
You can visit the Google Developers site to see how Google Play services are intended to integrate with Android and Android apps. Anyway, notice how you're granting access to just about everything. You may not have done this before, since the background service comes pre-installed on most devices and generally only draws attention to itself when it crashes. Well, take a moment to go to the Google Play services Play Store page and view the list of required permissions.

If you're interested in cutting out Google, it's probably because you don't want to give the company so much information. You'll be fine unless you start hunting around for APKs on the web. Despite this, you can presumably get by with whatever you find on Amazon or in alternative markets where Google apps aren't available. Unfortunately, the apps that need Google Play Services aren't clearly marked.Īs it turned out, my solution was to exclusively use software I could find in F-Droid. This means doing without some excellent third-party apps like Pushbullet.

I say this to stress that there may be other benefits you lose by giving up Google that just didn't occur to me, due to the way I use my phone.Įven after you do this, some apps require Google Play Services to run. These are all habits I formed due to limited data plans, spotty coverage, inconsistent access to a reliable internet connection, and discomfort at the thought of trusting companies with such personal data. When given the choice to sync my browsing history and tabs, I decline. Even with access to cloud services, I back up much of my data to hard drives. Despite the wide availability of music streaming services, I still buy albums and store my music locally. YouTube Music only plays files stored locally.įrankly, this situation didn't bother me. The camera app take photos, but it doesn't offer to automatically back them up to Google Photos.

Even if you remove all the apps that require a Google account to function, you will still lose some features in the apps that remain.įor example, the dialer app still works fine, but it doesn't automatically pull down contacts, and you can only pull up numbers that are saved to your device. On a Pixel device, the situation is a bit more challenging, since these phones come loaded with Google software.
