Effectively Using Android Without Google Play Services with Gplayweb in Docker

https://fxaguessy.fr/en/articles/2017/02/11/effectively-using-android-without-google-play-services-gplayweb-in-docker/

by fxaguessy • 9 years ago

318 73 9 years ago

hoschicz• 9 years ago

What is the worst thing about G Play Services you can't turn off?

ocdtrekkie3• 9 years ago

Probably 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• 9 years ago

Hyperbole much?

sametmax• 9 years ago

The fact that everything you do is linked to a google account.

crdoconnor• 9 years ago

I 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• 9 years ago

Software which nags and annoys the user is malware.

NoGravitas• 9 years ago

Besides 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• 9 years ago

There 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.)

JulienSchmidt4• 9 years ago

Time 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 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

xkxx4• 9 years 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?

JulienSchmidt4• 9 years ago

Can you elaborate, please?

Are you asking how it is unavoidable or how it is sending only minimal identifying data?

nebulous1• 9 years ago

Anybody have the lowdown on what currently does/doesn't work with this? Specifically, which sort of apps work and which don't?

Does this clone the google services framework or just google play services?

JulienSchmidt4• 9 years ago

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 and contacts / calendar sync (using DAVdroid).

mike-cardwell• 9 years ago

Can I use Signal under this setup?

j_s• 9 years ago

Kind of? https://zepman.tweakblogs.net/blog/12999/signal-on-android-w... (April 2016)

ce4• 9 years ago

Copperhead maintains a fork called Noise available in their F-Droid repository

https://fdroid.copperhead.co/repo

The repo's signing key fingerprint (sha256) is

    F0 D4 EB 11 93 AD 82 FE B2 24 BD 11 74 B6 FB
    D8 9A 39 D8 ED 98 8C 9F FF 2A DD 0D CD 1C 4E
    27 1B

known• 9 years ago

G play services sucks phone battery

fxaguessy2• 9 years ago

That'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• 9 years ago

I 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.

a3n3• 9 years ago

I 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_off3• 9 years ago

it could also come from the hardware.

scholia4• 9 years ago

Have you looked under Settings then Battery? Tells you which things are using the battery (%) and approx how much time you have left.

I usually get 3 days from a Nexus 6, and the biggest battery user is "Mobile standby" (5%).

necessity• 9 years ago

Uber, 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.

fxaguessy2• 9 years ago

When 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.

xkxx4• 9 years ago

Have you tried running Uber or Tinder under microG mentioned by JulienSchmidt in this thread?

trendia2• 9 years ago

The 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• 9 years ago

I'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...

(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.)

yohui• 9 years ago

Have you checked it recently? There's no microphone permission listed: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.economis...

bishnu• 9 years ago

Uber has a web client. I used it a few times from a laptop when I was without a phone (coincidentally, left it on an uber). Does it not work from mobile devices?

bruce_one• 9 years ago

The desktop version doesn't (iirc) but they have a mobile website version, but you have to raise a support ticket manually to get access (or else you get an indistinguishable "permission denied"-like error). It's an odd requirement.... And infitely frustrating :-p

The mobile website works fairly well :-)

I actually thought this might be an avenue for someone like Lyft to excel, but alas they didn't seem any better, iirc...

ocdtrekkie3• 9 years ago

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.

funnyfacts365• 9 years ago

Tinder does work with MicroG.

tehwalrus• 9 years ago

I 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• 9 years ago

I 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• 9 years ago

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.

moonfern• 9 years ago

In that case you can try 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• 9 years ago

This article is about a third party tool that lets you download apps from the Play store.

deep_attention3• 9 years ago

Or 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/

ycmbntrthrwaway• 9 years ago

Basically the author created web interface to similar APK downloader. At least Docker is completely unrelated.

floatboth• 9 years ago

Yalp uses a Google account, which isn't good.

I use https://apkpure.com

voltagex_3• 9 years ago

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

jay-anderson• 9 years ago

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.

Midiv0k• 9 years ago

Instead 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

whyagaindavid• 9 years ago

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

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