I'm addicted to root for rights management. Are there alternatives?

Gold95

Hi there. I want to switch from LineageOS with root to GrapheneOS without root for security purposes, but I'm not sure if I need to drop some privacy measures I have become used to.

For example, I use Easer to grant location permissions to my navigation app once a bluetooth connection is established with my car. And when bluetooth is disconnected, some pm revoke and am force-stop commands make sure the app doesn't keep following me. In the same way, my smart watch app only receives permissions to track my hikes in certain areas and then permissions are revoked again. These actions require root.

Are there alternatives for this nuanced control with or in GrapheneOS that can function without root rights?

GrapheneOS

Gold95 You don't need to grant persistent Location access. You can grant one-time access. You're making things more complex than they need to be.

matchboxbananasynergy

You can grant apps one-time location permissions. There are of course also global toggles for location, Bluetooth and other things like the camera and microphone.

In my opinion, what you see as "privacy measures" that you're achieving with root doesn't really amount to much when you've sacrificed your device's security, which in turn makes any perceived privacy benefits null.

I'd recommend checking out https://grapheneos.org/features to see what GrapheneOS provides over standard AOSP if you haven't already, and see if that fits what you want.

P.S. If you do decide to root your device while running GrapheneOS, we can't help troubleshoot anything or provide support. It's an explicitly unsupported setup, and in most ways, you wouldn't even be running GrapheneOS anymore.

Gold95

matchboxbananasynergy thank you for the response. Ease of use is usually a trade-off versus security. I have trouble using my fingers, which is why I became addicted to automation in the first place. I would love to do what I do now without using root. I can imagine it should be possible, because I can manually grant and revoke permissions without re-auth.

I don't plan on running GrapheneOS with root. I am however sincerely interested to find out what the possibilities are for automation.

Panda-na

Gold95
You could probably do all of this with "NFC Tools" and "NFC Tasks" by wakdev. These apps are great for automating stuff like this. You don't even need to use NFC to activate features, you can have it as a shortcut on home screen. Maybe some of the features recuires you to purchase the Pro-edition, but it's cheap.

Gold95

GrapheneOS You're making things more complex than they need to be.

Quite the opposite. What good is a smartphone if you can't make it do smart things? ;) I drive a lot for work. I don't want to use the old inefficient physical contact way of communicating with my smartphone for this repetitive predictable task every day, between every stop.

Here's what I did before.

Get in the car and put smartphone on dashboard. The following happens automatically:
- Smartphone detects car bluetooth
- Sets screen brightness to high
- Grant background location permission to navigation app, which is required to remain helpful with audio feedback when I make calls for work or switch apps
- Starts helpful navigation app
After driving, take smartphone out of the car and walk to the customer, the office, or home. The following happens automatically:
- Smartphone detects car bluetooth gone
- Screen brightness back to auto
- Revoke background location permission from navigation app otherwise the app can track my location every waking hour into eternity

I postponed installing GrapheneOS for this, but now the old smartphone is finally broken. I purchased a Pixel and put GrapheneOS on it. I guess there is no more postponing. :D

[deleted]

Gold95 You don't have to revoke location from the app. The OS shows the location alert every time something uses it. Im 99% sure your navigation app wont use it in the background while its closed, but you can check if the indicator shows up any time.

graphenediscoverer4

I didn't know about Easer or NFC Tools, only Tasker but never used it actually. Did you @Gold95 investigate the two latters since then ? Which one works best for your needs?

Gold95

graphenediscoverer4 Did you investigate the two latters since then ? Which one works best for your needs?

Yes, I ended up just installing the sandboxed play store and paying for the full version of Tasker. But I still can't do what I want to do: Automate changing app permissions without root. If you find a solution at some point in the future, please let us know. Although doing things without root means it needs to be supplied by the OS.

[deleted] Im 99% sure your navigation app wont use it in the background while its closed

I checked this using the indicator for a while, and I can tell you 100% it kept checking for location roughly twice an hour.

This location permission is needed by the navigation app to enable "auto launch on (car) BT connection". This way, Android will tell the app once a certain connection is made. However, this particular app, like many apps, appears to abuse this permission to keep a log of your location every 30 minutes, which I can only assume is meant to be sold. This behavior silently went away after a couple of updates, which has taught me that it can also silently be brought back by any app with the location permission, even if it's only meant to check for a Bluetooth connection.

All I want is to be able to control and especially automate permissions. Computers are meant to automate things, and users are meant to be in control.

spl4tt

Can't you just automate to turn on location services automatically in the car, and when you get out, turn it off? I mean, apps can't get your location when location services / gps is turned off, right? :P No need for removing permissions, especially since the app can't use them in the background as long as you tap on "Allow only while using the app" for the location permission.

graphenediscoverer4

spl4tt Can't you just automate to turn on location services automatically in the car, and when you get out, turn it off? I mean, apps can't get your location when location services / gps is turned off, right? :P No need for removing permissions

I guess he could use tasker to trigger location tile, whenever the user manually triggers BT tile, and that the phone pairs with car speakers,
but as for turning off location automatically, I'm very surprised gOS / AOSP didn't include the feature, since they already provided the feature to turn off wifi / BT automatically (that used to be popularized by tasker back in the days)

A guy requested the feature to the devs already here : https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/5867-security-feature-wish-list , along with cellular network access (i.e airplane mode) automatic turning off after N minutes, iirc.

jackFang

This seems like a very big feature that would most likely arrive with new Android update rather than GOS. I say big because it currently requires root to achieve what you are looking for. It would be great to have this sort of thing in the future.. However if it was part of core Android OS its probably going to be limited in terms of functionality, if you think about it being open to the public. They could include that in developers options if anything to have more advanced features