Do you need a Google account to use an Android phone? Here’s what you’ll lose—and gain—if you choose not to sign in.
You can use the Aurora Store app to access Google Play without enabling the system-wide Google account.
You can also use Gmaps WV to use a subset of Maps’ features completely anonymously (no navigation).
My experience: I got a Nothing Phone 2 recently and decided to degoogle it. Using ADB commands, I removed every google app from my phone, from the Dialer all the way up to the PlayStore, apart from just 2: Play Services and Maps. Both work fine without a Google account. I did take away all permissions of Play Services and it still works fine. Without this app, you will stop getting notifications from most of your apps so it is necessary.
Open source alternatives that I turned towards:
- Google Dialer -> Simple Dialer
- Google Contacts -> Simple Contacts
- Google Photos -> Simple Gallery Pro
- Google Play Store -> Aurora Store and Droid-ify
- Google Messenger -> QKSMS
- Google Calendar -> Proton Calendar
- Google Drive -> Proton Drive
- Google Chrome -> Mozilla Firefox
- Youtube -> Youtube ReVanced (Not FOSS, I use a throwaway account here with Vanced Microg)
- Google Translate -> Translate YOU
- Google Files -> Material Files
- Google Docs/Slides/Sheet -> Collabora Office
- GMail -> Proton Mail
- GBoard -> OpenBoard fork with glide typing
Everything works fine :)
I’ve used GrapheneOS on a Pixel 3A for a year or so, I’ll be honest
It was a fuckin’ pain.
MicroG is not a usable replacement for GPlay Services at all. Push notifs randomly stopped working, various mapping apps wouldn’t work. Food delivery apps crashed a ton if they ever did work. Some open source alternatives were a lot better than GPlay Service requiring apps, some were pathetically worse.
Like, as a handheld device that could use a web browser, it was fine. But as a smartphone that you expect to work when you need it day to day, no, no, god no. By the end of it I was using two phones, one of them a stock android device and the Pixel 3A, and I wondered why I was even bothering.
I can’t blame MicroG for this, its maintained by 1 guy and Google’s APIs are huge and everything uses them.
But I’m also never going to use an Android phone without Google Play Services again. Oh sorry gang, I didn’t get your messages because the IM app failed to send push notifs for 3 days. I don’t like Google, but I don’t like broken phones more than I don’t like Google.
I have no idea why you would want to use Android without Google though. It’s literally free and it’s some of the best products. 🤷♀️
Thanks! That sounds like a fun exercise for my next phone
