Android: Trying to stop Google Play Services From Running In The Background.

Steffie

Hi. Has anyone used either of these please?

My innate cynicism prevents me from bothering to d/l & install either, til/unless i can be confident they are not simply malware. Thought i'd ask here in case any other Vuser is more bold than me & has already tried either of them. Ta.

EDIT: Gahhhhhhhhhhhh, realised too late that this is posted in an inappropriate subforum, AND weirdly i cannot move nor delete it now that i've posted it. Sigh. Sorry Mods.

[modedit] Moved.

Hadden89

@steffie
Some infos comes from XDA, which is basically the modding section of android world, so I'm pretty sure they are safe.
Flashed a lot of things on my old phone from there without any issues.

The issue about hibernating/dozing play services - is the phone will probably force close more often any app which uses them or google ads (a lot of apps).

Their customs os - cooked rom - don't bring play services by default. Of course you'll miss playstore and other things, but phone should work, so it's technically possible to do that.

Apk seems to be totally clean
Well, maybe I'll test it - but I fear it implies rooting phone which I don't need on this phone.

Steffie

@hadden89 Many thanks. I don't want to root this phone just yet, so atm a custom ROM is not an option for me. However i thought the links i gave were for non-rooted phones... maybe i need to re-read them a bit more carefully this time.

Essentially i am sick & tired of Play Services running even when my phone is supposed to be asleep, reducing the battery life a lot. Ideally i want NOTHING happening when my phone is screen-off, other than still able to receive incoming calls & texts. I would be happy for PS to be active when i am actually using my phone, but the fact that whilst i have maximised battery life by Dozing most of my other apps, the inability to also Doze PS is plain irritating.

Hadden89

@steffie To hibernate playservices you have to edit something in /system or / folders and even a lot of trusty apps which allow to edit services on android need root as basically the phone run always as user (and don't have su by default).
You can try the app, but I guess will ask for root.

Some apps as greenify or force doze allow some hibernation via usb debug (rootless) but you still have to pre-allow permission via android sdk interface. But I fear core system processes are not covered by this procedure.

Steffie

@hadden89 Many thanks again. I just searched both those articles for "root", with zero hits [some links to unrelated pages got hits, but not the main articles]. I feel that is pretty poor journalism that they overlooked mentioning something so important as, eg, "your phone needs to be rooted to use these apps / techniques". I confess to being gullible, because i thought at the time i initially found these articles that they seemed too good to be true [ie, if i could do this even without needing to root the phone], but i naively put my trust in the fact that the journalists said nothing about root.

Oh well, i suppose that PS will simply have to keep on flattening my battery for no advantage.

luetage

Even with rooting, it's not easy to mess with google play services. I've been there and done that and unexpected things start to happen if you mess with the setup. The casual thing to do is disabling automatic updates of play store apps – and additionally setting them to update over wifi only. At least that's what I'm doing.

Steffie

@luetage said in Android: Trying to stop Google Play Services From Running In The Background.:

setting them to update over wifi only

Yes, i made that setting a long time ago, & it seemed to help, but i was/am annoyed to subsequently discover many mornings when my battery was nearly flat, having been at maybe 20-30% the previous night, & upon investigation i found that bloody PS had updated lots of apps whilst i slept [& i keep WiFi OFF until i explicitly wish to use it].

disabling automatic updates of play store apps

Ta for this reminder. Given that the comment above IMO implies that Android does NOT respect my settings, i have just now entirely disabled Auto Updates. To my amazement, over the following several minutes, i noticed the phone status bar twice show the little animated download arrow appear, run for a few seconds, then vanish again... ie, i suspect that despite my settings change the bastard might still be intent on "trying its luck" anyway... if so, then my battery will continue to be drained when the display is off.

sgunhouse

Do you know what sort of processor the phone has? Most are some ARM-based processor, but some do use Intel Atom processors. Reason I ask, I have Avast Mobile Security on one of my devices and they seem to do something that helps in that regard - but they only seem to run on ARM-based devices. It's a wi-fi only tablet so it's not checking cell towers and other phone stuff, but if I leave it asleep the battery lasts over a week. Obviously a phone won't get that sort of performance, but it may help - and of course it has virus scanning and so on.

LonM

@steffie If you find it's draining overnight, you could try and schedule it to turn itself off at night and back on in the morning. That would use up next to no power.

i'm not sure if that setting is available for all devices though.

Steffie

@sgunhouse It's a 2014 Motorola Moto G 2nd Gen.

Chipset Qualcomm MSM8226 Snapdragon 400
CPU Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7

https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_moto_g_(2nd_gen)-6647.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moto_G_(2nd_generation)

Its Android 6.0 is now a later version than when i bought it, but reached the end of its Motorola upgrades quite a long time ago sadly [i really should root it & whack a custom ROM on it, but ever since CyanogenMod went to the wall i kinda lost interest in doing that stuff].

Steffie

@lonm

draining overnight

Well, i did not mean to imply that that's what happens every night, coz it certainly isn't. Typically i get 3 - 4 days per charge if i've not made many calls, although recently it's more like 2 - 3 days max coz i discovered that i can use KDE Connect on it to WiFi-connect to my Lappy, so many nights i luxuriously sprawl semi-reclined on my sofa streaming Netflix in Lappy's V-SS on the other side of my loungeroom, with me calling the shots by phone... gawd tech has spoiled me!

schedule it to turn itself off at night

That's a very innovative idea! Unfortunately [& pls don't be insulted]:

It can't do that
Even if it could, i'd not want to do it; the phone is my only one [dumped my landline years ago], & being unreachable overnight in case of some family emergency would not be a good thing...

auralee.us

You might want to join XDA Labs and dl the app.

There are two sections...

Apps (no root required)
Xposed (apps that req root)

It does have a good search too.

Hope this helps.

yashpalgoyal1304

@lonm And I have tried turning phone off.... & to my surprise, that's even worse than leaving my phone idle with automatic updates turned off, and wifi and bluetooth always searching turned off.

The results are good however, when I remove the battery after turning it off

BabyClara0121

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