As much as I’d love to completely get rid of Google/Apple apps, it’s not always possible. My main concern is that I am sometimes required to use two factor authentication apps such as my banking app for example.
I expect these are only available on android/apple store, so my question is, is it somehow possible to emulate android on let’s say pinephone (or any other Linux phone) and get these two factor authentication apps still work?
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Yes, look up Waydroid. But a lot of the banking apps and so on are explicitly designed to detect unusual running environments and thus will still not work. Android games etc. typically work fine though.
You aren’t going to get banking apps to work easily. They are determined to ensure that your device is “trusted”. They don’t care about whether you trust it or not. These days a lot of them are using SafetyNet to ensure that the device is controlled by a known OEM. Software-based SafetyNet can be spoofed, but many devices now have Hardware-based SafetyNet which is incredibly difficult (as in there is not a known solution for most devices) to spoof. So if your bank is that annoying then you won’t be able to use the app on any device that isn’t running OEM firmware.
Personally I just use a web browser for my bank. If they are going to try and assert that the device is controlled by someone else than I don’t want to know what other tricks they are trying. The sandbox of a web browser is where they belong IMHO.
I normally use web browser too, but bank imposes 2 factor authentication via their app for sign ins.
Is the 2FA some standard like TOTP? I know I have this issue where no banks in my area support anything like that. But at least they support email 2fa.
To add on this, some banks do not even allow you to use their websites on phones if you’re not using desktop site. They’ll give you a big pop up telling you to use their app and block everything else
To add to this, you can also run Waydroid on Linux desktop. Could be a easier way to see of certain apps work.
I’ve used Waydroid on several Linux mobile OS and Waydroid is amazing. Literally no lag while running the apps, even old a low performance phone like the Pinephone.
Let me know of any issues you may have OP. Glad to help out
There is waydroid. I wanted to try something similar to what you‘ve described. I think it would have worked in theory, the issue I was facing was the lack of camera support, which made it impossible to scan 2FA codes, which is sometimes the only option with these apps. So give it a try and find out how far you can come with it. If that would have been possible, I think I could have switched…
