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Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | Hacker News Reader

You mentioned Signal and Discord for "messaging". Can you or someone else confirm that video calls work with GrapheneOS or LineageOS. I am getting ready to try these but I am still not sure video calling works. When reading about them I cannot find much discussion of this particular application.

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I can confirm that video calls work in Signal on Android flavors that don't use Google Play Services, including both GrapheneOS and LineageOS.

Thank you. Much appreciated. :)

(Perhaps WhatsApp might work as well, since, IME, it can be sideloaded and will work without a functional Google Play Services.)

Signal is specifically designed to work without Google Play Services, so expect a 1:1 experience when using it with these privacy conscious distros.

I'm confident Whatsapp will work, but I have not tried. Push notifications will not work without Google Play Services.

According to Plexus, WhatsApp works perfectly on Android without Google Play Services, whether or not you have microG installed.[1] I think they implement their own push notification system if you download directly from them,[2] though I haven't confirmed this.

Discord works perfectly with microG, and has a 3/4 rating without it since notifications will only work if you have microG.

[1] https://plexus.techlore.tech/applications/whats-app

[2] https://www.whatsapp.com/android/

[3] https://plexus.techlore.tech/applications/discord

IME, the notifications do work. I downloaded .apk directly from WhatsApp.

> expect a 1:1 experience

Push notifications are bad and it drains significantly more battery.

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