cross-posted from: https://thelemmy.club/post/11226460
This post is going to be a bit personal (and maybe a little bit out of context, it’s not just Google software I want to remove) but I’m tired of not knowing what to do about it. I want and have wanted to get rid of a bunch of proprietary software in my life, including but not limited to Google’s software, for quite a while now, and I even got a Pixel 7A with hopes of installing GrapheneOS. But there are a few problems. First, my parents are understandably concerned and need me to use Google Maps’ location sharing whenever I go to school. All my classmates use Instagram and we have that as our only messaging platform. I currently use DFInstagram, but I feel that it is not free from spyware. Finally, I also own a DJI Mini 3 Pro, and the associated DJI Fly app just refuses to work under GrapheneOS (I tested). Is there anything I can do to replace or limit the access of these aforementioned proprietary apps?
How much are you into programming and tinkering?
You may be able to make an xposed module to convince the dji app that you use an “investor approved” operating system.
First you would need to reverse engineer the dgi app a little, to find out where in the code it checks for your system, like when does it use safetynet. If it prints an error message or logs something to logcat when it refuses to work, then it could be easier to find the place starting from that point and the stringcs appearance in the code and usages.
Fortunately, even it not too easy, android apps are among the easiest to reverse engineer. The 2 major tools that will help you are jadx (the decompiler) and Android Studio (the official android dev program for helping in navigating the code, most important features are finding usages of a function or string resource, and “refactoring” so mass renaming functions when you understood what does a key function do)