I have LineageOS installed right now with gapps pico.
I want to remove gapps. What limitations will it inflict upon me? I know that there are is Aurora Store to download Play Store apps (that are not paid) and F-Droid for open source apps. But can I use Whatsapp without gapps (thinking that maybe it needs Google Play Services)? What about Maps/Uber etc.?
I use OsmAnd for maps and it works pretty well.
You might want LineageOS for microG. The microG Github has a list of problem apps that don’t work. Whatsapp isn’t on there but if you run into trouble just search /r/microG or post a question if an answer doesn’t already exist. The /r/microG wiki is a great beginner’s guide.
In my experience, some apps just won’t work, and the location services aren’t as accurate as Google’s.
I like Aurora Droid (same makers as Aurora Store) as an alternative to the F-Droid app.
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I find the UI nicer. But actually, there is a slight issue with F-Droid that Aurora Droid fixes. From this /r/microG wiki page:
It is safe to update microG from F-Droid. The built-in F-Droid app store detects microG Services Core as “UnifiedNlp (No GAPPS)” due to package naming conflicts. You will likely have an update to this package when first installing LineageOS for microG. The microG versions are in the 0.2.X range, so check the version numbers on this package. At the time of writing, the latest microG services core version is 0.2.10.X. Note that Aurora Droid is able to properly display the package name.
Emphasis mine.
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Yes, but I feel like Android is getting worse and worse with every version. Just removing Google apps is not enough to fix that. I will buy a Pinephone as soon as possible and use that instead.
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WhatsApp works without GAPPS. You can even download the APK off of their webpage. The Google Play Store is blocked in China, so a lot more apps than you’d expect are available outside of the Play Store.
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https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.grobox.liberario/
A location service without anti-feature.
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Whatsapp works just fine without gapps. I only use F-Droid, and I’m a happy camper.
I haven’t used gapps or microg in five years. I’d say give it a go, I’m surprised at what I don’t miss.
Maps and Uber work fine off of a web browser if you don’t mind that they’re not as pretty. This goes for a vast majority of things, including skype. I would recommend a user agent switcher for your browser though, sometimes you have to pretend your a desktop (the rescaling is always fine, I often wonder why they have mobile dedicated sites)
Can you recommend a user agent switcher? I had thought you could only get those add ons for desktop Firefox
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I was able to simply ‘disable’ play services (and many related services), mostly without issue. The only persistent issue I haven’t been able to resolve is a constant notification from the wi-fi-manager service that pops up every time my connection changes, but I’m going to fire up adb at some point to see if there’s anything I can do about it.
F-Droid is fairly complete, but you will have to figuratively glue some pieces together: DAVx, the simple suite of tools, and syncthing, in my case. A lot of smaller OEM apps (like, even the clock) will complain without gapps.
For maps I use osmand and the google maps PWA for POI search.
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