How practical is it to use android without gapps?

How practical is it to use android without gapps?

Other urls found in this thread:

f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=whatsapp&fdid=com.javiersantos.whatsappbetaupdater
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Depends on your personal needs and expectations.

It is better if you avoid gapps. Install f-droid and get all apps you need.

I'm only using Swiftkey, all 40 other apps are from f-droid.

It's very impractical. I have one phone with CM14 without GApps and it's practically unusable.

I have Micro-G installed but that doesn't do shit.

what are you using for maps?

nothing, I used MAPS.ME but I don't really use it now

I'm surprised there isn't a FOSS alternative, since the openmaps archive is available

>practically unusable
only if you're attached to facebook/google

OsmAnd is in FDroid

Not at all (from personal experience.) Open-source alternatives to popular apps are usually very subpar if they even exist at all, and Google has worked hard to make the AOSP experience as shitty as possible.

awesome, thank you

I'm attached to neither. But for example Signal requires Google apps.

It's great. Sideload the apps you can't get, or live without.

That's why it's not recommended if you're looking for privacy, plenty of other options.

Not impractical at all, everything i use comes from f-droid sans for poweramp and mx player pro, must be because i dont use any kind of social media though, i never checked if microG can spoof gapps to let you use jewtube or normalfagbook.

Literally unusable.

OsmAnd~ is the perfect FOSS gmaps replacement

Literally no other options that normies can use.

"Uhh they just have to set up a password manager and create an account with password."

Yeah you just lost 95% of consumers dipshit

>normies

oh no, normies don't like it, f-droid is finished...

I agree, it's a total pain in the arse. I put up with it for ages but the lack of maps forced me back into those cold bot arms

It's easy desu. Just use APKMirror, Aptoide, and FDroid for everything. If you really want to use the Google Play Store, you can download MicroG to work with it

Pretty sure the Una Phone is android focused on privacy. You better like the stock apps, though, because there isn't a store to download other apps.

>signal
Since LibreSignal has closed why would anyone use it?
Silence doesn't require Gapps, is on F-droid. Both are based of Text secure so it's the same shit anyway.

It is in the long run and will stay a niche thing just like Linux desktops.

Lack of maps? OsmAnd is an established open source maps and navigation app with lots of features (but is very slow), Maps With Me (MAPS.ME) is the new kid on the block; fast and nice but not as many features as OsmAnd.

Both of these use OpenStreetMap, which is a good quality map (especially in Europe), and are good for navigation (only significant problem being the lack of traffic information).

>cellular phone
>privacy

Pick one

I love F-droid and use it as a supplementary repository of often superior, libre, no-nonsense apps. My must have list:

Amaze, Andbible, Barcode scanner, Call meter 3g, Clover, Diskusage, Lightning, Linphone, MuPDF, OneTimePad, OpenKeychain, Red Moon, Silence, Termux, Turbo Editor, WifiKeyboard.

Thank you based developers for releasing free, quality apps.

>And Bible
Hi Terry

Not him but it's the perfect bible app

Android is fine without GApps.
For proprietary shit that are not on fdroid, Apdoide is okay.

...

Maps.Me is FOSS, they just didn't let F-Droid use their map download server and the name is trademarked

With CM13 :

Adaway - for hosts file
BusyBox
Clover - shitposting
Document Viewer - read pdfs
Faceslim - muh normies
Icecat Mobile
LibreOffice
LibreTorrent
Lightning
NewPipe - for youtube
OsmAnd - for maps
Plumble - Mumble
Red Moon - like redshift
Ring - secure messaging
Syncthing - for da cloud
Text Edit
VLC

You don't need gapps

What's the best way to save/sync your contacts without Google?

save all your contacts in a text file :^)

the only app i miss from gapps is Waze. Being tracked on every ride sucks but the navigation gets you over traffic so great. Botnet mever felt so good. Aside from that there is nothing that a free app wont be better at. Fucking signal tho, IRL peeps want me to use it but i wont fucking get a google account to install some white dreadlock hippie botnet

Literally the only thing that's holding me back is a fool proof wifi transfer method. Like you open an app showing your IP and a port that you have to type into your desktop browser. Showing your internal storage, right click and download to safe on your PC and an interface to upload stuff. You close the app and it disconnects. Is there something like that on fdroid?

