this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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I just installed it yesterday and it was super easy. So far I'm liking it, and I now have two profiles: Owner (main, no Play services) and work (has Play services for work apps). I'm still moving all my crap over, so I guess we'll see over the next few weeks if I run into issues.
Enjoy your spyware-free degoogled experience! Feel free to dm me if you have any questions. I'd say I'm quite experienced with GrapheneOS, degoogling and Android in general.
Thanks, I might just do that!
I've only had it a day, and I haven't even swapped my SIM yet (waiting for my case to be delivered), so I'll give it a couple weeks to really get a feel for things. I'm going on a road trip soon, and may be going out of the country, so if I'm going to run into issues, it's going to be soon. I'm also going to try using the eSIM to trial Google Fi (international data FTW, free for 7 days), so it should be a rather complete experience.
Google Fi is the one thing I have no experience with, as I'm not American. But all SIMs should work fine on Graphene, and eSIMs are supported through a compatibility layer, which enables Google's proprietary eSIM management tool (this is not the same as Sandboxed Google Play services, and you don't need Google Play for eSIMs). All the eSIMs and physical SIMs I tried work just fine. Google Fi seems to work, according to this thread on the Graphene Forum: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/7950-does-grapheneos-work-with-google-fi/6
Cool.
Since you're here, do you know if SIMs "just work" with different profiles? Can I restrict them to a specific profile? I'm guessing SIMs are a completely separate concept from profiles (which AFAIK just manages apps), but this is my first time with GrapheneOS.
As far as I can see, no. But what benefit would that really have? Network settings (including mobile networks) are global. The only thing that's profile-specific is your VPN setting. You can only disable a profile's ability to use the phone/SMS feature. Profiles generally manage apps, user data and some settings.
The benefit is that I could block apps installed to one profile from using my data (i.e. wifi only), while allow apps on the other to use it. I could install something like NetGuard, but I also use a VPN, and it's one or the other with that IIRC (at least on my old phone, I can only use one VPN at a time).
Ok that actually makes sense. I just realized that the fucking iPhone has this feature, but Android doesn't. GrapheneOS doesn't implement any custom features that aren't privacy/security related. And no, unfortunately you don't get a second VPN slot either.
Maybe I'll try to hack one in, how hard could it be? 😅
Pretty hard. If you don't have prior experience with the AOSP codebase, I'd say it's impossible. But if you want to get started, this is how to build GrapheneOS from source: https://grapheneos.org/build
I meant it more tongue-in-cheek :)
My threat model isn't such that I need it, it's just really annoying. GrapheneOS does allow blocking network per-app, which is a sufficient workaround. It's a bit tedious, but I can do the following:
I really wish there was a way to get VPNs and NetGuard playing nicely together. I want all traffic to be filtered by NetGuard, and then routed over the VPN. This is trivial on Linux, but apparently not so on Android, which is a shame.
There might be an easier way to accomplish this. The RethinkDNS app has a built-in Firewall and WireGuard VPN client. It also allows you to configure per-app Wifi and cellular data separately. The only caveat is that you would need to manually import the WireGuard profiles from your VPN provider.
Thanks, I'll check it out. :) That should do nicely.