Open Source · by Hana Choi · 2026-10-19
MicroG and the de-Googled phone: anyone daily driving it?
github.com
MicroG is a free re-implementation of Google's proprietary Android user space, the stuff a lot of apps quietly depend on. It comes up in pretty much every discussion about de-Googled phones because without something like it, a surprising number of apps just break. For those who have tried a de-Googled setup, did MicroG get you far enough to daily drive it, and which apps were dealbreakers?
39 sparks · 20 comments
Comments
Valeria López · 14 likes
daily driving it for two years. push notifications work for most stuff, banking app is the one I keep checking
Rizky Pratama · 2 likes
my bank's app refused to start, ended up using the website
Gentle River · 1 likes
banking apps are always the final boss
Imogen Clarke · 12 likes
I tried it, lasted a month, went back. not proud of it
Aoife Murphy · 0 likes
no shame, it's a lot of friction for most people
Sanne de Vries · 10 likes
anyone tried it on a work phone? our MDM probably throws a fit
Imogen Clarke · 7 likes
don't. keep work stuff on a separate device, saves your sanity
Iryna Melnyk · 7 likes
Huge respect to the microG devs. reimplementing a moving target like that is thankless work
Cedar Marauder · 0 likes
google changes things constantly too so it's never done
Antonia Silva · 7 likes
I went full no-google, no microg. it's fine if you mostly use the browser and F-Droid
Maya Williams · 13 likes
respect but I need maps that actually work in my city
Sofía Hernández · 0 likes
osmand surprised me, depends a lot on the region though
Gentle Coder · 2 likes
would love a list of which popular apps work and which don't. the wiki is a good start but things change fast
Pieter Botha · 0 likes
there are community compatibility lists, but yeah they go stale quickly
Siti Lestari · 1 likes
Funny how 'android is open source' and 'android without google barely works' are both true
Noé Petit · 13 likes
open source in name, proprietary in practice
Urban Comet · 1 likes
AOSP is open, the parts people actually need are not, that's the trick
Sanne de Vries · 0 likes
the bigger problem is apps that use play integrity checks. microg can't really fix that
Elsa Andersson · 8 likes
yeah that's a policy problem not a technical one at this point