I was the one that submitted the DNB Bedrift app report to the sec dev repo! I contacted DNB but they never responded to my email. I wonder if we can find a dev? I believe that's how the private app got fixed.

Want to use Vipps tæpp so much but I have Nordea for private and they don't allow it on their cards, for whatever godforsaken reason.

Hard to say how it fares against those specific attacks but some of the vulnerabilities that will go out in the mid-2026 on the mainstream handsets are already patched: https://grapheneos.org/releases#2026021200

(it's not magic. All big vendors have these details, just choose to take their sweet time to patch them. GOS has partnered with a major OEM vendor who provides them with access)

Other than the specific patches above, there's a list of generic GOS features: https://grapheneos.org/features#exploit-protection

All in all you're probably much safer.

Thanks for the Norwegian perspective.

I agree that the locking down is truly stupid. For what it’s worth, the reasoning for locking down mobile apps is allegedly that mobile users are a less technologically competent demographic than desktop users. I do not think so myself, given the difficulty in trying Graphene vs. Desktop Linux.

GrapheneOS themselves dont pretend that their secure from that level of attack, but its about evaluating your own threat level. State sponsered actors aren't burning zero days on the vast majority of people, and you only need to look at how badly several european governments want to ban graphene and similar to see that such exploits aren't even being burned on organised crime. Realistically unless you're a journalist or considered a political target you're gonna be fine with graphene.

GrapheneOS have hardened_malloc which is a huge advantage, I think. It makes the weird machines problem much harder. I would say be very careful, because you can still get previews of images, or old and weird media formats that could be exploitable, and android/GrapheneOS doesn't have the same sorts of policy as say Apple with the iMessage blast door. They control safari, etc.

Android's attack surface seems pretty jagged. For example there is only one webrender engine on iOS, where you can run anything you like on Android/GrapheneOS.

That's clearly a Uber problem. I'm also a GrapheneOS and used Uber once -- it worked.

It's quite secure against casual attacks, but a proprietary mobile platform has inherent issues wrt. withstanding even mildly sophisticated attackers, including mercenary spyware services. You still have a huge attack surface from all sorts of proprietary firmware blobs and hardware IP blocks that are running directly on the SoC. It's not clear that it's really worth even trying to secure it as opposed to just treating it like an untrusted toy.

Maybe not being able to use Uber isn't the downside you think it is though. UK centric view but call a cab and pay in cash, you haven't comprimised your security and you're not engaging with an unethical business.

Uber works in browser on mobile (and desktop). Last I checked lift did not.

> when I look at one for more than 30mn

That limitation might be doing you a favor, as these things go...

Even if Pixels hadn't PWM a larger screen (or, dare I say, a book) will be an improvement for longer reading sessions.

The Pixel limitations has been my main concern as well.

The good news is that they are actively working on developing their own hardware. The bad news is that it’s been delayed. But I’m watching closely.

https://www.galaxus.at/en/page/grapheneos-postpones-pixel-al...

The whole reason why GrapheneOS is superior to its alternative is because they do all that.

I also with they could support non-Google phones, but that's a problem coming from the manufacturers, not from GrapheneOS.

My understanding is that there are close to half a million GrapheneOS users. And many potential users don't want to buy a Google phone. So it feels like it is starting to become worth considering for manufacturers...

I don't get why Fairphone doesn't look into that. Is it because they are not aware, or is it too hard for them to make hardware that is compliant with what GrapheneOS requires? Hundreds of thousands of devices may not count so much for Samsung, but they must definitely count for Fairphone.

That and blocking the query all apps feature on android

"Banking Applications Compatibility with GrapheneOS" https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

Of course that is highly depdendet on the bank used, but so far none of my banking apps didn't work!

If you are using a rather popular banking app, chances are high that it has been discussed in the GrapheneOS forum.

Anyway, with google play services installed, mine have worked out of the box.

Yup, also Google Pay doesn't work, though there are other providers which work fine (Curve Pay I think works in all of EU), but it just made me carry my wallet everywhere and I understood I don't mind that at all.

Does anyone know if HSBC's UK app works on it? I've seen inconsistent reports that it does and doesn't.

Edit: ignore this - there's a list elsewhere in this thread!

While I respect the Linux on Mobile work, I believe that AOSP is a lot better, with a much better security model.

Remember that GrapheneOS is not Android: it's an AOSP-based OS.

I have been using /e/OS for 5 years, and also GOS. My take is:

- If your phone is supported by GOS, you should go for GOS.

- If your phone is not supported by GOS, you should look carefully and compare between /e/OS and Stock Android.

I had a Fairphone 3, and after 5 years, /e/OS was outdated by 4 years w.r.t. the manufacturer updates. In other words, Stock Android coming from Fairphone was more secure than /e/OS on that Fairphone.

In my experience, /e/OS has a tendency to claim that they support everything, but they just can't, there is too much. And then they complain when GrapheneOS criticises the fact that some /e/OS users believe their phone is well supported but actually isn't. And GrapheneOS is not wrong: I realised I was in that case after 4 years with /e/OS.

Read this:

https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

In short, GrapheneOS is vastly superior.

GrapheneOS is not Android. It's AOSP-based.

This might be one of those things were if there is big enough user base, companies will start to take it seriously.

Well i do use banking and netflix on graphene os on my pixel 8a and everything works perfectly

I only use Firefox. It has been years since I ran into a chrome only website. Though recently I ran into an edge only websit on my corporate network, not even sure how that happens.

Netflix and almost all banking apps work fine.

https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...

https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

All Swedish banking apps I've tried works great. Including BankID, swish, Sparbanken, Nordea, LF, Revolut and more.

