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CobrastanJorji
ranger207
Yes, that's correct, and yes it's a massive violation of the terms. Aurora Store also lets you use your own Google account, which is also outside of Google's terms. But the only way to get apps from the Google Play Store without installing the entire set of Google Play Services is this, so the entire setup is outside of Google's terms
chasil
It is quite convenient both from the perspective of a stock Kindle Fire (commercial Android), and for LineageOS (non-commercial, unlocked, root available).
It will also indicate if the app requires Google Mobile Services, which would preclude correct functionality outside of MicroG or alternate implementations.
tssva
> It is quite convenient both from the perspective of a stock Kindle Fire (commercial Android)
You can easily install the Google Play store on Kindle Fire tablets. It is installed on both the tablets in my household.
jraph
and without using something personal like your email address to download programs, which should be granted and was before mobile OSes. And still is on regular computers.
esperent
That's not really true, you can make a throwaway Gmail account in about 5 minutes. Make one per Android device, throw the login details into a password manager and forget about it. I've done this for several Android devices now and never run into any issues.
Ironically when I tried to set up a legitimate Gmail account for my business and used it to set up several accounts, within few days it got locked with no recourse for unlocking - there was a comment box where I could beg for an unlocking, never even got a response though. So Gmail is only for throwaway accounts from now on.
ignoramous
> But the only way to get apps from the Google Play Store without installing the entire set of Google Play Services is this, so the entire setup is outside of Google's terms
Some might argue adversarial interoperability is fair game: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20133151
yyyk
> the only way to get apps from the Google Play Store
There's also Raccon:
2h
> But the only way to get apps from the Google Play Store without installing the entire set of Google Play Services is this
No, that's not true:
yoshamano
You're not wrong, but that method is way more involved in every way.
- You need a PC to run GooglePlay - You need to install Golang on that PC - You need a Google Account - You need to sign into the actual Google Play Store from a real or virtual device using that account - You need to know the Google Play Store package name (com.google.android.youtube) instead of just YouTube - You then have to transfer the APK to your Android device and install it. - You have to manually monitor your collection of apps on your device to see if there are updates and then go through the same process again to get the updated version.
With Aurora Store I had to
- Install F-Droid from https://f-droid.org/ - Install Aurora Store from within F-Droid - Open Aurora Store where it logs me in with a random Google Account from their pool of accounts. - Search for whatever app I want to install. - Tap Install. - For updates I tap on the Updates button and then tap Install All.
ReadCarlBarks
>the only way to get apps [...] without [...] Google Play Services is this
That's not true. You can download APKs from sites like APKPure (which has been a top search result for "[app name] APK" for many years on... Google).
BiteCode_dev
Yes but:
- it's harder to trust apkpure than aurora
- apkpure has a lot of ads
- apkpure has some outdated packages
- apkpure is missing packages
WeylandYutani
I wonder if apkmirror is against Google terms? Use it to download old versions of apps.
CameronNemo
You've got it exactly right. Unfortunately, Google's Play Store is the only source for a number of proprietary applications that work mostly okay on degoogled android systems, including:
* my bank app, and probably your's too
* iNaturalist
* various dating apps such as tinder, bumble, hinge, coffee meets bagel
Edit: wonder if I could use a mirror instead?
Edit2: ugh tried apkmirror. Might work. The client has ads (pretty sure google ads...) and popups. Some of the ads contained a download button? I got confused and concerned. Dipped out. I'll just be more dependent on my workstation(s). Phone still works as a phone, I presume.
darkmighty
I really wish commercial apps would support alternative app stores. There are far worse offenders than Google, but it's currently quite intrusive and who knows if it won't get worse. I doubt the billions in rent they must collect every year on app sales really go on improving the OS experience.
F-droid repository format would be easy enough to support a commercial repository you could manually activate, with signing and all.
londons_explore
> I doubt the billions in rent they must collect every year on app sales really go on improving the OS experience.
Google has huge numbers of engineers working on Android...
