For many Android users, the Play Store is the primary point of contact for apps, games and other digital content, but Google is allowing alternatives to its own offering. In addition to the Samsung Galaxy Store and F-Droid, they also include the Amazon App Store. This doesn’t work well on smartphones with the latest version of Android 12.

Android 12: you can install the Amazon app shop

As first reported by Slashdot and Liliputing (via Android Authority), the Amazon app shop doesn’t work on Android 12. Reports of a faulty alternative shop surfaced in late October: at the time, the first users complained on the Amazon support forum that apps installed from the app shop no longer worked on their Android 12 devices.

However, on an Android 12 device, the App Store can be installed and logged in with an Amazon account. The alternative shop’s homepage doesn’t display any content, just black-box forms for music, utilities, games and more. Touching one of the boxes brings up the relevant category, but only the message “No apps found” appears.

Amazon App Store for Android 12: Installation is possible from the “My apps” section

Applications located in the “My apps” tab can still be installed. For example, Amazon Prime Video apps and Microsoft Outlook apps. Both can be used without any further problems.

In addition to the missing apps, users who installed the shop before the update to Android 12 report that they can no longer run apps installed before the update.

As seen on the support forum, Amazon is aware of the problems with its app shop. However, the company doesn’t give a reason for the glitches, but there are indications that the bugs could have something to do with digital rights management (DRM). Amazon is working on a solution, the forum manager wrote. It’s unclear when the app shop will work with Android 12 without glitches.

Google makes it easier to use alternative app shops with Android 12

The fact that Amazon’s app shop currently doesn’t work with Android 12 is annoying because Google promised before the release that it would make it easier to use alternative app shops. In the new version of Android, alternative app shops can import updates for existing apps without additional requests if they were installed from the same source, it says. This allows, for example, multiple updates to be installed at the same time, as well as for apps to update automatically in the background. The user must activate the update once during installation. In addition, the app must address at least API level 29, which corresponds to Android 10.

Amazon’s app shop is one of the largest providers of alternative apps for Android. However, it cannot be installed via the Google Play Store, but only as an APK via side download. The shop is the official contact for Amazon Fire tablets and is available for Windows 11 users to install Android apps.