Hello, I have been using GrapheneOS on and off for a few years. Thank you for your great work. However, I cannot understand the issues with the WEA. I recently reinstalled the system and, as of today, on my system still reads "Critical messages may come through regardless of user settings". Please note that I am not discussing the communication between the device and the network, which of course have to be compliant with the rules of the network itself.
My concern is the fact that apparently the user-facing UI showing the message cannot be disabled. Why? It is obviously impossible that a great team that managed to sandbox Google Play Services cannot find a way to comment out the lines in the source code where this app is supposed to show a message onscreen. I have been using Linux for 30 years, so... just don't. Any distro is more than happy to let me (if I want) recompile the kernel and eff up my device, yet, this pop-up window with static text is too much to tweak?
I have read the forums on this topic for years and I am a bit distressed with the stonewalling. The cycle of answers usually is: “The app does nothing, so we have no time to waste disabling it. Yet the app is very important, so it would be a security problem to disable it. But we cannot be sure what it does really, AOSP is very complicated! Anyway do it yourself and recompile the code (ah ah).” If the answer is that GrapheneOS does not want to be liable for disabling a feature that might result in lawsuits or something, I would be happy to just read this answer, it would make total sense. If I missed some definitive answer to this question in the forums or on X, I apologize for this redundand post, and I kindly ask the link to it.
But as it stands, it is a really weird situation, a canary of sorts, which greatly diminishes the value of the GrapheneOS proposition, and usually pushes me to just go back to a standard phone when I encounter a problem or miss a feature, because at the end a bucket with one hole is still broken. I am the opposite of a tinfoil-hat person, but the basic desire of just being in control of the hardware I own (just as I do with my PC, my stove, my fridge...) is the one reason why I have invested time on GrapheneOS – I certainly would have not done it to just avoid a few personalized ads here and there.