New User needing advice on Play Store

TheStudent

Hi all new GOS user here, just got my Pixel 9a.

Wanting to ask how people are handle using the Sandboxed Google Play Store? I was wishing to keep it out of my owner profile and keep it in my private space, so I can switch it off and keep it isolated. But sadly in private space and 2nd profiles you can't push needed apps to the owner profile.

In looking for solutions about moving apps and keeping the play store isolated, I had seen this discussion: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/18894-most-secure-way-to-install-play-store-apps-on-play-service-free-owner-profiles/

I was wondering about one user suggestion about using a APK extractor to back up and "push" app the owner profile. I have seen this app that can backup apks and seems to be open source: https://github.com/Domilopment/apk-extractor

But wondering what peoples thoughts are if this is a sound solution or not?

Worst case I suppose I could install the Play Store to the owner profile, log in update apps and then uninstall and do that every week.
Would be open other suggestions.

KleinesSinchen

You can update installed apps from secondary profiles.
You can disable Play Store+Play Services after using it – if you decide for having Google in owner profile (no need to uninstall every time)

===

I used adb for getting apps from secondary (Google infested) user to owner. Of course developer options and specifically adb aren't terribly popular here for security reasons to say the least. But I did this once and never enabled dev options since.

TheStudent

KleinesSinchen You can update installed apps from secondary profiles.
You can disable Play Store+Play Services after using it – if you decide for having Google in owner profile (no need to uninstall every time)

That's a good point I didn't think of that. As far as your aware does having two copies of the same app across multiple profiles and/or private spaces take up any addition space?

KleinesSinchen

Any app (the APK file) is stored only once regardless of how many user accounts use it. This also means updating is required only once and not for each user profile.
Obviously data for the apps is different. If an app stores or downloads a huge amount of data for each user (maybe a game that downloads assets) this will have some impact on storage space.