Depends. My threat model is practically: I want to avoid Google, i dont want to see ads, i avoid tracking as much as comfortably possible, i liek open source. Thats it. Theoratically it would be safer to have a burner google account(created on a public wifi) and get those apps via the playstore integration of graphene and only use the phone via a vpn you trust. Or smth like that. Dont trust me because i consider myself dum too. Personally(!) i like the Gcam and G Photo Gallery app so much that i dont want live without them. And they live happily sandboxed by Graphene on my phone without internet access. But i once used the playstore integration and all the google apps started happily sharing my information between them. Like beeing logged into my google account magically in the photos app. Which is exactly what i dont want. So i rather just use Aurora Store once or twice in a year if i need some stupid app for one reason or another. Heres a youtube channel which i consider good for Graphene stuff: https://www.youtube.com/@sideofburritos Also dont forget to read the great resources on graphenes website like: https://grapheneos.org/faq and https://grapheneos.org/usage