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sandboxed Play services compat layer is available

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The plans to make a stub implementation have been shelved for the time
being since it wouldn't provide broad compatibility and the choice would
result in confusion. It's best for us to push for apps to function with
no Play services and we expect Windows 11 Android app support is going
to help a lot with this. If apps work with a stub implementation, then
they're perfectly capable of working without it available and can easily
fix the portability of their code. It may be something we decide to work
on in the future, but we need to see what happens in the next few years
and we now have a great way of handling it in the meantime.
This commit is contained in:
Daniel Micay 2021-08-11 10:27:40 -04:00
parent 94b58830b3
commit 1a8d25052a
1 changed files with 13 additions and 34 deletions
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static/faq.html
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@ -1151,12 +1151,14 @@
<article id="google-services">
<h2><a href="#google-services">Will GrapheneOS include support for Google services?</a></h2>
<p>GrapheneOS will never include either Google Play services or another
implementation of Google services like microG. Those are not included in the
Android Open Source Project and are not required for baseline Android
compatibility. Apps designed to run on Android rather than only Android with
bundled Google apps and services already work on GrapheneOS, so a huge number of
both open and closed source apps are already available for it.</p>
<p>Like the Android Open Source Project, GrapheneOS doesn't include Google apps
and services. They won't ever be bundled with the OS. GrapheneOS includes an
experimental sandboxed Play services compatibility layer to make user installed
Play services apps able to run as fully sandboxed, unprivileged apps. This is
<a href="https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-play-services">documented as part
of the usage guide</a>. Many apps work perfectly without Play services and many
others only depend on it for a subset of their functionality. Users can choose to
install Play services in specific profile(s) to control which apps can use it.</p>
<p>AOSP APIs not tied to Google but that are typically provided via Play services
will continue to be implemented using open source providers like the Seedvault
@ -1166,35 +1168,12 @@
be implementing these via a Google service compatibility layer because these APIs
are in no way inherently tied to Google services.</p>
<p>We're developing a minimal Play services compatibility layer as a regular app
without any special privileges. The app will provide a stub implementation of the
entire Play services API pretending the servers are down and the functionality is
unavailable. It will always be disabled by default since apps will detect Play
services is available and will try to use it rather than alternatives. As an
example, Signal would try to use a non-functional FCM implementation rather than
their own server push implementation. The intention is that users will only enable
this in profiles dedicated to running apps with an unnecessary hard dependency on
Play services. We'll likely prevent enabling it in the owner profile to help users
avoid those kinds of pitfalls.</p>
<p>Our Play services app won't have any special privileges or whitelisting in the
OS like Play services or microG. There will be no support for bypassing arbitrary
signature checks like the microG signature spoofing patch since it substantially
compromises the OS security model and breaks other security features like verified
boot. Instead, our app will be signed with a GrapheneOS Play services key and the
only OS support for the app will be presenting the GrapheneOS Play services key as
the Google Play services key.</p>
<p>Ideally, Google themselves would support installing the official Play services
as a regular Android app, rather than taking the monopolistic approach of forcing
it to be bundled into the OS in a deeply integrated way with special privileged
permissions and capabilities unavailable to other service providers competing with
them. Even though we would never include it in GrapheneOS, it would be great if
users did have the option to install Play services as a regular app in specific
profiles. It's unfortunate that the approach taken to it is so deeply integrated
and anti-competitive. GrapheneOS users can still choose to use Google services if
they choose, but largely only via a browser. A few of their apps like Google Maps
do work with reduced functionality without Play services but most won't.</p>
as regular apps rather than taking the monopolistic approach of forcing it to be
bundled into the OS in a deeply integrated way with special privileged permissions
and capabilities unavailable to other service providers competing with them. Until
that happens, if ever, GrapheneOS can continue teaching it to function that way to
the extent possible without any special privileges.</p>
</article>
<article id="features">