Getty Images | Orich Lawson
Google has announced a bizarre policy that effectively bans call recording apps from the Play Store. As part of Google’s crackdown on apps that use Android’s accessibility API, Google said it no longer allows call recording via the accessibility API. Call recording apps are dead on Google Play because the accessibility API is the only way for third-party apps to record calls on Android.
NLL Apps, developer of a call-recording phone app with 1 million downloads on the Play Store – has been tracking policy changes. The Google Play support page lays out the new law, saying: “The Accessibility API is not designed to request remote call recordings.” Curiously, Google’s ban began on May 11, the first day of Google I/O.
Google is banning call recordings from the Play Store for no clear reason. Many jurisdictions require the consent of one or more members of the call to start recording, but once you meet that requirement, recording is completely legal and useful. The Google Recorder app is a product built entirely around the utility of recording conversations. Google also doesn’t seem to have a problem with call recording when it comes to its own apps — the Google Phone app on Pixel phones supports call recording in some countries. Google just didn’t provide the proper API for third-party app developers to compete with it in this market, and now it’s shutting down the workarounds they’ve tried.
The Android Accessibility API is very powerful and allows various controls over the Android operating system. Google has said in the past that the Accessibility API would be more popular if it were only used by apps for people with disabilities, but since non-accessibility options don’t exist for many of the supported features, many power-user apps plug in no-access options anyway. Accessibility API. Google says it wants to crack down on inaccessible accessibility apps, but it also wants to consider “responsible and innovative uses of accessibility services.”
In the past, Google reduced accessibility API applications by using a wider set of official APIs to support specific use cases, and it looked like this used to be a plan for call recording, but Google eventually dropped those plans. In 2020, the second Android 11 Developer Preview briefly added an “ACCESS_CALL_AUDIO” API for recording, but that API never made it to the final version of Android. It seems like a reasonable strategy to do this: first support call recording with the appropriate API, and then prevent applications from using the Accessibility API for call recording after a few years. Instead, Google’s approach effectively banned all call-logging apps from the Play Store. The good news is that you can always sideload!
