I recently acquired a pixel phone and set up gos. Prior to trying gos I was using an iPhone hardened as much as possible based off of recommendations and guides from respected OSINT experts.
It’s only been a week but I’ve found gos extremely frustrating and mostly useless except for web browsing.
I can’t seem to get my Yubikey to work so my 2FA is borked. Works fine on my iPhone.
I’ve previously managed to degoogle my life but now certain apps require me to use sandboxed google apps just to run.
I’m facing the nearly insurmountable task of convincing my friends, family, and colleagues to download and use signal when they are all using encrypted iMessage.
Most of my banking apps just simply do not work. Mobile banking is unfortunately something important that I need in my occupation. A part of the appeal of gos was being able to have an isolated dedicated profile for banking.
There’s also a few features that I’m assuming are iPhone exclusive that it really sucks to have without. Double tapping the bottom of the screen to shift everything down so you can reach the top of the screen with your finger when using one hand. Holding down on the space bar to move the text cursor between characters. Maybe these exist on gos though?
I understand most of the issues lay on the shoulders of the app developers. I’m grateful for the devs for creating and working on this project. I’m not bashing anyone here. I’m simply asking for some guidance on how I can break through the hurdles and make this work for me, from the mouth of those who were once in my position.
Sounds to me like you want an iPhone… There’s nothing wrong with that as long as you know what you’re getting into which it sounds like you do…
A project like GOS will never have that level of polish and it seems like that’s what you’re looking for…
I really like mostly everything about GrapheneOS on paper. The UI, user profiles, security features. It’s the inability to use it in a practical setting that’s frustrating me. Yet I see many people claiming they switched to GrapheneOS a month or a year ago and love it. So there’s got to be a solution. I can’t imagine those individuals installed gos and it was smooth sailing since day 1.
The people who love GOS have different expectations than you. I, for example, come from a series of shitty modern dumb-phones, so being able to use a modern smartphone with all of its benefits without Google weighing me down is incredible.
I would probably also not like it if I was in the apple ecosystem. I would have higher expectations and it would be a downgrade in that sense.
As somebody who has used graphene for a long time, it certainly comes with sacrifices compared to stock android or iOS just by the nature of being a non-stock OS due to Google’s integrity stuff. The biggest thing I miss from my iPhone is putting my cards into my phone’s wallet and using tap to pay. Graphene can do concert tickets, boarding passes etc but not full GPay functionality. However that’s my biggest gripe. I still use iMessage for group chats that I’ve had for years where people won’t migrate; I host a BlueBubbles server at home and it forwards it all to my pixel. Never had a yubikey so I can’t speak to that issue unfortunately. I wish you the best of luck in finding workarounds or converting back, whatever is best for you. Remember that privacy is about balance; clarify your threat model and your social needs and work to find an appropriate compromise
I eventually managed to get the yubikey to work, although it is very buggy and the steps to get it working are unacceptable IMO for the “most secure phone OS”. Hardware keys should be a major priority and should simply work just as easily as using passwords, but it seems to be a stale open feature request for a few years. Luckily for me, once bitwarden is authenticated with 2fa I don’t need my hardware key unless I reinstall it. So that’s one major hurdle behind me. Another plus is that while you need sandboxed google services to utilize hardware key auth, they don’t need network permissions to work.
Hello! I’m sorry to hear you are experiencing issues switching to GrapheneOS. I understand that can be frustrating, especially with how much of a privacy boost it is compared to iOS. I have used iOS my entire life, so I know it inside and out. When I heard about GrapheneOS over a year ago, I decided that I also wanted to switch. I spent multiple months learning everything I could about GrapheneOS and Android, just to give myself an idea of if I might like it. I even bought a $30 test Android phone to get familiarity with Android.
The thing is, I never expected it to be a one-to-one with iOS, and I expected issues to happen. I learned about potential issues and looked for solutions or forums where I can ask about such problems. I also spent that time (very) slowly convincing my friends to use Signal, but some still use iMessage. It’s not an easy switch from iOS! With that said, I have a few things that may help you.
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Don’t worry! Switching from iOS to any Android is difficult, and will take more than a week. You have to have the mindset of really making it work and making sacrifices. The thing is, even if it doesn’t work, its ok to switch to iOS. Make a threat model. If iOS is what you’re comfortable with, that’s ok! We don’t all have to use GrapheneOS
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Prepare Make a list of apps you will use once you switch, test out apps on an Android emulator or test phone, and see what works best for you. Not everything has to be open source, and some stuff will require Google. Tinker around and make a map of how you will set things up (apps, profiles, etc.) If you find that there are things you just can’t live without, you can either switch back to iOS or have iOS as a secondary phone for those apps.
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Security keys If your security keys are causing you problems, consider one that acts over USB-C. If that still doesn’t work, ask the GrapheneOS community for help at https://discuss.grapheneos.org/ You can still use iOS as a secondary device for logging into the services that you use security keys for.
