Damn, here I was worried I had bricked my phone and made it unusable by loading up my own personal apks when I was trying to learn coding and different app studios.

I feel like I would have noticed if my phone was unusable though…

not funny anymore. Banks and regulatory are doing this in some countries. Their app just refuses to open if users install any app outside of Google Play Stores.

Take a look at this https://mothership.sg/2023/08/ocbc-security-feature-delete-third-party-apps/

I don’t think this person was saying they think all manual apk installs are suspect, just that installing apks from an unreliable source. There are plenty of reliable sources to get apks

Most apps choose to distribute through Play Store only though. If the devs aren’t officially distributing on a separate platform or provide signing keys for you to verify the signature of the APK you get from elsewhere, you’re just asking for malware by downloading it anywhere else.