Although I do kinda wonder exactly what they're working on, considering each release of Android seems to be not very different from the previous one...
hellojesus
It won't help with privacy, but if you want to use apps only sourced via the Google Play Store on degoogled, you can download the apk, extract it, and then load and install it on your device.
I use grapheneos and have a separate profile that has GPS installed which allows me to download the apks. Then I adb in and transfer them from alt_profile->computer->no_gps_profile and install it.
em-bee
it seems you can get iNaturalist also from github: https://github.com/inaturalist/iNaturalistAndroid/releases
i just checked my banks, they are on google play and on the huawei app store, the latter though is not really an alternative i would trust any more than google, and i didn't see if it allows download without an account, but fortunately for myself i don't want banking on my phone anyways, as the phone is the most likely device to break, lost or stolen, nor do i care about those others. but that's just me.
i found apkmirror manageable, thanks to the adblocker i guess.
2h
> Google's Play Store is the only source for a number of proprietary applications
No, that's not true:
int_19h
... which is literally an app to download apps from Google Play Store?
dublinben
Those apps are almost certainly available in the iOS app store as well.
branon
Yes, that's exactly how it works, and yes, I install my banking app this way. It's not an issue from my perspective but I can see why Google doesn't like it.
I don't have a Google account and am unable to obtain Play Store APKs any other way, so Aurora Store fills an important niche for me.
I guess I will hold off on updating any Play Store apps until this is fixed or I can find another software/workaround.
blendergeek
> It sounds like this thing vends Google account credentials for a small pool of accounts to be used anonymously?
Yep. It lets people anonymously download apps from Google Play. It provides privacy and usability.
> I've gotta be misunderstanding something because that sounds like something that definitely should be blocked
Is there any reason why users shouldn't be able to download apps anonymously?
> and would be wildly outside of Google's terms.
Unfortunately Google does prohibit this. I wish Google would allow people to download no-cost apps without an account.
> How does this thingy work?
Unfortunately, it only works when few people know about it.
danjoredd
For people that want to anonymously use Android...people using Graphene OS for example...it is endlessly useful. You get all the benefits of a mobile operating system without giving your private data to Google.
amf12
If I understand correctly, people can use Graphene OS anonymously. This was a workaround to use Google Play Services (Store?) anonymously. So the users want to have a piece of cake and eat it too.
chc
It's to allow them to get apps. I wouldn't describe being able to run apps without being involuntarily tracked by a third party as "having your cake and eating it too." It's just a basic expectation of privacy. As it happens, Google makes this basically impossible to do without running afoul of their TOS, but I would characterize that as Google being unreasonable, not the users.
kornhole
This is a major problem for most people with a degoogled phone. Luckily I am using Graphene which provides a sandboxed Google Play services. This means that the only access you need to give it is network access rather than the promiscuous normal access it has to just about everything on your device. https://grapheneos.org/features#sandboxed-google-play
It would be helpful if others can share here how to extract and install APK's outside the Play store.
probably_wrong
> It would be helpful if others can share here how to extract and install APK's outside the Play store.
I use APKPure. I have the suspicion that it must be some kind of malware/spying operation, but I couldn't find any proof so I kept it. Another HN user [1] followed up on a comment on mine on the topic and they didn't find anything particularly strange either.
celsoazevedo
APK Mirror seems to be a more popular option: https://www.apkmirror.com/
Created by https://twitter.com/ArtemR which is known in the Android space.
fodmap
Graphene OS is a very interesting option but it only runs in Google's Pixel phones for now, so I'm waiting for the day it could be installed in other devices.
brewdad
I've always loved the irony of needing a Google phone so that you can run an OS the de-Googles your phone.
fyloraspit
You might be waiting a while. If you read the documentation I think they get into to the reasons for that pretty thoroughly. As a side note, I think the prices for 5's and 6's is pretty reasonable right now (they seem to have fallen a bit from a year or 2 ago).
nibbleshifter
IIRC the devs are only supporting Pixel devices because they are at least vaguely sane.
