A few feature requests, UX tweaks

siabadaba

Hello! Let me first stress that I'm not a developer but an end user. I use GOS extensively and I install in on tens of phones that are then being used by activists in the field. Based on that real life usage I have a few requests.

Fingerprint lockdown. This is the most important feature that we could use but I don't know if it is something that would be easily achievable. When using the phone in high risk situations it is very important for the phone to be secured with a very strong password, but it is also important for the phone to be accessible. For this reason I use a strong password and a fingerprint and rely on my ability to quickly turn on the lockdown mode if need be. But having fingerprints enabled is quite risky. For this reason I thought it would be great to be able to program some finger prints to unlock the phone and others to put the phone in lockdown mode. For example the thumbs and index fingers, which are most commonly used to unlock phones, could be set to lock the phone and require the password, while middle fingers would unlock it. This would enable us to profit from the great convenience that fingerprints provide, while also staying more resistant to the police forcing fingers onto sensors.
Caffeine mode. Would be great to have this feature built into the system, because the tiles available in f-droid are quite unreliable. The ablity to keep the screen unlocked and turned on once, without having to change settings is also great when you use a very strong password and don't want to type it in every 30 seconds.
Recording calls. Was gonna ask for a call recording button during calls but I see it was just added in the latest release. Fantastic!
Partial screenshot. It would be great to have a different button combination that would allow to make a screenshot only a selected part of the screen. Saves a lot of time on cropping out unnecessary or sensitive parts of the screen. On Lineage it is done by a quick press of the same buttons used for a full screenshot.
Ability to quickly turn on the flashlight when locked. I know that this has been discussed on GOS forums and Daniel Micay said somewhere that he doesn't want this feature. Maybe there are some security concerns that I'm not thinking about but I would like to once more argue for this feature. GOS is an OS often used by activists, journalists etc. That means that it is often used in the field, in places that often involve darkness combined with the need to stay focused and alert. The ability to turn on the light without having to look at the (blinding) screen and having to perform gestures can be very useful in such circumstances. It could be done by long pressing the volume up or down buttons.
Last but not least something that has less to do with security and more with simple UX. It would be great for the volume buttons to turn the snooze on while an alarm in ringing :)

I'm looking forward to any feedback from the community and especially from developers. Thank you very much for your indispensable work. We try to support you whenever possible.

matchboxbananasynergy

I know this is not exactly what you asked for, but this issue is filed instead that might address your use case: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/28

Basically, it will allow you to have your long password/passphrase as the primary unlock method (needed to unencrypt the phone after a reboot) and have a combination of PIN + Fingerprint as a secondary unlock method.

This will allow you to be able to enter a 4-6 digit PIN and then scan your fingerprint in daily usage, which while not as quick as just the fingerprint mitigates your concern of someone being able to force your finger into the sensor, and you won't need lockdown mode, since a PIN will also be required by default with no fallback.

There's an open issue on the tracker for this: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/1007
Indeed, this has been added on the latest release, and more improvements to the feature are coming in the future.
This strikes me as the first thing that's potentially out of scope. The screenshot function just takes a full screen screenshot, and editing/cropping it is delegated to a compatible editing app (AOSP Gallery by default, but can be changed).
This, as you said, has been discussed a lot of times, and the power button gesture will not be used for the flashlight. It's possible that it will be used for other things in the future, which are much more within GrapheneOS' overall scope. One possible application of it I could think is double-pressing the power button reboots the phone to put your data back at rest.

Aside from that, while this may not address exactly what you're asking, it seems that AOSP is planning to make it so you can add a flashlight shortcut right on the lock screen (on the bottom right/left) once configured by the user, so when that makes it into AOSP and naturally then makes it to GrapheneOS, you'll still have to turn on the screen, but it'll make it much faster, which is hopefully an acceptable compromise.

Unlikely that AOSP default behavior on this will be adjusted downstream.

I hope this helps! Keep in mind that I'm only a community moderator, and not on the GrapheneOS development team, so this is just my take on things.

siabadaba

matchboxbananasynergy Thank you for your extensive answer. I'm most excited to see something happening on that first issue

Chalko

https://grapheneos.org/donate

matchboxbananasynergy

Chalko I just want to make one thing clear, because the insinuation here seems to be that if they want their particular features added, they should donate; that's not the case.

People who donate don't get special treatment of priority. If a feature request has been denied, donating is not the way to go about getting it included.

Of course, donations are very much appreciated and they help the project have the resources they need to develop features that are within scope and maintain everything, but I wanted to be absolutely clear that there's no "pay to play" model in GrapheneOS.

Chalko

I knew that was coming, quite opposite intention but fair enough as I didn’t say anything else.

I know about the policy about donation and features.

But there has been an increase of post asking to add this feature or remove that feature I don’t need.
I figure I balance it with a post about donations.

Considering we are constantly getting updates even on weekends, it only shows that the devs are working non stop.
If anything, donations would only help to get to some of these lower priority convenience features after the most important things are taken care of.

csis01

More than just fingerprint lockdown, it would be nice to be able to designate a fingerprint AND/OR pin as a total data self-destruct. Use this fingerprint or pin (on ANY profile), and it runs a complete WIPE.

And a second special action that should be implemented for a special fingerprint/pin is to unlock it to a DECOY user profile, and lock down everything else hard.