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

  • toastal@lemmy.ml
    3·
    3 days ago

    FYI for the other commenters, UnifiedPush can work thru the Prosody mod_unified_push or any server with a up where 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_mqtt on your XMPP server). I am not yet sure if this is a tinfoil take or not.

  • illegalflyer@lemm.eeEnglish
    23·
    5 days ago

    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)

      • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
        4·
        3 days ago

        Good choices. I take this a step further and bridge IRC, Signal, Gvoice, and WhatsApp from a plugged in device or container to Matrix. Then use ntfy for Matrix notifications. This gives me notifications for all of them in Matrix/Element and thus through ntfy.

        Example: Instead of Molly I use mautrix-signal bridge as the device and it feeds messages into Matrix.

        There’s also a Telegram bridge: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/bridges/telegram/

  • WreckingBANG@lemmy.ml
    7·
    5 days ago

    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.

    • merlin@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      4·
      5 days ago

      So it’s either a persistent notification or allowing the app to constantly running in the background. Does it have a significant battery impact?

      • FrostyPolicy@suppo.fi
        4·
        5 days ago

        Doesn’t have a significant impact. Using Telegram (though third party OSS client called Forkgram) and Signal without Play services on pixel as well.

      • merde alors@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        5 days ago

        yes, it has a “significant” impact on battery. i don’t know why the other comment claims otherwise.

        it’s worth it for me, so i accept that “impact”.

        • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
          2·
          4 days ago

          For some people it doesn’t, and for others it does. So your mileage may vary. For example, with me, I have seen no significant battery impact, and I’ve been running it this way for several years.

      • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
        2·
        4 days ago

        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.

      • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        4 days ago

        as I know its the persistent notification (that you can hide on most phones, but do not swipe away) is what lets it run in the background

  • Cris16228@lemmy.today
    7·
    5 days ago

    It depends. Some apps have their push notifications system but may consume more battery.

    You should list what apps

      • VHS [he/him]@hexbear.net
        3·
        5 days ago

        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

        • Cris16228@lemmy.today
          2·
          5 days ago

          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

          • VHS [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
            1·
            4 days ago

            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.

  • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
    4·
    4 days ago

    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.

    • oldfart@lemm.ee
      1·
      3 days ago

      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.

  • MrPoopbutt@lemmy.world
    11·
    3 days ago

    Why do you not want play services on grapheneos? Doesn’t the sandboxing remove any issues with it?

    • ivn@jlai.lu
      131·
      5 days ago

      I don’t know, if your goal is security Pixels have the best hardware and GrapheneOS the best software. It makes a lot of sense.

      • SatyrSack@feddit.orgEnglish
        12·
        4 days ago

        Sure, but it’s still ironic. I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing to buy a Google device just to degoogle it, but I think that does fit the definition of irony.

    • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.orgEnglish
      61·
      4 days ago

      It’s truly ironic, but its really a good choice, if you don’t care about repairability and removable battery

      • Bullybeard@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        4 days ago

        Holy shit I just commented it was ironic, didn’t even say it was bad or good and I got 12 down votes? I suppose the reddit hivemind mentality carries over to Lemmy as well

        • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.orgEnglish
          2·
          4 days ago

          that, or bots. Apparently it’s possible to view the list of downvoters, somehow (like through mbin I think), so you may be able to check what sort of content do they post, if any