I have not any prior experience with installing custom ROMs, but after trying it out (and getting stuck, and googling and finding answers) I successfully did it. Below is my home screen if anybody is curious:
I use OpenBoard for my keyboard. Unfortunately I am still dependent on Play Store since some of the apps I need can only be found there. Sometimes it feels meaningless committing to this whole thing because I’m not perfectly private; then I think this is better than using a regular iPhone or Android phone.
So far I’m liking it. I am naturally inclined to feel hesitant about using this as my main phone and plugging in a SIM since it’s custom, but I’m slowly making the transition.
Feel free to share any beginners advice or your own experience using GOS for the first time. Cheers!
Sorry for the noob question, but are you able to access your banking apps with GrapheneOS? If so, how?
Most apps should work with no issues. There’s a compatibility list at https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/
For me, going into the app info and enabling “Exploit protection compatibility mode” worked for banking.
I’ve used four different banking apps (admittedly banks which may not operate in your country, but they’re popular enough in my country) on GrapheneOS no problems. I currently don’t have a banking app installed because I don’t need one and it’s probably spyware. I just do my digital banking in my web browser. But if you want to install a banking app, it should work completely fine, save for notifications—a lot of proprietary apps seem to rely on Play services for notifications 🤷♀️
Don’t forget to change your DNS provider to something such as NextDNS for added benefits
Does it have any benefits over just running pihole, other than reliability?
You aren’t always home, therefore when you aren’t home it’s useful.
I have not yet looked into the DNS topic. What are the risks if I use the provider’s default DNS? Or what are the advantages of using a different DNS?
ISP DNS servers often lies, depending on your country, a lot do DNS blocking so it’s a way to evade basic censorship. Also some alternative DNS can lie in useful ways, for adblocking or malware protection. You can also check mullvad DNS.
NextDNS even let’s you customize your DNS filter. You can choose which blocklists you want to use, and you can manually whitelist/blacklist individual domains. It also has other cool features like parental controls and malware protection.
You can still use PiHole as your DNS when not home if you setup a VPN. For me that was the route I went.
or you can allow public authenticated access to dns over https/tls… like just requiring a unique query param would be enough (just don’t expose the raw udp dns server, it’s a really bad idea)
It also works when using cellular data or connecting to a different Wi-Fi network. Your Pi-Hole only works when you’re at home or when you VPN into your home network
Fair. I always assumed I could just point to it while I’m out, but i also haven’t put a lot of thought into it yet lol
You can set up multiple user profile and install the play services in only 1 profile if you want to jeep other profile more private
Check out Heliboard (also on F-Droid) and follow the instructions to enable gesture typing. I also suggest Futo for on-device voice to text.
What specific apps are you using that you can’t deal going away from? Other than some social media or gamr or something. Even then it seems like there are replacements a lot of the time
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I’m curious why no one recommending FlorisBoard.
I’ve been using GraoheneOS as my daily driver for months now. I still have issues with things that need Google Localization (car sharing program in my city for example) and I’ve had a few banking apps complaining when being installed from the Aurora Store.
I miss having my cards on my phone quite a lot.
+1 for this, but i will mention that suggestions/autocorrect is not stable yet if that matters for people.
Suggestions/autocorrect will likely come within the next 2 months when 0.5 releases
It’s also easily customizable and will likely have an in-app layout editor by 0.6
hopefully i can move clipboard buttons too.
Aurora store and F-droid will be your besties, you don’t need play store unless you have purchased something.
You don’t need Play Store if you’ve purchased something. I had to use a paid app for a few years and installed it through Aurora. You can install paid apps on Aurora if you log into the google account you bought it on.
I suggest Droid-ify over the F-Droid store for ease of use, but both work fine
I personally like the F-droid app way better. It is pretty polished and has the benefit of being first party
Last I used it, Aurora store can’t do automatic updates without user attention. Is that still true? If so, it’s adding another massive inconvenience.
Automatic updates were added about six months ago. https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore/-/issues/719
They’ve been working well enough for me.
Well that’s awesome news. I used it a little over a year ago, so I didn’t know they were working on it.
Is it really a massive inconvenience? I would hardly even call it a minor inconvenience. I get a notification maybe twice per week that there are updates pending, and I just accept them in bulk. Your life must be absolutely perfect and ridiculously easy if that simple infrequent action can be classified as a massive inconvenience.
