G Photos with Gservices

aquila-enu

de0u Thanks for your thorough information. It is definitely eye-opening and I appreciate you taking the time to elaborate on it. The only reason why I use the Gcam is because of the different modes they have. I really wish Graphene cam has more modes, but alas, CameraX doesn't have it yet for Pixel phone. The Google Photos is simply for convenience to preview the photos you took from GCam and to quickly edit them. All in all, it's just for convenience.

I checked out Privacy Guides for most of the FOSS I use, if not all. And so far, I dont see any recommendations for Camera (I personally have no issue with the Gallery app from Graphene). So, if you have any recommendation for a camera app, more than happy to try that out :)

Again thanks a lot for your time.

DeletedUser87

aquila-enu the simple solution is to install Play Services in a different profile (work profile through Shelter, Private Space, secondary user profiles) than GCam and GPhotos. That's how I handle it. Apps can't really communicate between profiles for the most part (except clipboard for example) and it should be enough isolation to stop Play Services from uploading anything from those apps.

aquila-enu

DeletedUser87 if you install Play services on a different profile, how do you maintain updates of your apps? At least for me, most of my apps are retrieved from Sandboxed GPlay.

JollyRancher

Deny Play Services network permission, and if you need to allow it for some reason the first wipe the Play Services storage & cache.

If the apps have already passed data to Play Services and it is waiting for upload then wiping Play Services storage will erase that data and since GOS is making all these apps work differently from how they were intended it is highly unlikely that the apps are going yo attempt to resend data they believe has already been sent.

DeletedUser87

aquila-enu through Aurora for closed source apps and a mix of Droid-Ify and Obtainium for the FOSS stuff. I would drop Play Services altogether if there was a solution for on-device location services, other than that I have no use for Play Services.

aquila-enu

DeletedUser87 ok. But if you used other App Stores to maintain your updates, why would you have Play services in the first place under a different profile?

I'm aware now that this setup doesnt apply to your case, but in my case where I use Sandboxed GPlay, how would one maintain updates if they were put under the different profile?

DeletedUser87

aquila-enu because profiles can be put to sleep - no more talkie talkie to Google. I don't know if that works, but usually you would update apps through a different profile since version mismatches are not possible across profiles in Android. That requires to keep an app installed in a different profile, although you should be able to just disable it.

aquila-enu

DeletedUser87 I see. I didn't know that you could still update apps across profiles. Perhaps the method @JollyRancher said above could also work? So you disable network by default and only enable it when you need it e.g. to update apps, but remove app data first before turning the network back on?

My next question would be, is it accurate to say that all info from other apps retrieved from IPC is stored in the app data?

DeletedUser87

aquila-enu you can't really say when IPC kicks in. It might start once Play Services reconnects to a network and all previous measures would go down the drain. Also, if you always delete Play Services' app data, you will have to start from scratch every time. Logging in will become an annoying chore.

aquila-enu

DeletedUser87 makes sense. Btw I tried installing Play services in pvt space and as expected, it wont detect apps installed in a different space. So it has to be installed in the same space to manage updates.

DeletedUser95

aquila-enu

You could just install the same app that needs updating in both spaces and then disable it in the space that you are not using it in. It then only takes one side getting the update for the other side to also get it.

That's how I mainly have my setup going is Google Play in the private space and then after installing a specific app I want in the private space I use the aurora store to install it in the personal space.

This shouldn't noticeably increase storage consumption if even at all due to how the package manager works.

aquila-enu

DeletedUser95 I see. Thanks! In hindsight, I'll just stick to GOS camera and gallery. I already have a few more closed sourced apps installed and may be a bit tedious to duplicate those as well. Yet much appreciate your insight!

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