I want as little Google as possible on my Fairphone 4!

Hello to all,

I have just received my phone. Until /e/ comes out (any news?), I don’t want any Google applications on my Phone.
I used adb and deleted a lot of apps.

I have 3 problems though:

  • I can’t find the package name for Google PlayStore?
  • I can’t finalize the configuration because I don’t want to enter a Gmail account (impossible to skip the step). I have a very annoying permanent notification! (see picture)
  • I deleted the com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox package but I think I did it before deleting the widget so it’s still there and it’s really annoying! (see picture)

Do you have any ideas?

Thanks a lot :pray:

1 Like

Package names should be the same

Else I think you can slide the set up message to the left and use the gear symbol to deactivate notifications, or just tap on it and pretend again to do the setup and after that I think it will vanish

If there is no other way, another launcher should help to get rid of the search box

3 Likes

Just a cautionary tale before everybody runs off to uninstall whatever …

Perhaps it would be prudent to wait with experimenting perhaps too much at least until Fairphone offer a way to reinstall the OS manually. This seems not to be there yet (see section “Revert to Fairphone OS”).

7 Likes

Thanks, i found it : com.android.vending (Google Play Store)

No it’s impossible :frowning:

Thanks…

I will wait and install a new launcher and hope that /e/ will be released very soon!

“We expect to onboard the FP4 on our list of supported device by end of this year.” (as you know, just for others perhaps reading along)

3 Likes

/e/ is not an Option for me.

I don’t like the technical approach that e.foundation is taking.
I don’t think much of their APPs. I don’t like the approach with the e.cloud. The launcher is junk. Their own APP store is opaque and cruel. The Android versions are lagging behind.
A lot of things that put me off. I don’t want to be put in this corset.

Iode is maybe an alternative that I’m keeping an eye on. Even if their TrackerControl is not FOSS. A possible alternative. Nothing decided yet.

Or LOS4mg, as before on my (now) second device.
Then I can decide everything freely and do as I want. I like that best.

But as always. It’s nice that you have the choice and everyone finds what you like. :wink:

1 Like

and if even you install your own NextCloud server in replacement of the e.cloud ?

For my part, I have a problem with the technical choice of deeply integrate nextcloud, but I have to admit they did it well, and once on my own server, I got an easy to use device and software, that automatically sync my datas through my VPN on a machine I own with really few work.

And yes, the launcher is a joke, but I personally always use “unlauncher” so it doesn’t change anything for me.

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Hi @Bristow!

I did the same with my FP4. I can send you a list with all the apps that are safe to uninstall later.

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Why not make it official here?

I do not host my own nextcloud instance. I am using a managed nextcloud by Nextcloud Hosting | Gratis mit 1GB starten | hosting.de
Perfect!

Because I’m a student and I was still laying in bed at that time :sweat_smile:

you’ll find the list here as soon as I find it on my laptop

Edit: Here it is:

com.qualcomm.qti.qms.service.telemetry
com.google.android.youtube
com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox
com.google.android.onetimeinitializer
com.google.android.cellbroadcastreceiver.overlay.common
com.google.android.apps.messaging
com.google.android.configupdater
com.tct.endusertest
com.android.vending
com.google.android.setupwizard.overlay
com.google.android.marvin.talkback
com.google.android.deskclock
com.google.android.gm
com.google.android.apps.tachyon
com.google.android.overlay.gmsconfig.common
com.google.android.setupwizard
com.google.android.euicc
com.google.android.overlay.modules.ext.services
com.google.android.apps.wellbeing
de.telekom.tsc
com.google.android.overlay.gmsconfig.photos
com.google.android.dialer
com.google.android.overlay.gmsconfig.comms
com.google.android.apps.docs
com.google.android.apps.maps
com.orange.update
com.google.android.overlay.gmsconfig.searchlauncherqs
com.google.android.overlay.modules.documentsui
com.google.android.contacts
com.google.android.syncadapters.contacts
com.google.android.calculator
com.android.chrome
com.google.android.tag
com.google.android.tts
com.google.android.gmsintegration
com.google.android.partnersetup
com.google.android.videos
com.google.android.overlay.gmsconfig.gsa
com.qualcomm.qti.devicestatisticsservice
com.google.android.feedback
com.google.android.printservice.recommendation
com.google.android.apps.photos
com.google.android.calendar
com.google.android.documentsui
com.google.mainline.telemetry
com.google.android.projection.gearhead
com.google.android.overlay.modules.modulemetadata.forframework
com.google.android.keep
com.google.android.apps.setupwizard.searchselector
com.google.android.gms.location.history
com.google.android.apps.youtube.music
com.orange.aura.oobe
com.google.android.inputmethod.latin
com.google.android.apps.restore