There are much more annoying things when de-googling and using graphene OS than this IMO. This hardly even registers as annoying. Not being able to use my government 2FA app or NFC payments, now that is massive inconvenience.
Okay, smuglord. It’s a massive inconvenience compared to doing literally nothing. And it heavily depends on what apps you use and how often they update.
It’s OK shitbrains, but a small action over nothing does not make a massive inconvenience, at best it makes a minor inconvenience.
To me I love to have control over what I update, I agree with it not being inconvenient. For other it might so it’s not really necessary to be mean about it!
Unfortunately I’m experiencing the same thing :( Not too big of a deal for me to do manual updates once every two weeks or so but still an annoyance
I like neo store
Sometimes it feels meaningless committing to this whole thing because I’m not perfectly private
every small change matters
Exactly. I don’t even think of myself as having escaped surveillance capitalism. I’ve made it less lucrative though. All that data they’re mining? I’ve done a little bit of work to make sure the mines are tapped out. I’m gonna keep working to convince others that there’s value in doing the same. Its all part of telling these greedy shitheads we won’t accept their global destruction anymore
Today I learned that Vanadium has a search widget, so thanks for the post :D
It gets me wondering, I have never use a search bar widget in my life and I find them rather setting in the way… My search bar is just 1 tap away inside Firefox, which is also on the desktop… I’ve not seen many people around me use it
Do people really use it?
Well I used to use it when I was still using normal Android. When I open Vanadium I get greeted with the last page I visited and I get distracted from that, so a search widget helps me.
Makes sense. Whenever I open Firefox, of opens on the (empty) homescreen where I can start typing in the URL bar right away. But everyone has got their own ways!
OpenBoard is no longer maintained. Heliboard is a good alternative.
Openboard updated for me recently. When did they stop maintaining it?
https://github.com/openboard-team/openboard
Last commit is two years ago. I’d recommend checking what you have installed. A quick search on GPlay finds what appears to be a clone that may or may not leak user data.
version 1.4.5
org.dslul.openboard.inputmethod.latin versionCode 19
targetSdk 31 minSdk 19
Installed: May 8, 2024; 3:17 PM Updated: May 8, 2024; 3:17 PM
Is this an AHH SHIT moment or I’m good? Lol
So I don’t want to tell you to panic but I can’t find anything about “dslul” or their version of openboard. The questions I have are as follows:
- How did you acquire this apk? (F-Droid, play store, obtainium, regular download?)
- Do you have hypatia installed? If not, can you install it and run a device scan to see if there’s any known malicious blobs on your device?
- Please take a look at heliboard. I know its weird to tell people they’re safer going with the most popular options, but legitimately we’re a pack animal. We do better when we look out for each other and this may be a case where it’s best to go to the version of this project that has the most eyes on it
So I don’t want to tell you to panic but I can’t find anything about “dslul” or their version of openboard.
It’s the app id from F-droid, so I would assume it is legit: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.dslul.openboard.inputmethod.latin/
I use heliboard now downloaded today and deleted open board. I acquired openboard from Fdroid. Both times. I’ve never heard of hapatia. I will check it out momentarily.
1.4.5 is the latest—and last—OpenBoard version, released 8/8/22 per app on F-Droid.
Did you fresh install it? Your log makes it look like you just installed it.
Yes I forgot I did. My phone bugged out one day about it. I don’t know why. Whats a good FLOSS alternative?
Heliboard is recently restarted sucessor
Futo is another option, I am not sure if it is Foss Lois rossmann backs it though
I am not sure if it is Foss
It is not, just source-available:
https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/latinime/-/blob/master/LICENSE.md
I found a separate profile with google play was too much of a pain in the ass unfortunatly.
Thanks for the heads-up!
As someone who has a profile only for Whatsapp (used to also be Instagram), a profile for banking & finances, a profile for some stuff that needs play services, and a profile for most other stuff (main profile)…don’t use profiles unless you’re only creating one more at the most, and you’re absolutely certain there’s no need to share information between the profiles.
Graphene has had a long-standing bug from upstream AOSP, if I recall correctly, where it’ll always ask for your pin when changing profiles, and only sometimes will it allow you to use your fingerprint or alternative methods to get into your profiles. I almost never get the fingerprint option for my main profile, and have to tap back from the pin input on other profiles to get the option to use fingerprint, and not always. They do sometimes push something that loosely resembles a fix, but it’ll go back to not working after another update.
