Hi guys basically as the title says. I have a pixel phone running GrapheneOS and I really don't want to install Play Services. Is there an alternative for me? I need reliable notifications for Telegram and signal. Edit: Thank you all amazing people for helping I learned alot and found best setup for me
FYI for the other commenters, UnifiedPush can work thru the Prosody
mod_unified_pushor any server with aupwhere Conversations (& its forks like Cheogram, Monocles, Blabber) can be a distributor. This has the added bonus of coming with an awesome decentralized XMPP chat server getting to reuse a single connection & single app to server instead of separate ones. Conversations is the most efficient chat client on Android in terms of resources (battery, network, RAM) so might as well keep it lightweight—which you are probably trying to get push notifications from the likes of Signal or Element, but what is the point when you have an efficient XMPP server for your chat needs?However, I think UnifiedPush might be a bit flawed—as if the startup that created ntfy is pushing others to try to adopt their standard instead of getting folks on board with the older & capable MQTT (which also can be ran thru
mod_mqtton your XMPP server). I am not yet sure if this is a tinfoil take or not.Only thing I have a problem with right now is proton mail. Hopefully soon they will be implementing notifications that don't rely on google play (they said they are working on it)
I personally like using UnifiedPush wherever possible. You install an app to serve notifications (I use ntfy.sh), then install applications which support the standard. Usually they have a setting to toggle unified push which should register them with ntfy, then you’re golden. Obviously this is limited to a small group of apps but support is growing, and where it’s present it’s fantastic.
I don't know about Telegram, but I know, at least with Signal, it should work with web sockets, and allow you to get notifications that way. At least that's how I get my notifications on Molly, which is a fork of signal. While not many applications support it, you might also look into UnifiedPush and ntfy which is a UP app from F-Droid.
Telegram just sits in the background and works, I don't understand OP's problem. The only downside compared to gplay version is that there's a persistent notification.
Yeah, Molly does the same thing and doesn't cause me any problems.
It depends. Some apps have their push notifications system but may consume more battery.
You should list what apps
You're right I need reliable notifications for Telegram and signal
There's a fork of Telegram on F-droid called "Telegram FOSS" that runs a background service for notifications. I've used it and the effect on battery drain is pretty minor, like maybe 2% per charge. Not sure if something similar exists for Signal.
I use MicroG on my phone, it's a basic FOSS replacement for GMS and makes push notifications work for all apps. It gets push notifs from Google's servers but you don't need an account. It doesn't use Google at all for location, which is nice as that's a highly invasive aspect of Play Services. Not all ROMs are compatible with it, I use it on Lineage
I use MicroG on my phone, it's a basic FOSS replacement for GMS and makes push notifications work for all apps. It gets push notifs from Google's servers but you don't need an account. It doesn't use Google at all for location, which is nice as that's a highly invasive aspect of Play Services. Not all ROMs are compatible with it, I use it on Lineage
Does it work with WhatsApp? Its the only app that drains my battery like crazy. I had it installed but didn't work
It's a drop-in replacement so it should provide push notifications and location functionality just fine for every app. Other functionality such as IAPs will probably be unsupported.
From the data I see on Plexus for WhatsApp, the core functionality and notifications work just fine on MicroG, but backing up chats to Google Drive is broken.
Then I'm just unlucky because it didn't work for me, no push notifications
What ROM are you using? MicroG depends on a ROM feature called "signature spoofing" that allows it to impersonate the Play Services apps.
It depends for what Apps you need them. Often Apps like Signal or Element support getting Notifications via a persistent Server connection or asking every so often for Notifications. Even tho i could not find any source, i found that this works with Whatsapp(sadly have to use it) too.
So it's either a persistent notification or allowing the app to constantly running in the background. Does it have a significant battery impact?
On my device, I let the app just constantly hang out in the background with a persistent notification that I have turned off, but it does not have a significant battery impact for me at all. So your mileage may vary. Some people say that it has significant impact, and some people like me, it doesn't impact hardly at all.
