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Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

Ah, don't get me started about these dark patterns.

Google Maps, the native Android phone app, behaves like a crappy website in navigation mode.

Google really wants to push the assistant, there isn't a way to completely disable it in Android, disable all shortcuts, basically make it go away.

So, in Google Maps, there's a Assistant bar at the bottom. That only pops up when you're in navigation mode, and "conveniently", slides up when you switch apps.

So if you're in another app and decide to exit navigation using the X at the bottom left of Google Maps... the Assistant button slides up and you accidentally press it.

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> there isn't a way to completely disable it in Android

This is not true, as there is... just disable the Google app.

You will need to replace the launcher with the Nova launcher in the process, and will likely replace the search box with Firefox search. But the Google app and Assistant will be totally disabled and unavailable anywhere in the Android experience. If you find a link to it, it will ask to enable which you can decline.

I found this out by Google having placed me in some experiment earlier this year where my Pixel 6 Pro went from 24h battery life down to about 3h battery life. The battery was being drained by the Google app exclusively, and so without any fix or published workaround I set about disabling the Google app.

Overall this has been a huge improvement, my battery under near identical usage is now closer to 36h... and the Assistant not being present I have since viewed as a bonus (at the time I thought it a negative). I believe the issue is probably now fixed, but why would I go back when this is a better experience with more battery, disabling the Google app was like upgrading my phone.

Wasn't Nova Launcher acquired by a very shady company?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32150092

Lawnchair is a great alternative: https://lawnchair.app/

I personally also love Kvæsitso, which is a search-based launcher kind of like KISS launcher but with a cleaner aesthetic: https://kvaesitso.mm20.de/

KISS Launcher has the better smartly ordered search, though: https://kisslauncher.com/

Lawnchair on F-Droid says it's no longer maintained?

What's really odd is they support no app stores. Not GPlay or FDroid. So they expect users to continually download APK and update? Seems like a great pattern to keep their user base small - but maybe that's what they're after.

Most of these apps are in the Izzyondroid fdroid repo. It's there by default in Droid-ify which is much better than the official fdroid client anyway.

https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/app.lawnchair

What do you mean? Lawnchair is on the playstore. The only thing is that it tells me it was built for an older version of android, so I cannot install it.

I think it's safe to assume most want a supported version of an app, not something that's been abandoned on the Play Store. From the Lawnchair site [0]:

"Do you still support the Play Store version?

Unfortunately not. We no longer support the play store version; issues about it won't be accepted. This is done to focus development on making Lawnchair 12.1 finished and making it similar to Lawnchair 2. Also, maintaining legacy code is not a focus of the developers."

[0] https://lawnchair.app/faq/

Wait, Google lets you view it but just not download?

Android is perfectly capable of running that afaik; I'm sure that my current version (11 I think?) is at least backwards compatible back till Android 4, if not Android 2

You could try Aurora Store, which uses a pool of dummy Google accounts to pull apks from their servers. I doubt it has belittling restrictions like what you describe, and there's also a manual download option which can sometimes let you get old versions if the server still has them and you know the build number

I used it and it was better than the Pixel launcher in my opinion, but yes it seems like the last update was a year ago.

I'm very happy with OLauncher :) Minimalistic, quasi text-based. Swipe up to show all apps and show keyboard by default for a fast search, swipe left to open firefox and swipe right for signal.

I have been using Niagara for years. They have a built-in search, but it's better if you also have Sesame.

Almost every launcher has a built-in search feature. The difference with search-based launchers for me is having only widgets or even just plain nothing on the home screen, launching apps from a small favorites bar or by typing the first few letters of the apps name. It's honestly faster than looking at many screens full of folders of apps ever was.

https://sesame.ninja/ Sesame is cool, but not FOSS, and last time I tried it some years back it had some limitations for free users or didn't integrate into my launcher well or something like that.

Lynx launcher (my personal favorite) is also pretty good. I switched to it after Evie launcher development stopped.

Isn't Sesame also bought by the same shady company that bought Nova?

Branch is "very shady"?

Believe it or not, the Blackberry Launcher is solid and a great alternative.

Highly recommend the above. Moving to a launcher, defaulting to Firefox (yay adblocker), and replacing the default search with Kagi creates a near distraction free experience on Android.

Unfortunately the Reddit / X changes this year should remind us these sort of 3rd-party workarounds will only exist for so long.

