this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026
130 points (94.5% liked)

Opensource

6673 readers
171 users here now

A community for discussion about open source software! Ask questions, share knowledge, share news, or post interesting stuff related to it!

CreditsIcon base by Lorc under CC BY 3.0 with modifications to add a gradient



founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 3 points 4 days ago

Yes they are unprivileged, and the gmscompat tool doesnt give them more access that is true. Still it is google software with the intention to control your device and spy on you, while Aurorastore is a slim app that even allows to restrict the apps it tells to Google.

If you're hiding system services in Aurora that you don't want it touching, that makes it even easier to identify you, because Google play doesn't do that.

It is less data. GrapheneOS will have less system apps than stock android so that immediately gives it away.

Asking Google for updates is also different from telling it a complete list of your installed apps. You might simply not try to update these system apps currently.

In the end, it is really good that play services work on GrapheneOS, but they are still more invasive as regular user apps than alternatives.