That’s not silly. I hadn’t thought about this because I wanted microG and was happy that UnifiedNlp was taken care of in one go.
Of course logically it should be possible to install UnifiedNlp standalone. I found the following from a microG Project member here …
“if you are only interested in the UnifiedNlp functionality, you don’t need the other parts of microG and only the “UnifiedNlp (no GAPPS)” standalone package (assuming you don’t have GAPPS installed. However this will not allow usage of official Google apps.”
And the location components I see in LineageOS for microG are all there on F-Droid as standalone installs …
If you only rely on network location (UnifiedNlp) without needing Google Maps API on third party apps, then you should go with official Lineage OS + UnifiedNlp, definitely simpler. No need for signature spoofing.
Although you’ll need to install UnifiedNlp system-wide: LOS has not included required patches as FP Open did to support location providers outside system. My microG/UnifiedNlp Installer should make your life easier, just let me release a new ZIP with the Oreo plumbing (the work is already done). It installs the right F-Droid build of UnifiedNlp and an OTA-survival script, so you can upgrade safely from there onwards and forgot about it. I recommend the minimal flavour that just installs UnifiedNlp and let you use whatever backend you want.
Edit:Here they are! Make sure you do a backup before (better in airplane mode), so you can revert in case something fails.
phone asked encryption pin and is now booting LOS…
Edit 2: It booted… now checking my apps and stuff…
Edit 3: WOW, that was easy and smooth! I just needed to redo my app positioning and was set.
Some observations (will edit further):
geolocation via UnifiedNlp is working, also none of my apps is missing Google/MicroG yet
barcode scanner in camera app -> Is that new in 15.1?
auto HDR mode in camera app -> Is that new in 15.1?
Bugs / errros (will edit further):
taking videos is not working -> AFAIK a known bug
e-mail app is asking for some background permission for IMAP push -> I don’t use the app, I use K9, but I can decline the dialog, it pops up again and again. -> Bug?
Go into the app’s system settings, clear data and reboot.
Another way to launch it in Oreo is going into Location settings (tap and hold the notification bar quick-setting for toggling location), and at the bottom (“Location services”) you’ll find an entry for it.
To delete it, I guess it is enough to clear its data, reboot into TWRP and remove /system/priv-app/UnifiedNlp, /system/etc/permissions/privapp-permissions_microg.xml and /system/addon.d/70-microg.sh.
Alternatively, you could just clear its data, remove the latter file and re-flash your LineageOS ROM.
A clearer way will be always restoing the backup you should have performed before flashing it, though.
Weird. Do you come from a microG installation or tried it before? Could you test —e.g. with SatStat—, with GPS disabled but network location active if you get positioned fine?
I did restore The package from LOS 14.1 with Titanium Backup. This app still had a launcher but was not made a system app and therefore did not work properly.
But now everything is working as expected. Only thing missing is the App Launcher. For me that is not a problem at all. Thanks again for updating the package for oreo!
Yes, it was succesfully tested in official Lineage OS. It also survives OTA upgrades,
Note that UnifiedNlp can’t be launched normally for some reason (as documented in this thread). You can find detailed instructions on how to launch it through Settings here.
I’m sorry for not replying earlier, I just discovered your answer.
“flashable-zip_microG” sound’s like this s something to use when using microG. Can/Should I flash your permissions whitelist, too, even when I’m not using microG?
UnifiedNlp is part of the microG project. Just a very stripped down version that only covers network location. So the repo I linked has resources for generating my flashable ZIPs for installing both, the full microG setup and the UnifiedNlp setup.
The permissions file is required by both setups in Android Oreo. Since you were setting up UnifiedNlp by manually placing the APKs in the /system partition, I linked the XML file for you to finish the setup yourself, understanding you could prefer that (learning the process) than blindly flashing my UnifiedNlp ZIP.
If you however want the later, flash this over a clean LineageOS system.
