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  • Migration to Graphene - Four Week Review & Observations

I'm coming from a Galaxy S22 Ultra and as much as I love the features, the arrival of AI in the S25 Ultra and seemingly every other Android and iOS device is imminent. Enough already, right? It's something I want to avoid. I purchased a Pixel 8 and installed Graphene, which thanks to many videos went rather smoothly. Not looking to be Jason Bourne here, just de-cluttering and resetting.

As we all know, the challenging part is the apps, and on the plus side I'm realizing I had way too many (300+) on my phone gathering dust and who knows what security threats over the years. I will pare that down, keeping only what I can't live without. During this switchover process I have the S22 Ultra with the same T mobile sim and a new sim from the same provider in the Pixel, gradually installing apps to the new phone one at a time and running them side by side where possible.

For apps unavailable in the native app store, Obtanium or Accrescent, I created an alias account for the Google play store after learning about the threats from using shared anonymous stores like Aurora. I do nothing else with this account.

Here's a few impressions and frustrations so far:

The ability to create multiple profiles is fantastic. I made one especially for Amazon and Audible (yes, I know there are alternatives; maybe later). Amazon apps are some of the nosiest busybodies on the platform and talk to everything, according to many other posters. I also made a separate profile just for Google Maps, though I have not used it and found a couple of other options that may suffice.

I set up a separate profile for anything financial. Banking and payment apps open but I have not logged into any yet. One step at a time. I also have separate "Daily Driver" profile for apps, calls and everything else except Google maps and Android products.

Orbot tends to disconnect randomly. This one could be a deal breaker if I don't figure it out. For some reason every now and then I pick up the phone and see that Orbot is disconnected, and I need to manually reset it. I need to watch this more closely but wondered if anybody else had this problem. Can't rely on a phone that just goes off duty when it wants to.

Still seeking Airtag-like product that works with Graphene I used Samsung tags before and those don't work on non-Samsung products or anything running Graphene. I also have a Tile tag app which some people were able to get working but lately it sounds like Tile no longer works with Graphene. I downloaded the app, and I get a message when it opens it says "Tile won't run without Google Play services which are not supported by your device." Okay, I have it installed; tried flipping the compatibility switch both ways and still the Tile app does not work. Frustrating.

Nest app does not load. I get "Nest app had trouble communicating, please try again." FYI, I do not have the Nest account connected to Google, not required (yet...). Would be a nice to have, but I can live without this if need be. Ditto for Fitbit, another Google takeover which will probably force Google integration one day but does not right now.

ADT security app works just fine, which is important to me when away.

ProCam X Lite is a nice alternative to the native camera app. Even so, I think the pictures on the S22 Ultra are a bit better, but this could be just me not tweaking things the way that they can be with ProCam X. Paid version is probably an improvement. Still testing.

FUTO keyboard is great! Wish I found this sooner as I was getting very frustrated with all the others I tried on my S22. I put it on my old phone to use during the transition.

Undecided about cloud storage options. I like OneDrive as it uploads my photos when connected to wifi. It comes with a windows subscription I need to use for my laptop anyway. I also use Dropbox on the laptop. I considered switching from Onedrive to Proton Drive but by the reviews this seems like overkill. Slow speeds just to get harder encryption I don't think I need will frustrate photo uploads. Onedrive and Dropbox installed seamlessly on the phone, but I have not logged into either app yet. Unsure of risk/benefit; still researching.

Switching from Google Calendar to Proton calendar was a snap. I am using Proton calendar on my laptop as well as the graphene phone now and I should have made this switch much earlier - probably the easiest Google product to ditch. There may be some hiccups with things like web sites that send calendar items to a select few options, but small price to pay.

Proton mail works well and I am gradually migrating from gmail to Proton. I will keep the gmail as a legacy account for laptop access only since there's still services and accounts out there that I used to sign up.

Meta products - mixed bag: I installed Instagram and it works well but sometimes notifications arrive delayed, in batches. I don't know yet if this has to do with Orbot disconnecting but possibly. I deleted the facebook app from my phone years ago so it will not go on the Graphene phone. If I need to talk to a distant relative or sell an old couch, I log into the laptop.

I still need to install Whatsapp, though, when I'm ready to make the switch permanently. Can't have the same Whatsapp account on two different phones.

I really don't want to install Messenger, but I may need to, will see; a separate profile for Meta wouldn't let me see notifications in my Daily Driver profile.

NewPipe works well Alas, there's no "cast" feature to send to a nearby television but I can probably live without this. Rumble works great too; have not tried any other video streaming services. I haven't imported a subscription list yet but that seems easy enough.

