Compliments and a Question about Sneaky Apps..

The_Defector

After years and years of rooting phones and years of researching GrapheneOS, I finally ordered a Pixel and installed it. I even picked my fam up phones and installed it on their new phones as well. My only regret is that I didn't do this a long time ago. Bravo to everyone making this happen. I've never been so stoked about owning a phone before.

I have been doing lots of reading and listening over the past week. Somewhere in the past couple days, people were talking about ProtonMail and the Aurora Store. A claim was made that downloading the ProtonMail app from the Aurora Store would install Google Play Services as well. In fact, here is exactly what was said -
"The Google Play version will install Google services. Google services are necessary for push notifications from Proton mail. If you don't care about push notifications, then the GitHub version will be fine. I would not install the Aurora Store version."

Is this true? Will apps downloaded from Aurora Store also download Google Play Services? Is this statement false? Was it just worded in a confusing way? It would be a bit angering to open up your apps folder and see Google Play Services sitting there when you didn't intentionally download it.

I have no plans to download the ProtonMail app. But I found it concerning if that statement were factual.

Thanks for any clarification..

TrustExecutor

The_Defector Welcome! It is not true. The official Proton Mail app includes a Google FCM library that uses Google Play Services for notifications. Maybe other Google components as well, I am not sure. Without GrapheneOS Ssndboxed Google Play Services with network permission you will not receive any notifications. But the app itself does not install Play Services in GrapheneOS. No user installed app has permission to do that kind of operations.

c86

The_Defector

The other user already explained the FCM library and some apps needing that for notifications.

The bit with not using Aurora Store is because there are security concerns with it. One of which is the accounts used with Aurora Store are burner accounts made by their developers. They often get rate limited and blocked. I had also seen lower version apps there compared to using Play Store with my own burner account. I know some people will use Aurora in a profile without sandboxed Play Services for testing apps etc. I don't believe Aurora downloads any Play Services, but there is some workaround that allows apps from there to work if you don't have sandboxed play services.

If I recall from a few years ago, there was discussion in the GOS Matrix "Off Topic" room that discussed more of the issues with Aurora Store. You could find it I'm sure if you locate the original Off Topic room.

DeletedUser69

You Have Mail appears to be maintained.

https://github.com/LeanderBB/you-have-mail

The_Defector

Thanks for the responses.

It didn't make much sense to me. But I thought mayyyybe there was something I was overlooking. I'm not one
who would really use many apps from the Aurora Store on my daily setup. But just in case, I wanted to be 100%
sure and not 95%. I really appreciate the clarification.