A few questions / concerns I have of GrapheneOS before swapping

antsyboy

I'm considering using Graphene on a Pixel 7 and I just had a few questions before I do so:

Can I use Google play games for syncing game saves and stuff on sandboxed Google Play Services install, or do I have to install more?
Would it be possible to download paid apps using the app store? I have a few paid apps I'd like to continue using
Would the Google Play Store / Aurora Store / F-Droid (or Neostore) be able to do automatic installations instead of having to manually press install on every APK install prompt?
I wasn't able to find a recent post on this, but is there currently any way to be able to use Google Pay / alternatives?
(another question because I wasn't able to find a recent post about this) Does Snapchat work using sandboxed Google Play Services / on graphene OS in general?
Does the 7's face unlock work within grapheneOS?

If needed for organization reasons, I can repost this as multiple separate posts if requested by mods.

W1zardK1ng

Yes you can, but you need to login with your email id where you have saved the game progress, suggestion is if possible you can link any other account to the game, for eg - game like clash of clans have an option to link a supercell id and then use that id to restore the progress.
Its possible, either you login with the google account with which you purchased the apps or you can use the Aurora app to login to your account and download the paid apps from there.
There is no automatic app installation, if you are asking about automatic updates Google Play Store does automatic updates. Not possible in Aurora Store, Some F-Droid clients supports automatic updates and some wont. Official F-droid client and Droid-ify doesn't support it but Neostore does i think.(I dont install apps from F-Droid so not 100% sure)
NFC payment through Google Pay wont work, but if your bank's app support it. NFC payments will work.
You can set this from Setting->connected devices->connection preference->nfc->contactless payments ->default payment app.
Almost all apps works with grapheneOS, Snapchat also should work as per the reports, i dont use that app to confirm personally. see https://plexus.techlore.tech/
Face unlock wont work on 7 as it uses the camera for recognize the face and is not a secure way to unlock your phone.

antsyboy

Answers to most of my questions from my experience now having a GrapheneOS phone for under a week:

No, 3rd party sync through the games cloud sync or accounts will most likely work like W1zardK1ng said.
Through the Play Store it works perfectly.
No automatic installs but automatic updates in the Google Play Store works, Neostore has manual updates.
Haven't tried yet, but W1zardK1ng was probably right.
Yes, perfectly with no issues. It even still is optimized for the 7's camera.
No

So far it has been a seamless experience with the only issue being transferring from my old phone, but that's not a big deal. All my apps have worked great with no issues currently. I am probably the least de-googled GrapheneOS user though, as even though I want to leave google, I'm still stuck in some of their ecosystem and I prefer some of their apps over others. This includes their messages, GBoard, and google camera as I have my reasons to prefer them, but I made sure to disable telemetry in settings and also in my Google account settings.

antsyboy

Thank you for this detailed response. I'll be installing it soon and if I have any issues pertaining to it, I'll document them on this thread in case anyone has these questions.

[deleted]

Any OS is only as secure and private as you allow it. Using GrapheneOS is a good start, remember though that however much you sandbox Google Play Services, it will not completely prevent remote tracking and analytics from any additional apps you chose to install. In any case, welcome to the community and I hope you'll enjoy this little world and have as few issues as I do :)

antsyboy

antsyboy Update (since I can't edit after a few minutes) Google play games sync does seem to work. It just seems the few games that I tested it with didn't support it. I just have to make sure the game has network permissions during first startup so then it can sync.