I am a long term GrapheneOS user and would like to talk about it. r/privacy on the redditland blocks custom OS discussions which I think is very bad for user privacy, and I hope this post will be useful to anyone who are in the hunt for better privacy.
Nowadays smartphones are a much bigger threats to our privacy and Desktop systems, and unfortunately manufacturers has designed them to be locked down devices with no user freedom. You can’t just “install Linux” on most smartphones and it is horrible. And most preloaded systems spy on us like crazy. That was why I specifically bought a pixel and loaded GOS onto it.
According to https://grapheneos.org/features , they start from base AOSP’s latest version, imptoves upon it’s security and significantly hardens it. There’s hardened_malloc to.prevent against exploitation, disabling lots of debugging features, disabling USB-c data, hardening the Linux kernel and system apps etc. They even block accessing the hardware identifiers of the phone so that apps cannot detect whqt phone you’re using. That means with Tor and zero permissions given, apps are anonymous.
Compatibility with apps are best in Custom ROMs but there are still that can’t work, especially if they enforce device integrity. Very few apps usually enforce that tho. Also their community isn’t the friendliest but you can get help. Just don’t try and engage too much or have too many debates.
Anyone else here use GrapheneOS, or any other privacy ROMs? What is your experience? Do you disagree on any point? Let’s have a discussion!
I post someone’s comment on a controversial topic about google and GOS. I saved it because that’s exactly how I feel.
Step 1 of installing GrapheneOS for de-googling your life: Buy a Google Pixel phone
Look - I know, I know. I get it. Google allows you to unlock the bootloader while maintaining the phone’s unique and excellent hardware security features. The argument makes sense. It is compelling. Other manufacturers do not give you this freedom. I am not arguing about that. I have a Pixel phone running GrapheneOS myself.
However… It is just so very obviously ironic that one needs to trust Google’s hardware and purchase a Google product to de-google their life through GrapheneOS. I think that it is a perfectly valid position for someone to raise their eyebrows, laugh, and remain skeptical of the concept either because they do not want to support Google at all, or because they simply will not trust Google’s hardware.
The reason why I think that this is “controversial” is because I have seen multiple instances of someone pointing out the irony, followed by someone getting defensive about it and making use of the technical security arguments in an attempt to patch up the irony.
GrapheneOS is for not only privacy but also security. Ironic or sad, google chips are safer. https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
This is exactly why I don’t have graphene os, the irony of having to support google is too much for me call me paranoid but i also dont trust them with the hardware piece either lol. I’ve been running lineage os without gapps and its honestly great, updates and patches are every few weeks, super stable and awesome.
I assume you’re using it with bootloader unlocked. The issue is somehow some malware injects your phone and roots it, it can just install itself as a system service and just live there and you’ll never know. The security feature that protects against it is disabled once bootloader is unlocked.
Also I’ve heard that LineageOS has not all security updates present since some firmware updates needs to be provided by the specific manufacturer. For Pixel, Google provides it and GOS uses it.
Yes, a lot of people in this thread should look up the difference between a hardware based secure element and a salted hash.
I don’t have any answer for the point where you would not trust Google even for the hardware (even though I don’t think there is any risk on the current devices)
But concerning the “don’t want to support Google” an easier answer is to buy a second-hand Pixel
The point of not trusting Google hardware is that there is no way to know what hidden function is in there. De-lidding and reversing isn’t practical at current integration density. So, no, I don’t trust the hardware to not contain remoteable backdoors. But it’s a pretty high threat level.
With the lack of any other viable option, I struggle to see the point of the arguement.
Yeah it’s ironic but what is the alternative? At least we CAN remove Google’s known spyware from the device, and there’s no evidence of firmware level spying. If you get Samsung, or some chinese crap, you can’t remove Google period, and you might get spied by the manufacturer as a cherry on top. There is no way to have a perfect solution, well unless Samsung starts to provide Custom ROM support or something.
I’m using a Fairphone with /e/os. No Google at all.
Not hardened though. I was heavily considering fairphone but over the back and forth between them discussing with Graphene developers, their hardware is not secure enough yet for graphene to be made for the fairphones. If and when fairphones are on graphene then I will definitely buy them.
Also, even though I commend their phone, the accessories for earbuds and headphones certainly bring up some questions as to their intentions.
It’s because Graphene is not a custom ROM. /e/os is. Graphene is just an OS on top of the ROM, and Fairphone doesn’t update their ROM often enough.
This is a complete non-issue though if you use a custom ROM like LineagOS or /e/os.
No. The issue is with hardware secure elements in how cryptographically intensive workloads are done
https://www.androidauthority.com/titan-m2-google-3261547/
Unfortunately the fairphone falls quite behind in this and relies on software salt and hash that can be exploited.
Buying a used pixel and installing Graphene OS is absolutely a more secure platform than any AOSP based open source bootloader unlocked ROM.
This was not given as reason by the devs why graphene is not on Fairphone. The delayed security updates were.
It’s a holistic statement that doesn’t factor into this.
I think buying a Pixel phone second hand solves this issue and reduces a little e-waste at the same time.
This. I never buy a Pixel new.
If your objective is to punish Google, or to have nothing to do with Google. I completely agree with you using a pixel phone just doesn’t make any sense. You shouldn’t do it
If your objective is to have the most security possible… Then you should install graphene on a Pixel phone.
I’ve been on GrapheneOS for 4 years or so. I’ve tried CalyxOS every now and then, but always end up coming back to GrapheneOS. I find it simple, private, secure and free of BS. CalyxOS does come with some stuff preinstalled, which doesn’t really appeal to me, and I trust the sandboxes Google Play model much more that MicroG.
