I made the mistake of letting my cellphone
update and now have nearly constant warnings
that something needs Google Play Services. Everything
that can be disabled is disabled. Everything that can
be set for no notifications is set that way.

Example: "GBoard", whatever that is. I've
disabled notifications. I've disabled the app. But
I still get popups saying GBoard needs Google Play.
These settings seem to be mostly meaningless. All
I do normally is make phone calls. Occasionally I
need to go online. I've disabled or removed as much of
Google as I possibly can and use APKPure if I need
an app.

So my question: What would it take to get deeper
into the Android system and control this kind of
idiot functionality? I'm guessing it might be something
like controlling services on Windows? Maybe editing
config files in the core filesystem? I've enabled
developer tools, but that functionality is limited.

I don't use the phone much, but it's still maddening
to have icons covered over by dummy messages.

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Newyana2 <Newyana2@invalid.nospam> wrote:

I made the mistake of letting my cellphone
update and now have nearly constant warnings
that something needs Google Play Services. Everything
that can be disabled is disabled. Everything that can
be set for no notifications is set that way.

Example: "GBoard", whatever that is. I've
disabled notifications. I've disabled the app. But
I still get popups saying GBoard needs Google Play.
These settings seem to be mostly meaningless. All
I do normally is make phone calls. Occasionally I
need to go online. I've disabled or removed as much of
Google as I possibly can and use APKPure if I need
an app.

GBoard is Google's keyboard. I would guess that you have that installed,
and maybe set as your current keyboard. I'd try using another keyboard -
maybe there's a system keyboard you can switch to instead? Can you
uninstall GBoard?

Do you have Google services installed (Play Store etc)? You would probably know about it if you were running a degoogled phone, so I suppose the
question is why is something complaining about the lack of Play Services
when you likely already have that installed?

If the phone very old? It's possible something has upgraded itself in a way with something not compatible with eg the hardwired apps that come with your phone. Letting everything upgrade could fix it.

So my question: What would it take to get deeper
into the Android system and control this kind of
idiot functionality? I'm guessing it might be something
like controlling services on Windows? Maybe editing
config files in the core filesystem? I've enabled
developer tools, but that functionality is limited.

I'm not sure - Google Play Services is 'special' in that it has more
privilege than most other apps. I don't know how you control things at that level.

Theo

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Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote

GBoard is Google's keyboard. I would guess that you have that installed,
and maybe set as your current keyboard. I'd try using another keyboard - maybe there's a system keyboard you can switch to instead? Can you
uninstall GBoard?

I think all Androids come with that pre-installed but you can select any keyboard you want to use - where I favor the open source keyboards myself.

*OpenBoard* Privacy Focused Open Source Keyboard by dslul, FOSS
free, ad free, gsf free, 3.8star, 2.41K reviews, 100K+Downloads
<https://github.com/dslul/openboard>
<https://f-droid.org/packages/org.dslul.openboard.inputmethod.latin/>
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dslul.openboard.inputmethod.latin>

I like it because it does speech-to-text while other keyboards (for some
reason unknown to me) don't have the microphone icon to easily do that.
*Hacker's Keyboard* by Klaus Weidner,4.2star,60.4K reviews,10M+Downloads
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.pocketworkstation.pckeyboard>

But he has the choice of something like a billion keyboards if he wants.
<https://play.google.com/store/search?q=keyboard&c=apps>

Do you have Google services installed (Play Store etc)? You would probably know about it if you were running a degoogled phone, so I suppose the question is why is something complaining about the lack of Play Services
when you likely already have that installed?

You have to be careful whenever talking about "Google Play anything"
because Google Marketing realized it's a recognized keyword of value.

So Google renamed almost everything (e.g., Project Mainline) to "Google
Play something" (in that case it's "Google Play update services").

If the phone very old? It's possible something has upgraded itself in a way with something not compatible with eg the hardwired apps that come with your phone. Letting everything upgrade could fix it.

While that may be sound advice, I'll betcha' only 1 in 1000 people know how
to "let everything upgrade" (because they don't know how Android upgrades).

We have lot of threads on that topic, so I'm just making the point that,
unless Mayayana has been keeping informed, he won't know how to do it.

So my question: What would it take to get deeper
into the Android system and control this kind of
idiot functionality? I'm guessing it might be something
like controlling services on Windows? Maybe editing
config files in the core filesystem? I've enabled
developer tools, but that functionality is limited.

I'm not sure - Google Play Services is 'special' in that it has more privilege than most other apps. I don't know how you control things at that level.

When I look at my MuntashrAkon App Manager for "Google Play stuff", almost
all of the packages with that in the name are already wiped out by me
or they're forced-stopped and disabled (turned on only when required).

The only thing left that has "google play" in the name is Google Play
Services itself (because removing it caused a ton of errors, that's why).

Everything else with "Google Play" in the name can be wiped out on
an unrooted phone using simple adb commands from Windows as I explained.

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"Theo" <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote

| GBoard is Google's keyboard. I would guess that you have that installed,

Ah. Yes. I can't uninstall any of this stuff. Everything I can
uninstall, I have uninstalled. I can disable some things, but
not remove. Then there are things not in apps that also
complain about Google Play, such as "Carrier Services" and
"Device Health". It's a parade of complaining popups.

In my last phone I installed a Microsoft keyboard. In this
phone, despite being disabled, GBoard is still working!

At any rate, I was hoping to disable the popups altogether.
It's a Tracfone. TCL. I mostly only use it for occasional phone
calls. I suppose I can replace GBoard, but that won't solve
the popups. I'm guessing that there's some legal reason that
Google can't force their store to be used, so they're just
harassing people into turning it on.

| If the phone very old? It's possible something has upgraded itself in a
way
| with something not compatible with eg the hardwired apps that come with
your
| phone. Letting everything upgrade could fix it.
|

The phone is fairly new. Maybe a year old. Letting it
upgrade was what started this problem. :)

| I'm not sure - Google Play Services is 'special' in that it has more
| privilege than most other apps. I don't know how you control things at
that
| level.
|

I looked the problem up online and found that others
have had the same issue of demands to enable Google
Play, but I found no answers. Thanks for your time,
anyway.

This is one of the reasons that I avoid regular
cellphone use. It's too hard to control and too much
work to figure it out from scratch. There's a pile of
Google apps that I can't remove. And the hidden settings
are like a cave system. After you told me what GBoard
was, I opened Firefox to bring up the keyboard, then I
found a small settings icon along the top of it. That led
to a discovery that by default I was enabling GBoard to
report my keyboard usage. All that from an app that's
officially disabled!

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