Exposure Notifications System and Location Access

witcher

Hello! I'm using the german "Corona Warn App" which uses Google/Apple's Exposure Notifications System.
According to a help article About the Exposure Notifications System and Android location settings, the location service is not needed on Android 11 (and assuming any version above 11).

The app I'm using is Corona Contact Tracing Germany, which, upon disabling location in the Android settings, gives me a notification:

Exposure Notifications inactive
Location access is required to receive Exposure Notifications.

I'm unsure whether this is:

a bug in the app
actually still required (though unlikely)
supported on GrapheneOS with Android 13

Any insight would be great. Thank you!

GrapheneOS

witcher There is no exposure notification API in AOSP / GrapheneOS. It's part of Google Play services. If you aren't using sandboxed Google Play and granting the necessary permissions to it, apps will need to do this on their own. If sandboxed Google Play is present, they will likely try to use it, and if you don't grant the permissions the apps may not work if they don't give an explicit choice on how to work. Most of these apps likely mandate using Play services and have no alternate implementation.

witcher

GrapheneOS Thanks for the quick reply.

I forgot to mention that I'm indeed using sandboxes Google Play and the Exposure Notifications work as intended, i.e. the right permissions are given.

I'm guessing that this should then work without Location services, as said in the help article posted above.

Thanks.