[Huawei P40 Pro Guides, News, & Discussion] Vexusia:
Hey guys, long time lurker around xda and after purposely getting a huawei gms-less phone to see how it would go I ran into some frustrations learning that apks from the playstore whether from downloads or aurora store app etc, nothing would deliver notifications. My huawei is a nova7se but I had a friend test this on his and it is working as well so I presume it works for all huawei/googleless devices to a point.

The goal of this was to find a way to get notifications from playstore apps such as discord, outlook email , banking apps etc. This is not a replacement for google services apis needed for games or google apps which rely on services framework to operate in general.

A few things

-MUST BE CLEAN GOOGLE-LESS PHONE**

-Does not need root/bootloader unlocked

-Does not need sketchy downloads from random sites formatting recovery/ota/hisuite backups etc

-Mostly all open source

-Easily reversible and minimal risk

-All done through phone without additional mods or adb

-Not all apps will work for notification services for this depending on how the original developer team wrote the app to handle this situations. For example: discord, outlook, capital one bank, chase bank, apps work but protonmail did not want to connect to microg for notifications and I have not been able to successfully trick it to connect to it yet)

- APKS MUST BE FROM PLAY STORE ORIGINALLY. Using fdroid variants or personal stuff probably wont work since those packages did not rely on google notification services. I know some apps have a standalone apk you can download externally from the source but it may differ in its functionality.

-THIS IS NOT GOOGLE PLAY SERVICES AND WILL

NOT

MAKE GOOGLE APPS WORK. The reason it is not working for your google apps and games is because it was never supposed to. Dx

**By "google-less" phone I am referring to not having any leftover packages from attempting to install gms on the device. Google packages conflict with microG and will not be compatible. If you have used lzplay or other methods to attempt to get some form of playstore working, then you will most likely have google packages installed somewhere even if it failed to get GMS working perfectly. Keep this in mind if you get installation issues. Ideally if you are not using the phone as a daily, factory reset it to original settings if possible to ensure cleanest install if you want to pursue this.

STEP 1)

Download microG apps.

-microG services core

(optional)

- **microG services framework proxy

- **microG droidguard helper (? no idea if this is needed but was in my downloads for microg testing)

**the services framework proxy and droidguardhelper were part of the original experiment but later on I managed to get notifications running without needed either one of these.

Easiest way is to use fdroid store app and to add in microg repo found here.

https://f-droid.org/

https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki/Downloads

Step 2)

Open microg settings app - self check

-Signature spoofing will not work because we have no access to anything on the phone system wise

-Installed packages should have "playservices gms core installed" and "services framework installed" checked only (see picture)

-Grant permissions and select to ignore battery optimization (so the service is not closed in background)

Step 3)

MicroG settings main menu

-Turn on google device registration

-Turn on google cloud messaging

-Turn on google safetynet (probably is not actually doing anything but turn it on for good measure)

-Add google account (Does not appear to be needed since it did not do anything specific relating to notifs)

Step 4)

Download aurora store.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/

or

https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore

Fdroid route is easiest if you used it to install microg apps.

(Why aurorastore? Why not? The main reason is because it accesses google play store apps which inturn are the apks which are known to use google play services for notifications. Downloading an apk from another origin might not be the playstore version making it not really work with this process)

Step 5)

Download apps as needed with aurora store,

In phone settings, make sure you disable auto management of background apps.

Settings-battery-applaunch. Set apps like outlook, discord etc to manual and turn all settings to on (auto launch/run in background/secondary lauch).

Optional step 6) In aurora store settings , add microg apps to blacklist so aurora store does not try to update microg with play services which will erase micro g and give you a systemless apk of play services which does absolutely nothing.

Thats basically it. I was so caught up on trying to find ways to break into my nova 7se's bootloader and attempted to sideload microg for authentic playstore functionality and playservices but as long as notifications are working, aurora store + notifs is all the functionality I need.

No offense to those offering other ways to add in gms to huawei phones but as a security minded individual, it seems like too much of a risk to use randomly hosted internet files overwriting system functionality.

If you go into microg settings and under "google cloud messaging" you can see which apps are being monitored for notifications. Once I restarted my device, its status turned to disconnected but still catches notifications for outlook and discord as I tested. This is not using microg as a replacement for playservices because again this is ONLY FOR NOTIFICATION USAGE in this implementation.

Hope this helps anyone who wants to be able to use some google play apps but had notification issues. :)