I want to remove Play Store and its services from my phone. I want to ask your opinion, where is the most accurate APK source? APKMirror, APKPure or Aurora Store? If you have other options, please share with me. Thank you very much
Aurora Store must be downloading APKs from the Play Store directly, just proxying them to you. This is as accurate as it gets.
What’s for the other two i have no idea, they might be downloading directly too, might not.
But don’t take my word for it, i’m mostly guessing.
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It really depends on what apps you’re using
- Aurora Store would be my suggestion if you just want an easy drop in replacement or if you don’t find the apps on other sources
- they are having problems the last months that their accounts are getting rate limited > if it fits your threat model you might wanna consider creating a dedicated Google account for it
- https://f-droid.org and its alternative clients like Droid-ify | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository are also a pretty good option
- GitHub - ImranR98/Obtainium: Get Android App Updates Directly From the Source. is also a good option if you want to get the APK directly from the dev’s GitHub and many other sources
- some apps like Signal >> Signal Android APK also give you the APK directly and in case of Signal it even auto updates
options like GitHub or getting the APK directly from the dev’s website are a bit more risky since there is no party between you and the dev to test it + trying to find malicious code but if its something well known and trusted like Signal I don’t see a problem
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APKMirror is more of a repository than anything. It’s definitely an at-your-own-risk site, but one I will use myself on occasion. That said, Aurora is the safer option if you have a degoogled phone.
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Thanks so much for helping me with lots of details