knpk13 said:

Havent been on XDA in years. Glad to see this ROM is still being updated. I have been using gmscompat on a different ROM on my 7T Pro for a while now, but still been running official LOS on my 3T. I've tried microg a few times but never stuck with it.

I plan to use my 3T more so I will be switching to your gmscompat build starting today. Thanks for keeping it updated.

Edit: oh oops, you appear to be shipping microg, not gmscompat. Do you plan to ship gmscompat since you're already using some grapheneOS features?

Scroll back, I have created a GmsCompat test build only and asked for some feedback - I've never received any... Hence no regular GmsCompat builds.

knpk13 said:

Also I read the section on LOS19, I'm guessing that means the 3T will never get A12/13?

Correct.

MSe1969 said:

Scroll back, I have created a GmsCompat test build only and asked for some feedback - I've never received any... Hence no regular GmsCompat builds.


Correct.

Ah thanks, let me try the test build

MSe1969 said:

Volunteers wanted - Test build for 'sandboxed play services'

Hi all,

I have created (and also briefly tested myself) a test build of this ROM with an Android 11/LineageOS 18.1 port of GrapheneOS's Sandboxed Play services .

The test build - clean-flash strongly recommended - does not contain any microG app (but besides all other existing hardening measures and features of this ROM) and you would have to install the respective Google apps (GSF proxy, Play services and Play store) manually as ordinary apps - this means: NO FLASHING ANY ZIP, but manually installing the three apps as APK files or bundles. [You could either try to extract the APK files from a flashable Gapps ZIP (make sure to choose Android 11 and arm64) or to e.g. look at apkmirror.com - once again: DON'T flash any Gapps.zip!].

Whilst the current microG ROM offered in this thread mainly aims at users not really keen on using Google, but still providing a basic compatibility to many apps with G* dependencies without truly integrating with G* - this could become an option for those willing to use G* (and tolerating the known negative impacts), whilst not having to live with Google's infamous "kill switch" (factually allowing them to take over your device at any time and/or secretly replacing your installed apps with "crafted" ones) and ability to track you 24/7 (you however still choose to share information with them, don't ignore that fact!)

I would be interested to see, to what extent this approach is usable and whether this would be interesting for you as an offered 2nd build variant or not.

Your feedback is appreciated.
Thanks & regards - M.

Click to expand...

In case someone else wants to try, this link has the 3 google apks you need to install for gmscompat to work.

knpk13 said:

In case someone else wants to try, this link has the 3 google apks you need to install for gmscompat to work.

Google services · ProtonAOSP

Many popular apps rely on Google apps and services, such as Google Play Services and Play Store. Below are several ways to make such apps work on ProtonAOSP.

protonaosp.org

Alternatively, if you ship app.grapheneos.apps , users can automatically install gmscompat from the build instead of having to search for additional files.

I have been using gmscompat for a few months on my 7T Pro and am very happy with it. MicroG has too many tradeoffs for my usecase, and I'm more comfortable with the tradeoffs gmscompat makes. I am flashing the test build on my 3T right now and will let you know how it goes, thanks.

Click to expand...

knpk13 said:

Alternatively, if you ship app.grapheneos.apps , users can automatically install gmscompat from the build instead of having to search for additional files.

I in fact did have a look at this, when doing the test build, but that won't work. This app is shipped only for Android 12 builds of GrapheneOS and aims at loading the A12 Gapps (and obviously 13 accordingly). Here, we have A11.

knpk13 said:

I have been using gmscompat for a few months on my 7T Pro and am very happy with it. MicroG has too many tradeoffs for my usecase, and I'm more comfortable with the tradeoffs gmscompat makes. I am flashing the test build on my 3T right now and will let you know how it goes, thanks.

Good that you honestly talk about "Tradeoff for usecase" - because it is exactly that:

• MicroG has limited capabilities and aims at providing a basic compatibility.
• GmsCompat gives you the full G* ****load to be jailed in to a "quarantined" work profile. So your digital life is in your main work profile, whilst the exception, for which you would need G* is in your "contamination zone" work profile (or even several), where you have limited data and in best case no contact data
• However, if the G* ****load is indeed in your main work profile, because you consider that your digital life, you haven't won any advantage - except for not having the "kill switch" on your device...

knpk13 said:

Edit: Hm it appears GrapheneOS has pulled the direct link to the google apks (https://apps.grapheneos.org/packages/) so the best option would be to use the inbuilt app they ship instead for installation.

See above and my instructions. Extract GSF and GMS from a Gapps ZIP and pull Phonesky from apkmirror.com

EDIT: The censored **** is a word starting with "sh", ending with "t" and has an "i" in the middle

MSe1969 said:

I in fact did have a look at this, when doing the test build, but that won't work. This app is shipped only for Android 12 builds of GrapheneOS and aims at loading the A12 Gapps (and obviously 13 accordingly). Here, we have A11.


Good that you honestly talk about "Tradeoff for usecase" - because it is exactly that:

• MicroG has limited capabilities and aims at providing a basic compatibility.
• GmsCompat gives you the full G* ****load to be jailed in to a "quarantined" work profile. So your digital life is in your main work profile, whilst the exception, for which you would need G* is in your "contamination zone" work profile (or even several), where you have limited data and in best case no contact data
• However, if the G* ****load is indeed in your main work profile, because you consider that your digital life, you haven't won any advantage - except for not having the "kill switch" on your device...

See above and my instructions. Extract GSF and GMS from a Gapps ZIP and pull Phonesky from apkmirror.com

EDIT: The censored **** is a word starting with "sh", ending with "t" and has an "i" in the middle

Click to expand...