The only reason I could see skipping these alternatives and creating a separate profile for Youtube would be if I were a content creator. I see YouTube content creators in the Graphene space, but they probably don't use their phone for filming or viewing.

I don't know how much privacy benefit would be left even with a separate profile for YouTube, since it would require using my real Google account. People still do this with Graphene, and I suppose there's still some benefit since it's a bloatware free phone and offers more control.

Anyway, I hope this isn't too long a post but those are my initial experiences with this challenge. Jury is still out as to whether it will be my full-time phone but that is the goal. Thanks to this forum for the incredibly good advice and warnings along the way.

    New2MeOS a separate profile for Meta wouldn't let me see notifications in my Daily Driver profile.

    If u allow that profile to be ran in the background, and use 'send notifications to current user', u should be able to receive notifications in your daily driver profile, at 'the cost' of that meta profile running all the time.

        r134a Hadn't considered this, thanks! Will give that a try.

        The notifications generally being slow regardless of profile (Instagram, Telegram, ProtonMail) seem a bit worse today and definitely something I have to sort out.

          New2MeOS Orbot tends to disconnect randomly

          I guess you were following sideofburritos vid, I'd recommend dropping orbot and instead run VPN that allows more than one simultaneous connection. If it offers multihop even better. Run different exit nodes for different profiles even diff countries for profiles not considered 'daily' if you can.

          New2MeOS Still seeking Airtag-like product that works with Graphene

          There's a thread quite recent with same issues. Most of such stuff apparently do not work, I think there's also an entry in the bug tracker for the project may want to look into it for some additional data.

          As for keyboard I use Gboard with all permissions removed. Works fine for me and it's the only google app (except store+services which is required) updated via owner being a profile I use to install stuff and manage my phone. Since I need more than just en_US for suggestions and auto correction this is a trade off I can live with.

                New2MeOS
                The benefits of using GrapheneOS over stock G""gle are enormous, but try not to over complicate things or you may loose the daily usability of GrapheneOS. I know from personal experience that too many profiles quickly become unusable day to day!
                As for Orbot, the only problem I ever encountered was it burned through my battery power, so I removed it.
                I use a Raspberry Pi TorBox to get Tor network on my phone.

                    geko Not sure I understand - that device looks like something I would use for my own Wifi, not a mobile phone I take all over the world. https://www.torbox.ch/ Am I missing something?

                    The different profiles I've got set up aren't such a big deal since they're for things I don't use day to day, but I would like to keep Messenger isolated, if possible. Kind of doesn't matter anyway since I can't get it started successfully yet. Working on that.

                      0xsigsev Yes, that's how I got started. What VPN options aside from Orbot do you recommend?

                      Thanks for the heads up on that tag thread; I will check that out.

                      Tried Gboard on some previous phones and wasn't crazy about it but good to know it's an option. So far I like FUTO.

                        UPDATE: I got two of the apps (Hertz, United) to work by switching from Orbot to Proton VPN, then flipping on the split tunneling feature. This was the holdup for many apps which won't tolerate a Tor connection. Going to try it with a few of the others but so far this is very encouraging. Tile unfortunately still will not run, I keep getting the message about "Google play services unsupported" Nest also did not work with this trick saying the app "had trouble communicating."

                        If there is any serious disadvantage to not using Orbot and instead swapping it out for Proton, please advise. I am already a customer for email so their VPN was a no brainer for me.

                        UPDATE 2:
                        Interesting thing is the Uber app will turn on when I use Proton with split tunneling, but it says it will not run without Google play services running (even though it is already running). I think what this means is with this app (and probably also with Tile) I would need to allow location, sensors, and maybe some other permissions like nearby devices to run. I would only want to do this if it had to ask each time. Not sure if that method would fly with these apps if they had to ask each time but I will be experimenting with these settings next.

                        I also got Meta messenger to work using the split tunneling feature in Proton VPN. I have Messenger in a separate profile, will see whether I get message notifications in my Daily Driver profile - i think I should.

                        Oddly enough, while Instagram actually ran fine with Orbot, when I switched over to the Proton VPN I had to use split tunneling to get it to work again.

                        (PS in my OP, I meant Amazon products, not Android products.)

                          New2MeOS

                          The ability to create multiple profiles is fantastic.

                          This isn't a GrapheneOS specific feature, but we do have relevant improvements to it and normally Google Play can't be contained to a profile and has cross-profile access since outside GrapheneOS it can't be used as regular sandboxed apps rather than being deeply integrated OS components with extensive access.

