AI & TechnologySafetyNet Is Gone: Moving to Play Integrity and App Check

SafetyNet Attestation is gone: Google turned it down fully in January 2025, so any app or backend that still relies on it gets an error on every check. Replace it with the Play Integrity API. If you used SafetyNet through Firebase App Check, switch App Check to its Play Integrity provider. For App Check users the code change is small, and most of the work is setup in Play Console and the Firebase console.

If you landed here from an old link to Google's SafetyNet attestation guide, that address now redirects to the deprecation timeline. Dates and behavior come from Android Developers and Firebase documentation, as listed in the sources. I checked each page on October 18, 2026.

Disclosure: App369 is my studio. I build and fix Flutter and Firebase apps, and the last section mentions what I sell. Google doesn't pay me for anything on this page.

What happened to SafetyNet, and when

What failing apps see

Google says that if you call the SafetyNet Attestation API now, the attest call always fails: it returns an ApiException with status code 7, NETWORK_ERROR. That code is misleading, because it isn't a network problem on your side and retrying won't fix it.

What that means for users depends on what you did with the result:

• If your app blocked users when attestation failed, users on that version are blocked from whatever the check gated.
• If your backend required a SafetyNet result, requests from that version are rejected.
• If the check only logged the result, nothing visible broke, but you've had no integrity signal since the turndown.

Google's advice for the first two cases: once you've released a version that uses Play Integrity, tell users to update.

Moving from SafetyNet to Play Integrity

Google says the two APIs are conceptually similar, so if you already had an anti-abuse strategy built on SafetyNet, the migration is straightforward.

1. Set up Play Integrity in Play Console. Open your app, go to the App integrity page, and set up the Play Integrity API there, including linking a Google Cloud project.
2. Choose the request type. Play Integrity has standard requests and classic requests. Read Google's standard request guide and the classic one, and pick the one that fits how often you check.
3. Request a token in the app and verify it on your server. As with SafetyNet, the app gets an integrity token and your backend decides what to do with the verdict. Don't make the decision on the device.
4. Watch the quota. By default, an app can make up to 10,000 Play Integrity requests a day across all installs. If you check on every app open with many users, ask Google for a higher daily maximum before launch.
5. Collect verdicts before you block anyone. Google suggests gathering telemetry on your current users before you change app behavior based on verdicts, and treating Play Integrity as one part of your anti-abuse strategy, not the only one.
6. Remove the SafetyNet code and dependency once the new path works, so nobody mistakes an old error for a new problem.

Switching Firebase App Check to Play Integrity

If you used SafetyNet through Firebase App Check, the steps come from Firebase's Play Integrity setup guide:

1. Link the projects. In Google Play Console, open your app, go to App integrity, find the Play Integrity API section and click Link Cloud project. Pick the same Firebase project your app is registered in. Firebase says you must be an Owner of that project yourself: being in a group that has the Owner role isn't enough.
2. Register the app in Firebase. In the Firebase console, go to Security > App Check, and register your Android app with the Play Integrity provider. You'll need the SHA-256 fingerprint of your app's signing certificate. If you use Play App Signing, use the SHA-256 of the app signing key certificate shown in Play Console, not your upload key's.
3. Register every app. Once you turn on enforcement for a Firebase product, only registered apps can reach it, so register all of your project's apps before you enforce.
4. Change the provider in code. On Android, install PlayIntegrityAppCheckProviderFactory before you use any other Firebase SDK. In a Flutter app, set the Android provider to Play Integrity where you activate firebase_app_check, right after Firebase.initializeApp(). The parameter name has changed between plugin versions, so check the docs for the version you use.
5. Use the debug provider for development. Emulators and debug builds you install yourself often can't pass Play Integrity checks. App Check's debug provider lets those builds through. Keep its debug tokens out of release builds.
6. Monitor, then enforce. Check the App Check metrics in the Firebase console to see how many requests come from verified and unverified apps before you turn on enforcement for Firestore, Storage, Functions or other products.

Need a hand?

If App Check enforcement starts rejecting your real users, or the Play Integrity setup won't verify, the App Fix Ticket covers it in two fixed-price steps. A $450 Diagnosis gives you the root cause with evidence and a fixed repair quote within 3 business days, credited toward the fix. If you go ahead, the $1,200 Fix takes 5 business days. For a wider check of how your Firebase app is locked down, see the Firebase security guide, or send me a short description.