Aurora Store on F-Droid is a FOSS frontend for the Google Play Store that is a seamless drop-in. Requires no Play Services, nor an account.

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homebrewer 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

It doesn't work for everything; one of the banks I'm forced to use checks for how it was installed, and Android for some incomprehensible reason is happy to report that to any application that asks (along with lots of other information like bootloader status and developer mode — you really have fewer rights to 'your' device than random applications).

After opening the application, it complains about being installed through an "insecure method", and bails. Reinstalling through Google Play magically fixes that.

These "security checks" are spreading like measles, so expect to see this sooner or later.

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mschuster91 2 days ago | parent [-]

> one of the banks I'm forced to use checks for how it was installed, and Android for some incomprehensible reason is happy to report that to any application that asks

That's because apps that aren't published just on the Play Store but also on other stores or for direct sideloads (for users running Huawei for example which doesn't have Play Store) need to be able to detect the installation method to do updates on their own if there is no backing store.

	▲	const_cast a day ago \| parent [-]
		The use case makes some amount of sense, but I think once an API becomes predominantly used for fingerprinting and the real use case becomes a side effect you should just nuke the API. It's the responsible thing to do. Apple has done it a few times.

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bboygravity 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

But than the apps you download (your banking app) require play services right?

So then what's the point of having a Play Store without Google Play services?

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gf000 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

GrapheneOS managed to make Google play services into normal android services, without higher privileges that they have on other android systems.

I am personally more than okay with using the official, proprietary GP services from time to time if they abide by the same rules, especially that I can make these rules as strict as I want.

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unethical_ban a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not all apps on play store require play services.

And even if you install Google play on your graphene phone, it is still more isolated by default. Add that to the concept of storage scopes and more permissions control (apps have to ask for access to the network) and you have a more secure platform.

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ThePowerOfFuet 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Many apps claim to require Play Services, but all my (several) bank apps work perfectly on GrapheneOS. No notifications because they rely on Google, but that is more feature than bug in my books.

Signal brings its own notifications, so they work perfectly.

The only app which was broken to the point of unusability was Too Good To Go, which demands that you pick locations on a map which relies on Play Services; the manual city entry is broken.

I use Google Maps only in Firefox Focus, but I've heard that builds of Google Maps up to about a year or so ago didn't rely on Play Services, and with Aurora Store you can manually enter a build number to install.

tl;dr: 10/10, fabulous experience.

	▲	easyKL 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Need the Maps data, the satellite picture, or StreetView? All these past years this WebView wrapper have been working like a charm https://f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.maps
	▲	anthk 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Uh GF uses TooGoodToGo, I might try if it works with MicroG and the companion app which appears at FDroid (can't recall now the name, but it appeared with Droidify and some repos). It must be a Play Services API placeholder out there too. Install Droidify, enable the repos, and install "microG Services" and "microG Companion".