Apple yesterday announced a plan to comply with a Texas age verification law and warned that changes required by the law will reduce privacy for app users.
"Beginning January 1, 2026, a new state law in Texas—SB2420—introduces age assurance requirements for app marketplaces and developers," Apple said yesterday in a post for developers. "While we share the goal of strengthening kids' online safety, we are concerned that SB2420 impacts the privacy of users by requiring the collection of sensitive, personally identifiable information to download any app, even if a user simply wants to check the weather or sports scores."
The Texas App Store Accountability Act requires app stores to verify users' ages and imposes restrictions on those under 18. Apple said that developers will have "to adopt new capabilities and modify behavior within their apps to meet their obligations under the law."
Apple's post noted that similar laws will take effect later in 2026 in Utah and Louisiana. Google also recently announced plans for complying with the three state laws and said the new requirements reduce user privacy.
"While we have user privacy and trust concerns with these new verification laws, Google Play is designing APIs, systems, and tools to help you meet your obligations," Google told developers in an undated post.
The Utah law is scheduled to take effect May 7, 2026, while the Louisiana law will take effect July 1, 2026. The Texas, Utah, and Louisiana "laws impose significant new requirements on many apps that may need to provide age appropriate experiences to users in these states," Google said. "These requirements include ingesting users' age ranges and parental approval status for significant changes from app stores and notifying app stores of significant changes."
New features for Texas
Apple and Google both announced new features to help developers comply.
"Once this law goes into effect, users located in Texas who create a new Apple Account will be required to confirm whether they are 18 years or older," Apple said. "All new Apple Accounts for users under the age of 18 will be required to join a Family Sharing group, and parents or guardians will need to provide consent for all App Store downloads, app purchases, and transactions using Apple's In-App Purchase system by the minor."
Apple said it will update an API and introduce new APIs to help developers comply in what the company called "a privacy-preserving way," and promised more details and technical documentation this fall. The changes will help developers "obtain users' age categories and manage significant changes as required by Texas state law," Apple said.
Specifically, Apple said its Declared Age Range API "will be updated in the coming months to provide the required age categories for new account users in Texas." New Apple APIs launching before the end of 2025 "will enable developers, when they determine a significant change is made to their app, to invoke a system experience to allow the user to request that parental consent be re-obtained. Additionally, parents will be able to revoke consent for a minor continuing to use an app."
Google: Weather apps shouldn’t need user ages
Google is providing a Play Age Signals API, which is available now in beta. In the three affected states, "your app will be able to receive users' age verification or supervision status, age ranges, and other applicable signals" through the API, Google said.
Google said it will update the Play Console to let developers "notify Google Play of a significant change in Play Console without publishing a new version of your app. Additionally, you will also get a report in Play Console showing when a parent revokes approval for your app."
Google outlined its concerns about the Utah law in a March 2025 post. "The bill requires app stores to share if a user is a kid or teenager with all app developers (effectively millions of individual companies) without parental consent or rules on how the information is used," Google said at the time. "That raises real privacy and safety risks, like the potential for bad actors to sell the data or use it for other nefarious purposes." Google called the data sharing unnecessary, saying that "a weather app doesn't need to know if a user is a kid."
While the requirements are limited to several states for now, US Rep. John James (R-Mich.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) have proposed a US law to make similar rules apply nationwide. Lee argued that age verification and parental consent are needed because "Big Tech has profited from app stores through which children in America and across the world access violent and sexual material while risking contact from online predators."
Apple and Google both provide optional tools that let parents control what content their children can access.
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