Happy new year everyone!
In 2025 GrapheneOS implemented:
- A network location provider for highly reliable location position without using Google's service and a geocoding service.
- Support for Android 16, QPR1 and QPR2 after Google's removal of device support and releases for all current Pixel devices.
- Heavily improved our automated porting tooling and server infrastructure.
- Our first security preview releases allowing users to recieve embargoed security patches for Critical/High CVEs a few months before stock Android.
- Closed out some VPN leaks from Android.
- Enabling experimental support for the developer option Terminal virtual machine manager app and other features like GUI support.
- Several improvements to Private Spaces, including use in secondary users, ending session for them, and installing available apps.
- Established a ASN for GrapheneOS and a highly reliable and widespread global network for GrapheneOS services.
This year should have some significant improvements with GrapheneOS, especially on the usage and accessibility front. There is also a lot of future Android features that will be key in delivering this, such as a fully working Desktop Mode. May this year wish us well.
It's license is incompatible to embed into GrapheneOS. FUTO apps like Keyboard is not open source in the traditional sense but rather source available under a restrictive licensing that disallows commercial usage or removing any future monetization.
Needs to be greater support for tablets by Android devs. UIs designed for the big screen also help with Desktop Mode.
I'd rather people not use GrapheneOS just because a guy on Nostr told them. I just post about GrapheneOS for the users.
If you want reasons, go to the website and see if it fits you. If your iPhone is fine enough, no problem.
This is either a very hot or a very reasoned take and I am quoting my previous note for being potentially related but I'm not a fan of software choices being grouped together or categorised for certain types of people.
If you are using something only because a forum or a thread on social media told you to, then you are more of a sheep than the people using the platforms you are moving away from are. The latter are at least doing it out of a personal preference, not out of being alternative or contrarian. You don't need to be hardcore and use something that sticks to a specific social group.
Don't ask what the best of something is, ask WHY it is. Learn about the subject and see critically and you'll always find what the best project is for you. Don't walk in other people's shoes.
Research skills is everything. Read more. I think I read too little.
I once read a post off platform a while ago about how someone felt wrong leaving GrapheneOS to use something else because of (very justifiable) personal reasons to support their needs. The fact someone would feel really ashamed and negative that they aren't meeting some imposed values from some social group (over a software choice) is not okay. You can use and build what you want. This isn't purity testing. It comes across as a deeply toxic relationship between users.
Would be an engine for now. It can be used in TalkBack, the GrapheneOS TTS accessibility feature.
GrapheneOS wasn't created by Google. It's an open source project with full time developers in different countries.
We are looking at replacing/forking existing inbuilt AOSP apps, keep in mind licensing makes many existing good choices incompatible.
A great gallery app that fits GrapheneOS is this one:
https://github.com/IacobIonut01/Gallery/releases
Recommend giving it a try.
We're developing our own implementations of text-to-speech and speech-to-text to use in #GrapheneOS which are entirely open source and avoid using so-called 'open' models without the training data available. Instead, we're making a truly open source implementation of both where all of the data used for it is open source. If you don't want to use our app for local text-to-speech and speech-to-text then you don't need to use it. Many people need this and want a better option.
We are working on TTS first then SST. The TTS training data is LJ Speech https://keithito.com/LJ-Speech-Dataset/ and the model used is our own fork of Matcha-TTS.
If people want they can fork it and add/remove/change the training data in any way they see fit. It's nothing like the so-called "open" models from OpenAI, Facebook, etc. where the only thing that's open are the neural network weights after training with no way to know what they used to train it and no way to reproduce that.
Many blind users asked us to include one of the existing open source TTS apps so they could use it to obtain a better app. None of the available open source apps meets our requirements for reasonable licensing, privacy, security or functionality. Therefore, we've developed our own text-to-speech which will be shipping soon, likely in January. We'll also be providing our own speech-to-text. We're using neural networks for both which we're making ourselves.
Merry Christmas
update: I'm an idiot and that is meant to be a Star of David not a pentagram (why the fuck is it red?)
The red color threw me off to be honest. I admit I am not cultured enough to tell the difference from first look.
who could be behind this mysterious mobile operating system? if only there was a type of source distribution that showed you who was committing code or a website with an about page or a wikipedia article or something
(at the satanist conference) Alright guys we made the mobile operating system now all we need to do is set up THE CLUES
Next #GrapheneOS update will remove the messy End Session button in the lock screen of secondary users. You'll be able to end session within the power menu or the user profile switcher UI instead.
