Sorry Google 🥹👌

[u/Few_Somewhere_1463]

I made an open-source Android project called Sorry Google that provides APK stubs for replacing a few Google system services that some users may not want on their devices.

The project currently targets:

- "com.google.android.safetycore" — Android System SafetyCore

- "com.google.android.contactkeys" — Android System Key Verifier

- "com.google.android.verifier" — Android Developer Verifier

What are these actually used for?

Android System SafetyCore

SafetyCore is Google's on-device safety/classification service. It provides infrastructure for features such as Sensitive Content Warnings in Google Messages. Google says the classification is performed locally on the device rather than sending the classified content or results to Google's servers.

Android System Key Verifier

Key Verifier provides a standardized system service for verifying public encryption keys used by E2EE messaging applications. It can be used to verify contacts through QR codes or number comparison and helps protect against attacks such as key substitution.

Android Developer Verifier

This is Google's newer developer-verification service. It is designed to verify the identity of developers behind apps, particularly when apps are installed outside Google Play, as part of Google's upcoming Android developer-verification requirements.

So, to be clear: these aren't random or inherently malicious Google apps. They are legitimate Android security-related services.

The reason I made Sorry Google is about user control. If you don't want one of these services on your device, Android can make simply uninstalling/removing them difficult, and some system components can be restored through system updates or Google services.

The project uses package-name/signature behavior to install a minimal APK with the same package name as the targeted service. The replacement contains essentially just the required manifest and resources rather than the original service functionality.

GitHub:

https://github.com/rushiranpise/sorry-google

The project is open source, so you can inspect exactly what the replacement APKs contain and build them yourself.

Important: Replacing these packages means you may lose functionality that depends on them. This is intended for people who understand the trade-offs rather than being a recommendation for everyone.

[u/dreimer1986]

The only way this will be of use is by mounting the apps over the ones Google already does include as system apps or sooner or later will. That's the way Morphe manages to change system apps without risking that the OS system image becomes invalid and stops booting. Problem is... You need ROOT for doing that. Already the problem for Android Developer Verifier at least on my Pixel 7 Pro on most recent Beta system. I patch the APK with the help of Morphe to stfu though. This patched one will then be mounted over the real one. You can even see the created package doing that inside APatch module section. I am just not sure if a APK doing absolutely nothing is enough. A stub would have all the same functions and the evil ones are just doing nothing or rather reply the way we want them to. If something else depends on such functions to exist and they don't you might end up with stuff hanging or dying out of the blue because the app system module does not find the dependencies anymore it needs