The Google Play Store has been the default home for officially downloading Android apps for years, but that’s about to change. Later this month, Google will enact changes that should make it much easier to install apps without relying solely on the company’s own marketplace in the United States. This major shift comes after Google and Epic Games unexpectedly abandoned a proposed settlement in what has been a multiyear legal fight. With the settlement abandoned, Google will now be forced to open the figurative doors of the Play Store to third-party app stores in the United States.
The ongoing legal feud between Google and Epic has been something to watch, especially for fans of Android and gaming. However, for a while, it seemed like the companies wouldn’t come to a solid conclusion. Something began to shift back in December 2025, when Fortnite returned to Android’s biggest app store, though. For some additional context, Google was ordered by a judge to open up Android to third-party app stores in October 2024. However, the company continued to fight this injunction, pushing for a settlement — one that Epic had even gotten on board with — which would allow it to avoid carrying third-party app stores directly in the Play Store, instead allowing users to sideload them.
However, now even that fight is officially over. As a Google spokesperson confirmed to The Verge, the company is withdrawing its motion to amend the injunction, which means Google will now need to meet the judge’s original order from 2024. As a result, it appears that third-party app stores will soon be available to download from the Play Store in the U.S., and court filings indicate that Google will start implementing the associated changes on July 22, 2026, effectively ending the company’s monopoly over Android applications.
A welcome but unexpected change for Android users
This change is no doubt one that U.S.-based Android users will greatly welcome, especially in light of how Google has been changing how sideloading works on Android devices. For years, Android users were able to download apps and install them without going through Google’s Play Store. Some app stores, like F-Droid, have even grown in this gap, allowing users easy access to many open-source alternatives to popular Android apps. However, Google had big plans for making Android more secure, and that included some major new rules for sideloading applications. These rules ultimately would have made it much harder to access all the apps you wanted if they weren’t on the Play Store.
Now, though, with this new system in place, the need to sideload applications from so far outside of the Play Store might be a thing of the past. At least, that is a possibility, given how open Google appears to be to allowing third-party stores to operate.
Beyond just allowing third-party app stores to appear in the Play Store, Google has also already told developers that it will automatically make their app and game listings available to third-party app stores in the U.S. starting on July 22, unless the developer opts out. The third-party stores can also control whether they offer apps from the Play Catalog, and to do so, they’ll need to enroll and pay a $5,000 annual fee, as well as meet some other requirements, like noting when an app is from the Play Catalog.
There are still lingering questions
There are, of course, still several questions that remain to be answered about this change. Google will have to sort out details like how Play Catalog apps offered in other stores might utilize the company’s Play Protect functionality, as well as how best to evaluate the secureness of a third-party store before allowing its entry into the Play Store. Considering the trouble we’ve seen in the past with malware in Android apps, having a strong and secure approach to this will be vital to ensuring the system isn’t abused by bad actors. It’s also unclear exactly how this might affect other parts of the Play Store, like Google Play Pass, which allows users to pay a monthly subscription for access to full versions of apps and games.
Google has opened onboarding for third-party app stores, though questions remain about how accessible the process will be for store developers. Hopefully we see more answers for these questions, and others, coming out in the following weeks. For now, Android users in the U.S. can at least expect to see some big changes coming to the Play Store — changes that will hopefully create a more secure but open way to access even more of the useful Android applications out there.
