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GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

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Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#681

Post by fsflover »

subscribed wrote: post #662
fsflover wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my understanding, it's not the OS that makes it a toy but the hardware. I guess something with open schematics (Librem 5, Pinephone) should be better, or an open-hardware device like Precursor.

If the open hardware offers at least comparable security then maybe. If the hardware is an open book then no. A short list of the hardware security measures necessary to consider it "not a toy" ;) -- https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

I'm not convinced that all of these is required for security. My Qubes OS desktop is probably more secure than any GrapheneOS phone, and it only requires good hardware virtualization for that.

> If the hardware is an open book then no.

So you choose security through obscurity. I have no further questions.

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#682

Post by palata »

fsflover wrote: post #616
Itoldmyselfso wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not independent from Google if you purchase an android device from another manufacturer. You're then having your data sent to both Google and that manufacturer, resulting in far worse privacy overall than with just Google, not to mention worse security at hardware level. If you don't want to "support" Google, just buy any used Pixel 6 to 10 series.

I use Librem 5 as a daily driver. It has no dependence on Google.

Sure, you're free to use whatever you want. So am I. I want GrapheneOS :-).

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#683

Post by seanw444 »

anotherevan wrote: post #675

The biggest hold-back for me is that, here in Australia, Google Wallet (aka Google Pay) is the only way you can do tap credit card payments that I know of. Can't with Paypal. Not with any banking apps that I know of. It's just so damned convenient. And the recording of transactions on the phone saves me having to collect paper receipts.

If you want to fight back‚ let convenience take the back seat.

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#684

Post by ysnp »

Aachen wrote: post #553
palata wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been a user of /e/OS for 5 years, and also of GOS and would like to share my opinion on this: > it's worth noting that the GOS community is absurdly toxic to anyone doing anything privacy-related that isn't under the banner of GOS What I have seen (and I am not involved in any of those projects) is that GOS does care a lot about security, has a higher quality in that regard than anything else, and tends to be…

I'm also not involved with any mobile privacy/security project, unless OpenStreetMap data and self-hosting can be said to be such > GOS does care a lot about security, has a higher quality in that regard than anything else, and tends to be blunt about "inferior" projects communicating about security. Two remarks: - There's a difference between "blunt" and hostile or misleading. GOS (owners) are often the latter two f…

>Not everyone is running from an intelligence agency or cellebrite border checkpoints

OK, but would it be such a bad thing if most people's personal devices were pretty damn resilient to mercenary spyware by default? I really don't think the standards GrapheneOS are aspiring to are the problem with this picture.

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#685

Post by seanw444 »

haskman wrote: post #235

Been running GrapheneOS for a while on a Pixel 9, and extremely happy with it! Apart from the usual perks of the FOSS ecosystem, there are a few things specific to GrapheneOS that are not immediately apparent but have turned out to work very well - 1. The Pixel camera app works, including all modes and settings. A camera that takes good photos was absolutely a requirement for me, and the FOSS camera apps are not quit…

I originally wanted to get the Pixel camera app working when I got started with GOS a few years ago, but then I found Open Camera and haven't looked back. Does it do something cool that Open Camera doesn't?

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#686

Post by strcat »

mitanjan wrote: post #486

Google is so much engrained in our lives that we can't really break free. You can't just don't use youtube and for that you need a google account.These projects are nice and good for tinkering, but can't use this as a dialy driver.

GrapheneOS is very usable as a daily driver. Nearly every Android app can be used on it and there's a huge ecosystem of open source Android apps. You should read the whole linked article which explains in depth how someone new to using it set up their device. They chose a certain way of doing it to balance their priorities. Only a tiny portion of apps can't be used on GrapheneOS which are mostly a subset of around 15% of banking apps which ban using a non-Google-certified OS in a way we can't easily work around. Most banking apps do work and extremely very other apps are unavailable. Google apps and services aren't used by GrapheneOS by default but can be installed as regular sandboxed apps.

You don't need a Google account to use YouTube and can use it via the browser, NewPipe or several other alternatives rather than their app.

The linked article covers someone's first experience with it with a lot of detail. They're using it as their daily driver with mainly open source apps and separate profiles with mainstream apps they still need. They're using those with much better privacy protections including having sandboxed Google Play in those profiles for using mainstream apps rather than regular highly privileged Google Play heavily integrated into the OS and not running with the standard app sandbox or privileges.

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#687

Post by strcat »

cbeach wrote: post #459

The article is a wall of text with not a single screenshot. And I couldn't easily find a link to a page that summarised GrapheneOS with some images so I could see how polished it looked. This is one of the reasons why OSS fails to gain mainstream appeal (as much as I want it to)

GrapheneOS is based on the latest release of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) which is Android 16 QPR2. It looks nearly the same as the stock Pixel OS also based on the same AOSP release. The main UI differences are user-facing portions of the many privacy and security features added by GrapheneOS. There are minor differences such as the stock Pixel OS having a few different fonts than AOSP. The main thing to show would be the UI for features such as Contact Scopes, Storage Scopes, per-app exploit protection controls, etc. It looks like the stock Pixel OS without the Google app/service integration not present in AOSP with added privacy and security controls.

There are many useful videos about GrapheneOS here:

https://www.youtube.com/@sideofburritos/videos

Any of the videos older than December 2025 will be prior to Android 16 QPR2 so the overall UI will be outdated. That's part of why we don't focus on screenshots or videos because many would need to get updated every 4 months. We'd mainly be using them for our own features which often improve more frequently than that.

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#688

Post by MaroonBear »

onli wrote: post #38
ramon156 wrote: post #18

Does anyone have a good grasp of the differences between GOS and /e/OS? I'm buying a Fairphone soon and was wondering what both are like

GrapheneOS claims to be a lot more secure, having additional hardening. See https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm - keep in mind that it is not an independent comparison, the Graphene guys directly feed what this table is supposed to say in the issue tracker, https://github.com/eylenburg/eylenburg.github.io/issues/ . But it gives a good representation of the state of the ROMs according to Graphene. In re…

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Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#689

Post by strcat »

axegon_ wrote: post #78

For some (and other not-so) obvious reasons I switched to Graphene a few weeks ago. For years I've been pushing towards de-cloudifying my digital life and there were several reasons for it: On one hand it was the constant content subscription which gave me 0 guarantees that what I am interested in will still be available the next morning, even though I've paid for it, and the other was, you guessed it, the idiotic LL…

You can use a different keyboard than the default AOSP keyboard with more modern features including but not limited to swipe typing. We plan to replace AOSP keyboard with a fork of a more modern app but there isn't yet one meeting the functionality requirements which is under a license we can use. FlorisBoard is what we have plans to eventually use, although it might not be what we end up using.

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#690

Post by subscribed »

mmooss wrote: post #508
madeforhnyo wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A collegue of mine was tech lead at a large online bank. For the mobile app, the first and foremost threat that security auditors would find was "The app runs on a rooted phone!!!". Security theater at its finest, checkboxes gotta be checked. The irony is that the devs were using rooted phones for QA and debugging.

> the first and foremost threat that security auditors would find was "The app runs on a rooted phone!!!". GrapheneOS is not rooted, or is not required to be.

No it's not, but it's bundled in the same basket. "Didn't pass DEVICE_INTEGRITY -> rooted"
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