---
title: I'm tired of Google adding features to "Android"
description: I talk about the crazy choices Google has been making regarding features and GMS
image: https://i.imgur.com/0JdYw6M.png
tags: rant
---

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# I'm tired of Google adding features to "Android"

The last couple of Android releases were nothing *too* special, we had the usual really:
- New APIs
- Privacy improvements
- UI changes
- etc...

But in the past couple of Android versions we've also seen Google add plenty of features related to accessibility and updates, and this is where I'm especially mad about, as they're not as accessible as one would hope them to be.

## Google adding features to Google Play Services exclusively

Google has added tons of Accessibility features recently, though, many of them have something in common:
**They all require Google Services Framework**
<span style="font-size:12px;color:grey;">(we will from here on refer to this as GSF)</span>

This means any device which doesn't have GSF simply won't be able to use these features. For example:

- **Updates over Google Play**
- **The ability for an app to download additional content** (e.g cometin)
- **Live Captions**
- **Digital Wellbeing**
- Focus Mode
- Site Timers
- Application usage statistics
- **Nearby Share**
- **"Play during Download" (Google play background downloads)**

All of the above features are advertised as part of Android on the respective Android release pages, they're all still online and can be viewed here:
- [Android 10](https://www.android.com/android-10/)
- [Android 11](https://www.android.com/android-11/)
- [Android 12](https://www.android.com/android-12/)

There are way more things which simply won't work without GSF, but those are outside the scope of this post.

## Edit: Added section to address discussion

#### "Some of these things would not be possible otherwise"

**I see this only as partially true.**
For example, I've been told that older devices wouldn't have Nearby Share without doing it like this, and whilst that is correct at it's core, I still think it's wrong to then advertise it as an Android 11 feature.
Not to mention that Android 11+ could've just implemented it as part of the system instead of GSF

## Conclusion

**Google is advertising features in Android, which were never in Android to begin with.** You can easily verify this simply by looking at a build of the Android Open Source Project, which won't have any of the features above when built without GSF

And even if you build with GSF, the availability of these feature's isn't guaranteed, like how Live Captions are kept to *mostly* Pixel devices