876 words
April 6, 2024
5 minutes read
My 1 year experience of using GrapheneOS
PS : I first made this script in the hope of making a video out of it to attract the interest of more peoples into phone privacy and GrapheneOS. However, due to a lack of time and motivation I don’t think I will be making this video anytime soon so I decided to publish it here.
What is graphene OS ?
Graphene OS is a fork of AOSP (android) focused on privacy and security. It was originally started by Daniel Micay in 2014 and is now being developed by the community and thanks do donations.
Why did I install Graphene OS ?
I have been in the cybersecurity field for a long time and this is what made me realize how important Privacy and Security really are. I would consider myself a quite paranoid individual and this is why, when I needed to change my phone, I decided to buy a Pixel 6 and use Graphene OS.
Installing Graphene OS
The biggest caveat with graphene OS is that it can only be installed on pixel phones due to the security requirements and OEM unlocking needs of Graphene OS being only accessible on the Pixel devices. Also, as Graphene OS devs follows google security updates preferably a modern pixel (they still do updates for older phones for now).
However, when you do have your pixel phone in your possession it is really easy to install graphene OS. Just go to their web installer, click on the buttons you are asked to click and you should be set in under half an hour.
Post-install + Software
Now that you have installed graphene OS you will be granted with a surprisingly clean and unblotted home page by modern standards. It can even be a little bit disruptive at first.
That’s why we will be installing some essentials right away. However, I first have to explain how Google Play Services works in Graphene OS. Graphene OS trait google apps as normal apps so you can manage the permissions and uninstall Google Play Services, Google Store, etc and they not installed by default.
Without Google Play Services, you might not receive notifications, be able to install the Play Store, etc. However, most of the problems can be addressed utilizing certain apps.
After every installation of graphene OS my essential apps are :
- Aurora store to use the app store without any google account.
- Fdroid to download Open Source apps that for the majority do not need google play services for notifications
- Proton suite to replace email, calendar, drive and photos backup apps.
- Signal + Threema to replace SMS
- Read You for rss feeds
- Obsidian for note taking
- Syncthing to backup files to my server
Positives
We talked briefly about what benefits could graphene OS offer but I wanted to give some of the ones I prefer that might speak more to you.
First and foremost, Graphene OS goes a long way to reduce the attack surface of your mobile device with features such as improved sandobxing, storage scopes, PIN scrambling, …
Secondly, GrapheneOS also permit much more privacy by removing all of google services and applications by default. It also permit to manage app permissions much more in depth with the Network and individual Storage Scopes permissions for example.
As a consequence of removing all of this bloat, Graphene OS appears quite boring and empty to the user which is quite refreshing to see on a smartphone nowadays.
It can also be installed really easelly via a web browser without even using adb or any other tool and if you ever have a problem or encounter a bug you can count on the GrapheneOS community to help you.
To see a detailed list of all of the features of GrapheneOS you can go on the GrapheneOS website to the features page.
Negatives
But to be fair, Graphene OS also has some negatives. The first one being that it needs to be installed on a Pixel device which limits your choice of phone however the pixel is a really capable device that excluding the more premium phones is often seen as the best android phone for it’s price to performance ratio.
The second thing that might be a problem for some is the lack of SafetyNet support. This means that google pay and some banking apps will not work on Graphene OS. I do not use google pay and never had any issues with the banking apps I use.
Keeping a backup of your phone can also be a difficult task on Graphene OS. I save most of the data I need (photos and documents) on Proton Drive so this is fine for me. However; I still need to connect my phone to my computer to do a Backup every few months.
Using Graphene OS you also lack most of the features of a Pixel device running on a stock OS like all of the new Ai stuff. I see this as a positive.
To end with the negatives there is also some small bugs from time to time but Graphene OS developers are usually fast at fixing these so you shouldn’t run into many of them and if you do, it shouldn’t be critical ones.
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