Hey guys,
Long term LG user here, wanting to stick with my good ole G5 despite the age starting to show. As far as I understand, the latest official version of Android that supported the G5 was 8.0, and that's the latest my phone will let me go ofc. Now, the problem is, a bunch of apps no longer work, and Google Play is being weird even after a factory reset, so I can't find a whole bunch of apps such as BlaBlaCar, for example. Like, I know they are there... if I go on another phone they will be too (or through my PC) but if it detects LG G5, it pretends the apps don't exist. Long story short, I'm thinking some of these apps just don't work on older Android versions anymore. That being said, what would you guys suggest? There are hundreds of custom roms out there (or so it seems anyway), but which one works provenly well and offers apps from GStore (or another place, I'm good with that too if there's a reliable store) that actually work? I am a total newbie when it comes to custom roms, so far I've heard about Lineage, but really not sure about anything else. Any tips?
Hi, I would remove the play store and play services, replacing Play services with microg. Microg is an open source reimplementation of Play Services. It is very light, but it's not compatible with apps like Meet and Duo.
Instrad of the play store you can use Aurora Store, you can find it here on XDA. It is an unofficial client for the Play Store that works both with an anonymous account or with your own google account. It can also spoof the phone make and model, so you can be sure you will find all the apps. I'm using Oreo as well, and it still works perfectly with almost any app.
Edit: I tried to download BlaBlaCar on my G5 using Aurora store, it works as expected.
Ah, I see. So what you're saying is don't mess with custom roms at all? But how do I get rid of Play Services if I don't get a custom version of Android working, and to do that I probably need to unlock my phone/boot loader, right? Or do you just mean .. just... don't use Play Store and use Aurora Store instead? Tried the latter, and it definitely works. Now I just need to get rid of Play Store and all that, any recommendations on what to use to do that?
Although custom roms are great because they let you use the newest version of android, unfortunately there are some functions that are not supported, most notably the IR led to use the phone as a remote. Moreover in my opinion the LG camera app, supported only by LG roms, is the best camera app I've ever tried. You can flash TWRP or OrangeFox as recovery, and then remove the play store and play services from there. OrangeFox in particular has a specific 'app uninstall' function that makes very easy to remove apps. That is possible if you can unlock the bootloader. If your phone does not support bootloader unlocking, you can disable the play store from settings->applications or using adb command pm disable. In this case by the way I wouldn't suggest to disable play services, as there would be no way to replace them with microg.
Ah, right, thanks man! I'll give it a shot and see what I can do
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Alright so basically everything I'm about to say will make me look like an idiot. I've poked around on my phone removing a bunch of stuff it looked like I didn't need with some of it being recommended to not be removed and one day I couldn't connect to the google play store because it said check your connection and try again with a retry button and hitting retry would just bring the profile panel out from the side. So I installed the alternative App Store Aptoide and everything was fine because I didn't need the play store. i think I may have used lucky patcher the first time I screwed up the play store and tried to install clean versions now that I think of it. But now no google app whatsoever works including stuff like snapchat that says I need to update google play services in order to continue and then it takes me to my broken play store. I've tried to uninstall updates and reinstall the google apps to no avail. Please help! I'm slowly losing functionality of my phone
smloader said:
Alright so basically everything I'm about to say will make me look like an idiot. I've poked around on my phone removing a bunch of stuff it looked like I didn't need with some of it being recommended to not be removed and one day I couldn't connect to the google play store because it said check your connection and try again with a retry button and hitting retry would just bring the profile panel out from the side. So I installed the alternative App Store Aptoide and everything was fine because I didn't need the play store. i think I may have used lucky patcher the first time I screwed up the play store and tried to install clean versions now that I think of it. But now no google app whatsoever works including stuff like snapchat that says I need to update google play services in order to continue and then it takes me to my broken play store. I've tried to uninstall updates and reinstall the google apps to no avail. Please help! I'm slowly losing functionality of my phone
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Your best bet will be to reflash a stock rom for your device. Also Aptoide and lucky patcher are warez apps and not allowed to be talked about on the site. Either one of those could easily have had some malware embeded into the apks.
Word of advice. Unless you know what your doing dont go deleting things.
Thanks, sorry I didn't know about those apps. Roughly how much will I lose by flashing a stock rom?
smloader said:
Thanks, sorry I didn't know about those apps. Roughly how much will I lose by flashing a stock rom?
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You will most likely be starting from a clean set up so back up everything you need like pictures and such.
Also this is probably also not allowed but where can I get a stock rom since I never backed mine up ? I know I'm stupid
smloader said:
Also this is probably also not allowed but where can I get a stock rom since I never backed mine up ? I know I'm stupid
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Look in the forums for your device. A simple Google search for stock rom (device name) should get you what you need.
Hello all
For security reasons I bought a new phone compatible with CM and installed CM11M12 +freecyngn +Xprivacy without the Gapps. Previously I had a Windows phone. I imagined there to be issues obtaining apps but wouldn't have guessed their extent.
There is a Windows-program that allows for fetching the .akps from the Play Store but it is required that one has authenticated a device first which requires one to have installed the Play services.
There are online tools like evozi that allow for downloading the .apks but due to lacking knowledge in how to verify that the .apks indeed haven't been manipulated I rather avoid those. I don't want to become part of a botnet or install spyware.
There's the Amazon App Store, but that requires the app to be kept installed and the user signed in, and it spies on the user, so no option either. And while Amazon already is missing quite a few apps that are available on the Play Store, it's even more the case with all the other app-stores.
