Recently, Google announced their latest addition to the Play Store, Google Play Protect. This app, which is built into the Play Store app “helps you keep your device safe and secure”. Play Protect is essentially a security suite that not only scans for malicious apps on the Play Store, but also scans your apps and your device. A quick overview of Google Play Protect can be seen below.

Google Play Protect was enabled in the Play Store by a server-side update, so users were never allowed to opt-out of this service. Thankfully, Google does allow for this service to be disabled, but it will still scan apps installed through the Google Play Store. If left enabled, it will scan your device regularly and even scan apps installed from “unknown sources”. Google does state that “Google Play Protect may send unknown apps to Google. This information helps Google better protect everyone from harmful apps.”

How to disable Google Play Protect

In order to disable Play Protect, you need to go to the Play Store app. Once inside, open up the menu and scroll down until you see Play Protect. Once you are in the Play Protect portion, un-check “Scan device for security threats”. Now, you don’t have to worry about Google scanning your apps, device, web browser, or sending information of unknown apps you have installed.

You can enable or disable this feature at will. It’s good to know that Google’s “Find my device” will still be available with this feature disabled. There isn’t a way to remove this completely from your device as it is packaged with the Google Play Store. If a way does surface on how to remove it completely, we will update this how-to.