As the title says, I want to finally degoogle (completely) my life. I’ve found a Pixel 7 8/128 for ~270€ (or pixel 8? ~470€ but no white :c) it’s refurbished so google doesn’t get a shit from me.
I’m curious to know if:
- You can change the default icons color (black and gray-ish in the image) or is based on the wallpaper
- The camera app is good. Not going to make professional pics or videos but I still want to use it to take pics and a good quality is important. Tried their camera on a phone and the bottom menu to switch mode (picture/video/night mode/etc) was buggy
- Battery life is better/worse than stock Android (if anyone tried that)
- How the sandboxed play services work
- Anything else that I should know about. Some people say it’s good, some it’s bad so I’m curious to know.
I’m still looking for a good maps replacement, Organic Map is not the best because it’s missing a lot of places where I live. I wish there was a google wallet Foss alternative… I needed it to use my card with the phone (rare but still possible!)
Help a new user to fully leave shitty phone companies
Edit: Does it have some kind of cross profile notifications? Can I see notifications of another profile on the main?
GrapheneOS supports forwarding notifications from users running in the background to the currently active user. Forwarding notifications to other users is disabled by default and can be enabled within each user profile where forwarding to the active profile is wanted. Notifications forwarded from other profiles are displayed by default in a standard local notification channel.
It does
You can change the icons with a different launcher. Try Lawnchair.
I think it’s pretty good, although I did install the isolated GCam but I wouldn’t with another chance.
I hear battery is better but I can’t confirm.
I haven’t used the sandboxed services other than the isolated GCam but that worked great.
I’ve used Graphene for years now and I’ve loved it!
No, no, the icons are fine but I want to know if their color is based on wallpaper or it’s black and stop. Sadly, I miss the old Nova paging but they sold the app 🤷♂️ using NeoLauncher now, I tried lawnchair but didn’t use it for some reason (I don’t remember why)
What do you mean? I can try GCam but I was curious above GOSCam
The icons can be set to use material you on the default launcher which should change them to match the colors of your wallpaper. Not sure if the built in graphene apps respect this though
I just meant I hear GOSCam is actually better now than it was when I first got Graphene. So, if I had another chance (realistically I could do it now but I’m lazy to change it) then I would just stick with GOSCam to avoid having any Google software.
-I haven’t found a way to change the default app icons, but it doesn’t bother me that much with all the other apps I end up having.
-the camera app is plenty good for general use. I don’t use it for social media or anything, I use mine for work for taking pics of machinery and I use it to take pics of my kids and stuff and it’s plenty good for that. I can’t say how much tinkering it let’s you do, someone else will have to give more detail
-Battery life is plenty good for me. I have a pixel 6, and I go to bed with it at like 45-60% most days. I’m sure the newer phones are a bit better, but can’t say for sure
-I wish I could give more detail on the sandboxed apps, I use a few apps that use google play services and they work well, bit idk how it works behind the scenes
-honestly it just works like your phones OS should, it’s really quite good
- I also try to use organic maps when I can, but it is still missing things, I use google maps in my browser, but that’s getting worse and worse
I wanted to know if the icons color is based on wallpaper or it’s black and you can’t change it. Not sure if I’ll keep the default launcher anyway
I’m not looking for professional picture quality so if it works good, that’s great!
Still thinking if 7/7 pro or 8 (no white so probably no)
Organic map is a cool project but the fact it misses a lot of places near me is something I don’t like, I need it for work 🥲
Right, for the color, I have a neon background and the icons stay black and white. There’s no option to manually change them as far as I know. I tried changing them before I commented the first time. There might be a way to force it somehow, but that’s outside of my interest level lol
Long press the desktop and go into wallpaper & style, you have options there to change the colors.
By default the icons are black and white, but if you long-press the desktop, there’s a wallpaper & style menu that lets you change the colors to one of several options, including matching your wallpaper or a bunch of pastel color pairs.
Not foss but if you need good maps and a ton of features look into locus maps. I really like it for hiking as you can save offline maps and with brouter you also have offline routing.
Looking to degoogle myself too. For the maps, Here we go is a german brand. I know it’s not foss but being german, they have to follow GDPR which, I guess, is better than google anyways.
I would like to compare it to another non-foss app: Waze
I think it’s better that maps but I don’t know
Google bought Waze 11 years ago, it’s been part of Google Maps for years now
I don’t know if you can change the icon color, I didn’t try. I have a launcher I like so I immediately switched to that and it let’s me use any icons I want.
I have not had any camera issues on mine, 6a
I never used the stock os or sandboxed play services so I can’t help there.
I use Organic Maps and am fine with it, but mostly I use paper maps. My need for live mapping is very limited. You might want to try GMaps WV https://f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.maps/
What it is GMaps WV is a WebView wrapper for using Google Maps without exposing your device. more info, including limitations Here
Overall I am happy with GrapheneOS, no issues.
Try Magic Earth for a maps app.