I want to minimize data send to google but don't want to miss all the fancy features they create. The way I want to achieve that is by using offline features. I have two features in mind:
Photo app and its tool "magic eraser" "sharpener" and "unsharp background"
Google lens (translate offline)
Maybe there are more and you can help me extend that list.

For the photo app it works well . So what you need is to install services and google app and download this tools.
But I do have problems with downloading languages for lens. So in lens go to translate and than on top "recognize language". Than you can select the language to download. But that won't work. Although in all involved apps (services, google, lens) the network is enabled it won't download. It seems not to recognize that Wifi is on, because you can select between "use any network" or "use Wifi when available". I have seen it recognize size of download and starts for a second but than a red triangle tells me that download is not possible. Why?
I thought order of installation might be important. So I deleted all memory of google and lens app, so that it behaves as services have been installed first.
How to solve that?

Are there more cool apps that could be later on used with "network off" ?

Same issue with Lens. It might be due to play services not being privileged anymore.

Thanks for interesting link. Searching further on I found:
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/9569-cannot-download-languages-in-google-lens
... so in a nutshell you need a Google account (which I don't have).
Can this be confirmed? Any way to workaround that (by some kind of "sideloading"). Create a accound and delete it might be second best option?

I'm no so familiar with google universe, but maybe two other apps that might work offline (after once download some data, network can be disabled after).

  • Google translator (languages can download ... weird but Lens seems to use other data)
  • Google maps (this might be not soo useful, there are other good apps out and it's biggest advantage - the traffic monitor - can't be used in offline mode obviously).

There is also a problem downloading voices for TTS :(

Summery so far:

  • Photo (tools): works offline after download files
  • Maps: works offline
  • Translator: works offline
  • Lens: no download of languages (maybe with Google account ?!?)
  • TTS: no download of voice files

I remember having the same problems with offline g Lens even on Stock Pixel with G account, so I guess it's more of an app problem. For the TTS I use Google speech Recognition downloaded from Aurora. Then go to settings > type engine > preferred engine > google tts.
There are also alternatives that you can find on this forum.

You can also download Google recorder after g tts and basically have audio transcription offline.
For TTS, you first need to grant it network permissions, then install recorder also with network enabled. Restart the app several times and make 1-2 recording, then when you go to transcribe it will ask you to download languages for tts. You can also go to tts settings and download any language you need.

After all that, you can revoke network to both.

You can also get Pixel Weather app if play services installed as well as G phone and Messages (I will try to use a workaround later for RCS to work). I believe someone made call transcription work on this forum but permissions granted were awfully compromising.

    DeletedUser69
    Sure, only those that can get for free (in terms of data = work offline).
    Don't know why, but after installing sherpa (k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/tts/apk-engine.html) I was able to download voice for TTS !?!
    So lens is still missed....

      If Google getting your data is a concern, then you shouldn't be using these apps at all right now, if you're going to have Play Services installed alongside them with network access. It doesn't matter if you take away their network permissions, if Play Services is there and has access to the internet (for notifications), then they can just send the data through Play Services.

      I wouldn't necessarily discount the possibly that a non-Google app that has Google libraries in it could have been designed to communicate woth Google apps for this kind of data exchange either. Then you wouldn't be safe from that even if you didn't have Play Services, you'd need to thoroughly vet every app you use to make sure they don't include any Google libraries.

      You could have some elaborate setup to check and verify that neither Play Services nor any of your other apps are sending data on behalf of your Google apps, but that doesn't guarantee you that they couldn't statt doing it in the future.

      If you don't care that much, then just use the apps and don't worry about it too much. Otherwise you probably want to wait until app communication scopes, which should allow you to prevent apps from communicating with and sending data to other apps. The Network permission is a false sense of privacy right now in a lot of cases.

        Ammako : "It doesn't matter if you take away their network permissions, if Play Services is there and has access to the internet (for notifications), then they can just send the data through Play Services."

        Is this your assumption or a fact? My assumption is: if G Translater has offline files and "Network off" it doesn't send (what is to be translated) to internet. Otherwise it wouldn't make any sense to give the apps separate connections? And also if an app, that doesn't have permission for Network tunnels via other ways the hole concept of Firewalls/permissions would be nonsense.
        I can't think playservices are a way for an app to workaround it's missing permissions to network.

            2 months later

            starbright
            When I was playing around with google lens I noticed that, firstly you can't have only google lens you need the google assistant app aswell. Then despite still appearing like two different apps, the network permission on the google app would affect google lens, not it's own permission. This is one reproduceable example as this other user also found: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/18234-google-lens-and-google-app-communication

            starbright And also if an app, that doesn't have permission for Network tunnels via other ways the hole concept of Firewalls/permissions would be nonsense.

            I wouldn't be surprised honestly.