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Signal can now be used without Google Play Services
- shp0ngle 10y agoFinally, all the 10 people who were waiting for this can use Signal.
- binaryanomaly 10y agoTrue, but still I like this kind of resistance ;)
- marco1 10y agoGoogle Play Services was a hard dependency. People complained about it all the time and asked to remove it. Now they have finally done what users have asked for, and what is the reaction? "Who the heck needs this?" Well, that's how it always is.
- tptacek 10y agoBoth your comment and the parent comment can be valid at the same time.
- marco1 10y agoNo doubt, but this is not about facts (I'm even sure they're both true at the same time!) -- this is about attitude.
- caf 10y agoWhy would it be surprising to you that two different sets of people have two different attitudes?
- Nition 10y agoThe problem is, only the people who want something ask you about it. No-one's emailing to say "hey the Google Play integration is great - don't remove it!" Then after you do what the people emailing you wanted, all the people who were silent chime in. "Wait a minute, why were you spending your time on that? None of us wanted it!" That's why it always feels like marco1 described.
- invisiblevoid 10y agoThere are dozens out there. Dozens.
- catwell 10y agoFew people use phones without Google Play Services. Because of that, it doesn't make sense for application developers to support the use case. Because of that, lots of applications don't work without Google Play Services. Because of that, few people use phones without Google Play Services. (And then people complain about the lack of open Android alternatives, or that other OSs such as Sailfish do not take off despite doing crazy things to support Android applications.)
- Nition 10y agoYou can actually install Google Play Services on Sailfish and it's easy to do, but not officially supported obviously.
- catwell 10y agoThe actual Google Play Services or microG? Last time I checked the solution was microG but it requires you to root your phone, which on Sailfish basically means you don't care about security at all.
- Nition 10y agoThe actual Google Play Services: https://together.jolla.com/question/30926/howto-install-google-play-on-original-jolla-phone-sbj/ https://together.jolla.com/question/30926/howto-install-goog... It's basically just installing the APK, although there are a few more steps than I thought I remembered.
- diaz 10y agoAfter all these years I have never installed google services or used anything related to it. On SailfishOS I use f-droid and aptoide and some random apks from the web after using some weird websites that I'm pretty sure probably did bad things because they just go and supposedly get the apks from play store but I have no idea what they really do. All the applications I try and that require stuff from google they just crash randomly or at some specific options. I just uninstall them or try to be very careful for them not to crash. It's horrible experience and it's not something so hard to prepare for. Some apolications handle it showing that an action can't be done and I'm ok with it, that's simple, but crashing because the services are not installed is just plain ridiculous, lazy and bad engeneering. Once upon a time slack just worked fine, just didn't auto refreshed updates, then on one update it started crashing and currently since a while ago an annoying message appears everytime I focus/open the apllication saying that I don't have the play services despite the application working completly fine. The proper thing to do would just to be a messsge saying something like: " the app requires google services, the quality of the experience will be reduced and actions FOO and BAR will not work. options: continue anyway, exit and continue and remeber that option" in order for it to be persintent and stop being annoying. Not that hard. I just endup not using a bunch of applications that I would like to. Apps that use maps or or try to get location will usually just crash. I never even installed Uber or tried it because I'm pretty sure it will just not work, so I didn't even try it. microG is the best thing I could hope for, but I really tried to use it but was not able too. It requires something about signing or whatever that just didn't work after I tried a lot doing things with Xposed or what it was called. Even getting to a point where that almost worked was crazy. I'm pretty sure the experience will be pretty similar in any other alternative OS that has to deal with this crazy environment. And I will never get a "real" android where that thing will come installed, I refuse to. I was thinking of changing phones to some android based thing, but the support of hardware is very limited, so I'm pretty stuck. Waiting for any newer Jolla phone or any other alternative phone/OS that works.
- omash 10y agoI'm one of these lucky 10.
- taneq 10y agoHopefully the number of people who object to Google installing a webcam in their underpants drawer is a bit larger than that.
- chrismartin 10y agoAnecdata, but make that 11! I've wanted this for months and even sponsored the bounty.