Many of you are very fucking clueless tbvh.

One thing is relying completely on f-droid, which is obviously impractical af. another is using f-droid only while occasionally sideloading a couple apks from apkmirror.

For sideloading gapps and getting them to work without play services, microg is the solution.

So in my case, besides whatsapp, dropbox, and couple more, I don't need play services nor gapps, so I don't use them. Easy as that.

vCards

syncthing might fit

Owntracks and Signal cant work without gapps.
Micro-G is broken on android 7.1.1. Gsm tower location service is also broken.
Push services in many apps also do not work without gapps. You wont get instant notification of incoming mails/messages.
Contacts sync is a pain. Davdroid cant work with nextcloud or osx server carddav.
Syncing notes with non google email server is almost impossible.
OsmAnd is nice but it is useless for public transport and it do not have real-time traffic data.
It's unreliable as fuck.

it hasn't been unreliable for me so far, just slow as fuck starting up (it takes a few minutes for the android client to notice it needs to sync)

Pretty good
Microg enables push notifications on everything
I use osm for maps

>cm13
>using any red filter app
You know CM13 has that built into the system itself right?

I use an Amazon fire phone, and by default there isn't any Google shit.
By default i have a great Maps application.

Well there is Aptoide and the Amazon app store so as long as you are OK with using these then yeah, you can use Android without G-apps

I recently decided to get rid of all the Google stuff.
> Google Play Store => F-Droid
> (G)Mail => K-9 Mail (default Android mail doesn't support identities)
> Calendar/Contacts => DAVdroid
> Google Authenticator => FreeOTP
> Maps => OsmAnd
> Reddit => RedReader

Since everyone in my country uses WhatsApp I am kind of stuck with that, but F-Droid has a WhatsApp updater.

The only thing I currently miss is my bank's app.

no gapps. i love it

I sync contact on my Nextcloud server with DAVdroid

Thinking about ditching Gapps. Anybody know if WhatsApp works without Gapps? It's the only botnet app that I can't avoid.

Yes, it does. They have APK files on their website. There is also an automatic updater on F-Droid:
f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=whatsapp&fdid=com.javiersantos.whatsappbetaupdater

DavDroid, it probably supports whatever cloud or self-hosted solution you wish to use.

>LibreOffice
That doesnt cut it. Only botnet i have on my phone is Microsoft botnet thanks to office apps.

primitive ftpd + winSCP + ShareX

My holy trinity.

Whatsapp automatically downloads updates, there is no need to download the apk more than once.

Neato. Guess I'll go for it then.

Impracticable. Only retards and autists "muuhhh Stallman" do this.

I don't live GAppless because muh freedom.
I do because I just hate google.

Aren't winSCP and ShareX supposed to do the same thing?

It's fine, I've removed it months ago and don't miss anything. Most apps are on Aptoide anyway.
If an app "needs gapps" you can use Xposed and fake gapps. I've also removed location services in favor of microG and everything works fine. In fact my battery and bandwidth now last longer.
The one thing you won't have are some in-app purchases, but you can use lucky patcher for some.
Facebook works without gapps.
Are you 12? The phone won't lack a thing without gapps. It's practically bloatware.

What has the botnet ever done to you?

Going Google-free soon. Will side load some apps. Can someone recommend me the following?
- Email
- Maps
- Doc/PDF editor

K9mail
OsmAnd, navit, or maps.me

OsmAnd ran slowest on my phone, but I haven't used the last few versions since I no longer use navigation apps. It was very good and accurate and supports all countries offline. I mean, the navigation was all fine but when I was moving the map around myself it lagged, probably because my phone is a bit old. Look into all 3 and decide for yourself.
I never used email software other than Web browsers, but I always see people recommending k9.
As for docs, I use WPS but also have "document viewer" which is available on f-droid. Haven't heard of an app capable of editing pdf though.

Have you run into issues with not finding specific locations on OsmAnd. I noticed .ME was missing a few streets in my area despite the development being years ago.

