Running Roon for a few years now has made me a huge fan! I’d like to emphasize this, before making my wish:
On my (de-googled) Android smartphone, the roon remote app worked well over the last 3 years with my firewall only granting access to roon-servers respectively the roon server at home and the servers of streaming services. Since one of the latest updates, I need to grant access to googles “firebase” servers in order for the app to even just be able to discover my roon server on the home-net.
This is annoying and unnecessary.
The app should be able to establish its network necessities without involving google servers, just as many other apps out there do without any hussle.
I paid 700.- $ for this system, that runs really well and is a real bonus to my music listening habits. I certainly did not pay for the system just to learn that it relies or depends on tracking “services” from google.
So I would appreciate if you were able to remove google sdk from the app and supply an app that fosters and supports the free internet and does not force users into dependencies they never asked for.
Thank you for considering this. I appreciate your work.
regards, Florian
Firebase does a whole host of things. I don’t know what it is used for in Roon. Were you able to identify this before concluding it was unnecessary? I mean the entire back-end of Roon is running in GCP so I’m not entirely sure you can say Roon is “de-googled” at all.
If you really want a totally local, no cloud, music management platform then I’m not sure Roon is the right choice. I don’t mean to debate your feature suggestion, less tracking, less logs, less of my data in someone else’s system I’m all for but a cloud based service, and Roon is certainly dependent on the cloud, is going to cloud.
Thank you, @ipeverywhere I see your point. To clarify this a bit: I used to run the Roon app with no permissions except homeserver and roon-named servers on the internet. No firebase, no “…google…” (except for storage.googleapis.com) etc. It used to work until a few weeks ago, when I observed my Roon app not connecting to my Roon server any more.
I was not aware that Roons backend runs on googles platform, that makes it a lot less sympathetic…
Hi all,
This is the first time I’m posting, so I hope I’m in the right place and that you’ll forgive any technical ignorance from my side. I thought I would chime in as well on this subject only to voice my opinion on the matter of privacy and security in the hope of future improvements of the Roon software. First off, I would also like to say that I really enjoy using Roon and appreciate the project as a whole. English is a second language to me, so if I come across as negative or destructive, this is not my intent. I truly only wish to contribute to the project as best as i can.
While I’m sure that trackers such as ”Google Crashlytics”, ”Google Firebase Analytics” and ”Sentry” all serve their purpose, I personally am of the opinion that in todays age that it should be a priority to rid trackers from premium paid software and would absolutely love to see the Roon applications offered without trackers. Especially third party trackers as I would assume Roon collects most necessary data themselves via ”monitoring.roonlabs.net” and login credentials/activity, but this is an assumption only.
I’m using ROCK as my server software and also have 2 improvement suggestions I would highly appreciate to see implemented, as follows:
- Add the option of requiring a login to access the GUI. At current state anyone with access to the network can change network settings, delete files and tinker with the database, software and operating system. I know one could use firewall rules and adjust read/write access to files to mitigate this issue, but I think a login would be nice.
2. As the use of Tailscale is an option in the ROCK GUI, I would also really like to have the option of utilizing a self-hosted coordination server (such as Headscale).
That’s it, I’ve now voiced my opinion 
Best regards
Thanks for sharing your perspective, @SRas
I agree with you regarding trackers and data collecting behavior of apps and server software. Paying 700 bucks for a proprietary server software is really heavy. It should come with maximum user friendliness in an absolutely safe, secure and privacy respecting software environment. Relying on G+++++ backend solutions and tracking “services” is definitely not part of this.
Since Roon is part of the Samsung empire, it is tinkering with its credibility and trustworthiness here.
I’d love to see Roon taking their customers seriously again and getting rid of trackers and unwanted software parts like the G+++++ stuff.
Regards, FloW