After Google officially removed YouTube Vanced on the platform, many users lamented its sudden loss. For several users, this mod has been helpful since they could access many Premium features without paying any cent.

Recently, it has become an apple of the eye of the firm following Play Protect's action to flag the Vanced Manager app as a malicious application. According to the latest report, the search engine giant is warning users to refrain from installing this app.

Vanced Manager 2.6.0 Flagged as Malicious App

(Photo : Pathum Danthanarayana from Unsplash)
A particular version of the Vanced Manager app is flagged as malicious by Google Play Protect.

As XDA Developers reported via Mishaal Rahman on Twitter, Google Play Protect recently considered a particular version of the Vanced app as "harmful." With that, the team urged the users to uninstall it on their devices as soon as possible.

If you attempt to download the 2.6.0 version of the app on your Android phone, a warning message will flash on your screen. Play Protect will alert you that the app tries to "bypass Android's security protections."

As such, this message could mean only one thing: it might contain malware that might infect your device. According to Android Police, this specific Vanced app version can use root for app installation.

In doing so, the team found out that it belonged to the list of apps that abuse root and other privileges on the platform.

As of press time, Play Protect did not explain why such a message appears only to this particular Vanced Manager app. For users who have version 2.6.2 on their device, they did not receive an alert message on the device upon installation.

The developers of Vanced said that they have no idea why the 2.6.0 version was the only one being targeted. For now, there's still a mystery why it's happening in the outdated version.

It should be noted that you can no longer download the Vanced app from the official website. However, you can still acquire it from other external sources such as APKMirror and more.

Related Article: Google: YouTube Vanced to be Discontinued | Developers Says it's Because of 'Legal' Reasons

What the Users Think About it

Regarding this issue, many users said that they do not receive a similar message if they try to install that version on their device. One person wrote that he can still install the app on this Galaxy S22 Ultra.

While others attempted to turn off Play Protect, they still received the notifications on their device.

One developer raised his concern on Twitter. According to him, one way to remove the message is to publish the app on the Play Store. He cited the incident as "gross misuse."

Another user encouraged others to download Vanced microG since he did not encounter any problems when installing it. There's no warning or any notifications attached to it.

If you want to push through using it, we advise you to stick with the latest version so you can use the app flawlessly.

Read Also: Android Banking Trojan Strikes Again in Google Play Store | What to Know About Xenomorph Malware

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joseph Henry