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!
Been using it for about five years now. I absolutely love it. But I will say some of these comments make it sound like it’s a little easier than it is. I’d say about 80% of your knowledge from Android will transfer over and just work. But the last 20% is a bit of a learning curve, and will take at least a few weeks to get the hang of.
What I recommended to some of my friends that switched is to get the phone and mess around with it for a few weeks before you switch your sim. Then you’ll get the hang of things like alternative app stores and sandboxed play services, and you’ll figure out what you can and can’t do.
I will say the vast majority of things do work easily because of protection compatibility mode and sandboxed play services. But there will be some things that are just more hassle then they’re worth. I find keeping a second device, like a tablet, without a custom ROM makes that stuff easier.
And there are some things that seem impossible to get working properly, at least for me. For example, casting to a TV is basically impossible from what I can tell. Also, tap to pay, even for things like tickets doesn’t work (although if you have play services, you can use Google wallet for things with barcodes).
Overall, it’s totally worth trying out. Just don’t set your expectations too high. You’re not getting a completely “just works” experience.
As for other custom ROMs, I’ve tried CalyxOS and LineageOS for MicroG. I didn’t find either of them quite as good, but that was many years ago. Maybe they’ve gotten better.