I've had less issues than with CalyxOS for example, where more apps broke.

I'm happy with grapheneOS as a daily driver. Can you elaborate on being banned from paypal so I don't do the same ?

I am really hoping that other phone manufacturers will eventually realise that and start making phones that can be supported by GOS.

I mean you're not degoogling yourself if you put all your transactions through a google server. Cash if possible, card if not.

(Also it is possible to do these things if you root your phone, but caries its own risks and I wouldn't recommend. Ending your dependency on third party processors is probably the best outcome)

I'm not sure I fully understand this.

Why are GrapheneOS releases dependant on Google releases?

When there isn't a perfect solution, the next best thing is... the next best thing :-).

I contacted my bank, insisting that GrapheneOS is one of the most secure OS on the market and therefore should be supported if they actually care about users' security (it's actually far more secure than all the old, far less secure but Google-approved devices out there). They acknowledged an fixed their app, one of the most popular in France.

Still missing Android Pay but that's due to Android Pay being closed. I wish banks would do something and support NFC payment systems that don't require the device to be controlled by Google (how can we be okay with this?!)

What about the small matter of having to purchase a Google phone in the first place?

Author is installing Google Play Services it seems, wouldn't that work around this?

In any case, for me this also sort of defeats the purpose: I'd rather break free from Google and Apple, not just (stock) Android and iOS.

Android is a Linux OS and is eons ahead anything that would sit on top of "GNU/Linux" userspace.

Why start from scratch?

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 regular use, main difference will be that /e/OS comes with access to the alternative cloud service that project provides. It uses the default FOSS solution microG for google api compatibility, unlike GrapheneOS with their sandbox approach. /e/OS sets on AppLounge to install and upgrade both play store or F-Droid apps. Graphene has a small curated app repo instead.

I'd never use GrapheneOS since I don't trust the project. /e/OS is also not my favorite since it feels like it is developing slowly, having had issues with outdated software versions - though it does work well in practice. Have a look at iode for an alternative.

Consider this (by Graphene OS): https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand...

/e/OS community talking about it: https://community.e.foundation/t/article-from-grapheneos-abo...

And then maybe this: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

Hope that helps.

GOS creates a complete bunker of a phone that can provide defense against pretty much all but the most dedicated state level actors. If you're worried that someone would steal your phone specifically to target you, Graphene will protect against that. Securitywise it's hard to argue against them, although GOS tends to sacrifice usability in favor of security, which leads to odd decisions. Their device depreciation timeline is also pretty aggressive and really just matches that of the Pixel. (You're also buying the Google phone... to not want Google in your life; this bizarre paradox will always be strange). It's not exactly a recommendation for long-term support. Worth noting however is that usage of GOS is also seen as a signal in and of itself for the authorities that you may have something unsavory to hide, so using it stands out in that regard; some law enforcement officers (I think it was in Spain?) have said that the OS is popular with organized crime. GOS obviously denies the connection and they're probably honest in that the OS isn't deliberately designed for criminals, but it's worth noting at the very least. (Basically GOS is the paradox where someone trying their hardest to be anonymous ends up standing out way too much from the crowd and drawing attention to themselves.)

/e/OS (and similar "non-LineageOS" ROMs really) instead focus more on de-Googling. They're still generally security focused, but the priority is less "someone's after you" and more "corporate surveillance is kinda scary innit". The aim is less to avoid someone actively trying to drain your phone of data and more to prevent your phone from passively sending everything it can possibly find to the Big G's ad machine (as well as whatever other trackers get snuck into apps.) Because of this, they usually have better depreciation timelines and support a lot more devices compared to GOS who only support the Pixel line (which is an increasingly awful set of phones truth be told); their scope is much smaller.

Finally, 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. It's extremely maximalist, tends to get very upset at other projects whenever they get attention (see sibling reply to this, where they pretty much melted down because an outlet dared to recommend a Fair phone+/e/OS) and the projects official channels have generally encouraged this sort of behavior. It doesn't really damage the software itself, but it's worth considering.

It should probably be "break free from Google and Apple"?

They are the only Android phones that have the proper security primitives to build a secure OS on top.

I'm a new GrapheneOS user and stopped using Uber as altogether. Taxis aren't that bad where I'm at, and cheaper than Uber

I regularly use Uber on Graphene OS and have had no issues.

>there was one case that lead me to thinking about ditching grapheneos to this day

Your aim is misplaced: ditch Uber, not GrapheneOS.

No problem here with Uber on GrapheneOS.

They are dependent on the AOSP releases (which Google develops) and on the manufacturer updates (and because GrapheneOS runs on Pixels, then it goes back to Google again).

I’m interested which french bank is this?

No, because most banking apps call upon the Google Play Integrity API, which GrapheneOS doesn't (or can't?) use. There's a decent list kicking around of which ones work (Monzo, for instance).

https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

> GrapheneOS claims to be a lot more secure

That's not just a claim, this is an objective fact. GrapheneOS has a excellent track record when it comes to security, they have made several patches that got upstreamed to Android, etc.

You are right! I will change the title :)

> this also sort of defeats the purpose

Not really. On GrapheneOS, the Play Services/Play Store run as sandboxed apps, i.e. they are not system apps like on Android. They just run like a normal, unprivileged app. That's a lot better than on Android.

> I'd rather break free from Google and Apple, not just (stock) Android and iOS

If you want to break free, you don't have to install the Play Services / Play Store on GrapheneOS, just like you don't have to install microG on LineageOS. There is a misconception that microG is better than sandboxed Play, but I disagree. With microG, your apps still connect to the Google servers, so you're not "breaking free".

