Google Play Service Required?

linksbrawler

Hello,

Recently I've been putting some effort into degoogling. I got an android phone recently with GrapheneOS, which allows me to use it without google play services.

I am noticing that J-Novel Club app listed Google Play Service as required, and the app wont load up without it.

May I ask to confirm if it is required? And what JNC uses Google Play Service for?

Thanks

pcj

@linksbrawler if I were to take a guess, it's so you can buy coins using your Play Store account.

chocolatkey

@linksbrawler Hi, we don't have anything in particular that should be limiting the usage of our app without Play Services, of course besides in-app purchases. Play Services is included because of that + I think it gets included when you add Firebase stuff into the app which we use for analytics. There have been cases of users installing the app on unusual Android devices before, and we've also provided APK builds before.
I don't have a device running GrapheneOS lying around - could you elaborate more on the app not loading? Like, is it an immediate crash? I could also get you an APK build to try out.

linksbrawler

@chocolatkey said in Google Play Service Required?:

I think it gets included when you add Firebase stuff into the app which we use for analytics. There have been cases of users installing the app on unusual Android devices before, and we've also pr

Hey thank you for the reply. Makes sense it can be used for in-app purchases and Firebase.

When loading the app on my screen, I either get just a big blue screen or a splash screen with the J logo on it.

I am looking through the logs, and things seem to just stop after some google play service errors (Requiring Cronet).

03-29 23:02:04.637 25288 25326 W GooglePlayServicesUtil: club.j_novel.butterfly requires the Google Play Store, but it is missing.
03-29 23:02:04.637 25288 25326 E GooglePlayServicesUtil: GooglePlayServices not available due to error 9
03-29 23:02:04.637 25288 25326 I PlayServicesCronet: Google-Play-Services-Cronet-Provider is unavailable.

chocolatkey

@linksbrawler Oh, it's because of cronet. In the latest update that's out, we switched to using a better-performing networking library (cronet), but it seems that only works when Google Play services are available on the device. It should be possible to implement a fallback, I'll look into doing that for the next update.