by strcat | 2025-04-13 21:21:16+00:00
> Try putting that sentence prominently on the front page of the GrapheneOS website and watch the monthly download count rapidly drop. It would not be out of place for an Apple press release, but it would be out of place there.

We don't reduce the functionality or configuration of AOSP.

> I think the Graphene people sometimes forget that the vast majority of their users are nerds who aren't being targeted by APTs

The overall audience using it is not super technical. The community of people active in the chat rooms on Matrix and Discord really doesn't reflect the overall userbase. There are around 300k people using it, who largely went out of the way to purchase a phone for it and then installed it via the web installer. Many people also purchase devices with it preinstalled.

It's easy to use and we're focused on making it easier including filling in gaps like the recently added network location support which will be added to the initial setup wizard.

We also protect against a lot more than sophisticated targeted attacks against someone.

> don't want to be locked out of their own device, and really just want a trustworthy Google-free OS on their phone.

GrapheneOS exists to provide a high level of privacy and security while maintaining usability and app compatibility. It's working towards being as usable as the stock Pixel OS. It's meant to be an OS for everyone, we just don't have unlimited resources to quickly build most of the things we want. It has never been aimed at power users tinkering with and customizing their device. The level of functionality and usability we want to provide is the stock Pixel OS experience. Features unrelated to privacy or security which are not present in the stock Pixel OS are mostly out of scope.

> They also probably use Linux on their computers and yet haven't been hacked by "fake sudo" or "evil maid" attacks and likely never will be.

Software being open source doesn't mean it's trustworthy or privacy respecting. Running everything without basics like a strong app sandbox and permission model isn't a good idea on a desktop either. Linux doesn't imply not having a strong application security model.

Supporting and normalizing applications depending on having incredibly invasive access where they can access all of the user's sensitive data, etc. is the opposite of what we want to do. We don't see apps being able to request more invasive permissions and refusing to work without them as user control. User control is being able to avoid that without the app knowing. Giving root access to a huge portion of the OS and to apps is the opposite of what we're building. You seem to want GrapheneOS to be something it's not for an audience that it's not targeting. We never said GrapheneOS is for power users who want to have a bunch of customization and to grant more invasive access to apps.

GrapheneOS supports hardware-based virtualization across all the supported devices and that's the way people will be able to more freely do things like software development without compromising the security of the base OS.

> Apps will then either detect that you're rooted, or use AOSP attestation APIs to cryptographically verify that you aren't using a known-good custom ROM, and block your access to basic features of modern society such as mobile banking. This isn't Graphene's fault, but it should be noted that you will start losing out on things as soon as you start customizing or rooting the OS. So it does matter what upstream does to some extent.

Those apps wouldn't be willing to support GrapheneOS if we didn't maintain the standard security model. We're already going to be pushing the limits of what some apps will tolerate via our alternatives to permissions, etc. but we don't plan to eliminate parts of the security model. At the moment, nearly every app using the Play Integrity API would be willing to support GrapheneOS if they understood what it was and that they could verify it. It's an issue with lack of knowledge and unwillingness to do extra work for it rather than any apps actually wanting to ban GrapheneOS. It's something which can be addressed but it will get worse before it gets better as apps adopt the Play Integrity API. Growing the userbase by an order of magnitude or more will help solve this. Apps using the Play Integrity API are already feeling increasing pressure to permit using it and several have done so recently.