Supporting random other devices would be a nightmare.
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noman-land
Absolutely loving GrapheneOS for the past year plus. It's my primary device and I have no problems.
2h
> how to extract and install APK's outside the Play store.
jeroenhd
The linked thread claimed you can still create a Google account and use that to sign into the Aurora store. They only ban the shared accounts.
BiteCode_dev
Seems like Google is spending way more energy in preventing user to avoid being spied upon by them than they are actually moderating the app store against spywares and malwares.
Aurora wouldn't need to exist if they gave us an easy way to get apps from the Play store without giving control of our entire phone to the worst privacy offenders on earth.
brucethemoose2
Well yeah, they lose money from the former and (in the short term) make money by ignoring the later.
netfortius
Huge issue with those having to use a phone from one country with apps local to another country - very common for extensive travel, as the formal Google play store locality change is only allowed once per year.
Freak_NL
Yeah, that's annoying. Public transport companies sometimes have this issue, where they don't offer travel planning on their normal website, but tell everyone to use their app, only you can't install it because you're not from that country nor in that country when you're preparing to travel there from the comforts of your home.
CameronNemo
Does Amtrak still only tweet whenever their trains are delayed?
crazygringo
That's never been true.
That's been available on their site for as long as I can remember. Long before they had an app that would tell you as well. Heck, I'm pretty sure before Twitter even existed.
gavaw
You can change your account's country by opening the store and tapping on your avatar. It's a bit convoluted (requires you to make up an address) but it's not the end of the world.
netfortius
1. Only once a year - at least according to the config instructions, which I tried to avoid "testing"
2. You run the risk of losing Google voice, if the main US account is switched to another country where they do not provide voice services
lazycouchpotato
I'm not sure how many different countries you visit, but if it's 2-3 you can set up multiple Google accounts and quickly switch between them in the Play Store by swiping up/down on your profile picture.
jsnell
It's trivial to have multiple Google accounts, one from each country, on the same phone. The apps installed by any account will be accessible to all of them.
Snuupy
I have multiple Google accounts, one in each country. This solves the "app not available in your country" issue.
smnrg
Obtainium is open source and can download/update directly from source on GitHub or GitLab—or even use directly F-Droid, IzzyOnDroid, Mullvad, Signal, APKMirror, APKPure, Steam, Telegram, VLC, Neutron.
mikece
I don't know when it started but I had the same issue on a Samsung tablet yesterday afternoon. If Google permanently blocks access to the Play Store from Aurora then that will be sufficient for me to finally spend the money to get an iPad.
jeroenhd
I get that you want to send a message, but what problem does moving to iOS solve? You have the same restrictions, in fact even worse ones, with way fewer options for accountless downloads.
mikece
I am less concerned that Apple will exploit my data because they make plenty on the hardware; in the case of Android gear Google's whole point is exploit any data they can for profit. I have few use cases for a tablet as it is (photography being the big one: Canon Camera Connect) so if Google makes it impossible to get/update that app I'll just switch platforms. (If not an iPad then perhaps a laptop but that's far more bulky to take on a photo shoot.)
Stiffly6471
The part where you said:"I am less concerned that Apple will exploit my data because they make plenty on the hardware." feels like such a naive way to think about Apple.
This is what Forbes had to say about it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/10/19/apples-...
malicka
People switching from Android to iOS for privacy reasons seems myopic to me. Apple is, ultimately, a company. There is no such thing as them “making enough money.” If they can double-dip by both selling data and selling hardware, they will. It's not a matter of if, but when. De-Googled Android is objectively a more privacy-friendly option than iOS.
undefined
lost_tourist
iOS doesn't spy on you nearly as much google. They also don't sell your data to 3rd parties for a couple of pennies. They have their issues but google absolutely data mines everything on your phone to sell to their clients
josephcsible
That feels like cutting off your nose to spite your face, since iOS is still way more locked down than Android. If your employer cut your salary from $100k to $90k, would you respond by quitting and going to work somewhere else for $50k?
