Majorly disruptive SMS problems

secrec

This sounds a lot like a carrier problem. Can you confirm whether or not this problem still occurs if you put your sim card into a different phone?

FetalNevada

I restarted the phone (not for the first time) and now it seems to be working. The only thing I did differently this time was send a text message from my admin profile before switching to my other profiles. Due to the evolving nature of the problem, I am not convinced that was a permanent fix or that I won't see the problem again. I honestly don't know enough about this stuff to rule out carrier problems, but my thinking was that it might have something to do with different security settings on different profiles?

DeletedUser87

FetalNevada it's already pretty well known that sending SMS from user profiles other than "owner" is pretty buggy. Afaik the GOS team is trying to fix that, but you'd need to track down the according Github issues. Sending from owner shouldn't be problematic, so maybe try that as a workaround for now.

MrDavis_Machine

Do you know what happens with incoming text messages when using profiles other than "owner"?

I'm just curious. I'm a new user, I just installed Graphene yesterday. I plan to experiment with the OS on the new phone for a few days before moving the sim card over and using it full time.

I'm considering using a dedicated user profile to run apps that I consider less trustworthy. For the most part, I'd do what I need to do in the alternate profile, then get out quickly. But - if I spend significant time in another profile, will that affect incoming SMS? If I receive an incoming SMS, will it be stored in the message history for the alternate profile, and thus inaccessible from the main profile?

DeletedUser87

MrDavis_Machine incoming SMS should be fine (according to other users, I don't have first hand experience with that since I don't allow SMS in secondary user profiles).

raccoondad

DeletedUser87 You can send and receive SMS messages on secondary users

MrDavis_Machine

DeletedUser87 Thanks for the quick reply.

With your setup, will your phone appear as if it were offline to your carrier if they were trying to deliver an incoming SMS, but were in a different profile?

I'm curious why you disallowed SMS in secondary profiles (but impressed that you can do that). Every decision involves trade offs. My mission at the moment is to understand the trade offs before I start trading them!

raccoondad

This happens to me, Pixel 6a, its so damn annoying.

It only happens with image attachments but its very disruptive. This is a huge issue that popped up from the Android 15 update.

If anyone could help :<

DeletedUser87

raccoondad yeah, but it's buggy as I said. MMS seems to be almost completely broken. This seems to stem from the ancient (and somewhat unsupported) version of the AOSP SMS app.

raccoondad

DeletedUser87 GOS should really make their own hardened SMS app :v

GrapheneOS

DeletedUser87 No, it has nothing to do with the Messaging app.

DeletedUser87

raccoondad this will inevitably happen as there has been almost no updates to the AOSP app. It's not the only app that is causing some head scratches for the GOS team apparently, Gallery is also on the list, Keyboard as well. Maybe a few others I haven't heard about.

DeletedUser87

MrDavis_Machine for the first part, I have no idea. The owner is always active and kind of a "root lite" since some apps expect to run in the owner profile, so SMS always arrive from what I observed. I run on my owner profile mainly (all FOSS apps, nothing proprietary running except GCam and GPhotos without network access) and my secondary user is stuffed with spyware apps I regularly use. I honestly have no idea which benefits it would bring me to run mainly in a separate user profile.

MrDavis_Machine

DeletedUser87 Thanks. The setup which you describe is basically what I'm hoping to achieve.

I was thinking about installing Facebook in a separate profile. I rarely use this other than for marketplace, to buy and sell items. I normally just avoid this on my phone altogether - I have a dedicated PC for insecure apps, on a separate network. I have a bunch of items to sell at the moment, so the ability to be responsive while on the road would be helpful.

I'm also thinking about installing Google Maps in a different profile. It just occurred to me today that if I were using that to navigate for a long drive, and then my SMS messages were blocked for a few hours, that would be a problem. As the long as the messages are received and stored, no problem - I'm not going to respond while driving anyway.

Did you disallow SMS in your secondary profile in order to prevent accidental SMS use from the wrong profile?

GrapheneOS

DeletedUser87 Regular apps in the Owner user do not have any additional privileges or access compared to apps elsewhere. That's only something relevant to OS components like the Settings app.

DeletedUser87

MrDavis_Machine since I only have invasive apps in my non-owner profiles, I like to keep these apps separate from all important data. I have spread my stuff around a secondary user, a work profile and private space. This has the great benefit of not only separation; but I can also put these to sleep whenever I want. So basically:

often used apps (Google Maps, Apple Music, banking) are in the work profile which also has Play Services running.
not as often used apps but those that require some convenience are in private space (my carrier apps, speedtest, etc.), but Private Space has no Play Services at all.
secondary user: not so often used apps that don't require convenience. Mostly for managing smart home stuff and shopping apps. Play Services installed for compatibility but all permissions denied.

Make of that what you will, but it suits my needs very well. Most of the time, I have only a small subset of invasive apps running, which is perfect for my threat model.

GrapheneOS

SMS/MMS do not work properly in secondary profiles on Android. Our latest release should fix all of the known issues. It already had a lot of issues prior to Android 15 but Android 15 included security patches and other changes which uncovered more latent issues than before.

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/17094-grapheneos-version-2024110400-released

DeletedUser87

GrapheneOS okay, maybe I was under a false impression. How does the Stock Pixel OS handle that? Or is it the same mess for them too with user profiles?

Regarding the "root lite" I'm talking about: I don't mean extra permissions, more like that there's a high chance that there won't be random bugs with things like Android Auto or SMS or setting special permissions for apps in the owner profile as it happens in Private Space or user profiles.

PaulDavis

As another idea.
When sending your message did it say "RCS" or "SMS"?
If sending by RCS and the receiver does not have a data connection, it will not send. RCS is live messaging. If sent as an SMS then the service will hold the message and keep transmitting as soon as the receiver is on the network. It will still be marked as sent, even if they don't receive it for 4 hours. A good example is midnight on New Years Eve

FetalNevada

Sorry I forgot to come back with an update. The problem did come back, fairly quickly, but the 2004110400 update to GrapheneOS seems to have fixed it. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Thanks for all the help!