Highlight if software is unsafe before installing it?
One interesting point from a recent popularised blogpost is that it’s sometimes not possible to see the safety context tile on the app details page without scrolling down. So it might be possible for a user to click ‘Install’ on an app which looks good, without actually having scrolled down and seen that it’s unsafe.
(I think the rest of the article is incorrect on a number of points and am not suggesting making other changes in response to it.)
I think this is unlikely: unless the user already knows the app is what they’re looking for, I suspect they will want to read a little about it, and they’re likely to see the context tiles when they scroll to read the app description.
However, it does seem like it might be worth thinking about.
Perhaps if an app is rated as unsafe, then there could be an ‘!’ icon by the ‘Install’ button, or a confirmation dialogue after clicking ‘Install’ which asks whether you really want to install an unsafe app. The downside of a confirmation dialogue is that it easily contributes to alert fatigue.
I think what we have is fine (it seems unlikely a user would miss the context tile entirely), but I would also be fine with a change like what I suggested above. We might also decide to make a change as suggested, but only once the sandboxing ecosystem is a little more mature and fewer apps are rated as unsafe.