Google Play Protect is a valid tool to protect our Android smartphone from malicious apps, although it is a valid solution, it is not always 100% effective. With Android 15 the situation could change by making available to Play Protect – and therefore to the end user – a new tool: quarantine.
Not that this is something completely new: on Windows, for example, an antivirus may decide to quarantine a file if it thinks it might be malicious. Not being able to delete it, it isolates it from the rest of the system so that it cannot be executed, creating danger for other files.
Android, however, is not Windows, so the concept of quarantine is also destined to change slightly: Mishaal Rahman explains on Android Authority that Google’s OS was born as a virus-safe ecosystem because applications “are sandboxed by default and can only communicate with each other using specific APIs that they can only access if well-defined permissions are granted.”
So quarantining an app on Android is similar to a deactivation or, if you prefer, a suspension of Digital Wellbeing:
Notifications: Will not be shown
Windows: Hidden, Tasks Are Stopped
Apps: Unable to interact with other apps
The APIs used for quarantine, Rahman goes on to explain, “are the same as those used to suspend an app, except that an additional flag is passed.” In practice, the novelty lies in the fact that
Until now, apps with a SUSPEND_APPS authorization system could quarantine an app
A new QUARANTINE_APPS permission is now introduced that can only be managed by Google Play Protect
The first signs of this novelty are present in Android 14 QPR2 Beta 1 (released in November), but it is currently not functional. Easier for the feature to arrive with Android 15.