There are several ways to run Android without Google Apps. Probably the easiest way is to simply don't install any GAPPS package at all and see if that is something you can live with within your day to day use-case. Since for most users this is not the case we need a solution to bridge the gap(ps).

MicroG

MicroG is a drop-in backported API for basic Google Play Services mocking. A lot of apps require Play Services to exist in the system to function properly. By installing the MicroG GMS package you can continue to use these apps without having to report your every move to Google.

One important thing to note is that your ROM needs to support signature spoofing for MicroG to work properly. Some ROMS sport this ability out-of-the-box while others could work after applying a patch.

There are several ways to install MicroG. For this article I will focus on the methods I think are easiest and most reliable.

Option 1: Magisk Installation

For root (Magisk) users there is a very nice Magisk module called MicroG Instaler Revived that takes care of most of the work of installng MicroG at system level. It is a no-clutter no-hassle install and I like it!

Option 2: Manual install

Manually installing MicroG is as straightforward as downloading the appropriate packages from the MicroG Downloads Page.

Post-install steps for option 1 and 2

Now that you have the base packages installed you need to install some location back-ends to supply the geo data. For this I recommend the Mozilla and Nominatim NlpBackends. The easiest way to install and maintain these packages is to add the official MicroG F-droid Repository.

Android 10 permissions

su
pm grant com.google.android.gms android.permission.FAKE_PACKAGE_SIGNATURE
pm grant com.android.vending android.permission.FAKE_PACKAGE_SIGNATURE

Option 3: MicroG LineageOS builds

Another easy way to run MicroG is to simply flash a ROM with MicroG pre-installed and configured. The good folks at microG themselves have created LineageOS builds with pre-installed and configured MicroG apps and spoofed signatures.
Take a look at all the benefits of this project. They build weekly from official LineageOS nightlies.


Guesture typing

In order to enjoy guesture typing with the AOSP keyboard you need to copy two (proprietary) libs into your system/lib64. This is if you're actually on a arm64 enabled device of course, otherwise you copy it to system/lib

The following require libs can be obtained from the OpenGapps Github repository.

libjni_keyboarddecoder
libjni_latinimegoogle

After you've copied these to the appropriate folder be sure to set the correct permissions. -rw-r--r-- or for the numeric types amongst you 644.

Reboot and you're all set!

Mind you, this is not for the purists, these are proprietary binaries and can therefore never be completely trusted.


Location services

As far as location services go you're left with

  • UnifiedNlp (no GAPPS)
  • microG Services Framework proxy
  • Fakestore

Move /data/app/gms to /system/priv-app
Set permissions of the main dir to drwxr-xr-x 755