Play Protect info gets injected into device privacy settings on Android 13
It’s been nearly a year since Google started sharing all the changes bundled in monthly Google Play system updates on Android. We’ve seen a few of these land already this month, starting off with improvements to the Google Kids Space. Later, Google added new Wear OS features, followed by alerts for compromised passwords. Now we’ve got a few more to check out, as new Play Store and Play Protect-related features start coming to smartphones near you.
First off, Google talks about wanting to help users make better decisions about installing apps. To that end, it’s expanding on the information displayed in the details of Play Store listings — although the company isn’t saying precisely what is changing, nor have we spotted anything yet. This will probably be something like a few details related to permissions, or changing requirements — we’ll be keeping an eye out for exactly what’s new here.
What’s maybe a little more interesting is that Google says you can use your phone to check the status of app installs happening on the rest of your devices. We’ve seen work underway for a while now to make the Play Store more useful for managing apps across all your hardware, and this sounds like the perfect next step. Running the latest Google Play system update and Play Store v32.4, we’re not seeing any obvious progress bars for remote installs, so perhaps there’s a server-side switch Google still needs to hit. Once it does get here, it should be a lot more convenient to track app downloads and installs across all your connected devices .
Finally, on phones running Android 13, Google informs us that Play Protect security information will show up on the Security and Privacy settings page nestled in the Settings app. In case you’re noticing a bit of a theme here, this is another change that seems to have been announced before it’s actually live, but we’ll keep looking. There isn’t much of September left, but we sure plan to share any other new features that trickle in ahead of October’s first Google Play system update.