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Degoogling Because GrapheneOS has such great sandboxing, using sandboxed Google Play is generally safe. It’s still degoogled, but you ensure that any compatibility is met by isolating Google related things. You can even put those apps on a separate profile for further isolation. I know, it’s uncomfortable to know something Google related is running in the background, but unfortunately that’s the state of things. Some other custom ROMs have their own implementation of Google Play (See here)
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Contacting others I wasn’t able to switch everybody to Signal, and for the ones I couldn’t switch you can use a burner phone, MySudo, iOS as a second device, or https://jmp.chat/ to message them. In iOS 18, iPhones will also support RCS, meaning you can contact them with Android without using SMS. Again, this sucks, but you should take care of your own privacy and let them have their own journey.
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Banking apps Banking apps have been a common issue on GrapheneOS. Without specifics, I can’t comment, but I suggest reaching out to their forum at https://discuss.grapheneos.org/ for help. If that doesn’t work, use iOS as a second device for banking.
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iOS-specific features Android is not a one-to-one comparison to iOS, but what it makes up for is that any features you want can be quickly added by anyone. However, because the aim of GrapheneOS is a little different, it might be a while before user experience features are added. As for the keyboard, you can replace the default keyboard with ones that suit your needs. HeliBoard is a good one, although I don’t know if it has the specific feature you described. These features may be a sacrifice you have to take, unfortunately.
Again, if GrapheneOS simply doesn’t work out for you you can always switch back to iOS. Good luck!
Most helpful comment. Thank you. I’m heavily considering carrying two phones. My biggest hurdle is the Yubikey at this point because it locks me out of my password manager and most of my more important apps.
You mention using the usb-c connection. I tried that but it doesn’t seem to register. I guess I just need to research some more.
Thanks for giving me some hope!
@brownmustardminion @Charger8232 I understand two phones one for work, one for personal, for example. But carrying two phones somehow for privacy doesn’t make sense to me, they can easily be correlated as they appear together in multiple same locations carried around together so why go to the additional work of GOS and another phone?
Just for the sake of getting used to / transitioning to a single gos phone, does it make sense to use the insecure phone as a hotspot and utilize the pixel without a sim (so data only device). I would be using e2e encrypted apps for texts and calls so this makes sense in my head.
Just keep using your iproducts I guess. However, Apple isn’t private and they do not respect your freedom.
what’s interesting about android is that you can tweak the device to your needs. You’re not limited to the only solution your os designers/developers invented.
don’t like the keyboard? install another one. You need a particular gesture or button? install it, modify it. change the launcher. change your app store
it’s your first week and you’re searching for all these solutions at the same time and it’s probably frustrating. Give it some time and you would find them.
convincing friends and family to use signal is a challenge even for android users. (majority uses WhatsApp :/
I’m ngl this is surprising to me, as GOS has always just worked out of the box the way I wanted it to for me.
But:
I’m facing the nearly insurmountable task of convincing my friends, family, and colleagues to download and use signal when they are all using encrypted iMessage.
Anyone who uses Android will experience this. I’ve never owned an iOS device in my life and I’ve always used SMS and Signal to talk to people. Have occasionally downloaded WhatsApp when a group of people insists on using it and I need to communicate with those people, but usually WhatsApp is uninstalled when I don’t need it. I think most Android users just use WhatsApp though.
Most of my banking apps just simply do not work.
Even with sandboxed Google Play? Again, surprising to me tbh. All the banking apps I’ve used in the past have worked fine on GOS without any Google Play services, though I don’t have any mobile banking apps installed atm. I second the other commenter who suggested switching banks if that’s possible for you.
There’s also a few features that I’m assuming are iPhone exclusive that it really sucks to have without. Double tapping the bottom of the screen to shift everything down so you can reach the top of the screen with your finger when using one hand. Holding down on the space bar to move the text cursor between characters. Maybe these exist on gos though?
I’m sure you’re not the only person who’s switched from iOS to an Android-based system and misses these features. A custom launcher might have the former feature, and there must be an Android keyboard that offers the latter. Maybe ask around on more mainstream Android forums, as they’ll probably have the most people switching from iOS to Android.
No clue about Yubikey, sorry. Never used it.
If you want to use an iPhone, you can. You don’t have to use GOS. I understand if you’ve invested heavily in the Apple ecosystem, it’s just inconvenient to stop using it all of a sudden. Ironically I sort of experienced something similar in reverse when I tried to daily drive Windows for a brief time because of gaming, and I found it so frustrating to not have access to a lot of the programs I used on Linux, and how things worked so differently (and in ways I thought were much worse) on Windows. Not quite the same since there’s definitely no such thing as a “Linux ecosystem” in the same sense as an “Apple ecosystem” (good! I don’t want to log into my online Linux account to boot my kernel…), but big changes to your tech workflow will be frustrating as you build up a new system that works the way you like from the ground up. I don’t think using GOS as a daily driver is a necessity for everyone. I would like to promote people using degoogled, FOSS, privacy-respecting OSes both mobile and desktop, but ultimately, you are an autonomous human being and can use iPhones if you prefer to do so and are fully aware of the privacy issues.
