johnsmith

@MetropleX you MUST install ALL 3 packages if you wish to receive support for issues with sandboxed play services. The only package that can be installed without the other two is GSF to help with GCam as an example which doesn't require all of them.

Play Store IS NOT just a shop front, apps increasingly depend on Play Asset Delivery and Play Feature Delivery which require the official Play Store client instead of legacy OBBs which are deprecated and forbidden for new apps. Other Play Store services also require the official Play Store. Apps will increasingly depend on the Play Store for Asset/Feature delivery and other APIs.

      3 months later

      MetropleX

      MetropleX This is good to know. I was wondering why some apps were acting a little weird. I thought the play store wasn't necessary for apps to be fully functional

          eatinggrumble84 The option still won't appear for me. I have Google Services Framework and Google Play Services. GSF doesn't have any permissions at all though. Do I need to grant it any for this to work?

              5 days later

              MetropleX I have tried this but when I revoke network permission on Gboard I'm not able to use voice typing. I get an error message "can't connect to Google right now". Any ideas? Thanks

                  Hi everyone,

                  I'm currently having issues with the solution provided by @MetropleX. I've installed Gboard and checked the option Faster voice typing. I can see that data is downloaded as the User data goes up and flatlines at 228 MB. However, if I remove network permissions I just get the error that Google can't be contacted right now.

                  This persists even after leaving permissions on for a couple days as suggested by @Snowmonk. User data does not go up any further than 228 MB so it seems everything is downloaded.

                  Does anybody know what may be the cause? Are there other settings that may conflict with this feature?

                  Framework, Play Store and Play services all installed, everything up to date.

                  Many thanks.

                    If you can't get the GBoard / Google Voice Services to work then I can suggest two other methods.

                    First is to use Sayboard. For my use, it's fine. Not as accurate or fully featured as GBoard / Google Voice but good enough for the occasional voice transcription.

                    https://github.com/ElishaAz/Sayboard

                    Second, you can also install Google Recorder (no need to also install any Google Play packages), revoke network access, record / transcribe in that app and then share or copy - paste the results of the transcription into your note taking, text messaging, etc. app of your choice. Ads an extra step but just as accurate as the GBoard / Google Voice setup.

                    jamstock fdubosc it is possible that Google may have made changes when updating Play Services or GBoard.

                    I will endeavour to test myself later but as I don't use GBoard and only tested this solution at the time to provide advice it would be profitable to have a regular user of the feature who is on the latest version of the OS, Play Services and GBoard to validate if this is indeed an issue from an update or is simply a configuration issue.

                    I will respond later tonight when I am back from doing my site visits at work.

                          MetropleX Thanks for your response. If it helps the diagnostic, I also tried the feature when I was out of cell signal/wifi and it did not work in this situation either.

                            MetropleX Thanks. After playing around for a while I discovered that in my case Gboard voice typing with network access revoked only works with English (US) after it has downloaded over Wi-Fi. Other languages do not seem to be supported. The ones I tried were French and Thai.

                            If anyone can get other languages working please let me know.

                              For now if I want to use French or Thai I think I will have to temporarily connect to the network. Seems to be the only solution

                              Just confirmed the @MetropleX process did work for me.
                              English (US).

                              It still works after uninstalling the 3 Google services too.

                              Can also confirm works with English (US), issue seems to only concern other keyboards. Have tried English (UK), French, and Russian.

                              Yeah something I should get used to asking when this is discussed is the language being used.

                              Our new all-neural, on-device Gboard speech recognizer is initially being launched to all Pixel phones in American English only. Given the trends in the industry, with the convergence of specialized hardware and algorithmic improvements, we are hopeful that the techniques presented here can soon be adopted in more languages and across broader domains of application.

                              Source: https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/03/an-all-neural-on-device-speech.html

                              @MetropleX I take it back, English (US) no longer working. Issue same as before. Left network permissions on for two days just in case, deleted user data to start again. Returns issue "Can't reach Google right now".

                              I have literally this very minute logged into my Play Services secondary user.
                              Ensured my Play Services were updated to the latest Alpha release.
                              Downloaded GBoard and left network/sensors enabled for the setup.
                              Went to advanced and disabled all options.
                              Tapped Voice Typing and selected the Faster Voice Typing toggle to on.
                              Left the download on a 120mbps line over wifi to complete for 3 minutes.
                              Returned to the 'App Info' pane and disabled network.
                              Opened my launcher search and tapped the mic.
                              Said "This is a test" and the text appeared.

                              Also note I did not change my language locale from English (UK) or any other settings so it appears that works as well as English (US)

                              @MetropleX Okay, tried again from a fresh install and followed everything step-by-step as described above and still continued to encounter the same issue with English (US) and (UK).
                              In the end what fixed it was disabling "Multilingual typing" found in Gboard settings > Languages. I think this feature allows you to use autocorrect while typing a different language than the one of the keyboard, perhaps it creates some sort of dependency between the different languages installed and prevents offline voice typing from working correctly if the second language isn't also available offline (in this case French). Option might not appear if you only have one language installed.

                                fdubosc thanks for that, every little helps and working through this together has added a troubleshooting point that can be advised to help others AND you got it working too, win win.

                                Thanks for coming back and letting us know, many wouldn't. Appreciate your community spirit.