Google Play Store installation for Sailfish OS devices

Installing Play Store to Sailfish OS requires some downloading and terminal commands but luckily the terminal part is repeatable and easily scriptable - leaving us with only the downloading part.

Download compatible Google Apps from this link and extract them to /home/nemo/gapps-kk-20140606 so that the directory looks like following:

[root@Sailfish nemo]# ls -al /home/nemo/gapps-kk-20140606/
total 24
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root 4096 Feb 26 12:02 .
drwxr-x--- 31 nemo nemo 4096 Feb 26 12:15 ..
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Feb 26 12:02 META-INF
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  733 Feb 28  2008 install-optional.sh
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Feb 26 12:02 optional
drwxr-xr-x  9 root root 4096 Feb 26 12:02 system

Download Google Play store release 7.3.25 which supports downloading of apks from this link and extract the apk to /home/nemo/playstore so that the directory contains the play store apk as playstore.apk. You can do ln or rename. I did with:

ln -s com.android.<truncated>.apk playstore.apk

The directory looks like this:

[root@Sailfish nemo]# ls -al /home/nemo/playstore/
total 17320
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     4096 Feb 26 12:16 .
drwxr-x--- 31 nemo nemo     4096 Feb 26 12:15 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 nemo nemo 17723383 Feb 26 12:15 com.android.vending_7.3.25.K-all_0_PR_142209747-80732500_minAPI14(240,320,480dpi)_apkmirror.com.apk
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       99 Feb 26 12:16 playstore.apk -> com.android.vending_7.3.25.K-all_0_PR_142209747-80732500_minAPI14(240,320,480dpi)_apkmirror.com.apk

In short the playstore-reinstall.sh script does the following:

• Stop aliendalvik
• Remove existing store from file system
• Copy downloaded store to file system
• Copy gapps to file system
• Set rights to the files
• Start aliendalvik
• Install the downloaded Play Store
• Prevent Play Store from updating itself to prevent “pending” problem

Download the playstore-reinstall script to a convenient folder. I will use Download as an example.

If you are not comfortable with downloading you can copy paste the script from below and save it as /home/nemo/Download/playstore-reinstall.sh - for below examples to work.

#!/bin/sh
srcdir="/home/nemo/gapps-kk-20140606/system/priv-app"
destdir="/opt/alien/system/priv-app/"
deletedir="/home/nemo/deleted/"
playstore="/home/nemo/playstore/playstore.apk"

user=`whoami`

if [ "$user" != "root" ]; then
        echo This script requires root privileges. Please try again with devel-su.
        exit 0;
fi

reinstall () {
        echo 1: Stopping aliendalvik
        systemctl stop aliendalvik
        systemctl mask aliendalvik

        echo 2: Replacing Play Store with a compatible one from file $playstore
        chattr -i /home/.android/data/app//incoming/com.android.vending.apk
        rm /home/.android/data/app//incoming/com.android.vending.apk
        chattr -i /data/app/com.android.vending-2.apk
        rm -f /data/app/com.android.vending-2.apk
        cp -a $playstore /data/app/com.android.vending-2.apk

        echo 3: Copying files from $srcdir to $destdir
        cp -a $srcdir/GmsCore.apk $destdir
        cp -a $srcdir/GoogleLoginService.apk $destdir
        cp -a $srcdir/GoogleServicesFramework.apk $destdir
        cp -a $srcdir/Phonesky.apk $destdir

        echo 4: Setting up rights
        chmod 644 $srcdir/GmsCore.apk
        chmod 644 $srcdir/GoogleLoginService.apk
        chmod 644 $srcdir/GoogleServicesFramework.apk
        chmod 644 $srcdir/Phonesky.apk

        echo 5: Starting aliendalvik
        systemctl unmask aliendalvik
        systemctl start aliendalvik

        echo 6: Installing Play Store. Please check the latest download enabled version from http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/google-play-store/google-play-store-7-3-25-release/
        apkd-install $playstore

        echo 7: Preventing Play Store from updating itself
        touch /data/app/com.android.vending-2.apk
        chattr +i /data/app/com.android.vending-2.apk

        echo 8: Finished - remember to finish Play Store install in your device.
}

sign_out () {
        echo Skipping and quitting, bb.
}

echo This script requires that you have done following:
echo 1: downloaded gapps-kk-20140606 from https://www.androidfilehost.com/?fid=95832962473395379 and extracted it to /home/nemo/gapps-kk-20140606
echo 2: downloaded 7.3.25 play store and extracted it as $playstore
echo -n 'Do you want to continue? [Y/N] '
read answer

case "$answer" in
        Y|y)
                reinstall
                ;;
        N|n)
                sign_out
                ;;
esac

exit 0;

Start terminal and run the following:

devel-su
cd /home/nemo/Download
unzip playstore-reinstall.zip
chmod a+x playstore-reinstall.sh
./playstore-reinstall.sh

And finish the Play Store installation on phone screen.

The above script is safe to repeat so feel free to experiment.

All comments and corrections are welcome.