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Comment by harrygeez | Hacker News Reader

I don't fully understand. Are these functionalities baked into Android that only allow Play Store to use it?

Pretty much. Google Play services runs as like a root process that can (among other things) bypass all the security checks that the OS usually has. That includes those annoying update confirmation dialogs which make it impossible to install updates automatically without user interaction.

Specifically GMS runs as a "privileged app" (that's what priv-apps stands for) which can declare access to permissions in the manifest that non-privileged apps can't even ask for.

Importantly, this is largely a property of preloaded apps rather than GMS explicitly.

Yeah, they are curated by the author(s) of the Android build that the device is running.

> That includes those annoying update confirmation dialogs which make it impossible to install updates automatically without user interaction.

Important to note this has changed starting with android 12, now you just need accept installing the app, and the source can update the app without interaction.

Droidify (third party fdroid client) supports it, among others like Aurora store.

> Pretty much. Google Play services runs as like a root process that can (among other things) bypass all the security checks that the OS usually has.

Unnecessarily mind you, GrapheneOs proved that you can get the vast majority of GMS functionality without it needing to run as root. Even Gpay would work if google allowed it.

> That includes those annoying update confirmation dialogs which make it impossible to install updates automatically without user interaction.

This has changed with android 12, third-party sources can now auto update an app after a user accepts the initial prompt go install it.

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