Google play sandbox not working

K8y

When trying to open, it takes to the "sign in" blue button. After clicking it takes to another page that says "something went wrong. You don't have a network connection. This could be a temporary problem. Try again or connect to another wifi network."

But internet is working already...

fid02

K8y When trying to open, it takes to the "sign in" blue button. After clicking it takes to another page that says "something went wrong. You don't have a network connection. This could be a temporary problem. Try again or connect to another wifi network."

As Maskerot suggested, make sure that both Play services and Play Store have the network permission granted. IIRC the issue you're seeing with Play Store can happen when Play services is unable to connect to the internet, but not 100% sure.

If that doesn't work, suggest rebooting your device.

If the issue remains, try reinstalling Sandboxed Google Play: go to App Store > Google Play services > tap the vertical ellipsis top-right corner > Uninstall. The uninstall shouldn't take long. Then hit the Install button in the same screen. Make sure to wait until it's fully installed, which could take a while.

Uninstalling Play will clear app data for its apps, but it doesn't sound like you have used it for anything yet. You cannot accidentally grant the Play apps privileged permissions and they're always running in Android's standard app sandbox.

Snibby

Do you have internet permission enabled for whichever app you are trying to open?

K8y

Yes, it is just to open the google play app.

If I uninstall and reinstall is that a problem for graphene to keep it in sandbox mode?

K8y

I'll just go through aurora since no solution. Is that still pretty secure?

Also what is obtanium and how does one get it?

c86

K8y

https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium

It's basically an update tracker for users that get their apps from source, like GitHub. If you get apps from source you'll want to verify the app using something like AppVerifier in Accrescent.

Aurora can be used if you want, it's considered less secure than Play Store but it's ultimately user choice. You can search the forum for the discussion on that topic to see the issues discussed.

K8y

c86

First, If someone downloads apps from Aurora, but doesn't know how to use Obtanium, how can they still get automatic updates for their apps?

Secondly, Is there something that can be downloaded that will automatically update the apps if needed?

Thirdly, Can one simply open each individual app and see if it needs to be updated?

c86

K8y

I'm not totally familiar with the use of Aurora - I chose Play Store and GitHub / developer website for trusted apps I verified. So hopefully someone else can help you there.

I believe Obtainium will handle the auto up-date.

And lastly, you bet! You can pick an RSS feed app like Read You or Feeder or any other you like and link the app GitHub release page or developer release page to your RSS so you get a notification when an update releases!

As a note to the last point, once you verify the app once the AOSP package manager pins the hash on install. Updates to that app won't work unless the hash matches - so you only need go verify before your first install!

DeletedUser87

Aurora is probably good enough for most users. It can't offer the same security as the Play Store, but it's not a catastrophic malware ridden place. It still gets the apps from the official Google repository.
Obtainium is only a viable option for apps that are available outside of Google Play. This will, for the most part, only apply to FOSS apps that are on Github and a few closed source apps that are uploaded to the developer's website.
App updates can be implemented differently. FOSS apps might check for updates on launch, if they implement such a feature, for the most part you will need some external method (usually an app store) to keep apps up to date.

K8y

A) Yikes so Obtaniim isn't for updating say Signal downloaded from Aurora?

B) If Signal was downloaded from the Sandbox Google Playstore would it then automatically update or would it need something like Obtanium for it too to update in Graphene?

C) Worse case I can just update every 6 months back at Aurora, right?

DeletedUser87

K8y
A) Not really. You would need to download the Signal app from Github anyway, so there is no point installing it via Aurora if you want to use Obtainium later on.
B) There are no "automatic" updates per se. You can configure updates in the background for most app stores, although I disable these because I want to know what is updating and read change logs too.
C) Why would you do it every 6 months? You can enable updates in background or at least enable notifications for new releases which should be good enough to press a button and be done with it.

K8y

DeletedUser87 at least enable notifications for new releases which should be good enough to press a button and be done with it.

a) This can still be done despite downloading them from Aurora?

b) Also I just saw a message pop up saying "Sandboxed Google Play is running" though it's odd because I never even could sign in per my original post above. Why would it be running if I never even used it?

c) I hope this isn't a security issue...

DeletedUser87

K8y
a) as long as the signatures of the APK match, yes.
b) that's Play Services. It has little to do with Play Store itself (there's a bunch of explanations here already -> just search for it)
c) if you don't update apps for 6 months, it really can become a security issue at some point.

K8y

DeletedUser87
Thank you. I'm leaning towards just going with Aurora. However if I do get the Sandbox GooglePlay store to work and download an app from there, does that mean that particular app won't be able to communicate with my other apps?

Whereas if I stick with Aurora then the apps I have wil be communicating with each other since Aurora isn't sandboxed?....

nunyo

K8y you really need to read the GrapheneOS FAQ...

DeletedUser95

K8y Whereas if I stick with Aurora then the apps I have wil be communicating with each other since Aurora isn't sandboxed?....

All apps are sandboxed period on GrapheneOS. No exceptions.
Apps can only communicate with eachother if they have mutual consent. As in only if both apps trying to communicate with eachother agree to it.

Aurora Store simply provides less security than the Play Store when it comes to installing apps. Other than that the experience is pretty much the same. Your apps won't behave any differently security wise.

The reason why Google Play is referred to as Sandboxed Google Play on GrapheneOS is because on other Android/AOSP based Operating Systems Google Play is privileged and is able to bypass the sandbox to put it in basic terms. On GrapheneOS Google Play does not get such privileges hence the name.

K8y

DeletedUser95 thanks that's very helpful. Appreciate everyone's assistance!

K8y

I still would like to know why I can't access Sandbox Google Play store app.

Just in case I need to quickly download an app that might not work from Aurora.

Has anyone else had the same issue I described and found a solution?

Thank you.

NetRunner88

K8y

How did you installed PlayStore ? Did you use regular version in GrapheneOS App Store ?
Your issue is weird

DeletedUser95

K8y

Do you have any kind of content filtering set like adblocking for example? If so that can possibly cause issues.

Also did you make sure the network permission was granted to both Google Play Services and Google Play Store? Both should have it granted by default but as your situation seems very odd you could check both of those again.

If neither of those help it might be best to try and provide some logs as this sounds like a bug if not a configuration error.