Google quietly makes a major Play Store change Android users will hate

While it isn’t easy to highlight the exact factors that fueled the success of Android, the availability of apps and being able to install them from outside the Play Store are something that makes Google’s operating system more likable when compared to its rivals.

However, here is something that you won’t like at all: Google has introduced a major change in how the Play Store handles system apps, making things more complicated for users. As spotted by Android Authority, the Google Play Store has lost a valuable feature that allowed users to quickly undo a faulty update to system apps.

Google Play Store loses a key feature, offering you less control over system apps

Google Play Store not only allows users to download apps, but it also offers tools to uninstall those they no longer need. However, this is slightly different for system apps. They are also listed on the Play Store, but you can’t remove them from using the Play Store just like any other app.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Google has added one restriction for system apps on the Google Play Store. Unlike previously, you won’t be able to uninstall the latest update to a system app from the Google Play Store. Folks over at Android Authority tested it on their Android phones and found that system apps no longer have the uninstall button.

We also managed to reproduce this on our handsets and found out that the system apps show only the option to open the app. When an update is available for a system app, you’ll continue to see the option to install the update, but not the button to remove it.

This leaves users no choice but to rely on Android’s Settings for uninstalling updates to system apps. While this works, it’ll take you time, because you need to navigate deep into your phone’s Settings to find the option to uninstall an app update. To uninstall an app update this way, open Settings and then go to Apps > See all apps, and then select the app, tap the three-dot menu, and tap Uninstall updates.

Google hasn’t made an official announcement regarding this change, so it’s hard to tell when the company removed it. However, we observed the new behavior in Google Play Store, version 49.1.32-31 and 49.2.25-31.

This is one of the two major changes to the Google Play Store in the last two months. The one that landed last month, with the arrival of Google Play Store, version 48.8, made it easy to uninstall an app remotely. So, this is a classic case of taking one step forward and then one step back.