I wouldn't call it perfect, the routing software and paths aren't as up to date. Comparing the two cross country, OsmAnd added hours to the journey.

That said, if you're going for long long trips, having the botnet know where you are is pretty handy if you run into problems.

yeah but you'll miss pushed massages or get them really late unless you install microG

No, not really. I did have to zoom in pretty deep to find something once, but it was there. 3rd world country here, so if you live somewhere relevant there shouldn't be problems.

Is anyone else with microg + unifiednlp taking forever to get a gps fix?

I use ShareX to transfer files via "drag to drop" and winSCP (or filezilla) to manage folders, like if I have to order the files in some folders and such. Also I use winSCP to copy files from the phone to my pc instead of the usb cable.

I did a fresh install without gapps a fews months ago. I would not recommend it unless you are comfortable with mucking around with shit. For reference, my goals were to get a phone that 1.had no proprietary software, other than drivers and things that come with CM, and 2. runs Signal
Because I insist on running Signal, a gapps alternative was necessary, so I had to use microg. However, microg only works if you have signature spoofing enabled. Since I was installing CM 14.1, things like xposed don't work. So I had to manually patch the cyanogenmod source myself, to add the signature spoofing permission that CM refuses to add. But the patch file provided is out of date, so you have to manually put the code into the respective files (just scroll scroll scroll paste a few times, but still). Then, you have to actually get the code to compile, which can be a non-trivial amount of work (don't bother if your machine has less than 16G of RAM). After that, just had to get microg installed, compile Signal (much easier than compiling CM), push and install.
But then, I want to update CM, which means a repo sync, which it turns out wipes out all of your commits by default, because it lives on a git detached head. Yeah, don't know whose brilliant idea that was. But for now, I just go through and manually paste the patch every time because I haven't bothered figuring out how to fix that.

You can drag and drop with winSCP too? I'll just stick to that. Thanks alot

They both use OSM for the dataset, OsmAnd updates their maps about once a month. If something is missing, head to openstreetmap.org and fix it. It's like Wikipedia, if nobody bothers fixing it, then of course it never is going to get fixed.

I use ~Osmand

OsmAnd is bad optimised. I'm using a snapdragon 820 phone and moving the map causes microstutter if you're zoomed in like 1 km. The deeper you are the worse it gets.

ShareX is way faster for file transfer. You just press your hotkey, drag and drop your files and ta-dan! you have your files on a specified folder.

Then you open Amaze, open the files you just transfered with QuickPic and fap in peace.

>Bad optimised
>Shit CPU
That app runs super smooth on my SD 650.

Instead of being absolutely retarded, you can use Silence, the FOSS alternative to Signal.

Signal works with microG

Silence is an outdated fork of Signal. It still uses SMS/MMS for fuck's sake. Have they even updated from axolotl? I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. No, Signal has definitely made some poor decisions, but they're also the only thing trustworthy out there right now. Hopefully the new OTR release fixes that, but we'll see.

also: if more countries start blocking google push services for censorship, I would literally bet good money that OWS would start actually trying to find an alternative to it. It obviously hasn't been a priority, but it's only a matter of time before it catches up to them.

>Signal has definitely made some poor decisions, but they're also the only thing trustworthy out there right now.
Yep, like mandatory phone number verification and google play services. Fuck it. Wire is just as secure as Signal (e.g. OTR/SRTP, open source client).
>if more countries start blocking google push services for censorship, I would literally bet good money that OWS would start actually trying to find an alternative to it.
Users from such shitholes will solve that problem themselves, by using shadowsocks or other obfuscated vpns.

It depends.
How often do you use the play store(tm)?
That and maybe maps are the only reasons to use GAPPS.

Personally, I have a titanium backup of all play store applications I use that are not available in F-Droid.
Important feature updates happen so rarely, it's not worth having GAPPS installed just for that.
I also wrote a script a while ago that pulls app updates from a BlueStacks installation with GAPPS on my desktop and pushes the apk files directly to my phone.
I only have to confirm the installation the next time I unlock my phone.
If you're interested in the script I can pm it to you.

Also, your battery life will improve by at least 25%. Fucking botnet shit.