Google Play made a strange decision to ban call recording apps

Google has announced a strange policy that effectively bans call recording apps from the Play Store. As part of Google’s crackdown on apps that use the Android Accessibility APIs for reasons other than accessibility, Google states that call recording is no longer allowed through the Accessibility APIs. Since the accessibility API is the only way for third-party apps to record calls on Android, Google Play call recording apps are dead.

NLL Apps, the developer of a phone call recording app with a million downloads on the Play Store, is monitoring the policy change. The Google Play support page lays out the new law: “The accessibility API is not designed and cannot be requested for audio recording of remote calls.”Oddly enough, the Google ban will go into effect on May 11, the first day of Google I/O.

There is no clear reason why Google bans call recording from the Play Store. Many jurisdictions require the consent of one or more of the call participants in order to begin recording, but once you comply with this requirement, the recording is fully legal and useful. The Google Rec o rder app is a product built entirely on the utility of call recording. Google 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 simply doesn’t provide the proper APIs to allow third-party app developers to compete with it in this market, and now it’s shutting down their workaround attempts.

In the past, Google has decoupled apps from Accessibility APIs, supporting a specific use case with a more limited set of official APIs, and it looks like it was a call recording plan at one point, but Google eventually dropped those plans. In 2020, Android 11 Developer Preview 2 briefly added the ACCESS_CALL_AUDIO API‘ for the record, but this API never made it into the final release of Android. It seems like it would be a smart strategy to first support call recording with the proper API, and then after a few years, prevent apps from using the Call Recording Accessibility API. Instead, Google’s way is effectively banning all call recording apps from the Play Store. The good news is that you can always download the unpublished!