Yesterday I decided to create a second profile on my Pixel 5 with GrapheneOS. The idea was that I would only keep Google Play Services (GPS) and Google Play Store (GPS2) there together with WhatsApp (need it go my kids school) and bank apps, and therefore shut down second profile for most of the time. So, I deleted GPS and GPS2 on the main profile and since then, I have Signal Messaging complaining that it requires GPS. I know I ough to probably be complaining with Signal developers, but before I go down that route I just wanted to reassure myself that this is normal behaviour. Presumably, Signal is complaining that it requires GPS only because its the only way it can notify a user that an update is available? I’ve done some minimal tests and it seems to be working normally, despite GPS is not installed on the main profile. I guess I could move to SimpleX and ditch Signal but that would be tough given I spent years convincing people to move to Signal 🙂
You can hide the Error notification type (at least in AOSP Android 15).
No, Google Play Services in any form is spyware.
Replace signal with molly (a signal fork). It still works with signal perfectly, but does not complain about Google Play services.
Signal uses Play Services for its push notifications. It does have a fallback method which maintains a connection to their servers to get message notifications. It requires changing some battery optimisation settings which might have some minor battery impacts.
Personally I’m using Molly which implements UnifiedPush for Push Notifications without Molly/Signal needing to run in the background constantly. Also swaps a few other Google dependencies (like location pins) with open source alternatives.
Having the second profile with Google Services is a good idea though. That was what I used to do before I shed my last few Google dependencies.
Personally I’m using Molly
Me too, but even with no limit to battery usage it still gets killed after a while in the background…
Me too. I am rolling like a fucking tire. I fucking love everything.
Is that with using UnifiedPush or the WebSocket notification method?
Langis is Signal with the GPS requirement removed.
If you freeze them, yes. Can’t remove them forcefully tho, they bootloop.
You need to reinstall Signal for it to fall back to its own push notification system. This is not about updates but checking for messages in the background. This doesn’t mean you cannot receive messages at all without it, just that you’d have to do so manually by opening the app every time.
It may have worked for a little while, but a reinstall is required for restoring full functionality
spent years convincing people to move to Signal
It’s not linear. The first time they probably thought “Oh… another chat app, such a big deal, so complex! I’ll never manage” but now that they did with Signal and realize it’s not that hard, having another will be much easier.
Now on the actual question, I do not know. What actual information does Google get from it and as importantly what can they infer from it? Might actually be good to ask Signal developers since it’s because of their choice.
Related discussions https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/14203 which suggests https://signal.org/android/apk/ might not need GPS and isn’t delivered via Play Store.
No.
Explane more , I’ve got graphene just installed on my pixel 8 pro .
