Can't install Signal without Google Play Services #9279
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I have the same exact issue! My signal was working and updating fine on a phone with no google play services (Removed with ADB). |
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I have the same problem. Removing Google Services through There should be another step to remove Google Services because Signal can be installed on a phone that does not have them in the first place (e.g. Lineage OS without gapps), but that step is unknown to me. |
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It seems the I suggest renaming this issue to "Add an option to install Signal without Google Play Services even when they're installed" |
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Hi
I don't understand what you're asking here: "Is it possible to have the option not to use Google services during Signal installation"
Are you saying I should reinstall google play services just during signals install?
Because I can't do that.
I was wondering if I can register on the desktop app?
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Jan 30, 2020, 11:32 by [email protected]:
It seems the > pm uninstall --user 0> commands don't delete Google services' APKs, and that's what causing signal to think they're still installed. Unfortunately, you need root to delete the APKs because the filesystem is read-only.
Is it possible to have the option not to use Google services during Signal installation?
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Did you uninstall google services with The apk is still present on my phone, so I suspect Signal thinks google services are still installed. |
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I'm on LineageOS 17.1 and I can get past registration without Play services. However, when i try to open a new chat window, i.e. click on the name of a contact, I'm presented with a black screen and have to kill the app. |
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hey @visika @ioogithub so you either need
it was also mentioned, that it is enough to deactivate them to force signal to websocket connection @hhirtz |
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There is a workaround
You can also see the original post here: Another way, if you did not remove google-play-service yet, is to disable them temporarily in your device setting and reenable it after you set your signal working or remove it with adb uninstall. |
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Thank you, it works this way.
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I'm facing the same issue, on GrapheneOS SQ1A.211205.008.2021120717 . I followed the on-screen instructions to transfer my messages from my old to my new phone. Once the transfer completed, I got asked to enter my phone number. I then hit the "Next" button and a popup opened, saying
However, I had only installed Google Play Services in the work profile, not in the personal profile that Signal was installed in. Given GrapheneOS's sandboxing for Google Play Services, Signal should not be seeing any trace of them. EDIT: I was able to fix the issue using the workaround posted by @cyberpencake . So it seems this is rather a GrapheneOS issue in my case. |
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@codethief sandboxing does not prevent Signal from seeing GMS apis availability, what makes you think that? |
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@ph00lt0 I silently assumed that GrapheneOS would "hide" the APIs from apps when Google Play Services are not installed, precisely so that apps would not be under the (wrong) impression that they are available. I take it from your comment that this is not the case? As for sandboxing, given my above assumption I was simply trying to understand why Signal would think that GSF is installed. AFAIU sandboxing means among other things that GSF doesn't run as root, so there should not be any way for information about GSF being installed inside my work profile to leak into my personal profile and thus to Signal. But if my assumption above is not correct in the first place, this sandboxing and profile separation is not of any relevance of course. |
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@codethief because you used to workaround that means that you had it installed? "Since the Play services apps are simply regular apps on GrapheneOS, you install them within a specific user or work profile and they're only available within that profile. Only apps within the same profile can use it and they need to explicitly choose to use it. It works the same way as any other app and has no special capabilities. As with any other app, it can't access data of other apps and requires explicit user consent to gain access to profile data or the standard permissions. Apps within the same profile can communicate with mutual consent and it's no different for sandboxed Play services." - https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-play-services |
Again, I had installed Play Services in my work profile but Signal is running in my personal profile. So I would not have expected the workaround to have any effect, but it surprisingly did. |
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@codethief if you executed this command it must have been installed, user 0 is the main profile in android. |
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@ph00lt0 Again, I only ever installed Play Services in the work profile of the main user account. In any case, I think we need to be careful about the terms "user", "profile" and "account" here. Does user 0 refer to the main/personal profile of the main user account or does it only refer to the main user account (which has a main/personal profile and a work profile)? |
