How to disable "Wireless emergenecy alerts"

fid03

Jazkill So if I understood well i see the banner saying "Critical messages may come through regardless of user settings" because it's an AOSP banner that has not been removed but the GOS fix will actually block all alerts if I disable them. Am i right?

Yes, alerts will be blocked if you turn them off in the Settings app. Unless there's a recently introduced bug that hasn't been reported yet. See https://grapheneos.org/features#other-features

Wireless alerts are completely optional since GrapheneOS adds a toggle for the otherwise mandatory presidential alert type. This is particularly useful in Canada where the government abuses the system and sends every type of alert as a presidential alert to stop users from being able to opt out of weather and amber alerts.

Not sure why no one sent you a link to the official documentation.

The text you're seeing is probably something they forgot to remove. Or I don't know. If no one has made a GitHub issue about the text, I think a new issue might be warranted.

Watermelon

fid03 Not sure why no one sent you a link to the official documentation.

I mentioned it

lackofhumor

Andrea However, I do have the right to ask questions to other people.

You have the right to ask all the questions you want, that doesn't mean people should give you the answer you expect lol

Andrea Any distro is more than happy to let me (if I want) recompile the kernel and eff up my device

Why you don't like the same argument for GOS?
First of all you already received an answers (even if you don't like it), which included "code it yourself".
Secondly, you said in "linux" (whatever that means for you) you can always fix things your way. It is the very same in GOS (which also is "Linux")

Andrea

I thank all the fellow users who contributed to this thread with constructive information. To answer some of the questions above: my build number is 2026011000, the device is Pixel 8a, the region is Italy, system language appears as "English (Italy)"; the menu page in question is titled "Public warnings", the top toggle is called "Allow alerts", above it appears the text "Critical messages may come through, regardless of user settings". Down the page there is a section "Alerts" (Presidential alerts, IT-Alerts, Test messages, Emergency alert history) and the "Alert preferences" (Vibration, Alert reminder, Always alert at full volume). If this was just a piece of leftover text and the main toggle did actually work it would be great. If any dev could confirm that the intended behaviour of the OS is to actually block all warnings and do not display any pop-up text, I would be very satisfied.

If that is not the case, though, let me reiterate that my question is just: Why this notification cannot be completely disabled, while detailed amount of configuration is allowed for all other notifications? I have read several instances of the non-answers that I had already outlined in my first message, such as "it is harmless", "don't worry about it", "code it yourself". To those fellow users: You are of course not required to help me clarify this issue. If you take the time to reply, a constructive reply that actually addresses the point I raise would be more reasonable. Why does it bother you that I ask this question? You are most welcome to move one and do not answer me, of course.

In particular, concerning the "it is harmless" line of stonewalling, let me be more blunt: You know what is also harmless? Personalized ads. I challenge you to show me examples of someone that was "harmed" by a personalized ad. I do not have evidence that any of the big phone brands collecting user data has ever "harmed" any user. Evidently, this would negate the whole premise of a privacy-focused project like GrapheneOS. Actually, I think that a third party being allowed to command the appearance of graphics on a device is much less "harmless" than any of the privacy-violating behaviours that GrapheneOS is built to prevent.

I thank anyone who demonstrated interest in this topic, and I will read with great interest any further contribution that clarifies the issue.

Watermelon

Andrea let me be more blunt: You know what is also harmless? Personalized ads. I challenge you to show me examples

I don't think it's a good idea to invite off-topic discussion to the thread. It would clutter the discussion. I'm also interested myself in the different UI for different people and whether the main toggle still works when there's the text you quoted appearing above it.

Novalissoide

Andrea Setting locale Italy doesn't give that labelling of the settings page for WEA.

Please use your Auditor app and validate the integrity of your device OS now.

Have Adb, Shizuku, root, System UI-tweaker, Developer options or anything of the like been in use on your device?

lackofhumor

Andrea I challenge you to show me examples of someone that was "harmed" by a personalized ad.

Personalized ads push you into spending money for things you don't need. Often the advertisement arrives to people that don't even have the legal age to buy stuff online (like kids) and spend their parent's money.

Mind that a personalized ads is not only the banner on a website, can be also a popup in your children's games and/or given to you with the false premise that everybody else have it (this includes skins in some games, for example).

Furthermore, "personalized" doesn't mean that is convenient for you.
For example the same flight ticket bought from two different countries can (and will) have different prices.
They cannot offer two different prices if they don't know something about you (like the country you are currently in).

Next time you renew your car insurance, think of all those questions you need to reply, and ask yourself why they need so much data... the answer is "personalized ads", but sometimes names are misleadings and they do not suggest what we think.

These are just three very easy examples, but this topic is huge.

Andrea

Novalissoide Thank you for your advice. Actually the same message has been shown in the screenshot by Jazkill above, so I assume it is not tied to the Italian localization. Also, the message is in English – that would not be consistent.

I have never used any of the tools you mentioned as I am quite newbie to GrapheneOS. I have installed GrapheneOS once from the web, factory reset it once, and kept updated. I did install a few apks from the official devs' repos before factory reset (Brave Telegram Signal and a VPN). Now I have only installed apps from Google Play on a second account.

Novalissoide

I'm about to call attempted Smear Op on this. Since Andrea is so eager to keep on ranting about "stonewalling" etc, while cuddling up to us in the forum individually, they seem to have the larger project as target.

Andrea

Novalissoide Hi, I am very sorry about this message. I try to be very respectful and professional when dealing with real people online. I think that "stonewalling" is the correct terms when the same answers are given repeatedly, or, just as in your latest message, malicious intentions implied for no reason. I do not intend to smear this project in any capacity, I think what the devs did here is amazing. I don't know how can I make my intention more clear. Also, I am an adult and spending time smearing a FOSS project online is not really a good use of my time. I have been using Linux for 30 year and I only have love and respect for the devs of FOSS software.

I was quite surprised by the amount of replies my post got, even if not many of them were on point, so I replied a lot these two days, but I am happy to keep quiet for a while and just await further contributions that clarify the issue I raise.

Novalissoide

Andrea You should still use Auditor and check device integrity.

other8026

Our advice is not to mess with system apps' permissions or to disable them. The WEA app isn't the issue people are making it out to be. We have multiple threads about this topic where questions were answered.

The issue where some devices with specific setups have a misleading header has been reported to the developers.

All wireless alerts can be disabled. Disable them and the app won't bother you.

Although I believe that people should have the freedom to do what they wish with their own devices, we do have a community to deal with here. Our community helps a lot with support questions, so naturally people will share their own advice on how to deal with issues. Sometimes community member advice conflicts with official advice. This is okay in some cases, but when we have objectively bad advice that breaks things, we have to remove it. We have users with varying skill levels. Some may not know how to undo changes they make or they may even blame GrapheneOS for bad advice in our community if things break. So, multiple posts were removed, some because they are in response to removed posts to avoid confusion. It's also one reason I locked the thread.

Also, there's been a feeling of rising tensions in this thread and I believe the way some people were talking to one another crossed a line so the thread is locked for that reason as well.

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