Apps that Work on a DeGoogled Phone
“This video goes over the F-Droid and Aurora Store and how to use apps on a phone without google services.” He says that the Aurora store downloads Google Play apk’s, so many of them have Google trackers, and he shows examples of those. When you use Aurora apps, you’re still giving your info to Google. When you’re in the Aurora store, you can reveal the trackers by looking at the Trackers section of an app’s description. Those trackers can also generate income for the app maker from your information.
The F-Droid store apps don’t have those trackers. These apps are tracker free, but they’re alternative apps and aren’t as polished as Google apps. But many are OK. It’s also not as organized as Aurora is and apps can be harder to find. So you have to do more searching. It also takes longer to download apps from the F-Droid store.
Graphene: No Google apps or services
GrapheneOS Note: GrapheneOS will never include either Google Play services or another implementation of Google services like microG. It’s possible to install Play services as a set of fully sandboxed apps without special privileges via our sandboxed Play services compatibility layer. See the FAQ section for more details on our plans for filling in the gaps from not shipping Play services and Google apps.
At 1:24, Chris shows a table of apps in Aurora that gives their name, how well they work, and warnings about them. At 5:48 he shows a similar table of apps in F-Droid but also adds the app names and the name of the Google app they replace. This is helpful information for anyone using these apps.
Chris gives very helpful information about the apps from both stores and his experience of using them. If you’re using these apps, you should check out this video.
