I just learned about Aurora Store, and I'm wondering if anyone tried it and ditched Play Store completely. Does that work fine? What are the downsides?
Is Aurora Store a complete replacement to Play Store?
You won't be able to access the apps you've previously bought in the app store.
That's the only restriction for me so far.
Sometimes the store doesn't work for a short period of time but that's not important for me.
- Edited
Synthetic
Almost everyone here has tried aurora and many of us use aurora store as a replacement without any problems.
However, you should understand that the situation comes down to the individual person's needs. You can download any app available on playstore using aurora and without the need of a google account. However some select apps absolutely require the presence of the actual play store and some rare ones require it to be logged in to a google account. This is quite rare but does happen, its recommended to simply avoid such invasive and demanding apps, however for some its not an option.
The google Play backend consists of 3 components. Some apps need the presence of one or more of these components to work. In such cases you need to install that component (or all 3). However in most cases you can still use aurora to download the apps (even though you have installed playstore) and they work perfectly fine, even the ones that required the presence of play store. This way you wont even ever have to run the play store or use a google account. You can even disable to google components and the apps still work.
Aurora can't auto update apps however, it can only give notifications, which then by opening aurora you can click "update all" and then it will update all apps that were installed by aurora.
Play store however can update in the background without user interaction ( the apps that were installed through it).
The apps that might prove difficult are generally banking and identity verification apps, but again most of them also still work.
You need to consider which apps you need. Best open is just to install aurora and rely on it, and see if you run into any problems. The overwhelming majority of apps work just fine.
There is a limitation about how notifications work when the play store is present as compared to when its not and disabling the playstore after install also affects this. It has been explained in detail on this forum before so do look that up.
For a complete app ease of availability you might also wanna use fdroid and obtanium to complement playstore/aurora. Search for how to setup on this forum.
[deleted]
A of couple of years ago I switched to Aurora. Not long after I deleted my Google account.
One downside is no paid apps but any that you previously paid for will continue to get updates. I saved the apks for paid apps and installed those on my Pixel.
If you try searching on Aurora and get a "rate limit" warning there is a workaround.
Close Aurora.
Long press on Aurora's icon and tap settings, tap "open by default" and make sure "play.google.com" is checked.
Next, open a browser and search "app name google play" tap on any of the links should open Aurora on that app's page.
Thank you, guys.
- Edited
To my limited knowledge (and I might be wrong/misunderstanding some of the aspects), my main concerns regarding using a throwaway account with Sandboxed Google Play are:
The fact the Google account will be added to phone so apps can see which Google account we use (my understanding is that every app can see the accounts connected to the phone). This can ultimately affect privacy in some cases (e.g. a banking app that knows who you are can see your Google account attached to the device and will know you owns the account. Worse - it can share the data with Google via analytics and Google will know its you behind the account)
Likewise, even though Play Services have no permissions other than networking, they can still communicate with other apps and send the info over to Google and associate all the data collected with the throwaway account. Depending on which data is collected, it is possible for Google to build a more or less accurate profile on you over time.
Likewise, all downloaded/installed apps from Play Store will be linked to this account and depending on level of data sharing, can ultimately gather some useful data on you.
Can Sandboxed Play Service / other apps access sim phone number? If yes, then they can associate it with the throwaway account, hence affecting privacy.
Some other apps, for example, Google Maps (I personally use it as it has reviews of places that are very useful for me), can easily link your location to the account (even if we log out from Maps, it can still communicate with Play Services via inter app communication). So Google will ultimately know your location too linked to that account.
The combination of these can ultimately reveal your identity and/or allow Google to build up an accurate profile on you.
Using Aurora will bypass all these issues but then Aurora has its own issues as discussed in this thread.