Thread by @GrapheneOS

Play services compatibility layer in active development and an early prototype has the basics working.

It will allow users to install Play services as a regular app in specific profiles without granting it any special privileges. Most functionality can work with this approach.

Play services won't be bundled with the OS. It will be up to users to choose to install Play services in a profile.

It won't be part of the upcoming July security update release but there will likely be an initial experimental implementation ready for testing by the end of July.

This approach will be drastically more maintainable than attempting to reimplement the APIs. It will be much easier to port to new major OS versions and will provide much more of the functionality. It will also have all the usual security checks and component/server key pinning.

We plan on doing other things in this area but this is what we decided to fund in the short term.

We'll continue providing the necessary funding/resources to keep it properly maintained including porting to Android 12 and future releases.

Ideally, others will be interested too.

Apps not explicitly using Play services won't use it even if it's in the same profile since we won't set it as a provider for OS APIs.

Many apps like Signal use it when available but work fine without it via their own push, etc. so dedicated profile(s) for Play are a good idea.