User-facing Google Play Protect features are now rolling out in the Play Store app

Much of “Google Play Protect” — announced back at I/O in May — is just a public-facing rebrand of security features that have long been part of Android. We saw of the beginning of its rollout when Verify Apps was rebranded with the Protect branding last month, and now the Play Store side of things is showing for some users.

What users are seeing starting today is a new box in the “Updates” section of “My apps & games” in the Play Store that allows you to manually scan your apps and look for problems. There’s also a badge labeled “Verified by Play Protect” that has begun appearing for some on the Play Store listings for apps themselves.

Tapping the “Play Protect” button that’s now showing up for same in the Play Store’s hamburger menu will take you over to the Play Protect settings page. As we’ve seen before, this page includes a list of recently-scanned apps and toggles that let you disable devices scanning and the sending of unknown apps to Google for better detection.

Interestingly, we found that if you disable Google Play Protect from the settings page, the card under “Updates” in the Play Store app disappears. The menu item remains, however.

While we were seeing the Google Play Protect rebrand of Verify Apps on a few of our devices before today, none of us were seeing the features rolling out in the Play Store via server-side switch. Now, at least one of us is seeing Play Protect in the Play Store and many users on Reddit are seeing the same.

Thanks Dylan!