Last year, I started a thread to thanks the developers for a great 2022, and encouraging folks to donate for 2023. Well, I thought I'd continue this tradition by sharing some of the cool, new features GrapheneOS added this year.
Fixed Android's Verified Boot (February 2) - This is a great example of how the project continues to fix security weaknesses in the stock OS.
Added Contact Scopes (May 16) - A really cool feature that allows you to limit what contacts an app has access too. Very useful for WhatsApp, among many others.
Added new form factors, Pixel Tablet (June 16) and Pixel Fold (June 28) - Very exciting to see GrapheneOS expand beyond just the smartphone form factor. I'm writing this post on a Pixel Tablet, and its so cool using this great OS in a quasi-laptop manner.
Memory tagging extension support (October 30) - Added this extremely important security feature for Pixel 8 and 8 Pro. GrapheneOS is the first platform using hardware memory tagging in production, beating Apple and Google. Well done!
And as of this writing, GrapheneOS is about to include Android Auto support.
Note I'm just a regular user, with no affiliation with the project. So I'm sure there are a lot of other technical, under the hood features added or improved on this year as well. I'd love to see others share their favorite features from 2023.
Looking ahead, there are many more features planned, such as duress password, new backup app, content blocker for Vanadium, and app communication scopes, which will allow more control of app communication within a user profile (I'm really looking forward to that!)
Also next year is the 10th anniversary of the project. This work has made such a difference, both for all of us that daily drive it to the literally billions of people benefiting from upstream security fixes. If you'd like to see GrapheneOS continue to grow, please make sure to donate!