Google Play Store without other Play Services dependencies

Vagabond8630

I assume the answer to this is no given the below section of the documentation, but is there a way to use only Google Play Store without installing the other 2 Google Play Services (GPS) dependencies within the work profile?

Play services and the Play Store depend on each other, one will not work properly without the other. Both of them depend on the Google Services Framework app.

I use Shelter to utilize the Work profile for compartmentalizing untrusted apps from my data. I have installed all three of the GPS dependencies within my work profile, mainly to use the Play Store for seamless installation and updates of the apps within the untrusted compartment, .

However, this means that I have two instances of GmsCompat running at all times, which knowledgeable users have hypothesized as the main cause of me getting slightly worse battery life on GrapheneOS than I was getting on stock (link).

I would either like to find a more battery-efficient way of compartmentalization that meets my compartmentalization needs (link to related post), or to find a way to only use the Google Play Store without keeping a second instance of GmsCompat running at all times.

Note that I am aware that using the user account profiles instead of Shelter is a way to achieve this, but I prefer the Shelter-way of compartmentalization since it's more seamless to selectively share data to an untrusted app per a need-basis (ex: sending photos to a contact only on proprietary messaging apps).

Does anyone have any advice?

other8026

Vagabond8630 I have two instances of GmsCompat running at all times, which knowledgeable users have hypothesized as the main cause of me getting slightly worse battery life on GrapheneOS

GmsCompat is not the reason for you having worse battery life, it's having two instances of Google Play Services running at once.

Vagabond8630 is there a way to use only Google Play Store without installing the other 2 Google Play Services (GPS) dependencies within the work profile?

I don't believe so.

Sbpr

I have some suggestions, but they depend on your personal threat model and how you use your phone. I also can't guarantee significant battery life improvement since I haven't tested all these suggestions myself.

The simplest "solution" would be to use the Aurora Store instead since that doesn't require any Play Services at all nor do you need to login, which can be a privacy perk. Though, it's not as secure as the Play Store nor is it as reliable.
Use your owner Profile only for installing apps so you can push these installs to different profiles and nothing else. Turn off everything in this profile except the bare minimum permissions for the play store to function. No location. No Bluetooth. No network access and no background activity for every app but the play store and any other apps you might use (fdroid, obtainium, VPN, etc). Even if play services is running, hopefully the activity is minimal enough to save battery life.
If you have other apps that require play services, consider moving them to a third user Profile. So, you would have an owner with play store and GPS, a profile with no GPS profile, and a third profile with GPS). Then turn off this third Profile when not in use to preserve battery life. This also provides additional privacy benefits. If these are frequently used apps or require notifications, this might not be ideal. At that point, you're probably stuck with running 2 GPS profiles at once or installing them on the same Profile as the play store if your threat model allows it.
Confirm that it's actually play services causing the battery drain and not one of your apps that doesn't use play services. Some apps, like Signal, drain battery very quickly if play services aren't installed. In which case, move those apps to a Profile with play services or find an alternative app that is better on battery (like using Molly instead of Signal for example).