I would’ve loved to uninstall also com.google.android.gms and
com.google.android.gsf, since these are the packages that collect and send the most data go G00gle, but unfortunately, it’s no longer possible to send SMS or receive software updates after removing them. You can remove their permissions in the settings app, but keep in mind that G00gle did a dirty trick: The Play Services as well as Google Services Framework both have the permission to “change system settings”, so they can give them the permissions for calendar, contacts etc. back themselves. You need to disable this special permission in the advanced section for both of these apps.

I would also recommend to install NetGuard as a firewall to block most of the internet traffic for these apps. It’s not perfect, but it works most of the time. Make to set it as “always on VPN” in the settings, but don’t enable “block connections outside of this VPN”, since it apparently breaks the DNS service (so no more internet). I disabled internet access for basically every system app, including all the remaining G00gle and Qualcomm apps.

Speaking of Qualcomm. Don’t randomly uninstall these apps, that’s going to break your device to the point that you need to flash it again via your PC. Trust me, I’ve ran into that problem multiple times while figuring out which apps are safe to remove and which aren’t. On that note: ALL OF THE “ADVICE” I GIVE HERE COMES WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. IF YOU BREAK YOUR DEVICE, I CAN TRY TO HELP YOU, BUT I WON’T TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT. I’d be happy though if we could expand the list of uninstallable apps, so if you want to take the risk, you can try it.

If you know a little bit of Python, you can have a look at my hacky scripts to make some adb stuff easier. Keep in mind that I wrote them for myself, so don’t expect anything to work properly. If there is demand, I can tidy everything up and maybe even make a small toolbox out of it.
insert gitlab link here

I hope that helps, and gosh am I looking forward for LineageOS, so all of these workarounds won’t be necessary anymore :slight_smile:

19 Likes

I’d love to see that list too :slight_smile: have the same “as little g as possible on fairphone4”-project going right now as well!

Whereas this IS NOT ADVICE here is the post @Stanzi posted whereupon a messaging issue arose, but it gives you a clue as to what you will be looking at. So you can at least check out the topic if you missed it. :slight_smile:

1 Like

Has anyone tried to get Magisk installed on their Fairphone 4 yet?
Because then it would be easy to remove google components even systemlessly and potentially even replace the play services with microG components

I could successfully unlock my bootloaders, but as far as I know one would need the stock boot.img to get magisk installed on the phone
I did find a link to a Fairphone 4 boot.img on the code.fairphone.com site (under Fairphone 4 Kernel Source Code — FAIRPHONE open source documentation) but as far as I can see the version of that boot image does not match the version that my Fairphone 4 displays in the Settings → About section so I am not sure whether that would work …

Any advice would be appreciated

you have to wait until a recovery is available
no custom roms, no recoveries available yet…

at the moment, the only availability is to unlock the bootloader

Ok, thanks for the info
I thought a stock boot.img would be enough so that Magisk can patch that and get installed that way, but anyway, I will wait until at least the stock images are available for offline install so that I can at least always go back to factory default if I break something :slight_smile:

1 Like

I will hopefully receive my FP4 in two days. Is it possible (coming from a FP2 LOS) to install Titanium Backup and just use this to install all my apps with data (after disabling google)?

I think Titanium requires root,or? So if yes I think the FP4 cannot be rooted yet and so the answer would be no.

3 Likes

So. sofar so good, I have not deleted all apps from Stanzis list… But what I now face, some apps cannot access the storage (so I cannot import my backups - e.g. AntennaPod). I have tried granting access, but this is given.
Even Amaze/Simple FileManager for ex. cannot access 0/Android/data…
Which google-service would that be? I tried com.google.android.documentsui, but this only installed a non-working documents app.

That might be an Android 11 issue I think: Feature Request: manage files in the "Android/data" folder on Android 11 · Issue #490 · SimpleMobileTools/Simple-File-Manager · GitHub

2 Likes