Ah only A12 support? Rip. Was trying to avoid having to extract them. Which gapps package would you recommend I extract the apks from? Last time I used a gapps package was quite a while ago. Checked opengapps but their last build seems to have been in February, seems old, not sure if that's ok.

knpk13 said:

Ah only A12 support? Rip. Was trying to avoid having to sideload them. Which gapps package would you recommend I extract the apks from? Last time I used a gapps package was quite a while ago. Checked opengapps but their last build seems to have been in February, seems old, not sure if that's ok.

Should be OK, but play store won't work from this file, so look at apkmirror.com for phonesky.apk (they however only offer bundles)

MSe1969 said:

Should be OK, but play store won't work from this file, so look at apkmirror.com for phonesky.apk (they however only offer bundles)

Hm, the opengapps zip has the apps with the .tar.lz extension. How do I extract them? Is it simply a matter of renaming the file extension to .apk? As for Play Store, I guess I'll need SAI to install the bundles. Really annoying that Android's default installer still doesn't support installing split apks/bundles, guess Google is never going to add support.

knpk13 said:

Hm, the opengapps zip has the apps with the .tar.lz extension. How do I extract them? Is it simply a matter of renaming the file extension to .apk? As for Play Store, I guess I'll need SAI to install the bundles. Really annoying that Android's default installer still doesn't support installing split apks/bundles, guess Google is never going to add support.

tar.lz is also an archive format, like zip - you need a program to unpack - apkmirror offers an app to install the bundle

MSe1969 said:

tar.lz is also an archive format, like zip - you need a program to unpack - apkmirror offers an app to install the bundle

Ok I extracted the .tar.lz and got the apks for gms and gsf and tried to install them with android's default installer. Made sure it was for Android 11 and arm64. But the progress bar for the installation has been stuck for several minutes now, I'm not sure what the issue is.
Could you share the apks that worked for you so I can try them?

Edit: Ok the apk got installed after like 10 minutes lol, it was very slow, not sure why.

knpk13 said:

Ok I extracted the .tar.lz and got the apks for gms and gsf and tried to install them with android's default installer. Made sure it was for Android 11 and arm64. But the progress bar for the installation has been stuck for several minutes now, I'm not sure what the issue is.
Could you share the apks that worked for you so I can try them?

Edit: Ok the apk got installed after like 5 minutes lol, it was very slow, not sure why.

Made the same experience
For my own testing, I simply installed all in the main workspace. But the idea here is really, that you e.g. use an app like "Shelter" to create an isolated work profile, in which only you install the G* stuff and the apps needing it. Otherwise you still have G* spying you out, as explained already. GrapheneOS explains that, but I guess most people don't get it properly.
It is a good progress not to have the infamous kill switch, but the work profile, on which you use G* is still being spied out by "big G*"

MSe1969 said:

Made the same experience
For my own testing, I simply installed all in the main workspace. But the idea here is really, that you e.g. use an app like "Shelter" to create an isolated work profile, in which only you install the G* stuff and the apps needing it. Otherwise you still have G* spying you out, as explained already. GrapheneOS explains that, but I guess most people don't get it properly.
It is a good progress not to have the infamous kill switch, but the work profile, on which you use G* is still being spied out by "big G*"

Yes the dev of the ROM for my 7T Pro also uses a separate work profile and installs GMS and any apps that depend on it there. I'm just testing it for now, seems to work fine so far on my 3T. I'll keep using the test build for now.

Tbh, I don't really use a separate work profile myself, I just ended up using gmscompat because the gapps version of the 7T Pro ROM I use has a lot of preinstalled google apps and other changes that I don't want. I also like that I can deny any permissions I want to GMS and have a little more control over what it does. Another nice side effect is that it stops randomly updating apps I had disabled automatic updates for. Without gmscompat, the play store just overrides that setting for some reason and auto updates the apps anyway lol. I've kinda resigned to being tracked by Google and other companies to some degree on the internet, I just use the gmscompat build for the few nice "quirks" that build offers compared to the gapps build for my 7T Pro.

Edit: Hm, on my 3T, the Play Store downloads and installs apps just fine, but the installed app always show up as "installing.." even after the installation is done. Weird. The installed app works fine though. Force closing the Play Store doesn't seem to fix it either.

knpk13 said:

Tbh, I don't really use a separate work profile myself, I just ended up using gmscompat because the gapps version of the 7T Pro ROM I use has a lot of preinstalled google apps and other changes that I don't want. I also like that I can deny any permissions I want to GMS and have a little more control over what it does. Another nice side effect is that it stops randomly updating apps I had disabled automatic updates for. Without gmscompat, the play store just overrides that setting for some reason and auto updates the apps anyway lol. I've kinda resigned to being tracked by Google and other companies to some degree on the internet, I just use the gmscompat build for the few nice "quirks" that build offers compared to the gapps build for my 7T Pro.

As long as you are fully aware about what and what not is to be expected, all is fine.

knpk13 said:

Edit: Hm, on my 3T, the Play Store downloads and installs apps just fine, but the installed app always show up as "installing.." even after the installation is done. Weird. The installed app works fine though. Force closing the Play Store doesn't seem to fix it either.

Made similar observation during my tests. If you don't use paid apps or need license verification, I'd even avoid using a G* account and install AuroraStore.

Please let me know any further observation.

• Security string 2022-10-05
• Bromite Browser and Webview updated to 105.0.5195.147
• Some kernel patches
• microG 0.2.24.223616-61