Gcam Services Provider

This app 'simulates' certain components of Google Play Services required by the Google Camera (Gcam) app, enabling it to be used on devices without Google Play Services.

Comparison: GrapheneOS' Gcam support

Important

On GrapheneOS the photosonly flavor is the only one that is supported.

Since April 2023 GrapheneOS is able to run Gcam without additional steps. Here is the relevant part of the changelog:

add generic compatibility shim catching the exception from the Gservices provider being missing to enable apps like Google Camera [...] to work without GSF installed since they don't have any actual hard dependency on either GSF or Play services

However, the button that opens the last photo taken won't work unless Google Photos is installed. If you want to use your favourite gallery app instead, install the photosonly flavor of this app.

Comparison: microG

microG is a open source re-implementation of the Google Play Services (client side). Among other things, signature spoofing is used to achieve this goal. In comparison, this app only aims to get Gcam running without Play Services. Therefore this app does not need any security compromising hacks or permissions (no Internet access, no storage access and of course no root access).

How to install this app?

Important

Using GrapheneOS? Make sure you read the comparison with GrapheneOS' Gcam support above!

There are three flavors of this app named basic, photos, and photosonly. All come without UI and therefore have no icon in the app drawer. But of course the installation is listed in the Android settings (e.g. for uninstallation).

Basic includes everything you need to get Gcam running but the button opening the last taken photo will not work. The photosonly flavor supports this button but does not provide the features of the basic flavor; it is meant to be used alongside Play Services/microg. The photos flavor has all features from basic and photosonly combined in one app.

Flavor	Incompatible apps	Download
Basic	- Google Service Framework (GSF) - microg	GitHub F-Droid
Photosonly	- Google Photos	GitHub
Photos	- Google Service Framework (GSF) - microg - Google Photos	GitHub

Gcam compatibility

The following does not apply to the photosonly flavor!

• Use a compatible Android OS (#22) or modded Gcam
• Gcam version >=10.x is currently unsupported (#190)