- Fej 10y agoThis move is good at least from an ideological standpoint, as Google Play Services undoubtedly leaks data. Signal is of course not heavily reliant on Google Play Services; thus seems like a good solution for the most security-conscious, even if Signal is about reaching as many users as possible.
- marco_salvatori 10y agoThe are 1 billion people in China who have easy access to Android phones which do not have Google Play Services installed and provide no access the Play store. There are potentially more than 10 people out of those 1 billion that could have a use for Signal.
- metilda 10y agoSure, but does signal work in China? I'd be impressed if it did without any tunneling.
- marco_salvatori 10y agoLast time I played a bit with Signal, about a year ago, the app was a bit fussy but functioned without extra measures. And I believe it was the sign up procedure that was a bit fussy. Regarless, though, Chinese communications controls are constantly improving, and what works one day will not necessarily work the next.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- chaz6 10y agoI was waiting for this so I could use Signal on my BlackBerry Z30 (running BB10 with Android compatibility), but I have since swapped over to Android as there were just too many things missing. Shame, I really miss the hub. I guess I can buy the BB app to replace it.
- ticoombs 10y agoWhat does this mean for an official Fdroid option?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jethro_tell 10y agoIf I really wanted a phone that was clean, It would probably not be attached to a google account. This is where signal would really shine anyway.
- Cyphase 10y agoRequiring Google Play Services is not the main reason Signal hasn't been on F-Droid; you can read Moxie's thoughts on the subject in these comments (and in other places): https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/127#issuecomment-13335689 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/127#... https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/281#issuecomment-21762482 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/281#...
- yagni3 10y agoSome of these are solved by setting up their own repo (though you can't force users to update in F-droid). Some of the tracking things can be handled, I believe, if they were built out and opt-in. https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/Setup_an_FDroid_App_Repo https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/Setup_an_FDroid_App_Repo
- boondaburrah 10y agoWhile google play certainly helps with these issues, I currently have both whatsapp and firefox installed from their respective websites by downloading the APK directly. WhatsApp is happy to notify me when there's an update, and it's one click to download and install. Firefox downloads the update automatically, and again, it's one tap to start the install. Mozilla crash reporter runs when it needs to, etc. So while google play gives you these features "for free," it's not impossible at all to have them without. Only unattended upgrades requires special access, and to be honest personally I never want things modifying what's installed without asking.
- yagni3 10y agoI still like Matrix' federated first approach to the server over Signal's, but this is a welcome change. Now we just need an F-droid build (official repo or built by the F-droid team).
- marco1 10y agoHere's their stance on federation: https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
- problems 10y agoThey're pretty critical of XMPP but aren't there direct counter examples to it, like Conversations https://conversations.im https://conversations.im for one.
- anc84 10y agoConversations is the only counter example and only came into the scene fairly recently. Before, XMPP on Android (my OS) was not fun and battery draining.
- a3_nm 10y agoFortunately, as the code is under a free license, F-Droid or anyone else can ship their own builds no matter what Open Whisper Systems prefer.
- bubblethink 10y agoThis is great news. Is there sufficient interest in making a secure dumb phone ? If it's cheap enough, I think some people may be interested. The rough design for the phone can be something like this: It should not be a real phone. i.e., No baseband or actual cellular connection. It should work only over wifi (ath9k maybe?), and have provisions for always-on TOR/VPN. The rest of the hardware and software can be derived as some combination of Neo900, Replicant and copperheadOS
- unicornporn 10y agoNext problem: Signal will not work without a phone number... I'd vote for https://riot.im/ https://riot.im/ instead.
- mirimir 10y agoCouldn't the phone somehow "pretend" to have a phone number?
- bubblethink 10y agoI think it needs the phone number for verification. The phone number is the identity in Signal (and a lot of other apps these days).
- mirimir 10y agoVerification of what, to whom/what? If you're using WiFi, there's no "phone" anything involved. Or at least, I don't get why there would need to be.
- Paul-ish 10y agoYour messages still go through OWS servers. I believe signal routes messages via phone #. Signal client is open source though, so maybe this is easy to work around.