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@codethief that is very interesting, because the command should have failed you then and I see little reason why it would solve the issue for you. Profile and user should be regarded as the same in this context. Afaik the work profile is nothing different from a secondary user profile other than it being integrated. |
Very interesting, have you reported the problem to GrapheneOS ? |
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@Saroumane Thanks for the reminder! I had a brief look at existing issues in the GrapheneOS bug tracker and linked this discussion here in the (I think) appropriate places. |
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This isn't a GrapheneOS issue. Apps cannot see other apps or communicate with them across different user profiles. Work profiles aren't isolated to the same extent. It's no different than how it behaves on AOSP and the stock OS. Android apps can detect the presence of apps in the nested work profile from the user profile. The work profile manager can also choose to permit communication. It's simply how work profiles work. It's one of the reasons we strongly recommend user profiles. Work profiles exist for BYOD device management. They can be used as isolated workspaces but they are tied to a device policy manager which owns and configures them and aren't as isolated as a separate user profile. |
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Your issue is also partly tied to bugs / limitations in the specific work profile manager you're using. It's not specific to GrapheneOS and will occur elsewhere. |
It's all explained well at https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-play. There is no special sandbox in GrapheneOS for Google Play. GrapheneOS doesn't include Google Play or the standard integration for it. Therefore, they aren't privileged apps with dozens of whitelisted privileged permissions, custom SELinux MAC/MLS policies and integration into the OS as backends for different services. Our compatibility layer teaches them how to work as regular apps. They do not function any differently than regular apps. It's full standard app sandbox, not something special. The point of the compatibility layer feature is that they're regular apps with no special access or privileges meaning there is nothing special to learn about what they can do or access. It works the same way as every other app. I think you're misunderstanding what's provided by GrapheneOS. It's simply a compatibility layer teaching them how to work as fully sandboxed apps. Without the compatibility layer, they would simply chain crash from not having the deeply invasive OS integration and broad privileges including not being sandboxed as normal apps. Google Play has no special ability to communicate with other apps or any way to bypass profile limitations on GrapheneOS. It's a regular app. That's already the baseline without us doing anything special. All we do is make it function to the extent possible as a sandboxed app. |
I wasn't claiming anything like that. :) To the contrary, that was exactly my understanding – which is why I was so surprised that Signal still detected Play Services somehow. What I simply didn't know was that
Thanks for clearing up the confusion! |
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I do think it would make a lot of sense if work profiles could be closer to user profiles but at the moment that's not how it works. Keep in mind the feature exists for BYOD enterprise deployments as a way to have a device policy manager not in charge of the device as a whole (device owner) but rather only a profile (profile owner). Privacy was a factor in the design but it wasn't designed for use with a local device manager as a way to have an isolated workspace for other uses. It also has support for the device manager allowing communication across them to a certain extent for usability reasons. Imagine if instead you could have a user profile loosely tied to another so that it remains unlocked until that one is locked and you could do something like swiping between them via the status bar. Also, some way to see you have notifications in the other one. I think that's what people really want rather than how work profiles function. Work profiles are honestly quite odd. They're useful but... they aren't the direction we want to go for GrapheneOS. |
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Thanks a lot for elaborating and sharing your thoughts, Daniel! I suppose we should continue this discussion in the issue you created. :) |
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So this issue is open for over 2 years? Does that mean that de facto signal requires google play services. I only see people here saying they are having the same issue and some of the finding workarounds by installing google play services. Am I just lost if I wanna run signal without having to installing them or jumping trough a bunch of hoops? |
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The app is fully capable of operating without Play Services. I do it all the time during development, I intentionally have an emulator and a physical device running Lineage that do not have play services installed. The issue here isn't with Signal, but with the OS reporting that some flavor of play services is installed and reporting the status about it incorrectly. This is not something we can control or special case. When the proper "Google Play Services" not installed code is returned by the OS, this dialog is displayed and allows you to continue:
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@cody-signal many people do experience this problem because you do not allow fallback when the app thinks GMS installed when in fact it is removed from the user profile. This is a bug imo. You should either improve the detection or just allow people to manually enable the fall back option. Why not just make this a toggle in the advanced settings menu? I really don't see why that hasn't been done yet. |
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I recognize and understand your opinion, but I don't fully agree with it.