Aachen
Per another comment, and keeping with your analogy, they think the work at the 50k$ employer is nicer | that Apple isn't as evil as Google.
Not saying they're right or wrong, but that's valid logic if true. Personally I find the other ways in which you get locked down+in to already be so not worth it that it's not even a question I've needed to consider.
worik
> . If Google permanently blocks access to the Play Store from Aurora then that will be sufficient for me to finally spend the money to get an iPad.
Google is a clumsy puppy compared to Apple. Good luck making a client for the iOS play store.
It would be funny, if not for the fact that this duopoly is a dreadful break on innovation in the mobile software space. It is tragic
usernew
I'm seriously not getting this POV, which I see a lot.
Yes, some apps are only available in the play store, and the maker of them does not publish them anywhere else. How's that google's fault again? Are you mad at Twitter because Starbucks doesn't sell their coffee there?
There is no vendor "duopoly" between google and apple. There are about a thousand flavors of Android, and a bunch of phone makers - and google isn't even the top Android seller. The only one I've used with a play store was for like a year in 2010.
There is a technology duopoly, but the technology part has nothing to do with google. Much like there's no triopoly between windows/macos/linux. Because "Linux" is not a vendor. Linux is like "car," not like "Toyota." Windows is like "bicycle with lawnmower engine held on with duct tape." Macos is like "you're eating this absolute shit, and it does taste good"
lmm
> Yes, some apps are only available in the play store, and the maker of them does not publish them anywhere else. How's that google's fault again? Are you mad at Twitter because Starbucks doesn't sell their coffee there?
I can buy from Starbucks anonymously, or give my friend money to buy something for me. If they're calling it a "store" then that comes with an implication that you don't have to consent to being creeped on to get stuff from there.
They also did a bait-and-switch where they initially touted android's openness, but then moved an increasing amount of core functionality into google play services and encouraged app makers to depend on that.
> There is no vendor "duopoly" between google and apple. There are about a thousand flavors of Android, and a bunch of phone makers - and google isn't even the top Android seller. The only one I've used with a play store was for like a year in 2010.
There is absolutely an app store duopoly - it's a different duopoly in China than the rest of the world, but that's a distraction. The fact that they're able to sustain their 30% cut shows how much market power they have.
aaravchen
I corrected your analogy for you:
Starbucks (Google) and McDonalds (Apple) coffee are both available and control 98% of the coffee sales, with Starbucks owning about 70% by themselves. They each make their own special cups (hardware) that can only hold their coffee and require their special nozzles to fill, but Starbucks graciously allows a number of other retailers to make and sell compatible versions of their special cups. The fill nozzles of each require a special brewing process for the coffee to fit thru the nozzles, and a special grinding process for that brewing. Both own 99.9% of the market on services, tools, and aptents for the brewing and grinding. They also have 95% market share on bean buying and importing, and only ship to their own supply chains. To help with harvesting, McDonalds offers nice tools but will only buy beans harvested with those tools and charge $99/year/worker for them. Starbucks offers theirs for free, but the tools have to be taken apart if you don't your harvested beans ending up in a Starbucks purchasing truck. Not to be outdone by the lowly coffee farmers, both companies own large coffee plantations, and Starbucks owns 30% of the total coffee-growing land in the world and leases almost all of it to any type of farmer that will pay. Resultantly, it's less profitable and more work for farmers to not sell to Starbucks or McDonalds, even though they get paid very little for their beans.
Now you as a coffee drinker don't like that Starbucks is requiring you to provide 2 years of bank statements, your government ID card, birth certificate, body cam footage for the last 2 weeks, emails for the past 4 months, full text message history, and the passwords to every account you've had since you were 12 years old every time you want to buy a coffee. McDonalds is better, they only want the body cam footage, bank statements, and passwords, but you're not thrilled by that either. So you decide to find another coffee shop. You discover there are only a few, and they mostly just serve gas station drip coffee because they can't get growers to sell to them. Some try to get the grower to sell, but require the grower to also handle shipping and importing, but most want the growers to include shipping, importing, grinding, and brewing. Needless to say, not many growers are interested, especially ones that already have big name recognition among coffee drinkers.
