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Effectively Using Android Without Google Play Services with Gplayweb in Docker
- hoschicz 10y agoWhat is the worst thing about G Play Services you can't turn off?
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoProbably the fact that Google Play Services can update itself without your approval or consent, so Google can push any antiprivacy feature to your phone they want without your knowledge at any time. Play Services meets basically every definition of malware.
- TwoNineA 10y agoHyperbole much?
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y agoNot 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.
- pjmlp 10y agoYet on geek kingdom, bad Microsoft pushing W10 telemetry on us, but Google is cool and doesn't do no evil.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoTo be fair though, it is important that we continue to pressure Microsoft about their telemetry practices as well. Microsoft's business doesn't depend on data collection, and they could very easily return to not mandatorily collecting it, but our voices on the issue have not been loud enough yet. (And actually, as I recently discovered, Microsoft won't allow you to submit feedback about their apps unless telemetry is enabled at the Enhanced or Full levels on their OSes.) But, I do agree that Google gets naturally positive response and Microsoft gets automatically negative response, even though many of their practices are quite similar.
- mememachine 10y agoGoogles much nmore threatening to privacy the way i see it.
- taneq 10y ago> Google is cool and doesn't do no evil. That expired in 2015.
- ionised 10y agoGenerally, people who say one is bad will say the other is bad too. The exceptions are brand fanatics.
- gjjrfcbugxbhf 10y agoI don't think many geeks think that anymore.
- home_boi 10y agoGenuine question, what user tracking is there that isn't opt out?
- a3n 10y agoHow would I know for sure?
- Oletros 10y agoJust look at his comment history
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoMy comment history will reflect a persistent strong advocacy for privacy on the Internet. :) If you're going to follow me around here, please try to argue with my points rather than insinuating something about my character.
- sametmax 10y agoThe fact that everything you do is linked to a google account.
- crdoconnor 10y agoI blocked mine from using body sensors, microphone and camera and it now complains that it needs them whenever I fire up the gmail app. It doesn't. Gmail works fine. It still whinges though.
- antocv 10y agoSoftware which nags and annoys the user is malware.
- NoGravitas 10y agoBesides the security issues that other people will talk about, it's huge in terms of both RAM usage and storage, so if you have a low-end phone, that's quite significant. It can also be a major battery consumer.
- swiley 10y agoThere really isn't that much on google play store worth installing (except games I guess? even that's not so great and most cost money) that doesn't have some open source counterpart. The only exceptions are things like kik (and those don't run well, if at all, without google play services.)
- JulienSchmidt 10y agoTime to mention https://microg.org/ https://microg.org/ / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12864429 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 Push notifications via Google Cloud Messaging while only sending minimal identifying data * The Analytics (tracking) and Ad parts are simple stubs which avoid app crashes but do nothing else
- xkxx 10y ago> * 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 Sounds really cool! > * The often unavoidable Push notifications via Google Cloud Messaging while only sending minimal identifying data Can you elaborate, please?
- JulienSchmidt 10y ago> Can you elaborate, please? Are you asking how it is unavoidable or how it is sending only minimal identifying data?
- xkxx 10y agoI'm asking more about what "Push notifications via Google Cloud Messaging" are and why they are unavoidable. I think I will be able to infer what minimal identifying data is required from that.
- TheCoreh 10y agoGoogle offers a push notification system like Apple's, with centralized servers, to efficiently deliver notifications to all users without having apps constantly running in the background killing battery life. It is unavoidable, I assume, because otherwise you won't get notifications, which defeats the purpose of several apps, and they can't provide a fully independent alternative server because it would require integration on each app developer's backend side. "Sending minimal information", probably means they proxy the requests to avoid giving geoip info to Google about you.
- known 10y agoG play services sucks phone battery
- fxaguessy 10y agoThat's completely true, on my previous phone (Nexus 4), as soon as I used Android Stock, without Google Play Services, my battery life increased by around 30%!