About the devs, I really haven’t had any issues that I have not been able to resolve myself, so my interaction with the is non-existing. I have read some posts with interactions with them, and they do seem to be hostile towards anything that is not 100% aligned with their train of thought, which I find stupid, to say the least. But regardless of how rude they may be, I feel GOS literally has no competition in the Android landscape in terms of privacy and security.
I have the pleasure of using GrapheneOS. I can’t imagine using anything else. It was also the first (widely used) custom Android distribution to adopt Android 15. As far as I can tell, almost no others support Android 15 yet.
I’ve been wanting to try it for a while now, but I’m too cheap to buy a phone that can run it.
Pixel 6a with GrapheneOS here. Been using for about a year and a half, and loving it.
I don’t like the fingerpront sensor. Other than that it works great for me.
Exact same setup here! Almost no problems. Also loving it
How do you find it as a daily driver in terms of QoL features such as banking apps and payments etc?
Not a problem. Google Play is still available, with all apps you have today. If you want to run that, then it works allmost like stock but with more control over everything. Only thing missing is Google Pay and I strugle with RCS messages. I never use SMS so I don’t care about that one and it could be just me.
Alternatively you can run Google Play Services in a different, sandboxed profile if you’re going for privacy.
Thanks, that’s useful, I think it’s convinced me to finally switch
I’m pretty sure that every Android Lemmy user has a Custom ROM installed on their device. Currently daily driving GrapheneOS on my Pixel 7 Pro.
I feel called out…
Sending this from Lineage OS 21 ^^
Not me unfortunately … I used to have a Samsung Galaxy S9+ with an unofficial port of LineageOS. Nowadays I’m using a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra with the stock OS.
Maybe a Pixel should be my next phone, so that I get proper support for most custom ROMs.
Ive used it for around a year and a half and never had any issues. My banking app stopped working after about 8 months but I just log in via a browser and it hasn’t effected my life at all.
For anyone considering the move here is a list of bank apps and their current working status as I know that is a big consideration people worry over.
My banking app recently stopped working on graphene too. Mildly annoying.
I personally don’t even find it that annoying as it takes around 30 seconds more to log in via a browser for me and I barely ever use it anyway. I’m more annoyed that my bank has the audacity to think they can dictate what I use on my phone citing “login blocked due to custom ROM” or something similar when I last tried to use the app.
Fuck banks.
The UBL app isn’t listed, hope it’ll work 🙏
You can always give it a run and add a report. Also, if it doesn’t work, give the app devs feedback that it is preventing you from using it. It might not be much but we can at least try to make our voices heard.
Well, I’m saying this because I’m interested in running GrapheneOS on my next phone. (It doesn’t support my current one)
I’ve been using a Fairphone with /e/os. No Google at all. Rooted with Magisk. MicroG to run apps that need Google services. Everything I need works.
Did it come installed or did you need to complete a 27-step process involving cables and obscure commands and fiddly key combinations and the risk of bricking the thing?
Do Google Pixel phones come installed with GrapheneOS? We’re talking about custom setups with more privacy here.
I did have to follow the installation instructions, which included unlocking my bootloader, installing adb on my PC, and entering a few command lines.
There is the possibility to buy it preinstalled though, but from a third-party company.
So the answer to the 27-step question is Yes. Alas. Still nowhere near as easy as installing Linux on an Intel laptop. Which of course is already way too hard for most folks.
Still, well done for doing it.
U: downvoting facts does not make them go away. This was not a personal attack. I want this solution to to be more viable than it is, that is all.
Last 4 or so phones have all been GrapheneOS (I’m not buying new phones all the time to be clear; I use phones till they break; I’m just a long-time user) and yeah I’ve really had no problems to speak of. I currently have a separate profile with Play services for certain apps, and also just to isolate non-privacy-respecting apps that I have to have installed for whatever reason.
Almost all the apps I use are FOSS apps who are aware that a significant amount of their userbase will be using various AOSP forks so I’ve not run into any app compatibility issues. Even back when I used banking apps, I’d used 4 different banks’ apps on GrapheneOS and all of them worked completely fine. Now I don’t have a banking app because I won’t install proprietary software unless I actually have to for some reason, and I can bank on the web just fine.
I am waiting for the LineageOS port for my SM-A536B.
A simple search will tell you a ton of people here use GrapheneOS and other custom ROMs. Are you karma farming?
I would absolutely buy a Pixel, if only they supported sd-cards. I get that Google is pushing cloud-storage. If I smash my phone on the sidewalk, I still want to have a local storage, I can take out and thus make live backups to. There are just some features Pixels lack and privacy shouldn’t lock you out of them.
Not exactly good but the way I do it is to use a USB HDD to have backups and E2EE cloud solutions
You could roll your own cloud storage.
I’ve been using it for just over 2 years now and am very happy with it. I am curious about CalyxOS though. While I don’t think I’d switch I’d be interested in a technical deep dive comparison between the 2.
Do you have difficulties running pokemon go (if you do play it) and/or banking apps?
My three banking apps work fine. Ymmv
Banking apps works for me, they have a list at privsec.dev check that out first.
Banking works fine for me.
None of my banking apps or my government ID 2FA app work in GOS, not even with sandboxed google play services. I had to go back to stock android since these are essential to my everyday life. Huge bummer since I replaced my old broken phone specifically with a pixel for GOS.
