by strcat | 2025-09-14 23:45:37+00:00
> It's incredibly and unjustifiably inflexible and treats the user like they're the primary security threat.

There are no restrictions on what people can do added by GrapheneOS compared to the Android Open Source Project / stock Pixel OS.

> Sure it's cool you can turn off google play, but I found myself having to go into the menus and through the six or seven clicks to turn google play back on at least daily.

GrapheneOS doesn't come with Google Play. You would have had to install it yourself and those run as regular sandboxed apps with no special access. It doesn't make sense to turn it off and on which will break apps set up to depend on it. If you only want to use it with specific apps when needed, the right approach is using a dedicated profile for it. By turning it off, you were breaking apps installed in the same profile with it which use it.

Using a single profile with sandboxed Google Play is perfectly fine and doesn't ruin the privacy and security provided by GrapheneOS. Putting it into a separate profile is optional. Sandboxed Google Play are regular apps in the regular app sandbox with zero special access or privileges. Using multiple profiles to split things up is a more advanced approach.

> I found the profile feature to be only slightly more convenient than having two physical devices.

That's the purpose of secondary users. There are also the more convenient work profiles and Private Spaces. All 3 of these features are standard Android features. GrapheneOS enhances user profiles and Private Spaces in various ways but they're not at all mandatory and there's nothing pushing people to use them more than the stock OS. There's a widespread misconception that the sandboxing of sandboxed Google Play is tied to profiles but it's not.

> The entire thing seems like theater designed to show everyone that they're doing absolutely everything to be Secure, and user experience is a tertiary concern at most.

GrapheneOS deeply cares about user experience including app compatibility. We have limited resources so we haven't been able to replace or overhaul all of the AOSP apps yet, which is the main weakness of the out-of-the-box experience. Those can all be replaced by the user's choice of apps.

> Graphene is not an OS for normal people to use. It's designed as an OS for nerds who want to nerd about how "secure" and "private" their device is, irrespective of how usable it is.

No, not at all.

> Again, I tried for months to like it. Once I realized the security features were really only one step removed from having two devices, I just gave up. I'd rather be able to use my device the way I want than to be "secure" and only use my phone the way Google wants. Sorry, I meant Graphene.

Profiles are an Android feature, not a GrapheneOS feature, and only a tiny portion of our features have to do with them. The features page at https://grapheneos.org/features covers most of the features added by GrapheneOS, and very little of that has to do with profiles. It sounds like you chose to heavily use secondary users and didn't like that, which has little to do with GrapheneOS specifically.

> Given the choice between two third party entities dictating to me how I'm allowed to use my own device, I'd rather just use lineage and make my own choices. > > I don't want my OS to coddle me and lock me into padded playpens, I want it to get the hell out of my way and do exactly what I tell it to, even if that action is not in line with what some unknown third party thinks is in my best interest. It's my device, not google's, and certainly not Graphene's.

GrapheneOS did not create Android's user profile feature. It makes enhancements to it but it's not a major focus of what we work on. You aren't missing many of the GrapheneOS features if you don't use user profiles. Enabling more standard user profile functionality, notification forwarding, allowing more user profiles and a few other minor things are all we do with those. We have a substantial set of privacy and security features and nearly none of it has to do with profiles. Adding clipboard control to Private Space and enabling making Private Spaces in secondary users are how we improve those. Many GrapheneOS users only use an Owner user or Owner with a Private Space and/or work profile. Secondary users are a much more specialized thing. It's not expected that people split things across a bunch of secondary users, that's an advanced power user approach.