Beginner Questions: How secure is "Camera Access"

Carport0593

I just installed G-OS on my phone a few days ago. I'm really digging it, but have some questions:

1. How secure is the Camera when I have Camera Access turned off? By this I mean how possible is it for an app to still be using the camera?
I've seen similar questions be countered with "What's your threat model" or something like that. That's totally legitimate and I'm not entirely sure, but what's the threat model when I've seen lots of people (myself included) have tape over their webcam on their laptops, or less but still a few (myself included) tape over their frontcamera on their phone? I did this on my previous phone, but since the Pixel 6a (and most other Pixels, I imagine) have the frontcamera embedded in the screen, having tape over that camera is a little cumbersome.

So, tl;dr: how likely is it that an app would still have access to that camera when Camera Access is turned off, or am I just being paranoid?

2. On my previous phone I used Evie launcher, which is no longer available in that form, I guess. My main reason for using that is that you could just swipe down from anywhere on your homescreen (just as you can swipe up to get to the app drawer) and a global search bar would appear, where you could search for apps or online. Is something available/possible on GrapheneOS?
So far the closest thing is that I put a search widget on my homescreen, but that's really just a shortcut to the search engine website, so I'm not entirely happy with that.

I've played around with a few other themes, but none have worked out for me.

I'm open to suggestions of themes or apps or widgets, etc.

Thanks :)

unwat

Carport0593

I'm assuming you're talking about the quick settings tile to disable the camera globally? If so, with that off no app can access the camera at all.

As for the theme/launcher, you can feel free to install whatever you'd like. I personally use the preinstalled launcher because it works fine for me. I've read others use Lawnchair (I think, maybe there's a 2 after that). Many like it. I've tried it and thought it was okay. I believe it's open source.

Carport0593

Great, so that means I don't need to worry about putting tape over the frontcamera?

And I saw Lawnchair, but there are several different versions, so I'm not sure which to use. I was just hoping there was an option in the default Graphene launcher that I had missed.

Thanks :)

matchboxbananasynergy

Carport0593 The global camera toggle works well. Even if an app has been granted the camera permission, it can't use it when you've disabled the global toggle. You're good to go - no tape required. ;)

Carport0593

matchboxbananasynergy Awesome, thank you :)