I am reporting here a systematic bug I am encountering while trying to access my account on the PubliBike third-party app (Swiss bike rental service).
Everytime I try to access my account, the app crashes and I receive the following error message:
Aurora Store (alternative access to free-of-charge Google Play Store Apps) lists “PubliBike” as GSF-dependent, which means it needs Google services.
/e/ has no Google services. /e/ uses microG to mimic Google services as good as it can, but that has its limits.
While it works for a lot of Apps, there is no guarantee, and even if it works at a particular time, changes on Google’s side can break that at any given time, until microG did the necessary catching up again.
Settings - Apps & notifications - PubliBike - Force stop (Does it work again?)
Settings - Apps & notifications - PubliBike - Storage & cache - Clear cache (Does it work again?)
What does it say in Settings - About phone - Android version (<- tap on this) - /e/ version?
Did you get a notification that an OS update is available?
Settings - Apps & notifications - PubliBike - Storage & cache - Clear storage (Warning! This will delete all data the App saved on the phone. Does it work again?)
Uninstall and reinstall the App (Warning! This will delete all data the App saved on the phone. Does it work again?)
Indeed, I just read that PubliBike is Google Earth dependent…
Here is what I got for each one of your solutions:
Reboot the phone (Does it work again?) Unfortunately, no
Settings - Apps & notifications - PubliBike - Force stop (Does it work again?) No
Settings - Apps & notifications - PubliBike - Storage & cache - Clear cache (Does it work again?) No
What does it say in Settings - About phone - Android version (<- tap on this) - /e/ version?
Did you get a notification that an OS update is available? /e/ version is 0.13-q-2020121490323-stable-FP3 I haven’t receive any notification for an update yet.
Settings - Apps & notifications - PubliBike - Storage & cache - Clear storage (Warning! This will delete all data the App saved on the phone. Does it work again?) No
Uninstall and reinstall the App (Warning! This will delete all data the App saved on the phone. Does it work again?) Again, no
Do you think it would work if I install Google Maps or Google Earth (even if I don’t like the idea of having them on my phone…) ?
Otherwise I will just contact PubliBike to see if they can manage something in the future.
If the App really not only needs underlying Google services to work, but genuine Google Apps installed on the phone as a requirement, I guess you will not get around trying to install them.