I see it as a necessity, because the Google phone is the only one worth it if you care about security.

The problem is not GrapheneOS, but rather that phone manufacturers other than Google don't care. Now if there were millions of GrapheneOS users, it would start becoming interesting for other phone manufacturers to care.

My point being that I buy Pixel in order to give more weight to GrapheneOS, in the hope that other manufacturers will eventually realise that.

As long as it is based on AOSP, it is at the mercy of Google to release source code and updates. Given recent trends, I wouldn't be surprised if Google stops shipping Android source completely.

Also, they are working on bringing a non-Pixel alternative to market.

https://www.androidauthority.com/graphene-os-major-android-o...

What exactly is the risk of getting temporarily banned on Uber? You have to use a different taxi app? As if such a thing even exists?!? Unacceptable!!

Every app on my phone has at least one other app, usually already installed, that can replace it. This wasn't intentional, it just happened naturally. Unless all two or three apps in a category get blocked for me at the same time, this already unlikely situation is barely an inconvenience.

Unless the next best thing makes you think you are already achieving the "perfect solution" for what you think you care about, but in truth does not.

I'm not a mobile phone security expert but my feeling is that in the case of GrapheneOS - which target is probably high-profile people at risk of state actors et similia attacks - a zero-day in the closed source firmware from Qualcomm will probably screw you anyway.

I understand that you are anyway reducing the attack surface (now they need to target the modem firmware specifically), I understand the concept of security in depth and I also understand that by using GrapheneOS you are already placing mitigations for many other known and unknown attack vectors. But still...

> I wish banks would do something and support NFC payment systems that don't require the device to be controlled by Google

There are countries where it's possible to pay everywhere with the banking app scanning a QR code. No need for NFC :-).

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 blunt about "inferior" projects communicating about security.

Not that they couldn't improve their communication style, but usually when they call out technical limitations of other projects (e.g. /e/OS), they are right. And I mean the technical arguments. Then I have seen a bunch of drama, but to be fair I have seen those other communities show toxic behaviour towards GOS just as much as the opposite.

It feels like it is GOS vs "the others", because the others don't criticise each other, and GOS bluntly criticises when they see claims they find are wrong (I have seen claims by /e/OS going from misleading to downright wrong).

On my particular phone, after 5 years with /e/OS, the Fairphone updates were outdated by 4 years. In terms of security I would have been better with the Stock Android. It depends on the phone of course, because /e/OS tends to claim that they support everything and they just can't. Even on a phone that /e/OS supports well, GrapheneOS is superior, period.

But I agree, I could do without all the drama. I guess my point is that it goes both ways.

Yeah, just need to decide where to start the fork. The larger problem is radio firmware. FCC regs were the initial excuse, for wifi and Bluetooth too, but we need to open up the source for all of these and allocate money for enforcement if we are truly worried people are going to start adding wifi channels etc. Open firmware phone radios would let you do things like truly turning off the radio when wifi was present, no gps ping even.

> I'd never use GrapheneOS since I don't trust the project

Fair enough, you choose what you trust.

But personally, I have never seen a technical claim from GrapheneOS that was wrong or misleading. But I have seen many claims from /e/OS that were technically wrong or misleading. So I trust GrapheneOS more.

Then there is the drama, and all sides annoy me when they behave like this. But I have seen drama coming from all sides.

I like GrapheneOS but they fail to understand in this post that the #1 security concern an android user face is the lack of privacy.

Sure they have hardened everything but realistically, that's not the main threat for your average user.

Their top contribution to android is the sandboxed Google Play, by far.

The key phrase there is "such services". It's not just about one problem once with Uber, it's the risk of problems like this with any service of that kind, or really any service you rely on.

If using GrapheneOS significantly increases the risk a person won't be able to use a service they rely on, that may be unacceptable.

So no, their target is people who marginally care about privacy and security but don't want to use iOS. I don't think they target any particular demographic but I see security engineers and activists among users.

And it's not only security - simple stuff like USB data off unless the phone is unlocked, native call recording, much enhanced user profiles (to separate data mining apps like Uber or Instagram from your financial affairs), etc.

And yes, it's about reducing the attack vector. On most other handsets you'll get most of the fixes 6 months or a year later. At best.

If the same thing happens with the Lyft app, you may be stuck at your current location indefinitely, especially in less populated areas/late hours.

I think the appeal and use case for Graphene and similar OS for most users is the Google/privacy/ownership type argument.

I do understand your point that people at risk of state level attacks might get a false surface level appearance of defence from this. But then anyone who's a target of state level attacks and is making OS decisions based on a surface level understanding of the tech is not going to have a good time anyway.

fyi a Cell Site Simulator can masquerade as the legitimate telco operator and push type 0 messages to the handset.

What that means is they can push malicious settings and configurations (Definitely) and probably malicious firmware to the handset at will. They don't need to code this, they buy the software packages from the usual suspects. Adversary simply needs to put a drt box or a hailstorm or what-not close enough to the handset to do the work.

The baseband can do a lot, it has dma (if I recall correctly) and can almost certainly screen look, and extract information from some but not all base bands. This varies.

GrapheneOS cannot really influence this, but hardened_malloc could conceivably help. What would be great is a bench firmware re-flash, but I don't want to do this every single day.

/e/OS/ was bad with updates for a long time (I had to switch 2022). IodéOS is very good at it, in my experience (I have used all three)

I use qr based payments regularly where I live, and in my home country I use nfc payments (watch/phone/card) essentially always, when we visit.

NFC is by far more convenient and reliable.

Like others have said, you can use Youtube without Google account. Moreover, you can give Google the middle finger by using uBlock Origin or viewing though a third party client like VacuumTube. Also don't forget the shorts filter recently featured on HN to remove those annoying portrait format videos.

