Its hard to know exactly what the privacy implications will be of installing Play Service and Play Store on the device.

A lot depends on the apps that are in the user profile and how you have things configured - which apps have which permissions. The only apps that will share data with Play Services have Google libraries running inside themselves.

The libraries for Googles crash reporting, analytics and advertising services, as long as the app has network, will connect to Google directly if there is no Play Services on the device.

If you arent using a VPN you may be concerned about the Google apps being able to see the different IP addresses you connect from. But theres the same concern for their libraries running in other apps. You could reduce this by constraining their ability to run in the background. But this would also impact the ability to get instant notifications for any messenger apps.

Its also worth considering that theres many other companies that make libraries, designed to make app development easier, which are also included in many apps. Some of these libraries are purposely designed to also collect as much data as possible for sale to data aggregation companies. Also worth noting that libraries within an app inherit the permission that the app has been granted!

Its also possible to get apps and update them via Neostore, FFupdater, Accrescent. With Neostore its worth considering which repos you have enabled, but theres a whole load to choose from.

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Just to bump this thread up, I am noticing the same, it renders the app almost unusable (search returns no results) on 4.1.1 and 4.2.1 versions alike. Just did a fresh reinstall just to experience the same. Any of you having this issue?

Two days back the update from 4.1.1 to 4.2.1 has updates and searches for new apps working on my P7P running latest GOS

I just had same issue with Aurora, after updates the store messed up some of my apps like Garmin or 2fa, I realised there is an issue when I tried to search for these apps and I couldn't. I ended up setting up the Google play store with the new Gmail account which is going to be linked only here. It's a shame that aurora failed

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Can anyone confirm search function in Aurora store working? 4.1.1 or 4.2.1 (whichever version, doesn't matter), seems broken to me.

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    So as it stands, those who don't use sandboxed Google, don't have alternative access to Play Store apps, apart from maybe apkmirror or the like, sad... Let's hope they fix it soon

    dc32f0cfe84def651e0e Did you read my post? 🤓 Okay. My translation from german in english was a little different. And as I posted, I already did find a working link. Thanks for your workaround.

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    dc32f0cfe84def651e0e Alright! Setting opening supported links seems to have re-enabled search activity. Thank you very much for that! 👌

    [deleted]
    No problems with Aurora Store, but don't forget to set the search filter correct.
    If you are looking for an app with advertising, then it will not appear without setting the filter on.
    If you know an app, but cannot find it, maybe it needs GSF and you haven't set the tag for it.
    (sorry for my poor English, hope you know what I mean)

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    Still does not display any result, even with a play store link, even after uninstall/reinstall. 4.1.1. With sandboxed play services.

    Hey all, I'm new to the forum and glad I found this thread, Aurora has been driving me nuts! After an MP3 player app named Musicolet. It stopped working a few days ago, and went to reinstall it, but now can't get to it from the Aurora store.
    Reinstalled FDroid and Aurora, neither helped. Found a site that has the apk file for the app, but none of the new or even older versions work, saying "incompatible with this device" - weird, when I've had it installed without issue before.
    This seem like something to do with Aurora, or something else as well?
    Thanks!

      Aurora's disposable accounts getting rate-limited, which is why search won't work. There are open issues about it on their issue tracker. Nothing we can do on our end unless they sort it out.