This is because the OS is telling us that it is! And when this is true, and it is updating, it is a completely valid situation to be in. We would then want to encourage them to try again later because the experience/performance is much improved with push notifications.
We may look into something like this, but it would likely involve a time component or number of tries, as we wouldn't want most folks to go down that route for the same reliability/perf reasons.
Everyone. EVERYONE. Wants their one little thing as a toggle in a settings menu. It's just not feasible or good design. Settings can't be an attic to just shove random stuff for each person/subgroup wants. It's just untenable. |
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I was not aware of the "misreporting" by the operating system. This makes more sense now, but an option to force the use of the fallback system would be nice. @cody-signal Thank you for clearing this up. |
The only reason I am asking is because a lot of people are having this issue. I have moved to a phone now without it being installed at all but people who uninstall GMS from the main user profile will always suffer from this if you don't change it. |
Got a code snippet I can try out? |
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Unfortunately no, but when checking for apps in adb you can always filter with |
Personally I've no idea what those people are talking about. |
Regarding this specific battery drain (Signal without Google play services) : I barely notice it when I can use wifi for the whole day. (instead of using 4G for data) |
If you read the comments it explains very well. This isn't about custom roms that never had GMS installed. The problem lies where users manually remove GMS from the user profile via ADB as debloat strategy. In that case you cannot use Signal as it still thinks it is installed (which technically is sort of true, but it won't run anymore). |
OMG so sorry I was browsing the GrapheneOS issue tracker and somehow ended up here but still thought I was in the GOS repo. |
FYI, in my case I did not remove GMS. I had this issue with just the plain install of LineageOS (alioth), which to my knowledge comes without Google Play Services (I even got the popup in Signal telling me its missing). I then used microG's image packaged with microgG and now it works. |
Does that mean that you're doing ? If so, users have had more success doing instead. |
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@haffenloher disabling GMS doesn't work in many phones and on other devices other system apps will automatically re-enable it. By running uninstall with many models you can 'brick' this behavior. Edit: It is also my understanding and experience that if you disable GMS Signal still won't work. At least the signup and notifications after do not. When you disable it after install and don't care about notifications it is less of an issue. |
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@ph00lt0 During registration, Signal explicitly checks if Apparently you can even use |
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@haffenloher the main problem has nothing to do with disabling GMS. Once again the problem appears when uninstalling the app from the user profile, which is a work around for people who cannot disable GMS in their OS. This "disable-user" command on GMS doesn't work in many different flavors of Android. I do agree it's hacky but for many people this is a step they make to get rid of google. I really don't understand why you wouldn't support a more flexible fallback. |
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This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions. |
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This issue has been closed due to inactivity. |
and others
Bug description
I cannot run Signal and get past the Enter your phone number screen. Signal throws an error message about updating Google Play Services.
I can confirm that Google Play Services, Google Services Framework, Google Play Store and any other packages that start with “Google” have been removed from the phone using the adb uninstall command.
pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.gms
pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.gfs
pm uninstall --user 0 com.android.vending
...etc
I have tried this from a fresh factory reset with all Google apps uninstalled as well, same results. Signal will not run without Google Play Services and throws an erroneous error about updating Play services. No other issues with other apps and GMS on the phone, just Signal.
Steps to reproduce
Actual result:
A message appears:
Expected result:
Signal will proceed to the next screen.
Screenshots
Device info
Device: Samsung Galaxy S9
Android version: 9.0 Official
Signal version: Tested with 4.50.5 and 4.50.6
Link to debug log
Cannot pen Signal to provide a debug log.
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