on its Google Phone app, which some have criticized as not a developer-friendly transfer. But Samsung’s phone app can nonetheless file, exactly as a result of it doesn’t use the Accessibility API. Anyway, it is smart that Google would permit its personal product to make use of the Accessibility API, which it manages. I do marvel if there’s a future the place Google splits off name recording away from the accessibility choices and opens it again as much as builders, whether or not to get again of their good graces or simply to take care of this function on Android telephones.