Hi All,
First off great kudos to the GOS team for making privacy and security the primary goal. In todays world we need it.
Recent GOS migrater here trying to get rid of my other phone so I can make the full switch. Here are some challenges I have been having. I was working on a Dual sim setup, but all my issues are valid for a single SIM as well since I tested everything after turning off the second SIM and disconnected the second line.
General theme: Notifications issue, I think that when I first set it up it was working and then something broke recently either because I fiddled too much or something else.
General Question/Suggestion: Is there a way to back up a profile and restore it without the app data or settings? i.e. just apps but a shell? I am finding myself experimenting too much and then having to just delete profiles and start over.
What I looking for:
- A reliable SMS/MMS/GroupChat messaging application that works across profiles. I have given up on RCS pretty much but might reconsider it if I reactivate my second line in Fi but I am still researching the security risks that might come with that. Here are all the apps that I have tested.
Common Issue with all apps: No notifications in non-owner profiles and messages have significant delay in arriving.
- Stock: Works ok but not great
- Fossify messages: This is what I am using across all profiles now. One gotcha that I had after a lot of testing was that if you have different messaging apps on different profiles, none of them get notifications. Now I am getting notifications on my owner profile but not on the others once I made the Fossify Messages the SMS appp for all profiles.
- Email Client:
- I am currently using Outlook Web Application (for work coz I am trying to avoid installing any MS apps for now) but I am not getting notifications. Thinking about switching to thunderbird beta but still working on enabling it on the org side. The contacts on my work profile are a mix of work and personal so that I can recognize who is calling form both sides.
- For personal I use Proton Mail and it works flawlessly across profiles no notification issues nothing.
- Financial: I do not do a lot of financial stuff on the phone other than the usual zelle, etc. Some banking apps do not work like Chase for example and I have not experimented with turning off the exploit protection which seems to have worked for some folks. Any advise here would be appreciated.
- Notes: Experimenting with Joplin and Logseq with SyncThing, a bit of a learning curve.
- Calling App: Stock GOS. Works for me, I dont need anything fancy for this.
- Contacts and Calendar Still on the hunt for something that I can reliably use across profiles.
Heres my setup: If there are improvements in this please let me know
3 profiles:
Owner: Has Google Play Store, Google Play Services, F Droid
Work: Google Play Store, Google Play Services, F Droid and applications pushed from Owner Profile
Personal: Google Play Store, Google Play Services , F Droid and apps installed from the profile not pushed from Owner
Play: Havent started anything with this yet but considering something like a throwaway profile.
All Profiles have:
Proton VPN
KeepassDX
SyncThing: Still looking for an alternative that will help me sync files across profiles and my desktop since SyncThing will not run in the background on secondary profiles and has trouble starting unless sessions are ended on each profile. Owner will not sync unless all other sessions are "ended"