I ran into an issue with a customer running a few hundred devices in a kiosk launcher who wanted to optionally allow app installation from Google Play through a shared-use model. Apps were set to available, and while they'd install fine, they couldn't be uninstalled by the user.

After escalating to Google, they pointed me to the docs referencing expected behaviour - but the docs didn't actually mention it. Following some further discussion, Google have now updated the AMAPI policy reference (https://developers.google.com/android/management/reference/rest/v1/enterprises.policies) as of today to reflect actual behaviour from:

On Android 11 and above, the user control is disallowed but userControlSettings can be set to USER_CONTROL_ALLOWED to allow user control for the app with this role.

To:

On Android 11 and above, when an app has this role, user control is disallowed for all apps. The IT admin can set userControlSettings to USER_CONTROL_ALLOWED to allow user control for specific apps.

This means even apps with install types (like AVAILABLE) won't be removable by the user, because the presence of a KIOSK app triggers a blanket userControlSettings deny.

The fix is straightforward - set userControlSettings to USER_CONTROL_ALLOWED for any apps you want users to be able to optionally remove:

This caused me a lot of unnecessary troubleshooting, so it's good to see it corrected. This is worth keeping in mind for any kiosk deployment where users need or want the ability to manage some of their own apps.

#androidenterprise