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Comment by mehrdadn | Hacker News Reader

Unlike "Settings", the name is not "Play Services", but "Google Play Services". It makes sense that you shouldn't be able to disable literally everything that was built-in such as Settings (how else are you supposed to undo what you just did...) but the problem is that you can't disable preloaded Google apps (which includes Google Play Services).

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I uninstalled glibc from a Gentoo machine once. Fixing that was a huge pain, but I kind of appreciate that I was allowed to do it.

But sure, in a mass market setting, I don't find it at all surprising that you wouldn't be allowed to disable Settings.

Oh you may have misunderstood my comment. On my phone at least, there is an app named "Play Services" which I assume provides things like location services and other background Google platform APIs. You can disable other pre-loaded Google apps individually (Google Search/Assistant, GMail, etc).

FWIW, I too hate that there isn't a replacement for those Play Services. I'm so frustrated - Pixel launcher will not show temperature in Celsius unless I give it "Web and App Activity" permission.

> Pixel launcher will not show temperature in Celsius unless I give it "Web and App Activity" permission

This is pretty surprising - what locale are you using?

English US.

And English Australia / English UK won't display Celsius by default without web permissions? (Granted, that would also mess with the display of calendar dates.)

I think I understand what's happening here. If I click the temperaure on launcher, it opens the Google Search app querying for "weather" - here it is in celsius.

Temperature units preference is saved in Google Search app. Pixel launcher, even though it shows the news cards from Search app, cannot show temperature in the units of my choice unless I give it the "Web and App activity" permission. Just Google things.

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