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.

Why do I need a Google account for Youtube? It seems I can watch nearly any video I want without logging in. Moreover there are anonymity proxies like Invidious.

As someone who doesn't have a Google account, I can use YouTube just fine on my GrapheneOS phone using apps like NewPipe.

> /e/OS/ was bad with updates for a long time (I had to switch 2022).

In my case, it was a few months ago, so end of 2025.

I think it's just that they can't possibly support thousands of Android devices. I just don't like that they are not being very clear about it. You would think that buying a phone through Murena would guarantee some kind of support, but it actually doesn't.

I can't say about "convenient" because I don't use it, but I have been using QR codes for years and I haven't had a single issue. I don't know anyone who has.

QR codes are reliable.

The good news being that the work made by Linux on Mobile projects regarding the radio firmware benefits AOSP projects, and inversely, right?

I think it's more of a marketing claim from less secure systems that "privacy is not security, and GrapheneOS focuses on security while we focus on privacy".

GrapheneOS does care about both, quite obviously. And GrapheneOS tends to say that if your security is bad, then it is affecting your privacy too. Whereas others say "sure, we break the Android security model by unlocking the bootloader and signing our system with the Google test keys, but your apps will contact Google through microG instead of the Play Services, so it's more private". Which is worth what it is worth...

I have never seen drama from /e/ or any other project GrapheneOS attacks, like Calyx. Please link me to it - I asked this several times, people never can follow up. So far?

You can have a second or third VPN active if you use a work profile and private space

Note to self: look for second hand unlocked Pixel 10 pro!

> Being able to install browser extensions in Vanadium.

You can use IronFox - available in Accrescent store that comes with GrapheneOS, and install firefox extensions

> 3. Android Auto works!

Does this require installing google play and other google services to work?

Edit: https://grapheneos.org/usage#android-auto

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?

I've wanted to try this on my old Pixel 5, but it has the dreaded screen/motherboard failure. It appears there is no solution for that short of replacing the screen/mobo, which i've already done once after cracking it.

> "Break free from Google" and buy a Pixel phone from them to do so.

Pretty much yeah.

Also, the surveillance tech is getting ahead of the people now, this article might make sense back in 2015, it’s not the case anymore, even if you use a full linux distribution, hardened too, but connected to the cellular network through a modem, the operator can pinpoint your location accurately, because all new cell modems are equipped with gnss and send the NMEA message either in demand or periodically to the towers.. not to mention if your software is open source and secure, your hardware isn’t, and until we reach that point, I would prefer to have a gray man model and blend in within the crowd rather than standing out like a sore thumb.

I've found using separate accounts for Non-Play (default) and Play (exception/escape hatch) to be a very happy medium.

This has been my experience with Windows too. Airpods connect out of the box on Linux, but on Windows they would stop pairing every couple minutes until I fixed some drivers

Alternatively, consider PineTime, which even offers a choice of the OS it runs: https://pine64.org/documentation/PineTime/

> GrapheneOS is based on Android, which is solely developed by Google.

GrapheneOS is based on the Android Open Source Project. It's incorrect to say it's solely developed by Google and it's open source software which we're free to change as we see fit.

> GrapheneOS only supports Google Pixel devices. Thankfully, they are working on partnering with a different manufacturer, but details are still very limited.

No, we already have a partnership with a major Android OEM. It's not something we're working on obtaining and we've provided a fair bit of details including that it will be publicly announced by the OEM in March, that the devices will launch in 2027 and that they'll use a high end Snapdragon SoC which is either the flagship (most likely) or one step below it.

> They recommend using the Google Play Store

No, that's not our recommendation.

> recommend against using F-Droid

We recommend against F-Droid due to it being an unnecessary middleman between users and app developers which does not truly reduce trust the app developers. F-Droid apps are consistently out-of-date and often lag months being on important privacy and security fixes. F-Droid consistently makes problematic undocumented changes to apps including rolling back dependency updates. F-Droid is known to use highly outdated build infrastructure which is very poorly secured. They have a bunch of bad security practices throughout their approach and have made it clear it isn't a priority for them. They've repeatedly said they don't believe app sandboxing is useful and much more than that. Many open source apps including Signal and WireGuard have asked to have their apps omitted from F-Droid due to the security and trustworthiness issues with the project. That's not at all something specific to GrapheneOS.

> Their Vanadium web browser is based on Chromium, which is controlled by Google.

Chromium is an open source project which is collaboratively worked on by multiple projects using it as the basis for their browsers. That includes Microsoft who implemented the WebAssembly interpreter available in the upstream Chromium codebase which is used by Vanadium but is dead code in Chrome and regular Chromium builds since it was added for Edge.

> It also does not have an ad blocker

No, that's not true. Vanadium has a default enabled ad blocker which uses EasyList, EasyPrivacy, EasyList's Adblock Warning Removal List and also selectively activates a whole bunch of EasyList affiliated language/regional lists based on the currently active languages. This approach avoids adblocking being used for fingerprinting, avoids greatly weakening site isolation sandboxing as extensions do and is much higher performance which is important on mobile. It very clearly has ad blocking and a per-site toggle for it.

> or support extensions

Extensions greatly weaken site isolation and give third party code without verified boot extensive access to website content similar to dangerous Android accessibility service apps. Very few extensions are focused on privacy and security in a similar way to GrapheneOS and would compromise what we're trying to build. It's not the approach we want to use in Vanadium. If you want to use extensions then you can use a browser with them but it doesn't fit into what we're building with Vanadium where we want to implement features ourselves in a very private, secure and robust way which cannot be done with extensions. Extensions fundamentally reduce security including because they used a shared process across all isolated websites which inherently reduces isolation. Few extensions take this seriously, even the ones focused on privacy. They commonly add leaks between sites. There are plenty of other browsers available but ours is aiming for a standard of privacy and security which cannot be achieved with extensions.

