Remember using play services unofficially like e.g. microg can get your account locked. It is OK to create a throw away accounted for downloading apps,but continued usage _may_ lock your account.
I do use lineageOS on a nexus 5 without play services and battery lasts 2 days with light usage.
Effectively Using Android Without Google Play Services with Gplayweb in Docker
61–70 of 78 posts
Re: Effectively Using Android Without Google Play Services with Gplayweb in Docker
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki... Wearable and Cast are often missed APIs. Contacts and Calendar sync is also not implemented yet. I can't think of any app that I personally used that doesn't work. That includes Google Maps and the Play Store. There were some crashes in the past, but microG became a lot more stable since then. However, I completely rely on my own infrastructure for mail…
HERE WeGo ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.here.app.m... ) is a good alternative to Google Maps. Does not need Google Services installed and you can download the maps to your device, even to an external sd card.
Second this. I used it on my iPhone.
Re: Effectively Using Android Without Google Play Services with Gplayweb in Docker
#63I use an Android phone without any Google services or a Google account. When I got the phone, it brought up a demand to sign in with a Google account. But there's a "Later" option to bypass that temporarily. Disabling "Google One Time Setup" made that go away. Mail is the built-in IMAP client. Browsing is with Firefox. Apps come from F-droid. Maps come from ZNavi. It's OK.
Sure, but sometimes you want app that's only in play store - maybe Signal (if you trust the creator), maybe e-banking app, or local transport app, or Waze, or whatever. Some bigger apps are on apkmirror.com, but smaller ones aren't uploaded very often, so this might be a way to get them.
This article is about a third party tool that lets you download apps from the Play store.
Re: Effectively Using Android Without Google Play Services with Gplayweb in Docker
#64Or you can just install Yalp Store from F-Droid ( https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=com.github.yerio... ) and download the apps from the Google Play Store directly to your device. You can also easily update your apps with Yalp Store. Another possibility is to use the Java software Raccoon on your Desktop, available here: http://raccoon.onyxbits.de/
No idea what Yalp is doing with your email here: https://github.com/yeriomin/YalpStore/blob/23503d639034d68b8... I find Android code really hard to read - there's so many levels of indirection here I can't find where it's actually calling whatever.google.com to grab the APK
This particular code looks fairly straightforward (could definitely be clearer). It's building a url and including the email as a path segment. What the remote service (http://tokendispenser-yeriomin.rhcloud.com/) is doing with that email is harder to determine.
Re: Effectively Using Android Without Google Play Services with Gplayweb in Docker
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki... Wearable and Cast are often missed APIs. Contacts and Calendar sync is also not implemented yet. I can't think of any app that I personally used that doesn't work. That includes Google Maps and the Play Store. There were some crashes in the past, but microG became a lot more stable since then. However, I completely rely on my own infrastructure for mail…
HERE WeGo ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.here.app.m... ) is a good alternative to Google Maps. Does not need Google Services installed and you can download the maps to your device, even to an external sd card.
it sure needs LOTS of permission, gonna go try it anyway :D
Re: Effectively Using Android Without Google Play Services with Gplayweb in Docker
#66Uber, Tinder, and other apps I use require Google Play Services in their latest version. They simply refuse to work without it and there is no web alternative. It's either downgrade to a bug-prone version or use Google Play Services. There is really no privacy on a fully functional Android Phone that isn't just email and phone services - though I guess if you're using Uber and Tinder there is no privacy one way or th…
You'll find this the case with most location-dependent apps like Uber (to find you) and Tinder (to find people near you). Google nudged most of these apps over to using the proprietary Google Location Services API for this sort of stuff, because of their Wi-Fi triangulation feature. Whether or not these apps work with MicroG, I don't know.
Tinder does work with MicroG.
Re: Effectively Using Android Without Google Play Services with Gplayweb in Docker
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
HERE WeGo ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.here.app.m... ) is a good alternative to Google Maps. Does not need Google Services installed and you can download the maps to your device, even to an external sd card.
it sure needs LOTS of permission, gonna go try it anyway :D
A lot less then Google Maps actually ;-) Just compare permissions view details under https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... and https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.here.app.m....
Permission Google Maps has in addition to HERE WeGo:
[Device & app history] retrieve running apps
[Identity] add or remove accounts
[Contacts] modify your contacts
[Phone] directly call phone numbers [Phone] write call log
[Microphone] record audio
[Other] download files without notification
[Other] view configured accounts*
[Other] send sticky broadcast
[Other] disable your screen lock
[Other] measure app storage space
[Other] control Near Field Communication
[Other] read sync settings
[Other] run at startup
[Other] use accounts on the device
[Other] toggle sync on and off
[Other] read Google service configuration
Permission HERE WeGo has in addition to Google Maps:
[Identity] read your own contact card
[SMS] send SMS messages
[Other] pair with Bluetooth devices
[Other] access Bluetooth settings
[Other] change network connectivity
[Other] uninstall shortcuts
Re: Effectively Using Android Without Google Play Services with Gplayweb in Docker
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really. Strictly speaking Google Play Services is a rootkit. One that can be used remotely. And it contains heaps of invasive user tracking code. Is is pretty much malware.
Yet on geek kingdom, bad Microsoft pushing W10 telemetry on us, but Google is cool and doesn't do no evil.
Generally, people who say one is bad will say the other is bad too.
The exceptions are brand fanatics.
Re: Effectively Using Android Without Google Play Services with Gplayweb in Docker
#69Time to mention https://microg.org/ / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12864429 again. It's a FLOSS re-implementation of Google Play Services. It offers e.g.: * Optional completely offline geo location service via an on-phone database which often preserves battery and even works when no internet access is available. Online backends using e.g. Mozilla Location Service are also available * The often unavoidable Pus…
Can I use Signal under this setup?
Re: Effectively Using Android Without Google Play Services with Gplayweb in Docker
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
No idea what Yalp is doing with your email here: https://github.com/yeriomin/YalpStore/blob/23503d639034d68b8... I find Android code really hard to read - there's so many levels of indirection here I can't find where it's actually calling whatever.google.com to grab the APK
This particular code looks fairly straightforward (could definitely be clearer). It's building a url and including the email as a path segment. What the remote service ( http://tokendispenser-yeriomin.rhcloud.com/ ) is doing with that email is harder to determine.
That part is open source too: https://github.com/yeriomin/token-dispenser
That said, if you're sketched out by it, don't use it on a Google account with any data on it. Just make a new empty account for apk downloading.