F-Droid is excellent but there are non-free apps that have no FOSS-alternative.
I could imagine flashing stock again and downloading the .apks and storing them somehow on my computer before reinstalling my current system. The question: Is there any other way in obtaining the apps from the Google Play Store that I don't know?
Needless to say that if I have the choice between the convenience of apps on one hand and a system that minimizes spying on the other I choose the latter without the blink of an eye.
Thank you for your help
;__;
You could find the apks floating around but can't promise they haven't been edited. Any of the paid apps that you install will try to verify by connecting to Google play store. Any pirated apps normally include things like keyloggers and screen screen recorders. I'll be honest your will be hard pressed. But then Google doesn't really do much more then ms does
Thank you for your reply, Zelendel.
So if I buy an app in the Play Store on my device using stock ROM, flash CM without Gapps and try to install the same app it won't work because it'd try to verify the purchase and for that the installed Play Services are necessary?
Luckily the apps I'm looking for in particular are mostly free apps. Will they run without the Gapps?
soikku said:
Thank you for your reply, Zelendel.
So if I buy an app in the Play Store on my device using stock ROM, flash CM without Gapps and try to install the same app it won't work because it'd try to verify the purchase and for that the installed Play Services are necessary?
Luckily the apps I'm looking for in particular are mostly free apps. Will they run without the Gapps?
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As long as they are not programed to use the Google services or to call back to Google play then yes.
Basically, I have a custom ROM installed (Ressurection Remix) without GAPPS (intentionally) on my Moto G5 Plus.
Almost every app works fine, but some don't. These are for the most part apps that I backed up and installed using Titanium Backup.
The specific app I want to try to get working is DB Navigator. It works almost completely fine, I can search for new routes and change settings etc. However, I can't see tickets that I have booked. I don't need to be able to book tickets through the app, but I would like to be able to see the tickets I have already bought.
My question is, is there any way to get this app to work without installing GAPPS?
(I apologize if this question has been answered already. I googled it, duckduckgo-ed it, looked through the forums and still found nothing )
Google Lens is already on the phone, but there's still the Google Lens app in the store that you can install. There's also GPay already on the phone, but some apps tell me to install Google Pay from the store.
Why? Does having double the apps screw with anything in the long run?
Maybe updates? I would go with the factory load versions unless they don't work well.
For Gpay, the one on the phone is the old version. They are pushing everyone to upgrade to the new version, that is the one in the store.
I don't use Gpay. The worst that will likely to happen if you don't upgrade is eventually it will stop working. You could get into issues with Playstore which demands updating. Playstore is so on my bad side, I rarely use it anymore.
I use the factory load versions for most of the Google apps especially Gmail and Gmaps as the update's UI's* sucked. Some of the Google system apps are factory load too because the update caused issues like excessive battery consumption*. So it is after 2 years, current load is over 1.5 yo, still fast, stable and user friendly.
You should experiment to see what works best for you. Just be aware that updates (especially firmware) can break just as easily as they can fix devices.
*Samsung seems to modify these and many times the factory load version works best. Or perhaps it's just the oldest version before Google screwed them up more
I installed the Google Assistant app just so I could add it as an icon to my home screen in Nova Launcher.
It's for people who root and want specific apps installed without installing the background/integration stuff.
For example, Pokemon Go and Ingress Prime show in Play Store as not available for my Nord N10 5G, yet I see reports of people talking about the games, mentioning update problems, and mentioning they have those on Nord N10.
What could be going on?
I'm not sure I can answer your question, but I can possibly help another way.
First, lemme try: Note that *IF* Google decides you are an icky-free-thinker-scum trying to escape from its grasp, it will silently blacklist you in subtle ways. The Netflix app is a great example; on one phone (I think it was the N10 but may have been my last one, a OnePlus 6) it worked normally through Play store, then I flashed and tried reinstalling (Netflix, via Play store) and was surprised it listed my phone as "not compatible". After finishing all the tweaks to get the SafetyNet blessing, I was once again able to get it to work... but I think it may have been a reflash after (changed Google Ad ID? ).
So... on my current phone, which is completely de-googled, I've gone to sideloading everything (painful, but that's my choice). For anything that is free, I use: APK Downloader to get the >APK or its splits (yuck). If it is not free, I install on some other phone with a normal Play store and swipe the APK via ADB. I *THINK* you can do this (get the APKs) without root.
I'm assuming, based on your other posts recently, that you have root and most of the tweaks, so I think ADB is your friend here. In my NF example above, the app itself runs just fine after sideloading (and putting in MagiskHide+Zygisk).
Hope that helps.
So, it's like, google noticed I've rooted my phone, and blocked me from apps that require unrooted phones? Strange, I can still install MIR Pay (russia's Google Pay alternative) just fine... I guess it's only for apps that enabled this feature (ban users with rooted phones)?
I'm not entirely sure, but for me, it wasn't my account, just the phone profile. I could still install NF on other devices, and am still running it to this day happily (via sideload). My guess is it is safetynet (even if you pass now) vs root, but who knows, it is a continuous war.
SomeRandomGuy said:
I'm not entirely sure, but for me, it wasn't my account, just the phone profile. I could still install NF on other devices, and am still running it to this day happily (via sideload). My guess is it is safetynet (even if you pass now) vs root, but who knows, it is a continuous war.
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I guess after you let Play Store find out you have root, it marks your device as "incompatible" for some applications. I wonder why it doesnt for others? Like, many apps won't work under root, but they don't become "incompatible", while this case, Ingress and Pokemon Go, they do.