> They recommend against using Firefox.

Firefox's Android app has atrocious privacy and security. A browser without even basic content sandboxing let alone sandboxing with full site isolation. That's combined with major other major security deficiencies and it isn't something we could recommend using. Recommending against it doesn't mean people can't use it...

You'll still be using Vanadium as the web content engine within apps using the WebView such as email clients rendering HTML email and many more. Many people have a misunderstanding of what the WebView is and confuse it with custom tabs which are provided by the user's selected default browser rather than the WebView used within other apps.

> This is not a criticism of the GrapheneOS project or developers.

How isn't it criticism of GrapheneOS? Regardless, Vanadium does have an adblocker and we don't specifically recommend the Play Store as you said. The biggest issue is that what you're saying about what we prioritize, advise or provide isn't accurate.

> I understand that security is the biggest priority of GrapheneOS

Privacy is the biggest priority of GrapheneOS and privacy depends on security. GrapheneOS is a privacy project.

> It is more directed towards the GrapheneOS community that often blindly recommends GrapheneOS as the only option and treats any alternative as inferior and not to be considered.

Our project and community regularly recommends iOS as an alternative which provides far better privacy and security than non-GrapheneOS options. Most other options have very poor privacy/security including lacking even basic privacy/security patches and protections. Similarly, our project and community regularly recommends using macOS for better privacy and security than either Windows or desktop Linux. What you're saying are blind recommendations are anything but that but rather very well informed information provided by the GrapheneOS project.

> Most users do not need security at all costs.

GrapheneOS is not about security at all costs and this misconception which regularly comes up that it's about security rather than privacy is completely wrong. Many projects failing to provide decent privacy treat it as if privacy is solely about which apps/services are bundled rather than needing to provide privacy patches, privacy protections and solid security to protect that from being bypassed. Much of what GrapheneOS provides are privacy features such as Contact Scopes, Storage Scopes and the Sensors/Network toggles along with much more. The security protections it provides exist to protect privacy. Why else would the security protections be there other than to protect privacy? It's not a separate thing from privacy but rather is a huge part of providing it. There's no other reason for us to work on security than protecting privacy. It doesn't make sense to say we work on security instead of privacy.

Most users do need basic privacy/security updates and protections. Failing to keep up with basic updates and misleading users about it is a severe issue. There isn't any major non-GrapheneOS AOSP-based OS that's doing the bare minimum of keeping up with updates.

> Especially among the free and open source enthusiast community, freedom and user control are often prioritized. There should be more awareness and discussion about what the user wants and whether that actually aligns with the security-first goals of GrapheneOS.

You aren't accurately representing what GrapheneOS provides, our approach or our priorities. People can see for themselves from the detailed article that it provides a highly usable and compatible system with a huge amount of user choice. People can choose from a wide range of approaches based on their privacy and security goals. It doesn't impose choices on people. You treat it as if people are forced to use Vanadium when it's another choice of browser which people have on GrapheneOS but not elsewhere. GrapheneOS users have more choice among browsers and the one we have DOES provide ad blocking contrary to what you said. GrapheneOS users can use F-Droid despite us recommending against it due to the major security deficiencies. Providing well informed recommendations with detailed explanations does not in any way hinder user choice but rather informs people so they can make better choices. Our recommendations not aligning with your personal beliefs or preferences doesn't mean we're somehow reducing user choice.

They are working with a partner to create their own hardware to run GrapheneOS on.

Your "perfect" is a massive enemy of the "good" that is GrapheneOS compared to using stock Android.

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

> Also, RCS works very inconsistently (been without it for months), seems to be Google's fault.

The best thing would be to switch to Signal (Molly) for texting.

Are you in the US? I get the impression that iMessage and RCS are only big there. Almost nobody uses them here in Europe. (It's mostly WhatsApp where I live and Signal is slowly getting more popular.)

As an aside, from the latest release notes: Sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer: add toggle for granting Play services access to ICC auth in order to support RCS with carriers requiring it for RCS in Google Messages including T-Mobile (see RCS usage guide)

https://grapheneos.org/releases#2026021200

https://grapheneos.org/usage#rcs

The RCS issue is why I switched back to iPhone, reluctantly.

If anything, iOS seems buggier and less reliable, but I know (and am related to) a lot of people who insist on using iMessage/RCS, and I can't be missing messages.

There's a huge open source app ecosystem for Android and it has the best support of any major platform for well integrated web applications. There are a bunch of alternatives for getting apps including getting them directly from the developers which has been automated without needing an app store. The linked post talks about using Obtainium for getting apps more directly from developers when possible.

privacy != security.

And sandboxed Google Play services serve both goals -- it runs the service as a regular android service, not an exceptional one that has a bunch of extra permissions. So you can allow/restrict it as you seem fit, while not "getting behind" on features/apps that mandate it.

You can use labels for contact scope.

wish my yubikey would work with bitwarden

8. External storage works. This is the only mobile OS I've found that has stable support for an External SSD.

I bought a second hand Pixel 7 to test this and an exFat SanDisk Extreme Portable 2TB works with reads/writes perfectly.

>4. Android QuickShare works!

Does that require being logged into a Google account? How to ensure Google knows nothing about your shares?

I have Graphene w/ Google Play Services (required for my job) and would love a easy way to share files/info with various devices (incl. iOS/macOS which I remember should work with QuickShare in the future) but will avoid a service that shares data with Google.