Regarding communicating between profiles, that’s hard to pull off. The curveball of having to send screenshots from banking apps, say, confirming transactions, it’s made a lot worse with profiles. I’m currently relying on my nextcloud instance to upload screenshots from finances, then downloading those screenshots from nextcloud into my WhatsApp profile, just to send a proof of transfer to someone. I’m definitely not keeping my phone like this for much longer.
All else considered, however, I’m not going back to a ROM that doesn’t respect me as the owner of my device. I’m happy to have switched to graphene and I am here to stay.
Thank you for sharing this. Honestly, right now, I simply don’t feel a need to use profiles for my apps. I understand some people claim I probably should considering I use both FOSS and Google apps, but I’m just getting started with this whole privacy thing and I don’t feel like rushing. Using only one profile probably isn’t the absolute worst thing you could do, eh?
I’m using a work profile for Google Play. It was surprisingly easy to setup and there are few guides around. But basically you install Shelter, then clone Apps to the work profile. Open up Apps on the work profile and install google play services normally.
Unfortunately it is very crippling to completely avoid Google on Android.
Tbh if you don’t do mobile gaming, I think this is entirely doable. I say this as someone who uses Aurora Store for about 3 or 4 odd apps. I could live without them on my phone, but I just choose not to for the convenience of having a mobile client for some proprietary services I use. And I don’t have Google Play services at all.
I use Gboard with network permissions toggled off
I recommend you use GrapheneOS as your daily driver. There’s not really any reason not to. I have been for years and never had trouble.
I’m still waiting on LineageOS being ported on my phone (SM-A536B).
You are welcome to work on it. However, Samsung devices are a absolute pain to work with.
Yes, I know that, and I tried porting it to PostmarketOS, but the build failed miserably.
You need to mainline the kernel for Linux systems. That is a very difficult job
Welcome! My experience has been seamless, I think most of the idiosyncrasies have been covered in other comments already but Ive had zero issues with base functionality “out the box”
You can use the aurora store for most of your play store need’s.
vouch for aurora store being awesome
Should be all, its simply a frontend. I have never seen an app be “missing” so to say.
Some apps are not available in my Google store due to geoblocking. Can aurora circumvent this? Or is it a front end of the “local” google play store?
A reputable VPN can block this. I’m not sure if the store can solely. I don’t believe so. If your blocked for any reason you need a good VPN. ****
You are correct, re-loading the aurora store after shifting my vpn to the target country (and anonymous login) seems to change the aurora storefront too :)
Nah, I prefer F-droid wherever I can. The mentioning when an app has anti-features is so helpful.
But Aurora is a great second option.
Yeah I use play store because I have to have some stuff furnished from play store for work but aurora store is a great way to acquire those apps you do need to get through life but that aren’t open source
I was referring to features, like adding money to your account. Not that they are needed in aurora.
I just keep Play store installed with all permissions disabled, including network, and use Aurora store instead.
What is the main difference between using Play Store and Aurora store (logged in with your Google account)?
Aurora is a foss wrapper with fewer anti-features like ads. You could trust the client more ig if you’re using Aurora. I use F-Droid for most things and then Aurora for like 3 apps I’m not willing to give up and have no foss alternatives. I mostly just use Aurora out of principle for the apps I can’t get from F-Droid, but also I guess out of a lack of trust for Google (which I suppose is related to the principle of not using proprietary software anyway)
Aurora store has a cleaner interface with no ads and can be used without a google account.
I’m more curious about the privacy aspect of using Aurora over Play, especially considering since I will be logged into my G account.
Just dont use your personal g acc (obviously), and its fine.
Excuse my ignorance, but why not use your own G account?
By not using your own g account I meant not using account that is assigned to your identity or account that you use for official things.
Unless you have some purchases on there and you want to use these, but you shouldnt use your own account for that in the first place.
When starting Aurora, you can choose between an anonymous account or your own. You can still use the anonymous option even if you are logged in to other services with google. If you go logged on anyways, I guess Google will not know your every tap with Aurora? I would think logged in, google play store and aurora would be comparable (not private).
Do you know if it’s safe to download banking apps from third party stores (in this case Aurora)?
It does download from google (servers), so it is safe enough
I have heard Aurora is more insecure and you can risk getting your Google account blacklisted or banned using it. Do you have any experience with this or know how common it is?
