Google play services is a monolith, that does a plethora of stuff on the phone, including features like quick share, location services, various Firebase APIs for instant notifications stuff, find my device and whatnot, so I think the size is pretty reasonable.

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You could license it under the (A)GPL, charge for downloads in the Play store or for compiled binaries on ur website and ask for donations on F-Droid.

You could even do a freemium version where some features are locked in the binaries you distribute and need a license from ur website or smth (for those who don’t want to use Google Play). (iirc SD Maid 2/SE does this)

Someone else could just compile the app themselves, unlock all premium features and distribute it to play store without violating the license?

There’s also the PersonalDNSFilter which does the equivalent while being a tiny open-source app that serves only for that purpose and also somehow still not getting banned from the Google Play store or AdAway which also has this feature or TrackerControl or…

Win + V should bring up cliboard history which is basically the same pop-up just on a different tab.

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Breezy weather also allows you to select weather data from multiple sources. It even let’s you select which type of data to get from which provider.

Am I dumb or Mint still uses Plasma 5 on xorg by default and its wayland support is mediocre?

The Xiaomi Android One line-up was unlockable without any hassle, but is long time discontinued. I used to use the Mi A2 lite as my main phone and you could just unlock it yourself offline. Only thing blocking you from doing it was the OEM unlocking toggle in developer settings. I still have the phone and it is running Android 14 like a charm.

RCS is an open standard, but Google’s implementation of it isn’t AFAIK. That’s why there exist no 3rd party RCS client outside of those praised by Google.

I don’t understand why the control panel UI wasn’t modernized instead? Would that really be unfeasible? I think it still might have been less work than to maintain 2 coexistent “settings/control panel” apps and migrate from one to another. Sometimes you have to throw out the old code base and start from scratch. But if you do so shouldn’t you rather distrubute the result when your finished and not in a half-baked compromise-like state?

I don’t understand why the control panel UI wasn’t modernized instead? Would that really be unfeasible? I think it still might have been less work than to maintain 2 coexistent “settings/control panel” apps and migrate from one to another. Sometimes you have to throw out the old code base and start from scratch. But if you do so shouldn’t you rather distrubute the result when your finished and not in a half-baked compromise-like state?

Lawnchair 2 is no longer under development. The development team always starts to develop a new launcher based on the latest stock launcher every time a new Android version is released (so basically every year). This way the app usually never gets past the alpha or beta builds till they already move on to start from scratch. I don’t understand their strategy.

I use Google Lens and I also have to keep Google app installed. I agree it’s annoying that they just can’t make the apps work standalone. There already is a package that nearly all Google apps dependend on. The package is Google Play Services. Why can’t they implement this into Google Play Services as they do with all the other stuff (quick share, find my phone, location services etc…)?

Did you flash a custom ROM? Maybe it will work with a custom ROM.

EDIT: Your phone uses Mediatek processor, so it’s not going to be well supported. I recommend you to stick to locked bootloader and just live with the phone as it is.

https://topjohnwu.github.io/Magisk/install.html

Did you unlock your bootloader? Some apps just scan for Google Play SafetyNet or in some other way to check whether you unlocked your bootloader or rooted and if they think you do they will vaguely state you are rooted.

Other’s concern about your phone being infected are justified and I recommend you to try whether a dedicated root checking app thinks your phone is rooted. These usually don’t lie.

Regarding your rooting situation I always rooted the lazy way. Renamed magisk.apk to magisk.zip, flashed it and it always worked for me. But I rooted only 2 phones in my life really and this is not the recommended method by magisk developer.

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It is not only ironic but pathetic. They promote it as the new open standard and people who just don’t look further into the details believe it.

KOReader. The app is multiplatform (also for some e-readers and Linux) so the UI is not among the most beautiful (but I actually prefer it over Librera), but it’s feature packed, and does really well what it’s made for.