My threat model is mainly privacy(and little bit anonymity) from big tech, governement,trackers ,brokers etc. I am not that worried about security and for me even AOSP's security is good enough.
So what settings should I modify in system settings to make phone faster? Like turning off exploit protection? I read somewhere grapheneos security features come at the cost of small performance loss. So which should I modify to make my phone faster which doesn't affect privacy
System settings for a privacy-focused user with minimal security concerns
Privacy requires security.
Don't change the defaults for the worse options, any performance gains you might get are going to be minimal at best. If you want to make your phone feel faster turning off or reducing the animation speeds to 0.5x (from developer options) will make a much bigger difference.
whiskeywalrus If you want to make your phone feel faster turning off or reducing the animation speeds to 0.5x (from developer options) will make a much bigger difference.
Developer options include some things that don't work right or break other things. Only a few months ago a developer option related to animation triggered a bug in the lock screen.
It is not generally helpful to recommend that people address minor issues by placing themselves in danger, at least not without warning them.
Developer options are intended to be used by developers working on an application, and also intended to be used on non-production devices that don't contain private data.
Tubeless2720 The exploit protection compatibility mode toggles are mainly for compatibility with apps containing memory corruption bugs occurring in regular usage. Disabling hardened_malloc for certain apps may improve performance but it won't make any significant difference for most. Doing this reduces the security of the app against attacks, and will substantially impact privacy if it gets exploited because of it. This does not need to involve any kind of targeted attack, many vulnerabilities get widely exploited and many apps don't even do proper security updates for their dependencies.
Disabling secure spawning will save a significant amount of memory at the expense of greatly reducing overall system security. The direct negative impact on privacy from doing that is small, but it has one. Having a much less secure device does have relevance to privacy despite your belief that they're separate things. They are not separate things and there's widespread use of exploits including by apps wanting to bypass privacy protections.
de0u The bug you mention was related to disabling animations from accessibility settings, not developer options (though I don't know if they function technically the same). And yes of course if you don't know what you're doing you can break things via developer options, though in this case the risk of changing animations speeds seems very small and the usability benefit is actually quite large, at least for me personally.
whiskeywalrus In this case the risk of changing animations speeds seems very small and the usability benefit is actually quite large, at least for me personally.
Obviously what you choose to do with your device is up to you.
Whether or not it's ok to recommend on this forum that people use developer options on production devices, without mentioning any warnings or disclaimers, is up to the forum moderators.
whiskeywalrus If you want to make your phone feel faster turning off or reducing the animation speeds to 0.5x (from developer options) will make a much bigger difference.
Clearly you are not aware that certain features in Developer options can cause irreversible data loss, or you wouldn't be recommending it to the OP.
whiskeywalrus And yes of course if you don't know what you're doing you can break things via developer options, though in this case the risk of changing animations speeds seems very small and the usability benefit is actually quite large, at least for me personally.
You are aware that doing things in Developer options may break things if you don't know what you're doing, but you still recommend it to someone who has not expressed that they are familiar with the breakage that Developer options can cause?
Certain toggles in App info like Exploit protection compatibility mode, memory tagging, loading code via storage etc. are not harnessed under Developer settings yet arguably pose increased security risks for what(?), better app compatibility. Are we going to warn users to be sensible when considering using them? After all, they are not available on any other "production device".
- Edited
SgtSurehand I expect that if somebody were recommending that people disable MTE or hardened malloc for speed, without any kind of warning, then somebody would point out the elevated risk. Likewise if somebody suggests various developer options for speed, without any kind of warning, I think it makes sense for somebody to point out elevated risk.
But the situation is worse with developer options, not the same. Developer options are literally concealed behind an invisible menu, because developer options are variously dangerous and/or unstable.
Sadly, it is expected that some users will disable some exploit protections to run some apps in production including with private data -- that's why those toggles were added. It is not expected that developer options are used with private data on production devices -- that's why those toggles are behind a hidden menu.
de0u I in no way endorse using Developer options, though they are enabled with sole purpose of viewing running and cached processes, since I haven't been able to find a tool allowing me to do that with such detail.
I have also witnessed apps refusing to run with dev options enabled, mainly games for anti cheat reasons.
SgtSurehand What if the code that displays running and cached processes is exploitable? That would be mostly OK from Google's perspective, since many of the developer options are intended to weaken device security while developers debug apps running without private data.
If you have audited the process-monitor code and are confident that even though it is behind a hidden menu it's still safe, that's one thing. But turning it on because it appears to do something that seems like it could be safe may not be prudent.