Appls reliant on google play store/services

lawman

Is there an easy way to list all the apps which rely on google play store/services?

I am looking to put them into a separate secondary profile.

The stumbling block I've come across in trying to have a daily foss profile is that whatsapp and signal needed for my daily profile, and requires google play store/service. Has anyone found a solution?

DeletedUser495

lawman Neither Signal, nor Whatsapp require Play services, they work well without.

lawman

DeletedUser495 both give me an error if i suspend play services. From reading it seems both partially rely on play services but many features work without. whatsapp push services require play. molly reduces play services requirement for signal too.

this is a separate discussion.

just wanted an easy way to list all the apps which rely on play services.

disfall

lawman, did you install Signal and WhatsApp after you installed Google Play Services and then disable Google Play Services?

lawman

has anyone used micro g on gos? Its supposed to be installable and sends less info to google, although less compatible than sandboxed play and maybe less secure.

lawman

disfall yes

DeletedUser495

lawman if you use Play services, Signal and Whatsapp will register with them for push on the first run. Otherwise they will fall back to websocket/unified push. Disabling Play services naturally will remove push capability from them requiring reinstall. They run perfectly well without Play services, meaning they don't need to be installed separately/together with other Play services reliant apps to answer part of your question.

When downloading from Play store, there is no direct way of finding out which apps will rely partially or completely on APIs provided by Play services or public lists which would be huge but there are ways you can find out by using sevices like Exodus or directly installing them from Play store and analyzing libraries used with apps such as App Manager https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager or LibChecker https://github.com/LibChecker/LibChecker .

lawman

DeletedUser495 This is very useful thanks.

I found the following:
Push notifications may be unreliable — Without Play Services, WhatsApp can’t use Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) for instant push notifications. This means you might only get messages when you open the app or keep it running in the background.

This states battery will drain faster without FCM push as you'll only see notifications if opening whatsapp or draining battery with keeping on always.

For Signal I found:
Signal: Relies heavily on Play Services for push notifications, so it’s trickier to use on phones without Google.

Molly: Has a built-in WebSocket push system so it works reliably without Google push infrastructure — perfect for GrapheneOS, /e/, LineageOS, and Huawei devices.

So the question boils down to:
1) Does websocket/unified push require app to be always on, draining battery more than play services FCM push?

Thanks in advance

harp

lawman Does websocket/unified push require app to be always on, draining battery more than play services FCM push?

No, the app can be completely turned of and hasn't to be remain open in the background when using unified push for notifications. For example Molly has two implemented notification methods (the non FOSS version Googles FCM like native Signal as a third): the Websocket method which is also available at the native Signal client as an alternativ to Google FCM. Using this, Molly/Signal app must run in the background to get notifications. Using Unified Push as an alternative only the UP service/app must run in the background which costs not that much battery drain.

lawman

harp

1) How can I force signal and whatsapp to use
a) unified push (for least battery drain) + how do we install UP service?
b) instead of websocket (more battery drain).

2) To avoid Google FCM;
a) Can we install via Aurora with play services running; or
b) Must have play services disabled, then install via Aurora

3) If we installed using (2a) above then pushed whatsapp/signal to a second profile
a) Would whatsapp still expect play services to be enabled in the second profile? - or would revert to unified push?

Thanks again

de0u

lawman I don't think WhatsApp supports Unified Push. I also think I've seen that to get UP for Signal you need to run Molly instead.