A quick question from potential buyer of next generation of pixel phones, since samsung keeps disappointing hard with their top line - is there any difference in quality between default photo app and what graphene os bundles with?

Pixel are supposed to be very good in photography, part hardware and part software, and my concern would be degradation of that software part. With small kids, there is nothing more important on phone for me than photos/video quality these days (apart from never going into apple ecosystem, I am just incompatible with that company' philosophy).

Or its just about slapping some commercial photo app (like I heard from other photographers is often done on apple to get most out of it, but forgot the name of the app) and not caring about this?

Pixels are really great despite being from Google. I hope they will continue to make them unlockable/relockable. As you say they are also surprisingly hard to brick. Here is someone trying to break it intentionally during the GrapheneOS install:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik0AiO0WtuU

If you don't like giving money to Google, plenty of companies offer refurbished Pixel phones.

I have a Pixel 6a with GrapheneOS. Runs great for years, except for one or two apps that require an "official" Android.

Anyway, I now need to get the battery replaced, because apparently they are dangerous and Google pays for the replacement. Unfortunately, the replacement process requires the stock android to be installed. Meaning, I would need to backup the whole phone, reinstall stock android, then restore everything - and hope the whole ordeal works out.

Graphene is supposedly working with a major OEM manufacturer to have future device support independent of google, on a flagship device. It's been in the works for awhile but it's very exciting.

https://www.androidauthority.com/graphene-os-major-android-o...

Garmin watches seem quite open even without that. I have all my data syncing to influxdb every 15min for a Grafana dashboard and it works great.

In background I also have Withings scale sync the measurements a couple of times a day to Garmin.

I tried GadgetBridge because it cannot sync the activity files (.fit and/or .gpx) so I still had to plug the watch into a computer to keep the actual data.

So I ended installing ActivityLog2[0] to do something with the files I had to have on desktop and GadgetBridge was of little use because relying on GadgetBridge without actually syncing the files might make me forget about doing the backup to a device I control (GrapheneOS or a computer).

As soon as GadgetBridge support syncing the files from the watch to the app (or any local folder on Android), I'll install it again and stop doing the manual backups over USB. Syncthing will do it automatically.

[0] https://github.com/alex-hhh/ActivityLog2

I didn't need anything more on my to-do list, but this is intriguing.

> And once you are on GrapheneOS, break free from your proprietary watch ecosystem and switch to GadgetBridge

Then switch back to Google/Apple after half a year when you discover that you can’t run

- your banking app - any government app - the app required to access large sports events - the pandemic tracking app without which you can’t enter an airport - various other random apps

because they ALL detect that you’re running on a phone with an unlocked bootloader and will flat out refuse to start. And for many of those, there is no legal alternative.

(The extent of this varies depending on where you live, of course.)

> It also does not have an ad blocker

It does have a network-level ad blocker. What it doesn't have is a blocker which modifies/injects Javascript into pages, which iiuc is the main reason that the blocker doesn't help with ads on YouTube much, or pages which employ similar techniques.

> They recommend against using Firefox.

To clarify: they recommend against Firefox Mobile because it didn't support site isolation until last month's v147 updates. I don't know if the goalpost has moved since, but in any case: there's nothing on Graphene that would prevent you from using Firefox.

Was WebOS really that much about openness? Are you not thinking of FirefoxOS/B2G?

They are working with a partner to provide their own hardware to run GrapheneOS on. Maybe they will have more than one model.

Definitely one of the best features to have this in the native UI, though it's also possible in other ways

If anyone wants this without GrapheneOS: https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.ukanth.ufirewall

If anyone wants this without GrapheneOS and without root: https://f-droid.org/packages/net.kollnig.missioncontrol.fdro...

> I had a Pixel 6a with Graphene OS for a year before the phone started to glitch and eventually die. It ran pretty hot; sometimes it was hard to even hold the phone in my hands without burning myself.

This sounds like your phone may have been one of the Pixel 6a models with a defective battery[1]. It was a major problem for which Google pushed out an update that nerfed the battery life. There is a tool online where you can check if your particular 6a was one with a battery from the bad production batch[2].

But that unfortunately doesn't help if you are in Brazil where, as you say, Pixels aren't officially sold and import/export controls tend to make tech warranties useless in practice.

[1] https://www.lifewire.com/pixel-6a-battery-overheating-warnin...

[2] https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/16340779?hl=en

The article directly answers your questions, specifically in the “what is GrapheneOS?” section.

For the end user, breaking free from Google means exiting from Google’s services surveillance system wherever possible. It doesn’t mean complete elimination of the use of source code written by Google employees.

GrapheneOS is really the most private option of all viable daily drivable smartphone operating systems available, because your only other options generally involve Apple and Google services dependency.

You can use GrapheneOS and never send any user information to Google, that’s how you “break free.”

If something truly unacceptable happens, you still have a while to switch to something else, in the meantime you will still have a working system.

~6 months here. In my case, it became almost a full daily driver ( putting corporate spyware on it would kinda defeat the purpose ). It is by no means perfect, but I can recommend it ( and I could not do the same with other phones that should have been better on paper -- linux phones like pinephone or purism ).

Same. Not only has using it been no trouble, but having a barebones core app selection, a few picks from F-Droid, and using the browser for the rest makes my phone feel refreshingly under my control. It lasts for 3-4 days of low usage to boot, when nothing is phoning home constantly.

It looks about the same as stock android.

You could buy a used Pixel. Also, they are working with a partner to create their own phone hardware.

This statement implies ignorance to the reasons the project selected Pixel devices.

