Sandbox google in a profile you can turn off, use it to install your app through the play store then copy that app to another profile. You can turn off the sandbox profile until you want to update.
this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2026
37 points (100.0% liked)
Privacy
48342 readers
216 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
Ordered by preference, cascading down when it's not present
- F-Droid : I'm used to it and know it relatively well
- Accrescent : comes from GrapheneOS but very few apps
- Obtainium : works well, very interesting principle, but limited shared configuration
- .apk from Website or repository : no reviews so have to do due diligence, updates also manual but just works
- Aurora : that's my ultimate fallback. I install it, use anonymous mode then uninstall it.
And yes FWIW I do believe obtaining apps for GrapheneOS is the most challenging part. Installing it with the Web installer was trivial. Using it is great, very convenient. Getting apps which are not in F-Droid, not straightforward.
Aurora : ... the[n] uninstall it.
Why though?
Why keep it if I don't need it?
PS: Thanks for spotting the typo, fixed.
More installations through Aurora and, more critically, updates. Depending on what app we're talking about, this may be critical, particularly for financial apps.
If I need more installation I can install Aurora back. I do not know how frequently you install apps for me it is very, once a month at most.
Regarding critically typically apps do warn you when it's the case, including financial apps. Usually if it's truly critical they'll stop working until you do update.
True, app installations don't happen very often for me either, but I don't see the harm in keeping Aurora around for it.
Regarding critically typically apps do warn you when it's the case, including financial apps. Usually if it's truly critical they'll stop working until you do update.
Typically these notifications are there to let you know that your app is terribly outdated and about to run into a breaking change (incompatibility between app and web-backend), not for security issues. I think it's very ill-advised to wait for something like that to happen, but you do you.
Banks sole business is making money by managing others people money, consequently I do imagine that they estimate that whatever they put online is safe enough and insured enough not be pragmatically speaking creating any risk for their consume. I imagine, and maybe naively so, that it's a well enough regulated business so that if "shit happens" it's on the bank to cover, not the customer.
I rarely find myself defending banks, but here we go. ;) They will argue (as I do) that it is gross negligence on the side of the customer not to keep software updated. And if they can prove that you were using outdated software (which will be simple, based on the logs connected to your account): no, they need not cover any damages arising from you not keeping up to speed on security updates. That's part of your due diligence.
They can revoke usage. Say if you use app version 7 and the required app is version 8 then no transaction can be done. The app can be installed yet unusable. So it's not because the app is installed and outdated that functionalities have to remain usable. Gaming servers do that all the time.
I'm pretty sure they already do that, not "just" warnings.
there is aurora store
https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore
I personally use F-droid, then play store myself
Aurora store is interesting. It has two modes you can use to download, right? How well do they work
Anonymous works fine 99% of the time if you only install occasional apps from Google. It works by grabbing a random Google account from a large pool of Google accounts that Aurora (or someone) runs, and accesses the store for searches and downloads after logging you in. You're logged out after a set period (several hours iirc) and then grab a new 'anon' account from the pool next time you do updates or search for an app.
The only issue you may face occasionally is if the app you want is geofenced to your area, and the 'anon' account was made in a different geographical location - in which case you won't be able to find the app in the store to install (or update) it. I usually just log off and on a couple of times and this resolves. It's a minor irritation.
Many create their own throwaway Google account on a different device (not linked to them in any way), but I haven't bothered.. Might be worth it if you install a lot of apps from Google store and want minimal issues though.
I think that would undo a lot of the attempted anonymity though, even if it's just for app istalls/updates. I've used Aurora for.. 4.. 5?.. years as my only means of apps from the Google app store, only using anon accounts and only having occasional hiccups where updates don't kick off automatically or geofenced apps can't be located. I only use maybe a dozen apps from the store though, all the rest are F-Droid/etc.
I use Obtainium. It's not a store or repo, so I have to manually find the apps I want to install. I even prefer it over fdroid: I might search for apps on fdroid but then go to the app's repo (on codeberg or github, etc) and try to install them via Obt ainium. But 98.6% of the time, I don't use fdroid to search for apps - I find them mentioned on Lemmy, in my RSS feeds, searching the internet via searxng.
Same here.
Also shout out to this nifty site that helps adding apps to obtainium that fail if you just add the github link:
https://apps.obtainium.imranr.dev/
Complex Obtainium Apps Crowdsourced "Hard to Add" App Configurations for Obtainium
I've been wanting to get some rss feeds going on my server. Would you have some good links for rss feeds for open source, self hosting, etc to get me started? Wanting to run a docker container for them too.
I now see that I expressed my idea unclearly. Sorry!
I don't have any RSS feeds specifically for new/good apps. I meant that in my normal RSS feeds, sometimes new/good apps are mentioned that I want to take a look at.
I get leads from sites like selfh.st, Lemmy communities that discuss FOSS or Linux (or even non-tech-related communities sometimes mention an app that has to do with their domain of interest), and I sometimes search github (FYI, I use github as little as possible - I host my own Forgejo forge for my stuff - but, like Youtube, you have to go where the data is if you're going to find the data).
Ahhh, ok no problem. I will check selfh.st out. Thanks!
i use f-droid for most apps (Free and open source), and aurora store (its on f-droid too) for google play apps. technically, aurora does access google play servers to get those apks, but so does any other site that would share those apks, so.. no account is needed for this, btw.
generally, avoid downloading apks from the internet, its risky af.
Iirc GrapheneOS recommends Accrescent for getting most apps
It's not a solution yet unless you only want to use like 5 apps, I hope it does gain traction though and becomes a better store than F-Droid
true i forgot about accrescent. it only has a small handful of apps tho that are also just on fdroid
Part of degoogling is finding alternatives to proprietary options and the play store, like Immich, while I find not all people are apt or even willing to host their own services, programs like syncthing can help in the interrim.
I know, but you neeeed Synology. Think of it more like, you need your photos, they're just in the way.
If by malware you do genuinely mean those that exploits vulnerabilities on your system to gain unauthrorised access (as opposed to apps that have heavy telemetry), I think apps from official sources are sufficient like Play Store or F-Droid. Malware will usually ask you excessive number of permissions. Deny them whenever possible. Installing them in second profile would make the damage contained.
But since you said degoogling, I would go with F-Droid, or directly from GitHub, where most apps are open source. Obtainium is a great tool to manage those applications. Last but not least, denying network access can block some telemetry on apps that don't require network to function.
Moblism is pretty useful