zlacker

>>madars+(OP)
Happy long term user, great project. Here is a list of Open Source Apps, I use to replace Google stuff:

  Aurora Store - Anonymized frontend for Playstore
  F-Droid - Open Source App Store
  Obtainium - App Store for other sources (e.g. github)
  Organic Maps - Open Source navigation (not as good as proprietary ones though)
  SherpaTTS - Text to speech for Organic Maps
  PDF Doc Scanner - Little Trickster, Open Source document scanner
  Binary Eye - Barcode reader
  K9 Mail / FairMail - Mail client
  LocalSend - Cross Platform File Transfer
  Syncthing Fork - Catfriend1 Syncthing fork to sync files
  VLC Media Player - media player
  KOReader - ebook reader
  Voice - Paul Woitaschek, local audiobook player
  AudioBookShelf - Remote audiobook player
  Immich - image backup
  Fossify File Manager - file manager
  Substreamer / DSub - Audio streamer for navidrome self hosted server
  OpenCamera - Open Source camera app

I wish I had this list from the start... Hope it helps someone :-)

>>sandre+yS
How do push notifications and similar things work on GraphenOS? Do they work reliably out of the box on most apps, or did you have to set up MicroG/whatever GrapheneOS's equivalent is?

>>labada+LI1
Push notifications work on GrapheneOS whether apps do it themselves, use UnifiedPush with the user's choice of provider or use FCM. UnifiedPush and FCM are a more efficient design where apps share a push connection. Unfortunately, many apps only support FCM and some support their own push as a fallback, but few support UnifiedPush. FCM works very well via sandboxed Google Play, which is an approach where Google apps can be installed as regular sandboxed apps with zero special access or privileges. Nothing FCM does actually requires special privileges and our compatibility layer makes it work without it.

GrapheneOS does not include sandboxed Google Play but rather includes an open source compatibility layer providing support for installing Google Play as regular sandboxed apps. They can't do or access anything more than other apps including the Google Play code running inside apps using Google Play which is the reason for choosing this design. It simply uses the same app sandbox and permission model which are both greatly improved by GrapheneOS for supporting running the rest of Google Play not bundled with apps using it.

Worth noting apps don't need Google Play services to use Google services and many Google libraries like Ads and Analytics work without it. FCM requires Google Play services but many of their libraries do. There are Lite variants of Ads and Analytics for keeping apps smaller which lose the ability work without Google Play services. The general reason for the design is they don't want to have huge apps and want to be able to update the clients for their services without app developers doing it and shipping an app update. FCM is one of the special cases requiring the central design for efficiency. UnifiedPush is an alternative with choice of implementation / provider.