No. There are anonymous logins. And you can switch microG off.
3 Likes
Or donât install it at all.
5 Likes
just dropping this here. there are legit reasons to also not want to have microG installed. I can only speak for myself, but at least I do not need it at all. using LineageOS without GMS and without microG is a conscious decision I made. I mostly install only open source apps though. In the rare occasion where I do install/try a proprietary app and it hard-requires GMS then this is an easy uninstall for me and I move on to something else. funnily enough I never encountered (installed) a GMS-requiring app myself.
either way. I canât wait for my Jolla Phone to arrive and finally give Sailfish OS a try. Iâm honestly done with Android (and its forks) and want to try alternatives. Sailfish looks already promising to me from the ongoing research Iâm doing.
5 Likes
If you really need some of the Android apps , youâll need AAS. However, if you are like me and want to keep banking and ID stuff off your phone anyway, prefer the browser over apps in general, arenât afraid of the terminal and a bit more experimental native apps, you might be as surprised as I was, that staying fully native can be an option, for some at least.
Iâve got the native core apps as well as calendar, alarm app, weather app, whisperfish (for signal), media player for my local .flac music library, file manager, angelfish as backup browser for the rare cases where the native browser has issues with a site, retroarch and scummvm for a bit of hardware appropriate gaming, ⌠and that pretty much serves my needs. All of that without touching Android.
4 Likes
Pro tip: Do not install it.
I have now read your post twice, and fail to see a any reason listed - let a lone a list of reasons (plural).
On the step where you are asked if you want to install AAS, there is a Setup-cog icon and under there you can opt out from these if you only want AAS without the addons.
5 Likes
I wish Jolla would have told us all this BEFORE sending it to us. Now I have a unit where I canât get that Google shit out of my phone, and I canât configure microG as I want to.
I need exactly two android apps (mandatory banking apps), no more no less, and I donât want to bend over to use them. Big mistake @Jolla. But maybe the American pressures became too much? What do I know..
Anyway⌠I want a flashable SFOS image for my Jolla phone immediately so I can fix your mistakes.
@eson once more
MicroG is NOT Google stuff, it fakes some proprietary stuff to allow us access and usage.
And:
You already have it! On your device.
Just vol+up and power (or was it power and vol-down?). I never ever will learn that for a device)
And you can reset it to the flashed SW release.
Or just the settings "Resetâ functionalityâŚ(as below post says)
2 Likes
Welcome! Personally what annoys me is the whole idea that despite buying an alternative OS, the first thing I have to do is to use a PlayStore application (AuroraStore) to download essential Android apps hosted on Googleâs servers, from developers who needed to submit to whatever wills of Google to have their apps hosted there (including very soon paying 25 ⏠to Google for the privilege); and that Google could cancel AuroraStore anytime they want to, or make apps better at detecting theyâre not running on a genuine Android, and making our alternative OS nearly useless in practice for normal life.
My take is that once you accept the above, MicroG isnât a problem. It is only a way to make those Android apps happy about running on your non-Google device, without having to install actual Google Play Services (which you can alternatively install).
But yeah I agree they could make it easier to uninstall MicroG.
For the time being you could create a backup on an SD card, do a factory reset (both very conveniently from the settings app), then restart and re-configure your phone without MicroG, and finally restore your SD card backup to get back any communication data.
1 Like
Speak for yourself. There are dozens of us that use no Android apps at all! Dozens!
7 Likes
My sentence started with âPersonallyâ and the subject is âIâ so indeed I am speaking for myself. I cannot do normal activities without Android applications. I need 3 authenticator/approver apps which arenât TOTP.
1 Like
As long as youâre angry with the right people (the ones requiring you to use specific Android apps, not Jolla or the community) weâre with you. 
6 Likes
Hey, who is calling for me?
Just to clarify
- Iâm super happy about Jolla and my JP2601, like I was previously super happy with the 10iii port, and the XA2 port before that. Iâm anxiously waiting for more, like this:
- I enjoy this community quite a lot as well.
- I am not really angry at anyone, just a bit saddened about how the things have become.
1 Like
I got my new Jolla Phone a few days ago and switched to SailfishOS after literally over a decade of using iOS. Though I would have liked to only use native apps, I found myself installing quite a few android apps over the last couple of days. Itâs just how it is, I need these apps to get updates from my kidsâ kindergarten or have my train / bus tickets with me (Deutschland-Ticket) and so on. It kind of itches me, that I use âgoogle servicesâ now, but still: I think having these android apps contained in a private environment of sailfishOS gives me more control and privacy than any Android-Fork or iOS-system could ever give me, so I still am quite happy with that, even though I had to make some compromises.
8 Likes
Of course I know that, but maybe my choice of words wasnât the best. What I am really annoyed by is the pre configuration of microG that canât be changed, and that I canât uninstall it.
Did you check the microG Self-Check/settings? Permissions way beyond what I would want to grant any android app⌠and they cant be disabled.
1 Like
Absolutely right.
And I guess one more thing was incorrect after this default installation afair.
I am not sure anymore so would be kind if one can check that:
I think I have seen in settings of F-Droid - Manage installed apps - select microG Services - three-dot menu on top-right. And see whether âIgnore all updatesâ is selected.
It should not!
No, it is not. But⌠F-Droid says, freely translated from SwedishâŚ
âThis app was built for an older version of Android and canât be automatically updated.â
I was able to manually update both microG Services and microG Companion. Still canât disable unnecessary permissions though.
1 Like