- kestrelhawk 10y agoI've recently been attempting to gradually liberate my data from reliance on Google's services, not just for being more privacy conscious but by a means of exploring new services offered by other companies/developers and to decentralise my data. I've started this process by installing Lineage OS on my OPX device and selected the bare-minimum of Google Services - Google Play Store/Services. From what I've done so far I imagine it's quite difficult to remove dependency on Google Play Services and I've been wondering, which alternatives exist and what's the rationale behind completely removing dependence on Google Play Services? With Lineage OS I've been able to restrict most permissions besides storage so is there any need to remove it?
- ethagnawl 10y ago> I've been wondering, which alternatives exist https://f-droid.org/ https://f-droid.org/
- mverwijs 10y agoThere is no need for any Google software. Just install lineageOS, then install f-droid and from f-droid install Yalp Store. From Yalp you can install any app from Google Play, should you want to.
- 7ewis 10y agoWon't this just drain the battery very quickly?
- yagni3 10y agoMy phone is way more battery light since getting off Google Services completely. Conversations uses a similar solution, I think, and I have way more battery at the end of the day than when my phone was stock Google Android.
- kasey_junk 10y agoYes. But everything is tradeoffs. Some people are apparently ok with less battery life instead of Google Play Services. Its been a very big critique of Signal for I long time. Personally, I think it is a pretty poor critique but this allows people to make that choice for themselves, which for some people is important.
- synicalx 10y agoI've always found Google Play Services was the #1 battery drain on my S7, 15-20% each day even on a brand new/stock build.
- invisiblevoid 10y agoSure it will. But there isn't so much they can do about it. Google could. Still, people asked for an option to use Signal without Play Services, and here it is. Even if it will drain their battery a lot faster. Moxie actually said this beforehand: > I expect it to have high battery consumption and an unreliable user experience source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883410
- i2shar 10y ago> I expect it to have high battery consumption and an unreliable user experience, but would be fine with it if it comes with a warning and only runs in the absence of play services. So for those who are still running on devices with Play Services, it will still use GCM, and hence won't be a drain on the battery?
- simplehuman 10y agoHas anyone tried Signal's voice calling? The overall voice quality is very poor and the voice volume is extremely low. And call me stupid, but I could not even find the video call button in signal (on android). I had to sadly switch back to whats app because voice and video quality are stellar.
- bubblethink 10y agoVoice is getting better. It's in beta right now. Both parties need to enable it in the settings right now. I tried it recently, and it worked quite well for the most part. They'll presumably iron out the issues before a general release.
- simplehuman 10y agoAre you talking about Video and not Voice? I didn't have to enable anything for Signal Voice calls.
- bubblethink 10y agoYes, it's the same setting for both video and voice, which uses the newer webrtc stuff. The old voice support is being phased out, which is probably what you've used in the past.
- romanovcode 10y agoI wish every app would be possible to use without Google Spy Services.
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoI don't feel like wading through a diff to find out so could someone explain what they changed? How are they handling notifications and what impact might this have on battery life?
- rorykoehler 10y agoI don't get notifications on Signal. Android 6.0. Anyone else experience this?
- farless 10y agoNo, notifications work for me. Android 7.1.1. Check out their support page for some ideas to fix this: https://support.whispersystems.org/hc/en-us/articles/218112597-Where-are-my-notifications- https://support.whispersystems.org/hc/en-us/articles/2181125...
- rorykoehler 10y agoYes, I have ensured all my settings are correct. I get notifications when someone "new" joins signal but not when a message comes through. Same issue with Telegram. I suspect it's an issue with Android notifications.
- beerbaron23 10y agoI did, the solution was to uninstall signal, install it again. Then head to the app section in android and make sure the notification permissions are enabled
- rorykoehler 10y agoCool will try that thx
- interfixus 10y agoTaking this long to shake officially somewhat free of the the Play Store horror is one thing which tells me to stay clear of Signal. Not that it matters. The phone number thing was a dealbreaker from the beginning.
- psynapse 10y agoVery welcome news. I discovered after doing a clean flash recently that the ability to have Google Play Services on the phone but disabled, became unavailable. I used to use it exclusively for Signal - it meant no push notifications, but I could still foreground the app for it to check for messages. I was disappointed that I could not install Signal again, even though my phone number was registered, without Google Play. I was preparing to walk the microG services (or similar) path, but now I don't have to.