No, that's a misconception. GrapheneOS has only ever supported devices where the cellular radio is isolated from the OS and unprivileged. It does not have access to memory it hasn't been permitted to access by GrapheneOS. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, UWB, etc. are isolated components too. Our hardware requirements are listed in our FAQ and require proper isolation for radios:

https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

8th, 9th and 10th gen Pixels provide our full set of requirements with 7 years of support from launch. 6th and 7th gen Pixels are missing the ARMv9 security features including the extremely important hardware memory tagging (MTE) feature we heavily use to protect against exploitation. Even the first devices we supported back in 2014 including the Nexus 5 had isolation for the cellular radio but similar isolation for Wi-Fi/Bluetooth started with the Nexus 5X.

They are working on getting their own hardware.

What binary format?? Go read facebook's "source code", is that any more open than a random apk? If anything, apks decompile quite well.

Yeah Pixels are poor quality. Mine developed the common pink vertical line display issue after 18 months

The flag ship should not be more than $500

That's pretty unavoidable at that level unless you are able and willing to build your own phone hardware, OS, and all the apps you need.

It is just Android. If you're familiar with the usual Material styling of Android, you're familiar with what Graphene looks like.

Where is it? I had a really hard time finding the irony.

I disagree, privacy is an essential part of security, if there's no privacy, then there's no security.

That's also why I don't keep anything important on my phone as I don't trust what's going on there despite having all the secure features that you would want.

My Yubikey works with bitwarden on GrapheneOS using NFC.

Very good to know!

> This is the only mobile OS I've found that has stable support for an External SSD.

My Librem 5 running PureOS also supports external storage just fine.

If photos are important for you GCam is a must, you can download it

That makes no sense. If there is a recall program for safety, surely they have to accept whatever software is on there? It's not relevant to the hardware repair

Under settings->automations->auto export, you have "Auto export zip" where you can specify export interval. The zip file includes all the data (personally, I only see .fit files) from your app. For sync, you might have to use something like syncthing.

Probably the reason why Garmin watches are well supported by GadgetBridge

> - the pandemic tracking app without which you can’t enter an airport

Not sure if airports specifically used another mechanism, but the Android contact tracing APIs were actually reimplemented in microG, allowing these apps to work even on custom roms.

Your other examples don't hold universally either (banking apps are compatible with un-rooted custom ROMs more often than not, and not sure how many sports event apps use integrity checks), but your general point stands that it may come with trade-offs.

Setting up GadgetBridge is very easy since it's just an android app. No flashing firmware etc. However, not all gadgets are equally supported, and you should check the support status of your device - https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/ (I bought my watch only after checking that page for compatibility).

How do you sync the data out of Garmin? Something like https://github.com/matin/garth, or syncing directly from the watch?

No banking app on phone because why; no government app because oh fuck why, whats wrong with your government (at least in primary phone and I never needed secondary); app for sport events - thats just me but I prefer doing sports rather than passively watch them, so 0 loss; pandemic what? its 2026 and I never saw such requirement in Europe, Africa nor Asia; no other app requires that.

Thats not coming from some paranoid security person, just regular (software dev) joe.

Most banking apps work perfectly, most government apps work perfectly, etc. It is only an exceptionally small subset of apps using anticompetitive measures such as play integrity.

Also, do not leave your bootloader unlocked. That is an incomplete GOS install and you will need to lock it to secure your device. Not locking it is both insecure and will make a much higher number of apps fail.

Other way around, actually. It's possible to make concessions to privacy, like providing crash reports, or running applications in sandboxes which limits what they can harvest, while keeping the platform secure.

Any privacy you have on a system is reliant on no one tampering with that system and on software behaving itself. Without security, you can't trust the system to implement any privacy.

You might want to read my comment again. :) If you use labels, the app will have full access to the associated contacts, not just to their names & phone numbers.

Unfortunately yes, and I am signed into my Google account for it.

Yes, it's a huge difference. However, you can install the very latest Google Camera app through the Aurora app (or Play Market), and it works perfectly except you don't get photo preview within that app; to fix that minor issue, you can install the Gphotoshim which someone else mentioned in the comments.

On the other hand, if you switch to the latest Google camera app, you will not really be participating in making the open source version better.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

In the US, many refurbished Pixel phones are Verizon variants which disallow OEM unlocking.

When was in college and had Sprint this was a nightmare since then I wanted root for unlimited hotspot (Sprint made it easy that way), but most refurbished Pixels were Verizon variants.

And I couldn't just use OnePlus because they were only designed GSM networks or later Verizon CDMA-less. Then, new Pixels were unaffordable for me, but parents insisted on using Sprint.

I ended up getting a Pixel 3 off Mercari (which I still own) just to keep root.

Now, I can afford a Pixel 10 Pro new (which I am right now), alongside spare Pixel 9 and OnePlus 13R units. But even then (a) my income is lower than when I worked at Microsoft and (b) The OnePlus was from a trade-in deal.

I hope it's Fairphone.

You can lock the bootloader again with GrapheneOS and many banking apps work.

Firefox 147 doesn't provide site sandboxing or even basic content sandboxing on Android. They enabled multi-process support by default but still don't provide any form of sandbox for the separate processes. They enabled the separation part of site isolation which is partially implemented for Firefox desktop and now mobile but do not have content sandboxing and partial site sandboxing as they do for the desktop browser. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1565196 for their still open issue with many other issues as dependencies for sandboxing.

The complete lack of content and site sandboxing on Firefox for Android is only one of the reasons we recommend against it. It has major security deficiencies beyond this and cannot benefit from many of the hardware and OS protections due to it. Vanadium is much more secure than standard Chromium while Firefox is much less secure than it, so there's quite a stark difference between them.

