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Comment by kestrelhawk | Hacker News Reader

I'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?

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There 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.

More people should know about Yalp! Awesome.

Just note that Yalp is storing the username and password you give it server side.

They have an experimental option to login without giving your credentials; I just tried it minutes ago.

I just looked through the source code real quick, and while I may have missed something it seems to be storing the credentials client side, not server side. Unless you mean on Google's servers, then yeah.

I'm a long-time F-Droid user, but I hadn't heard of Yalp Store that I can remember; thanks for the reference!

To be fair I don't think it has been available that long in f-droid.

My previous hack was two phones. One clean and one with Google Play. Both with f-droid as f-droid has this wonderful feature of copying one apk to another over WiFi.

Sorta like a private repo.

Yea, I didn't mention it, but I checked when it had been added; it was 2016-12-30.

I just wish I had a device that was supported, having major issues with cyagenomod, had to flash stock and it's driving me crazy.

Cyagenomod with no google apps/services at all makes me feel much better though. I may have to get a new device just for lineage.

> Just install lineageOS

Except many many phones are NOT supported by LineageOS.

That is the reason I do my due diligence regarding the personal requirements (quirks) that I have.

And then I buy a phone that _does_ support rooting and other ROMs.

While this would be a perfect solution, there is one caveat:

Most apps (e.g Signal until today) rely on Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) service for push-notifications. Without GCM, many apps simply crash.

> I've been wondering, which alternatives exist

https://f-droid.org/

check out the microG project: https://github.com/microg

it provides a location service that works without google and they re-built the play services and maps API, so you don't have to have any google apps installed at all. for those apps that actually need to talk to google servers, there's an option for that.

Have you had any experience setting up an Android device to use microG? Their installation instructions on Github make it seem like a huge hassle. (e.g. You need a custom ROM that supports app impersonation, which is usually prohibited on security/privacy conscious distributions.)

yes. in short, it didn't work for me. either your ROM supports that out of the box (mine didn't), or you install xposed (should be rather simple with their installer, but didn't work for me, likely because my five year old device isn't supported), or you patch your ROM manually to enable "app impersonation" (signature spoofing), that didn't work for me either.

but the xposed route should be simple, provided you have root access.

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