GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone without requiring personal information

calvinmorrison

so what is going to happen? Will California issue slave catcher warrants for those who violate laws? will Free Stater sheriffs dispatch citizens on long haul flights to meet their fate in the Golden State?

logdahl

Of course :^) I'm close to jumping ship to GrapheneOS, but as a Swedish resident I really need our digital id services, digital mailbox, and banking apps. I have seen their page on app support, but I am slightly afraid its not up to date / will break any time. I guess the solution is to use one banking android phone and one GrapheneOS for everyday use.

beeburrt

Fuck yeah! I was wondering about this.

glass1122

I hope you are allowed to operate in Canada Freely. If I am right, there is already something called Bill C-22, which is again a censorship and state level surveillance act under the guise of Child protection. Sooner or later Canada introduce this rule too.

Sophira

I have to wonder how this will impact their partnership with Motorola. Presumably, Motorola will have more difficulty if they're found not to be complying with relevant law... I hope GrapheneOS isn't completely banking on their partnership succeeding. If Motorola devices ever became the only devices that GrapheneOS works on, and it's being done with Motorola's blessing, then it could be more easily legislated out of existence.

blacksmith_tb

I appreciate the principled stand, but on the other hand the CA law only requires users to self-identify when setting up accounts (and then the OS will expose age to apps), that seems fairly toothless (though wrongheaded) compared to TX and UT wanting to scan photo IDs[1] 1: https://www.tomshardware.com/software/operating-systems/cali...

gslepak

If you're considering switching to GrapheneOS from iOS, here's a guide: https://blog.okturtles.org/2024/06/the-ultimate-ios-to-graph...

varispeed

If Motorola releases a phone with flagship specs that runs LineageOS, I am buying.

RRRA

Canadians not being able to disable Amber alerts sent at presidential level all the time might also be interested to be able to sleep again...

crimsonnoodle58

Related and also on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47479183

joecool1029

One of the reasons I build my own LineageOS builds is because of terrible one-party consent recording laws (in places like California) there’s no geographic way in Android to check it on a state-by-state way. It just goes off country code and disables it for the US since quite a few states it’s illegal to do. For my state it isn’t illegal so I modified my builds to allow it. There are other things like this too in Android disabled on per-country. Japan has a camera shutter noise that cannot be disabled but this was a request by their carriers, apparently not a law, big discussion under this review: https://review.lineageos.org/c/LineageOS/android_frameworks_...

diowldxiks

I did the switch to graphene on my pixel 9 pro recently and have 0 regrets. it's just a better OS than the google infected android. Here's what I did: * Follow instructions to install graphene on their website: https://grapheneos.org/install/ * Set up a private space which will be used for google play services required apps (bank stuff, etc). Install google play and google play services in the private space. Do not install google play services on your main profile. Set the private space to lock after 5 mins of inactivity. Set up google play on a brand new google account. You'll need to provide a phone number during setup. I used my normal phone number, others who are more concerned about deanonymization could use rental phone numbers or other things. Install any apps into the private space. * Try to install apps on your main profile, ideally open source, privacy respecting stuff. Some recent apps I've found that work great and replace google infested stuff - AntennaPod for podcasts, OrganicMaps for OSM maps, Obsidian for notetaking (google keep), KOReader for ebooks, Molly/Signal for messaging. Vanadium as the default browser works well, except it doesn't have adblock plus for youtube (it does some other ad blocking though and works fine). Things I still don't have a great solution for: * Android auto - I don't think it works from a private space due to auto locking. Still figuring this out * Spotify - since it also needs to run in the background and I haven't found a better music replacement. Overall graphene has been a far better experience and I like it much more, and feel more in control of my hardware.

ChrisArchitect

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47479183

niksmac

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47479183

bivlked

the commitment to not requiring google play services is what makes this different from most privacy ROMs. the real question is whether the app ecosystem holds - banking apps and 2FA are always the pain point that pushes people back to stock android.