Android distribution
From late 2026 all Yorkshire Systems Android distribution will likely be side-loaded only: self-hosted binaries on this website for free projects and via itch.io (or Gumroad or similar) for any paid apps.
Why not Play Store?
- Review times are now at a completely unworkable 21 days. Just a few years ago an Android app update could be live in the Play Store within a few hours. This went up to a couple of days, then a week, two weeks, and now three weeks. This is likely caused by the increase in non-developers using AI to generate apps.
- Mandatory testing cycles. Google now force developers to have a testing track on Google Play for new apps where at least ten testers must use an app for a week before you can release publicly. This might seem sensible but it doesn't work for paid apps that have a niche market, losing ten paying customers is significant. Yorkshire Systems apps aren't made for mass market, they're weird little projects that will likely only get a handful of sales, up to maybe 100 for audio projects, certainly less than 1000.
- The above situation means there's a minimum one month delay from finishing a first release of a project to getting it to users.
- If you catch a critical bug in production it's three weeks before you can get a fix to users, versus an hour or so if you offer side-loading.
- Although not admitted by Google there's strong evidence that any apps using Android Auto features are subjected to more lengthly review times (various anecdotes in the
AndroidDevsubreddit and also seen in my day-job)