Android 15 Private Space and App Communication Scopes

Tedo

Hello,

From what I could gather there’s been some work on App Communication Scope.

I also see that Android 15 will bring a Private Space feature.

Could both be combined in term of UX? Are they related in some way?

other8026

Tedo In the article, they mention an "apk teardown," so it seems this feature is going to rely heavily on an app. If I recall correctly, only privileged/system apps can get permission to access or modify profile-related stuff, so I'm thinking the app won't work on GrapheneOS. However, there might be some changes to AOSP to make it work, so I guess we'll have to see what happens when Android 15 comes out.

W1zardK1ng

Tedo Its not related, the IPC is to control communication between the apps in a profile.

Private space is something like a user profile but inside the owner account. You can install sensitive apps there so that once you lock it no one can see the apps installed in the private space and notifications will not be shown. Probably apps inside the private space can communicate each other.
The same feature is already available in Samsung phones.

DeletedUser40

Private space seems to be creating a nested profile so it's a bit different, I would assume it's similar to work profile but without need for an admin app, naturally with profiles there would be no IPC and there would be the additional option to use a different VPN on it and stop the profile independently

Mintou

What is the progress on app communication scope ? From where did you get the news ?
This IPC scope will be amazing and will be a major feature against telemetry !

Dumdum

Mintou
Soon™

I think that App Comm Scopes is one of the big things they're working on after the Pixel 8a release, but I might be wrong.

fid02

Mintou https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/12565-is-gos-development-slowing-down/7

We were clear that this is an extremely difficult feature to implement and that it would take a long time.

Vagabond8630

App Communication Scopes potentially sounds like it could be the way of app compartmentalization that meets my ideal requirements for a compartmentalization setup (full post link):

Prevent un-trusted apps from having access to my sensitive data (ex: files, contacts) by default
But selectively & manually-enable data flow between trusted apps and proprietary apps when required
Completely shut off the trusted apps when not in use, so that they do not run any background processes when not in use
Seamless installation/maintenance of apps installed in the un-trusted compartment
Efficient use of resources by not needing to keep two instances of GmsCompat running at all times

Curious to see how this gets implemented in Android 15.

Exodus7675

Vagabond8630
I'd be happy if I could have multiple usage profiles without requiring multiple users (Google seems to gently try to separate Users VS Profiles, though personally I revert to Usage Profiles VS User Profiles).

Phone-only usage profile
IM apps usage profile
Snooper/Social apps usage profile