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I've been wondering for some time: If you're one of those unfortunates who have, for unstated reasons been banned from the Google ecosystem for life, what opti

I've been wondering for some time: If you're one of those unfortunates who have, for unstated reasons been banned from the Google ecosystem for life, what options still remain to use an Android phone? You won't be able to download apps from the Play store, even if they would otherwise run on a device that doesn't have a valid google account logged in. Right? I have one of those legacy (still free) custom domain things i.e. "workspace" and I'm getting increasingly paranoid about tinkering with its configuration (untouched for years) for fear of triggering some secret forbidden thing.

JohnFen 2y ago
I've had a few de-Googled phones. It's entirely feasible. The way you do it is by replacing the factory OS with an Android fork that has been de-googled. > You won't be able to download apps from the Play store You don't need to. There are other app stores, and if you don't mind the slight inconvenience, you can sideload apps without using an app store at all. Which you might have to do in order to install the app you need to use an alternate app store. It's not 100% -- there will be some apps that won't work (some banking apps, for example, don't want to run if the OS has been tampered with). But that kind of thing wasn't a showstopper for me, and there are often alternative apps you can use. If it's just a case of not having a valid Google ID, then you probably don't even need to go full hog like that. You could likely get away with just using an alternate app store instead of the Play store. At least, that used to work. I haven't done it in a few years, though, so it may have changed.
- MarkusWandel 2y ago
  I thought they were implementing countermeasures to just grabbing the .apk from the Play store via the web and then sideloading. Like not even using the .apk format any more.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    I can sideload .apks just fine on the current version of Android. I don't know if you can still grab the .apks from the Play store or not, because I haven't tried that in years, but you don't have to get your apps from the Play store. I don't think that's relevant to MarkusWandel's question anyway because he was asking about what to do if you don't have access to Google's ecosystem, which would include the Play store. If Google does do something to prevent sideloading, it would just mean you'd have to install a de-googled Android to restore that functionality. That's a bigger hassle, but not the end of the world.

JohnFen 2y ago

I've had a few de-Googled phones. It's entirely feasible. The way you do it is by replacing the factory OS with an Android fork that has been de-googled. > You won't be able to download apps from the Play store You don't need to. There are other app stores, and if you don't mind the slight inconvenience, you can sideload apps without using an app store at all. Which you might have to do in order to install the app you need to use an alternate app store. It's not 100% -- there will be some apps that won't work (some banking apps, for example, don't want to run if the OS has been tampered with). But that kind of thing wasn't a showstopper for me, and there are often alternative apps you can use. If it's just a case of not having a valid Google ID, then you probably don't even need to go full hog like that. You could likely get away with just using an alternate app store instead of the Play store. At least, that used to work. I haven't done it in a few years, though, so it may have changed.

MarkusWandel 2y ago
I thought they were implementing countermeasures to just grabbing the .apk from the Play store via the web and then sideloading. Like not even using the .apk format any more.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  I can sideload .apks just fine on the current version of Android. I don't know if you can still grab the .apks from the Play store or not, because I haven't tried that in years, but you don't have to get your apps from the Play store. I don't think that's relevant to MarkusWandel's question anyway because he was asking about what to do if you don't have access to Google's ecosystem, which would include the Play store. If Google does do something to prevent sideloading, it would just mean you'd have to install a de-googled Android to restore that functionality. That's a bigger hassle, but not the end of the world.