                          Orbot tends to disconnect randomly.

                          Orbot is poorly written, buggy and inefficient. Tor is making their own Tor VPN app to replace it. Orbot doesn't have great compatibility with modern Android and lots of issues. This is not caused by GrapheneOS.

                          Nest app does not load.

                          You might be missing dependencies for it. Try installing the Google Search app too. Try searching the forum for this.

                          ProCam X Lite is a nice alternative to the native camera app. Even so, I think the pictures on the S22 Ultra are a bit better

                          You can use Pixel Camera for the same experience as the stock Pixel OS. Our own Camera app is going to be improved to catch up in various ways but Pixel Camera is hard to compete with and can be used on GrapheneOS.

                          Meta products - mixed bag

                          These apps work fine on GrapheneOS. They partially depend on Google Play but can work without it. To have WhatsApp, etc. work properly without it, you need to change some things.

                              New2MeOS Uber works well on GrapheneOS without granting extra access to Google Play. You enable the network location service provided by GrapheneOS if you need location detection to work without GNSS reception. You don't need to grant Location to Google Play services since we reroute apps requesting location from it to asking it from the OS by default. Not really clear what issue you're having with Uber and why.

                                  GrapheneOS

                                  Orbot is poorly written, buggy and inefficient. Tor is making their own Tor VPN app to replace it. Orbot doesn't have great compatibility with modern Android and lots of issues. This is not caused by GrapheneOS.

                                  That's good to hear (ditto about the camera app improvements). I'm also finding that Proton VPN was so restrictive a lot of apps only worked with split tunneling, which I think means there's no VPN at all for those, just open traffic. So I went back to using Orbot and now United and Hertz apps are both working using it! Weird, I didn't do anything to the settings in Orbot.

                                  You might be missing dependencies for it. Try installing the Google Search app too. Try searching the forum for this.

                                  I looked around and it seems kind of a dead end; same for Fitbit, another Google takeover casualty. I installed Google Search anyway but still no effect on Nest. What dependencies could there be aside from Google Play Services and Google Services Framework?

                                  These apps work fine on GrapheneOS. They partially depend on Google Play but can work without it. To have WhatsApp, etc. work properly without it, you need to change some things.

                                  I got Meta messenger working in a separate profile and though notifications are enabled, I'm not getting notifications across to my daily user profile. What might I be missing?

                                    GrapheneOS

                                    Uber works well on GrapheneOS without granting extra access to Google Play. You enable the network location service provided by GrapheneOS if you need location detection to work without GNSS reception. You don't need to grant Location to Google Play services since we reroute apps requesting location from it to asking it from the OS by default. Not really clear what issue you're having with Uber and why.

                                    I went into settings and under location ensured Uber was granted access (I presume this is one to which you refer). Google Play services does not have location activated; good to know it is not needed.

                                    I flipped the location switch off, then opened the app. It asked for location access. I hit "only while using the app" and it opened. I got the same message plus a yellow banner at the top of the app saying "location sharing is disabled. Tap here to enable" I tapped, it took me to the setting you mentioned, location was shown as already on from my previous action. Strange, can't get past this.

                                    The app nevertheless opens, but very slowly. I got to the part where I entered location for ride pickup and because I'm using Tor and location is spoofed, I needed to enter my start and destination addresses manually. This may be a case for split tunneling using Proton VPN for the sake of convenience as entering all this info accurately from a random street corner in an unfamiliar city would be a headache. But yes, it looks like Uber could work after all. Thanks.

                                    • de0u replied to this.

                                        Bismark
                                        How does it know your location, though, when you open Uber? I assume you are running Orbot...

                                            New2MeOS
                                            It would be for me a browser permission, I think vandium. Uber does show a local map with uber cars nearby, and updates the map as the driver nears, so it seems like everything works. Because of this I keep it on my main profile and that is nice. If I clear vandium (cache cookies...) I need to log back into uber when I open the link. I have no problem with that. There is another app that runs in vandium that I use for weather allot. Its called windy. Its very nice as well.

                                              New2MeOS The [Uber] app nevertheless opens, but very slowly. I got to the part where I entered location for ride pickup and because I'm using Tor and location is spoofed, I needed to enter my start and destination addresses manually.

                                              I am puzzled. Using Uber fundamentally requires Uber to know your actual precise location to pick you up and drop you off, plus (I think?) non-anonymous information to pay. Given that, what is being concealed from whom by using Tor?