- shostack 10y agoI have my Nexus 4 still until my Pixel XL arrives sometime mid March. It has gotten unbearably slow lately (navigation taking literally 1 min. or more to open up. I tried to narrow down the cause via battery usage and OS Monitor but since all the tracking and ad related stuff apps use goes through Google Play Services I can't identify the culprit. I assume routing ad and tracking related stuff and core functionality through there was so Google could lock down their open garden and prevent ad blockers from really blocking them. Bummer that iOS notifications are unusable for me.
- baq 10y agoIt can be simply internal storage wear.
- a3n 10y agoI actually don't use my phone much, and not at all for entertainment. Consequently my battery usually lasts three or four days. (Motorola G4). Vaguely within the last week or two, no change in behavior, no new apps, that's been cut at least in half. One day it lasted less than a day. I've got things like location and bluetooth turned off. I haven't been able to track it down. I'm wondering if it's a recent google or other app update. It's pissing me off.
- on_and_off 10y agoit could also come from the hardware.
- necessity 10y agoUber, 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 the other.
- fxaguessy 10y agoWhen I tried Uber (a few months ago) without Play Services, it was working, but without the location feature. So, if you typed an address, it was working as expected.
- xkxx 10y agoHave you tried running Uber or Tinder under microG mentioned by JulienSchmidt in this thread?
- trendia 10y agoThe Economist magazine not only requires Google Play Services, but also access to your microphone. There is no way to disable that. I cannot figure out why they would need such intrusive access -- there is no "speak" feature in their app that I'm aware of.
- codebeaker 10y agoI've no evidence this is being used by The Economist's app - but this is "usually" the reason for this feature: - https://www.wired.com/2016/11/block-ultrasonic-signals-didnt-know-tracking/ https://www.wired.com/2016/11/block-ultrasonic-signals-didnt... (not trying to spread FUD, endorse this practice or criticise in anyway, just trying to help the parent comment understand one potential "excuse" for an app "needing" this functionality for a non-obvious use-case.)
- trendia 10y agoThanks for the link -- that would explain why so many apps need access to the mic.
- tehwalrus 10y agoI tried to use a Cyanogenmod phone over the summer without google play services (I couldn't get it to install). I used the Amazon android store, which has many of the same applications as the play store. However, most apps I installed crashed on first launch due to (I assumed) lack of play services. It was a very crappy experience which lasted only about a week before I switched back to a handset where the gapps flash worked correctly.
- Animats 10y agoI 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.
- glogla 10y agoSure, 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.
- moonfern 10y agoIn that case you can try yalpstore: https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/com.github.yeriomin.yalpstore https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/com.github.yeriomin.yalpstore The app downloads apks from the play store. You'll have to use a Google account, perhaps a trowaway account created on a different device.
- fulafel 10y agoThis article is about a third party tool that lets you download apps from the Play store.
- deep_attention 10y agoOr you can just install Yalp Store from F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=com.github.yeriomin.yalpstore 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/ http://raccoon.onyxbits.de/
- ycmbntrthrwaway 10y agoBasically the author created web interface to similar APK downloader. At least Docker is completely unrelated.
- floatboth 10y agoYalp uses a Google account, which isn't good. I use https://apkpure.com https://apkpure.com
- voltagex_ 10y agoNo idea what Yalp is doing with your email here: https://github.com/yeriomin/YalpStore/blob/23503d639034d68b8055a39ec486f7073c4ddd61/app/src/main/java/com/github/yeriomin/yalpstore/TokenDispenser.java 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
- jay-anderson 10y agoThis 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/ http://tokendispenser-yeriomin.rhcloud.com/) is doing with that email is harder to determine.
- problems 10y agoThat part is open source too: https://github.com/yeriomin/token-dispenser 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.
- Midiv0k 10y agoInstead of downloading an app from Google Play and transferring it to the open source phone you could use Aptoide. https://www.aptoide.com/?lang=en https://www.aptoide.com/?lang=en
- whyagaindavid 10y agoRemember 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.