Can you believe the audacity of google with regard to what they do to the AOSP interface? Every single time I've upgraded android versions since KitKat, without fail, the interface is degraded. First it was side scrolling app selection when opening things. I can't even remember the number of things I had to change about how I use my phone that disempowers me over the years.

This time, I upgrade to android 15, because the version I was using stopped getting security updates this year. Besides changing the quick toggles to be useless text, and thereby having less of them available in literally twice the surface area, besides taking away a couple of them's ability to quick toggle and requiring you to open a dialog to interact, this one "feature" has me explosively angry...

You can't not have a default browser. You can't just decide, oh hey, I'm gonna click this mp4 link and choose to open it in MPV, oh I know this page is going to be pozzed with js and whatever else just to render, I'm going to open it in the browser I use for that. Nope, not an option. You have to have a default browser.

You *can* get around this I've discovered. You have to clear defaults, which will set your default browser to the default installed browser, and then, you have to desable the default installed browser. *Then* it will prompt you to pick a browser. But, of course, it still won't let you play mp4 files over https in a video player. And, every time you click a link in a browser, it prompts you to open it in a browser of your choice, or to open it in an app and set the app as default. Yes, you read that right, click a link in iceraven, it should open right there, right? Nope. Every time you click a link, in the browser you're using, it asks you which browser you want to open it in, if you manage to not have a default set.

Fucking. Insanity.

And what can I do? That's probably out of scope for Graphene, as is everything else usability related apparently because it is a security product that exists in a vacuum, not an operating system or something. LineageOS won't do anything different from how google does it. It's basically their policy at this point. Its almost like they don't even like maintaining an operating system. *There isn't a mobile operating system in existence that empowers the user as a primary goal.*

Every update, without fail, degrades the interface. They want to funnel your behavior, train you like a dog, haze you. This particular gripe of mine of course is to force everyone to use chrome on android. Force you to not be able to pick between different broswers on a per click basis, and ofc 90% of users have chrome installed with the system, voila no more competition for google. It's not to make your life better. I've been saying it for 12 years, one of these ROM maintainers needs to fork from upstream and maintain basic app compatibility and merge things like battery management improvements and that's it. AOSP was perfect 12 years ago, UI wise. It's only going to continue to get worse. This is how civilizations collapse.