[noob question] How come Gmaps works just fine on my device?

m_sanders

Hi!

I run GOS on my Pixel 4a (I switched about a year ago from lineage), and I am so pleased with the experience, it's amazingly well-crafted. I have left behind all social networks and messaging apps (apart from Signal), but I can't get rid of Gmaps.

I thought Gmaps wouldn't run on my device, or that I would at least have to go through several tutorials to learn how to sandbox google services and find a way to run gmaps, but I installed it through Aurora and it runs just fine. I am obviously not logged in on any gmail account, but I was wondering if it's normal (maybe google services are sandboxed by default?) or if using gmaps on my device is a threat to privacy on my device?

Thank you for your help,

jarelllama

m_sanders Most apps work as intended just by having Sandboxed Google Play and it's dependencies (Google Play Services and Framework) installed. GrapheneOS has done an excellent job porting most privileged Google Play Services features to work as a standard user app using the compatibility layer.

GrapheneOS also, by default, reroutes location requests to its own location implementation, allowing apps like Google Maps to use location just fine without relying on Google Play Service's location services. Although it gives us the option to use Google Play Services' location if desired.

The website would explain it better than I ever could.

MetropleX

m_sanders Maps is not an app that Google placed hard dependencies on having Play Services in a privileged state nor requiring network based location. It works fine because it actually has robust code to utilise a fall back to the OS API and using GNSS/GPS.

Using GMaps on GOS only allows them to know where a Pixel device with a certain IP is travelling from and to, if you log into your Google Account in Google Maps it can then link that data to the account. If you use Google Maps to travel between the same two points around the same time as you used to do so when/if you used it previously with an account, any anonymized data can be deanonymized by probability to link it to your legacy Google account.

Everything I am saying is a 'can' not a 'does' happen situation.

jarelllama

Thank you MetropleX for the more in-depth answer.

m_sanders

Thank you both for your answers, as I said, I'm just a noob who cares about their privacy, and every time I find out new info on GOS I'm just amazed at how great a job has been done with it. I'll be sure to donate.