![\"Screenshots](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/WeatherAppScreenshot3.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
The good news is, we don\u2019t need to do all this work because someone has already done it. There are companies which already invest a lot of time and data building weather databases, sophisticated algorithms, and delivering the processed weather updates. All we have to do is send them a request for the data we want, and just display their response within the app. We\u2019d have a system become an interface between our app and theirs. This is an Application Programming Interface, or an API<\/a>. The \u201capplication\u201d part of that is obviously the app, and the \u201cprogramming interface\u201d is an interface as opposed to a \u201cuser interface\u201d because it\u2019s just two programs talking to each other without user access.<\/p>\n That\u2019s basically what Google Play Services is. It\u2019s a bundle of different APIs that lets Android apps access Google features, just like we could access weather features with a weather API in our app development scenario.<\/p>\n You might have noticed that apps often have a button that lets you sign in with a Google account. A lot of Android games show a little Google Play Services toast with an auto-generated username that links to achievements, saved games, and leaderboards. Sometimes, you get a Play Protect<\/a> warning that it detected a malicious app on your device. All those features rely on Google Play Services. Those are usually the features you get to see, but most are hidden from the user.<\/p>\n Just like Google login, apps can also access location, run mobile ads, process payments, and even push notifications with Google Play Services APIs.<\/p>\n It Works Like a System App Without Being a System App<\/p>\n Google Play Services doesn\u2019t show up in the app drawer, but it is always running in the background, and it doesn\u2019t need any permission from the user. It gets all the permissions by default, it doesn\u2019t show up in the launcher, and you can\u2019t remove it. It\u2019s constantly running in the background and runs without battery optimization restrictions. All of that makes it sound like a system app, except it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n I tried disabling it, and almost instantly I started getting bombarded with alerts to enable Google Play Services. I couldn’t open any Google apps, and non-Google apps, like Asana, my banking apps, and even Airbnb stopped working. Google kept spamming the same notifications over and over, every 10 seconds and annoyed me into re-enabling the services.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a unique position for a user-space app because no other app has system-level access. Google pushes security patches and updates via Play Services independent of the full Android OS updates.<\/p>\n Google Play Services is Exempt From Android\u2019s Privacy Restrictions<\/p>\n With Android 10, Google introduced a security feature called \u201cscoped storage.\u201d In previous versions of Android, an app with storage access could access every file on the device. Scoped storage tightened access and apps could only access relevant directories in isolation, not the entire storage space.<\/p>\n Older versions of Android would give free access to call logs and call metadata. Any app could track who you called, when, for how long, and how often. As you can imagine, that\u2019s an incredibly sensitive permission, so in modern versions of Android, the OS heavily restricts which apps can see the call logs<\/a>. Pretty much only dialer and contact apps can access it.<\/p>\n The point I\u2019m trying to make is this: Android has introduced a lot of excellent privacy features over the years, but there is one process in the user space which is exempt from those restrictions, and that\u2019s the Play Store Services. It has absolutely no restrictions on it.<\/p>\n You can see the permissions section is greyed out, and the app has default access to every sensor (including my microphone, call logs, body sensors, camera, and nearby devices) and data point available. You can’t revoke any of these. Location is allowed all the time and I can see that it accesses my location every couple of minutes.<\/p>\n The Play Store Services process has access to your precise location at all times, the motion sensors, networks, hardware identifiers (including IMEI), contacts, passwords, the entire storage space, call logs, access to other apps\u2019 data, and more. It even constantly scans your device for malware.<\/p>\n It\u2019s Why You Can\u2019t De-google Your Phone<\/p>\n In tech enthusiast circles, there\u2019s been a movement on the rise in recent years that\u2019s all about cutting Google out of people\u2019s lives. A big part of the movement is removing Google from Android phones\u2014that\u2019s what de-googling a phone<\/a> means.<\/p>\n On paper, it sounds pretty straightforward because you could simply just remove all Google apps from the phone, YouTube, Gemini, Maps, and so on, and be done with it. In practice, however, it\u2019s incredibly complicated. You can\u2019t uninstall many of the Google apps because they run on elevated privileges, and you need superuser or root access<\/a> to remove them. The most you can do is disable those apps with ADB tools<\/a>. Even if you go through that tedious process, there is one thing that you cannot get rid of, and that is Google Play Services. Even after removing all Google apps from your device, the Play Services processes will continue running in the background.<\/p>\n Even if you could remove them somehow by rooting your phone, removing Play Services will most certainly break a lot of apps you use every day. Remember I mentioned how Android app developers rely on Google Play Services APIs to make their apps work. Google Ads, Firebase notifications, Google Play, Google sign-in, integrity checks<\/a> for banking apps break without active Google Play Services running in the background.<\/p>\n![\"Google](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Google-Play-Protect-icon-1.png\"){kind=icon}
\n Credit:\u00a0Joe Fedewa \/ How-To Geek<\/p>\n![\"android](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/android-11-remove-permissions-if-app-isnt-used.jpg\")
\n Credit:\u00a0Justin Duino \/ How-To Geek<\/p>\n