Ideal setup for Google camera and Google play sandboxes on main profile

ifman13

Hi, I want to use Google camera in my main profile to get the best possible photo quality, I would also like to save the location of each photo.

According to the documentation, I would only need GSF to use Google camera, but it seems that to get the location of the photos I also need Google Play Services, is this the only alternative?

I currently have the "Reroute location requests of the OS" option enabled.

The biggest doubt comes about GSF and GPS permissions, is it advisable to disable the network permission on both? And apply the restricted battery profile instead of "No restrictions"?

My fear is to have a higher battery usage by altering any of these permissions and try among all to achieve the ideal configuration for those of us who do not want to give up the best photo quality on our Pixel.

Thank you very much

Hulk

ifman13
Hello!

To get proper location tags on your photos you need to use Google Location Accuracy service. Google Location Accuracy needs to be configured properly and it requires an internet connection to function. For more information please refer to the official documentation:
https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-play-configuration

From the same usage guide:

You should give a battery optimization exception to Google Play services for features like push notifications to work properly in the background. It isn't needed for the other 2 apps.

Hope this clarifies things

ifman13

Hulk Thank you very much for your reply, I have been testing on the street and have managed to get location on the photos with the following settings:

Google Location Accuracy disabled.
GSF and GPS without network permissions and with battery profile "restricted".
Sometimes it doesn't get the location, but taking several in a row it always ends up getting it.
The last part you comment in your post I think is to get push notifications for apps that require GPS.

I'll keep testing and comment here, in case it helps anyone.

cotlipan

Hulk Thanks for sharing the link with the relevant instructions! It helped me fix the location issue as well.

Additionally, do you know what the main downsides in disabling the re-route, in terms of privacy?

I don't have a full grasp of the whole idea, but I assume there are some compromise, since the re-route was put there in place for a reason. While I do want geotagging in my photos, I do not however want to balance that with Google being able to track me at all time.

ifman13

cotlipan I understand that disabling this option, there is a filtering of data to google, being the one who provides the location.

Anyway, as I said, I get the location in 90% of the exterior photos with Google Camera and the following configuration:

-Google Location Accuracy disabled.
-GSF and GPS without network permissions and with battery profile "restricted".
-Reroute location requests to the os enabled.

So with this setting, Google Play Services only has location permissions, and cannot run in the background freely.

Welteam

cotlipan Disabling rerouting doesn't impact your privacy in itself. However, in order for geolocation to work with rerouting disabled, you obviously need to give all location permissions to Google services. At that point, Google get all your GPS data as well as nearby network and devices.

cotlipan

I see... I guess I will have to accept this part then.

Before I knew about disabling the rerouting, I simply tried other camera apps. With e.g. OpenCamera, the geo tag actually worked, but it took literally 25s before it could establish the location. In other words, I'd have to wait 25s every time before taking a photo.

Welteam

cotlipan If possible, I would really advise the GeoTag app instead. This would allow you to manually add geotags to your photos. It's a bit more involved but also a significantly better compromise.

cotlipan

Welteam That's definitely one way to go about it!

For my use case, I think it would involve too much work unfortunately. My biggest reason for wanting immediate geotagging is for going on trips, so it would involve lots of photos in different locations, so I wouldn't have the energy to tag them manually during or right after the trip. That's the extreme case for me, but even for day to day life, I would most likely end up not doing it and prioritize other activities if I know myself right.