Recommending against using Firefox and F-Droid due to major security deficiencies doesn't in any way reduce user choice as the post above portrays it. Having a lot of accurate information provided by GrapheneOS enables our users to make more well informed decisions. We also do not specifically recommend the Play Store as the post says above but rather we provide nuanced information about the available choices. Specifically for obtaining apps from the Play Store which aren't available directly from the developers, we recommend using the sandboxed Play Store for users who using sandboxed Google Play in a profile for app compatibility already. Play Store itself has signature verification while Aurora Store only has TLS with a smaller set of trusted CAs by default similar to many Google apps. Aurora Store is sometimes needed to work around app's filtering who can install it so we do recommend it for that specific purpose. Aurora Store still logs into a Play Store account and making a throwaway account to use the Play Store app doesn't reduce privacy compared to using sandboxed Google Play without one.

If they'd put a screenshot, that would then have been immediately clear to casual visitors.

My initial assumption was "this is gonna look like a typical OSS product, and not as polished as iOS or Android". A single screenshot would have dispelled that notion.

> The flag ship should not be more than $500

Which is (almost) the case during sales. The P10 was on sale for $599 not long ago, and you could buy a 9a for little more than $300. That is extremely good value compared to any iThing repoted your every move to Apple.

So long as browsers allow you to open the developer tools and inspect memory etc., they're more open than remote attestation of a stock android or ios device

Decompiling apps only works if you can get the app. I don't understand GP's problem with the apk format either, but you do need to break terms of service to get the files if you don't have a phone with Google services installed. Whether that's ethical or legal is up for debate

They are working with a partner to create their one phone hardware.

YMMV. I run sandboxed Google Play Services on GrapheneOS so almost every app works. My digital payments app works, and the same with most government apps I have tried. My private bank's app doesn't work, but I just use their website for the handful of times a year I need to access it.

I also disagree with that, I trust my Linux distribution to behave well much more than I trust any Android platform and it doesn't even have much app sandboxing at all.

You can't fix a lack of trust like you have in Android with technical solutions. The flaw in Android is fundamentally a social problem.

If they switch mostly for privacy reason, then starting using Gemini might be counter productive as Google might learn far more about the end-user than if they just did some basic search on any other Android devices. To enable Gemini, one was to accept some crazy T&C and accept that Google collects an incredible amount of personal data.

I prefer to use intermediaries like Kagi Assistant, thanks to the strict privacy conditions of the API and the mixing of queries from thousands of users.

That reads more as sports team flag wavey thoughts and feelings trust than anything actually backed by objective data.

That's the difference between trusted computing (Linux distribution) and untrusted computing (Android).

If you want something backed by objective data, my phone has an advertising ID built in the OS and my laptop doesn't. My phone had 100s of privacy scandals and my laptop doesn't have one.

It's not just sports team, different philosophies create different results and computing goes beyond just the code.

So it's not about labels, but you want the ability to restrict the fields an app has access to rather than an all or nothing – full access to a contact or none at all?

That's a hard pass.

Oh man, sorry to hear that! On the other side of the pond, carrier-specific/locked phones haven't been a thing for ages. Haven't seen a carrier-specific phone since 2013 or 2014.

I'm annoyed at everyone who shares my name, phone number and any other details with Meta. I never consented to it. The behavior of their app slurping up your contacts database is despicable.

This doesn't answer your question, but in case it helps for others out there: it's possible to use WhatsApp with no access whatsoever to your contacts and I used it that way for years. Connecting with people is slightly jankier but it still works.

The tea leaves are indicating Motorola.

Duckduckgo's only hit for "Gphotoshim" is your comment. Any hint at what to look for?

Is it not possible to buy a phone in the US without any cellular providers involved? I thought that kind of lock-in was a thing of the past.

Its not.

I mean... yes? But I really don't think there is any 'irony' here. The author clearly stated:

> It’s thanks to them that we even have the option of at least partially freeing ourselves from Google (Android) and Apple (iOS)

partially. And I do think they successfully did this. Asking Gemini questions when you really have something to ask is very different from integrating your whole digital life with Google.

You won't pass Google Play hardware attestation that way, and you won't find a bank in Europe or the UK that doesn't require that to log on to their website within five years.

Does NFC work with those digital payment apps on Graphene?

You pass basic, but not device or strong integrity. This is purely googles fault and is an artificial limitation that requires regulatory restrictions.

It is possible, but many people still buy them from their provider with financing or subsidies. That means people shopping for used Pixels who want to unlock the bootloader need to avoid the special Verizon variant which forbids unlocking the bootloader.

This is separate from SIM locking, which forbids use with another carrier. US carriers still do that, but are required to remove the lock after a while if the customer doesn't owe them money.

It's not clear why Verizon insists on permanently locked bootloaders or why Google agrees to it for Verizon when they don't do it on Pixels sold anywhere else.

My bank works fine after relocking (in NL, Europe). And last time I checked all Dutch banks work. My VISA credit card app (from ICS) also works. Same for the government identification app, the government message app, our insurance app. In fact, I haven't encountered anything outside of Google Pay that didn't work.

(I don't deny that there are apps that won't work. Best to check before switching full-time.)

In India we use QR codes for payments. NFC in general does work (for example, I use a yubikey for 2FA).

Thank you! Double s in the middle was the fix I see :)

Yep. I lost a restocking fee when I bought a used "unlocked" Pixel. Turned out it was not SIM locked, but it was impossible to unlock the bootloader. It was pretty easy to find a bootloader-unlockable Pixel once I knew what to look out for, but the first time I had no idea this was something you had to look out for.