So I’ve been using Aurora Store logged in with my google account for the past 2 years. In that time, my banking app and Paypal did not work properly, always getting stuck at some part of the app.
Today I’ve decided to login to the Google Play Store on my Pixel 7 Graphene OS phone, and to my surprise, the apps that misbehaved started downloading stuff on the play store and started working normally!
Would it be bad to switch to using the Play Store instead of the Aurora Store?
PS: I use obtainium for the majority of the apps, Aurora / Play Store is only for the few closed-source apps I need to use.
With sandboxed GPlay, the main thing you should be aware of privacy-wise is that it will know all the apps you have installed on the profile. If you care about that, you can relegate just the gplay apps to the work profile.
But yes, sandboxed gplay will provide better compatibility with apps. It seems like you encountered a known issue of aurora in that it often incorrectly shows what device you’re using, so the wrong version of an app can be downloaded.
And since you’re logged into your google account anyway, there’s no benefit to using aurora store on GOS that I can think of.
I have a similar question but in regards to obtainium vs sandboxed gplay. Most of my apps came from gplay even the open source ones like exiferaser and proton suite. Only the ones where I can find the github rep do I use obtainium.
Technically the foss apps I mentioned also has github, but I think someone in the forum (can’t remember where and who) mentioned if you already use sandboxed gplay, may as well benefit from their security feature. I just unconsciously revert back to obtainium.
Curious if there is any benefit to use obtainium with github/gitlab vs sandboxed gplay. Thanks!
With sandboxed GPlay, the main thing you should be aware of privacy-wise is that it will know all the apps you have installed on the profile. If you care about that, you can relegate just the gplay apps to the work profile.
Does Google Play even know about apps installed within the profile but through a Aurora or Obtanium?
And how do we know there isn’t more serious data collection from Google Play?
There’s an active discussion on the GrapheneOS forum about how usage guide is unclear about what exactly is communicated between GPlay and apps within the profile (especially those which are closed-source and/or are tied to push notifications).
Hijacking this thread to ask a silly question:
What’s the worst impact of using normie apps such as WhatsApp, Viber, LinkedIn on Graphene outside of the confines of the app itself and the permissions you give it?
Network tracking, sees other apps. I think the problem is not a device compromise, it is what happens on the apps themselves. Think about how your browser is not affected by visiting google-com, you are affected by using google-com.