Private space best practice

Gossygos

Having originally set my configuration up using the owner account for app distribution with several user accounts for various things one of which is my secure zone, I have been contemplating how to use or indeed whether to use the new private space feature that's available from version 15.
I came across one suggestion, which is to use the owner account as the secure zone whilst keeping private space for the rogue insecure apps. I found this interesting because it means you can keep all of the apps available to the launcher by never locking the private space, with the secure apps separated from the rogues.
However, I realised that it is possible to do this equally well by having the app distribution the other way around, the secure in the private space and the rogues in the owner.
Just wondering now what other people's thoughts are on private space and in particular how best to use it.

argante

Gossygos Do not use Private Space in the owner profile. Keep the owner profile only for administration, installation and updates. Create a Private Space in the user profile (you can already do this). The advantage of Private Space is very good isolation - you can only share the clipboard, but even that can be disabled. In my opinion, Private Space is best if you want to use e.g. Tor or Tor Browser there. You can easily destroy such a profile later and create a new one. Another use of Private Space is e.g. a cryptocurrency wallet or a banking app, which you can easily separate from other apps.

I'd love to hear other opinions.

userofgos

Gossygos I currently use the owner profile for my main daily usage (texting, calling, email) and use the private space in the owner profile for my banking and social media apps. I like this setup because I can limit my use of social media and the notifications by locking it, and it allows me to share the clipboard when logging into banking apps. It find it more convenient but still isolated to an extent.

I'm working on setting up other user profiles again to isolate things more and have more specific uses for them, but still working on that as it's tricky to get the right balance of convenience and compartmentalization.

When I first started using GOS I tried isolating everything in different profiles and it was too much lol. So I've just been daily driving using the owner until I get a feel for my needs and build out from there.

Gossygos

argante thanks, that's useful right away because I didn't know private space was available in the user profiles, in fact I think it wasn't originally so I've probably just failed to keep up. I will almost certainly now set up a user profile and private space combo and leave owner for app loading only.

calpurtmun

argante you can only share the clipboard, but even that can be disabled

Oh wow I didn't know clipboard sharing could be disabled! Very nice.

Gossygos

userofgos yes I did exactly the same but found it too annoying to keep switching profiles and then finding you need something out of the one you were just in. Not helped by the too clunky switching process, the double swipe is too much friction imo better if we could have desktop shortcuts as an option or something similar.
I also have a couple of use cases for seperate profiles, one being remote access to a PC and another Facebook to keep it slightly out of reach.

userofgos

Gossygos the ability to add Private Space in other user profiles was recently added in one of the last few stable releases. So I'm looking forward to testing that functionality out too

userofgos

Gossygos yeah I find double swiping in the app drawer to access Private Space rather annoying and would like to have them on my home screen, but also see it as a benefit as well, by keeping access limited. Maybe one day there could be an option to add them to the home screen, and then when you lock the Private Space, then the apps would be removed from the home screen until the next unlock (I'm sure this is difficult to implement and maintain).

I've recently heard that some third-party launchers like Lawnchair support Private Space apps on the homescreen. But I still hesitate to use a third party launcher. Maybe I'll try it in another user profile.

userofgos

calpurtmun yeah there where a lot of impressive updates to Private Space in the 2025051900 release

2025051900

Private Space: add new setting for disabling delayed locking of storage to make locking work like secondary user end session feature we enable, similar to the toggle we add for disabling secondary users running in the background (standard Private Space doesn't work this way to keep fingerprint unlock available after it's locked/stopped)
Private Space: add new setting for blocking sharing the clipboard to and/or from the parent profile and other nested profiles within it
Private Space: add support for the Install available apps feature we currently enable to support installing apps available in the Owner user to secondary users
Private Space: add support for secondary users including all standard features with the exception of auto-locking support since our implementation of that is too complex/invasive to properly review and test while we're focused on Android 16 porting

I'm addicted to reading the release notes on every new release...and find myself checking the info app almost every day 😂

Gossygos

calpurtmun you can disable it on only one direction too which is very handy

nandohyphen1

userofgos me too. Love reading the release notes.

nandohyphen1

Now that I think about it, for some reason I'm locked out of my private space! I believe my PIN is the same as my phone PIN, but it always says its incorrect for some reason. It locked me out of my phone once, (said too many unlock attempts) so I dont really want to try it again. (I have nothing in my private space right now so if I don't unlock it, it's not too important)

nandohyphen1

nandohyphen1 never mind. I just figured out how to delete it and reset it