A couple enterprising companies however have figured out they can just resell the Starbucks coffee. Most of these just go buy all the types of coffees available and keep them on hand for anyone that wants them, but buyers are wary of whether they're really getting the Starbucks coffee or coffee with unknown fillers added. Only one company has decided they'll resell by offering to have a one of a dedicated team of people go buy the Starbucks for you while you watch (Aurora Store). Now Starbucks is getting angry because they specifically say you can't buy coffee for others, and they're banning the dedicated team of people from all Starbucks stores in retaliation.
hef19898
Isn't Google forban antitrust fine from the EU with that? With all those new rules about sideloading?
sigmar
To be clear, aurora store is an alternative method to access the google play store and download apps from it. This change isn't making sideloading more difficult, it is making it more difficult to access play store apps without installing the play store.
fodmap
Yes, IANAL but that sounds like a clear abuse of a market dominant position to me.
0xedd
Use a Linux phone. Contribute. My bank has a website.
fodmap
My daily driver is a Linux phone running Ubuntu Touch. Besides that I have three more phones running other Linux projects, basically to test them, and to report bugs.
In addition to those devices, I also have another one running Lineage OS because I need some apps that I can't run in any other way, v.gr. Monash University Low FODMAP Diet App.
_rdvw
Ubuntu Touch doesn't even have encryption: https://github.com/ubports/ubuntu-touch/issues/178
fodmap
Yes, I know. I'm running UT since 2015, and I'm fully aware of its pros and cons.
OTH I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Can you elaborate?
Operyl
Some banks don’t expose everything on their website, sometimes it’s only available in their mobile app.
staringback
Change banks then. Free market at work
Operyl
I wish it were that simple, sometimes. Not everybody is in a position to, for varying reasons. We’re privileged to have that ability. There are entire groups of people who just can’t because of being “black listed” for one reason or another.
chrismorgan
Initially this works, but unfortunately trends in society are making your options shrink over time.
I switched from the cheapest telco around (by a significant margin at the time, $10–25/month instead of $35–50 for what I needed), circles.life, in part because they had no website to control things, view usage, &c., but only exposed that stuff through a mobile app that I couldn’t run. (Also very clearly illegal conduct in matters like sending spam text messages from their service notifications number, which they refused to even acknowledge when directly confronted.) But the telco I’m on now, amaysim, introduced some new roaming arrangement a few months ago that you can only activate through their app, not their website. (I would like to use it next month, so hopefully talking to customer support will work. At least they actually let you talk to support without using their app, which circles.life made hard.) Also their website is painfully slow to log in: from hitting the login button to the next page starting to load takes fully 48 seconds, and their site is of the idiotic “insist on logging you out after ten minutes” variety (like most of these sorts of businesses, for baffling reasons), so viewing my usage is fairly painful. At least I can keep the tab open at the usage page, and then when I reload and get presented with the login form and press the login button, it’ll end up back at the usage page in a minute or so; some will lose what page you were on, so that you have to go through multiple steps each time.
Banks, most of the biggest ones in Australia still have online banking, but it’s generally painful to log into and use compared to their mobile apps, and they all have a nasty habit of adding new stuff to mobile either first or only. And newer bank labels are commonly mobile-only. Internet banking is largely treated as a legacy matter which they’re all just not particularly interested in.
usernew
Please let me know what bank lets me deposit a check on their website by taking a photo of it.
charcircuit
All Android phones are Linux phones.
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mmsnberbar66
which do you recommend? maybe I get one as a toy project at first...
hinata08
toy phones are mostly the Google pixel, and Fairphones
- You can flash anything on these.
- You have 5-10 years of update on the android out of the box
- huge communities.
- consistent VoLTE and VoWIFI support
- lines are easy to understand (only a few models in each generation)
Samsung offers no long term support of phone, do hardly any publication to help open source communities to make a new image of android, and have the knox thing that makes it harder that it could be to flash. They just poop billions of different models every year without further support.
