Not sure how many people were suffering from it, but Google Photos became adamant about pushing ads. I couldn’t find a replacement in Google Store which wasn’t doing the same. Downloaded F Droid, used alternative to website to find apps, downloaded and now the problem is solved. You can use Google Files to install the F Droid apk to start your journey of degoogling. I’m still using some proprietary apps which work with the Android UI such as Google’s Wallet but everything I could replace I did (unless I’d inconvenience myself like with Contacts). The open source apps have much better UIs and don’t bombard me with ads or other stuff the big corp wants to push like their accounts. I wish I had done it sooner and this post was made to encourage other people to do that. I tried Aurora Store, but Google doesn’t let me login. It tells me it would give me a popup to type a number into, but the popup never comes. Anyone knows what app pushes the popup? Is Aurora a full replacement for Play Store or do I need to have both installed?
Depending on how far down the rabbit hole, or how deep your pockets are… I started off slowly degoogling. Now have replacements for everything… Run grapheneos on pixel6. Yes. Google phone with graphene is your most private and secure route…who would have thought… Banking apps all work, NFC, etc. Can even have a work profile or separate user and sandboxes play services if still need play services for any apps you reply need
can confirm. using grapheneos on a pixel 5. i dont have a banking app or google services though personally. everything else at least i can confirm works fine. not really much need to root grapheneos either usually, especially as it is less secure (at least for most users?)