It appears Google tries to degrade alternative application stores to just another app offered through the Play Store, and therefore subject to Google's policies (including an annual $5,000 fee for policy and security reviews). So I wouldn't be surprised this is very much intentional: as to force application stores through a channel controlled by Google, to technically allow competition (at Google's discretion) while ultimately killing "side-loading" through other sources.
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026
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Remember when Microsoft was forced to give a "select your web browser" prompt when setting up a Windows computer?
Quaint times, those were....
Guys, work on improving Linux phone instead. Google is taking Android away from you and it just isn’t worth arguing with them about it. Let them hang themselves. Build a better alternative.
You wish it’d be that easy. Building a phone isn’t the difficult part; building an ecosystem around is a huge task.
Where I live, you are almost forced to own either an Android or an iPhone, otherwise it’s tough luck getting banking, secure net identification, way to interact with the government agencies, bus or train tickets, etc.
That’s not a tech problem, that’s a regulation problem. If I am required to have something to use a service, private or public provided, that service needs to provide what I need to use it. I’m not buying my bank an interface to me. I’m not buying my employer a way to log in. I’m not paying for someone else’s problems.
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The endless challenge is that a phone needs to talk to the phone network. The radio manufacturers are deeply in bed with the surveillance state and they are absolutely opposed to free communication. Which means they will never allow a cell phone radio to work with free software.
Calling is something that works in e.g. Postmarket OS. The trickier parts are NFC payments, lack of apps. So it comes with huge drawbacks. Some apps can even require that your device is verified by google and you have no way of hijacking it.
Proprietary camera software is also a huge thing. Software can do so much thing and you pay for the software also, not just the hardware but you lose the software when you install something other than the factory default.
And battery optimization is very young in desktop grade linux OSes, you won't get that good battery life as with android.
NFC and battery life are absolutely huge concerns. Cell tower stuff isn’t great either but if you absolutely had to many of us can live without cellular and just do VOIP.
Apps aren’t that big an issue, waydroid is a thing and the appification of the internet is detrimental anyway. Do it in a browser.
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Platform is not the issue, apps are. Even on a Linux phone you will have to run android apps and you will have to install them from somewhere. And for most apps Play Store is the only place where apps are uploaded.
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chucked postmarket os on an old shitbox tablet and its great 👍🏻
looking forward to a spyware free future.
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Misleading title. After reading the linked Gitlab discussion it's more likely a backend change from Google side. Aurora does use burner account but early reports seem to suggest they are not flagged or rate limited.
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I noticed these intermittently, but retrying later has seemed to resolve the updates.
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Well looks like its time to start making alternatives or scream for Linux to come out with a phone.
I’m out of breath by this point. You want to scream now of all times?
Linux phones work, but they depend on many Google Android apps to be daily usable by normal people.
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What alternative are you going to make? My bank only publishes their app on Play Store. I can either use Play Store app or Aurora to install it. You think that if you build alternative, open source store my bank will publish their app there? You think any bank will? F-Droid already exists, do you see any banks publishing their apps there? Do you see any of them dong Linux version of their apps?
The alternative here would be some other corporation building independent app store and getting everyone to publish their apps there. Amazon tried that many years ago. Maybe Samsung could do it now. It's definitely not something we can make.
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Classic Graphene users, making this all about themselves. This hurts Aurora users, period.
Ironically, this hurts Graphene users the less because they can sandbox their google play services.
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It's on fdroid.
I recommend blocking play store.
They are not blocking the download of the app from playstore. It was obviously not available there in the first place. They blocked API access to the google servers where aurora store was getting the apk files from. They just killed the concept of aurora store (and any alternative playstore frontend) entirely.
What?
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Seems like clickbait but the graphene devs recommend against aurora store in favor of using a second profile with the sandboxed play store
The Play Store requires a Google account. Using a second profile is extremely inconvenient.
Graphene recommending this at all is extremely sus. My objective of using your operating system is to avoid giving Google any information I possibly can. Don't know why they always recommend using Google shit in a sandbox like those packets aren't still coming from my IP.
Its not sus. They're just hyper-aware of security. And Aurora is just not terribly secure. Its just that you're now choosing between privacy and maximum security. And I prioritize privacy, personally.
They pretty much only recommend Accrescent.
I agree. Specifically, it's privacy AND freedom (free software development model).
If these two are against maximum security, GrapheneOS consistently chooses security. Which is unfortunate for me, because I would consistently choose freedom. (Especially due to long-term considerations.)
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- GrapheneOS isn't John Android. Stop black and white thinking. You don't have to fit in with people when you post to .ml.
- If you have read the thread you are posting (relevant message 18 hours ago as opposed to this post 13 hours ago), you would have seen that you can just press "reload accounts" to fix it.
people treating graphene like the only android OS drives me up the fucking wall, i'm sure it's great but holy SHIT lineage has existed for years and years but.. now it's suddenly irrelevant?
Leaves a bad taste in my mouth
Lineage and GrapheneOS are not even in similar levels here. Yes, LineageOS (or any of its commercial forks) is great I'd you have anything other than a Pixel phone. Definitely beats having any stock Android. But having the choice and telling people that "GrapheneOS is not the only option" without context is intentionally guiding people that could potentially have a much more secure and way more private mobile experience look somewhere else just "because".
I don't pretend to know what tour reasons are, could be because of Micay, could be because the GOS team of developers has no filter, I don't know. But even Louis Rossmann, who openly chose to get away from GOS because of Micay's actions has said, time and again, that nothing even comes close.
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It's working fine for me while logged in. It's always been crap when logged out. This is nothing new.
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Downgraded to Aurora Store 4.8.3 and now working well for the moment.
I was wondering cant we just scrape Play Store and distribute the apks on a different website? most apks has checksums so we will know nobody has changes the apk
and distribute the apks on a different website
Or with distributed technologoes such as torrents. Then it's cheaper to operate any required servers.
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There are a bunch of sites like apkmirror etc. that do that but eventually the large ones started enshittifying their service. On apkmirror for example you used to be able to just download the apk's, now they've invented a special "format" that can only be installed through their app. Needless to say that was the end of that, I'm not keen on giving install capability to any more apps than I absolutely have to. (Zero is the ideal answer in case you're wondering, but in practice it's usually one, the system file manager. Any other app can download apk's to /Downloads or go fuck itself.)
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Looks a lot like an issue, more than the reality that the title is suggesting?
click-bait?
just tested it, at first i got rate limited(?) "server busy" but a minute later the updates went through fine
Yup can confirm. Some apps return this error (example tutamail and windscribe vpn). Fix it by downloading the apk in fdroid or github/ gitlab directly.
Aurora still works for me for now on Samsung stock OS. I now mostly install Google Play apps with APKPure over Obtainium tho and only use Aurora for those not on APKPure. And most of my apps are from GitHub/GitLab releases and F-Droid. I disabled Google Play and didn't login to Google account. I don't want the requirement of a Google account to install an app and Play Integrity to run an app. It is by no means acceptable that a company, using a closed source implementation that also tracks user and breaks Android security model, can censor what apps a user can install and decide what security and privacy compromises a user needs to agree to just use the normal phone functionalities that they pay for and by no mean require those compromises technically. They are turning Android into a service and a prison like iOS did rather than a software.
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