Xiaomi is like Porsche with the 911, which means they brand all of their phones the same, even when they have very different processors, vowifi support or not,... So pay attention to your exact model (the "pro" keyword isn't marketing, it can make the difference between a locked in Mediatek processor and a open source snapdragon)
I'm annoyed to have got the only flavour of Mi10-something without Vowifi support, for example, because I didn't read properly.
Sony has some OK phones to hack as well. And they look good ! But I think there was an article on HN a few days ago, about the hardware of the XA2 that called home to send analytics even with a custom ROM.
I'm also annoyed because I have had that exact model with iodéOS.
So yeah, I'd recommend to just get a Pixel phone if you want something compact (the 6A is pretty narrow), or the Fairphone if you want something large that you can physically repair, and update for the longest even if you don't hack it.
(I now have a Mi10 Lite and a Pixel 6A. I just had the latter, so that I can use one of these to hack a bit.)
realusername
Samsung community support is pretty good if you stick to the flagships, it's true that you lose Knox in the process but Knox is pretty much useless in my opinion anyways.
_rdvw
Fairphone 3 is currently shipping an end-of-life Linux kernel and Fairphone 4 kernel goes EOL before Fairphone claims support for.
em-bee
for a toy project, the pinephone is on my shopping list.
for serious use i stick to /e/OS supported phones. /e/OS has its own store that also gets apps from google play using their API. i wonder if that will be affected too. so far it's still working
fodmap
I'd recommend not the Pinephone but the Pinephone Pro. The former is extremely slow.
_rdvw
/e/OS hasn't updated their browser/system webview in 5+ months, see my version tracker here: https://divestos.org/misc/ch-dates.txt
undefined
wildredkraut
I hope they file a report to the EU‘s Digital Market Act Commission.
ktosobcy
oh ffs... i do hope tha we will soon see alter alternative stores. unfortunately android (with iOS) has virtual monopoly and they force dumb stores...
ewoodrich
Aurora isn't an alternative app store, it's an alternative method of accessing the Google Play Store. F-Droid is an alternative app store on Android usually used by degoogled phones.
Aachen
With alternative stores, I'm hoping that we'll get a choice in where to install public transport apps, Spotify, Discord, games, et cetera from, rather than having the choice between Google and illegal mirroring sites (the app's owner holds copyright and didn't authorise something like apkmirror/apkpure to distribute with ads and potential malware, though they've proven more reliable on the latter front than early apk redistribution sites).
That's how I also read GP's comment, but your reading is also a valid one.
ktosobcy
Correct and I do get most of my apps from f-droid but unfortunately majority of big apps (banks, IMs) are on Google play only... because there is no sane/official alternative now (even f-droid can't update the apps automatically... )
toastercat
It's been a great app, but I've found myself relying on APK Mirror more and more. Would be nice if there was a more up-to-date APK Mirror client that can handle updates automatically.
2OEH8eoCRo0
Many apps are removed from APK Mirror via DMCA takedown.
flangola7
Why would they even honor that?
t0bia_s
Solution:
1. Settings -> Apps -> Default apps -> Opening links -> Aurora Store -> Add link -> check both boxes
2. Search for your desired app with any web browser + search engine, long press on the play store link
3. Open link in external app (Aurora Store)
4. No need to de-anonymize yourself or wait for an update. Hopefully this gets fixed soon.
easyKL
Unfortunately this workaround doesn't seem to allow you to get the download button on Aurora Store for the searched app: "App purchases not available on Anonymous accounts" But you'll get the Update tab for the already installed apps.
t0bia_s
Well clearly you cannot licence purchased apps on play store outside play store. But it works for all free apps.
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I'm unfamiliar with what's going on here. It sounds like this thing vends Google account credentials for a small pool of accounts to be used anonymously? I've gotta be misunderstanding something because that sounds like something that definitely should be blocked and would be wildly outside of Google's terms. How does this thingy work?