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submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Timely_Jellyfish_2077@programming.dev to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

It feel like we’re losing to Google, day by day. They aren’t killing AOSP directly, but they are making it useless step by step.

Now it’s Google Play Services, Play Integrity checks, installation source checks… more and more apps just refuse to run without GMS. Banking apps? Most of them don’t work. And it’s only getting worse. I run vanilla AOSP on my main profile, no Play Services. I keep GMS only in my work profile for the apps that absolutely need it. But now even some regular apps that don't need any play services won’t work on my main profile anymore. They simply block your from running , like le chat.

Maps is google's most important app there is no way to run without play services. Sure we can use webview or gmaps wv, but they don't provide turn-by-turn directions. Earlier maps used to work without play services, but two years ago, an update stopped it from working. Now that old version is out of date and no longer works.

Google is slowly making GMS very important to run. The problem with GMS is they require to run as system app and has to have all the permissions by default.

Hope EU puts pressure to make google allow apps to run independently without GMS or atleast install them as user apps(like graphene os sandboxed play services).

If we keep going on like this, AOSP can only run fdroid apps in the future.

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[-] Decq@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Can you elaborate which banks those were? Or you if there is a curated list of banks that work on custom ROMs?

[-] vas@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Dutch banks working without google are: BUNQ and ASN Bank (EDIT: and Triodos).

BUNQ has the built-in QR scanning functionality broken (the one for iDEAL, if you're living in NL you know), but that's acceptable because it works to scan the QR in Binary Eye, which in turn opens the bunq app and the payment can be made easily.

ASN just works, all features that I've tried I think. (This one is only in Dutch though.)

Banks that I've tried few years ago and they didn't work: ING, ABN AMRO, Rabonbank, Tridos, possibly few others that I forgot.

Also, lately I've started using some of those "international" ones, not so focused on NL. I've found that Wise (pure web, haven't even tried their app) and Revolut (app) seem to work well on my de-googlified phone. Hope that helps!

EDIT: re-worded the first line of my message to be indexable by search engines, because that may be useful for future readers.

[-] Decq@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Thanks! I'm on ING now and every time i look it up for ING i get conflicting answers, Probably because it differs for each country they operate in (and people don't always specify). I'll look into the other ones.

[-] vas@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

(And noteworthy that ING has a million of different apps)

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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
262 points (98.9% liked)

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