I know it's a dream, but I'm looking forward to simple Linux phones. Moving to GNOME / arch on my Desktop lets me do what I want to do and somehow, magically plays any game from Steam without a hitch.

This is what Competition law is primarily about if I want/have to use App X, App Y should not be forced upon me. It was the problem in Windows/IE or Android/PlayStore ...

Google, Apple, MSFT are abusing "monopoly" in one area to extend their reach in other areas.

> just disable the Google app.

Since several months ago, disabling the Google app also disables camera functionality in Google Translate (?!..), which to an expat is absolutely crippling.

I had no idea all the expats from before 10 years ago were crippled.

FWIW WordLens came out in 2010

“just”

Yes, it's very simple. Just open the app info (by long holding the app icon and pressing the little "i"), then select "disable" and confirm the dialogue. Or did you mean something else?

There are 10 comments above mentioning various gotchas.

While you're at it, why not install a custom ROM without Google Services (and use MicroG for notifications and stuff).

Generally this comes with the downside of being unable to use banking apps.

Can you build on that ? In particular, did you lose voice to text writing as a result ? This is my biggest fear.

> ”don't get me started about these dark patterns”

Here’s another dark pattern for you in a totally different context.

So Google use to have all of it various services on a separate subdomain (eg maps.google.com).

But they moved to having everything under www.google.com.

You know why, it’s because when you allow Google Maps to geolocate you (which is totally appropriate for a Maps use case) … now ALL of Google services get geolocation data about you from Search, Gmail, etc since they are all hosted in the same www root.

Nice benefit is the elimination of tons of CORS requests.

No end user has ever been inconvenienced by a CORS request, so not sure that's a "benefit" for anyone other than Google.

Sorry I find the ability to not allow geo for google.com for more than a day annoying as hell and a stupid feature where apple is over reaching.

What does that have to do with cross-subdomain CORS requests?

that's actually pretty cool in a very fucked up sort of way

I’m not sure the correct way to approach The problem is, but it’s more widespread than just the big guys.

Chess.com is annoying me by changing my settings every 1 to 2 months to put them back to what they want.

This sort of thing is really common

Used to love google maps, but I’ve switched to Apple Maps it’s been so bad lately. It’s taken me in literal circles, decides I need to do 2 uturns while sitting at a traffic light, gives instructions that are unclear or too late, etc. I noticed Waze got worse lately too, I guess they’re integrating them more :(

Google assistant randomly fires off for me in my heavily de-googled 2017 LG phone.

It is so frustrating. I hate that app with passion, yet I can't disable it in android.

I've got no idea whether this still happens in more current Android versions or not, but on my phone I also discovered the weird phenomenon whereby force-stopping the Google app resets the selected assistant app back to Google instead of whatever else I might have chosen.

That sounds like straight-up malware behavior. One process protecting the other so you can't kill them both permanently.

This should be explicitly made illegal when it's done without the user's consent.

>Google really wants to push the assistant, there isn't a way to completely disable it in Android

This is why I switched to LineageOS. Google, the biggest ad company on the planet, is not to be trusted with something so personal as a cell phone.

Little protip: if you sign your phone up with Google, it doesn't force the assistant on you at all. Don't remember having to disable it, you just have to not consent to their terms.

Side effect: you can kiss access to the monopoly on apk files goodbye unless you want to use third party hacky methods that use a pool of random people's accounts to talk to the google apk servers...

Using one monopoly to gain market share in another :) The pattern is everywhere with google. I keep wondering why the competitors like TomTom haven't gotten them banned from the country with antitrust suits. Instead, TomTom just cut their losses, threw in the towel for their own map (which has surprisingly good worldwide road coverage for a Dutch company from the noughties), and is starting to use OpenStreetMap as a base layer. I'm not complaining about OSM use, but they were in the prime position to force Google to open the data they funneled from their original monopoly

If you open setting in maps, you can disable driving mode, which gets rid of that bar at the bottom. I then couldn't figure out where to turn it back on. There's still an assistant button but in a less intrusive location.

Huh, you can't disable Assistant anymore? When did that change? My phone is old.

I can on a Pixel 7 pro. Did for a while before deciding it was useful and wanted it but didn't like it trying to pop up, so I went from disabled, to off by default but callable by dragging from one of the bottom corners and requiring me to press the mic button for it to listen. Kind of the best of both worlds, it stays asleep until I need to change whats on the chromecast.

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