Placing in the power button menu also means you're able to choose to power off in the same place, which could be a valuable protective measure greater than ending the session of the current profile.
8 Pro has better camera, display and build quality. 9a is newer and less powerful (a series is the cheapest options) but gets updates for a substantially longer time. I would recommend the 9a for most people because of updates and longevity but you'd want other models of you cared about better spec.
Had seen news that a mobile phone centered around a different cryptocurrency had been announced as end of life (no security updates) after just two years.
Please just use a commercial off the shelf device from a reputable brand and long support time. OS updates is not driver, firmware, etc. Even if it is a 'Bitcoin phone' it's likely not the best or safest phone a Bitcoiner should use.
What you search on YouTube is known to YouTube because you are doing it on YouTube. The platform wouldn't make a difference. Their ability to infer an identity to the searches is dependent on other information you give it, like your account, IP address etc.
There could be mining apps, but I don't think they'd be a good platform to do it on. Get a cheap mining hardware.
#GrapheneOS is very distinct from other Android distributions and OEM configurations. There is a litany of Linux kernel and Android Runtime hardening changes and features powering GrapheneOS. This is very significant but often overlooked because most changes aren't visible to the end user.
The leading example of this is hardened_malloc, the hardened memory allocator used in GrapheneOS to protect against memory corruption vulnerabilities. You can find a technical article about it by Synacktiv, a French cyber security company:
https://www.synacktiv.com/en/publications/exploring-grapheneos-secure-allocator-hardened-malloc
Hardening in GrapheneOS are built on closing out commonly exploited attack surfaces, substituting them with more secure replacements, or giving them stronger security defaults.
If you are a blue teamer you'll already be familiar with the Pyramid of Pain:
For newcomers, this model is a layered pyramid that ranks indicators of compromise by a linear level of difficulty and cost for the threat actor to evade security measures to perform an attack; The bottom of the pyramid being very easy and trivial for the threat actor to change and the top being tough.
This model opens newcomers on how good security strategy is built: Techniques and capabilities over individual actors. Closing out tactics, techniques and procedures are far more important than blocking an IP address or a file hash. You want to protect against a type of attack, not against a particular actor who performs them.
The point of having extensive hardening features is that we need to ensure vulnerabilities that would affect Android are benign, harder to exploit or patched in GrapheneOS before they can be exploited. Android distributions carry the weight of vulnerabilities from upstream. To reduce that weight, we need to make sure a highly sophisticated exploit developer would have to uniquely design their exploit to target GrapheneOS, should they be able to at all.
Without that, GrapheneOS wouldn't be special. It would not be sensible to claim it is more security and privacy focused than Android if it was able to be exploited through the exact same mechanisms with little or no effort needed to port. An Android distribution that is just Android without Google services is mostly as exploitable as Android. Something that is "DeGoogled" (I don't use the term, it's Reddit tier buzzword nonsense) may not necessarily be safer to use either.
To earn the title of being hardened it needs more, but this isn't ever implemented well enough. Projects that have done so to the best of their ability also have died (DivestOS).
Our hardening features are available outside of GrapheneOS. Leading example of this is secureblue, a security hardened Linux distribution (https://secureblue.dev/) which is using hardened_malloc and Vanadium inspired chromium browser. A business also sells hardened Rocky Linux supporting hardened_malloc. If you are a maintainer of a leading project then implementing our hardening features and supporting is strongly encouraged.
Around Android 17 is likely when the desktop mode could finalize and not become a developer option upstream. You can test the developer option today. It's unlikely we'll be doing a lot of work on this when we know it's being changed a lot.
We have a lot of ideas for the Linux Terminal app but not being approached yet for the same reasons. Ideally we'd not want to be using Debian but a hardened distribution of some kind. The process of having GUI apps could be a little more seamless than running terminal, installing GNOME, doing sudo passwd to let yourself log in, praying it doesn't break and moving to GUI. Should just be like opening an app and selecting a VM.
KDE was tested a long time ago and was a bit unstable. GNOME always worked even early on. I'll give it another try again in the future.
Footage of highly experimental GUI Linux virtual machine (and video games) in highly experimental desktop mode in #GrapheneOS.
https://blossom.primal.net/06339de81a9838bd4cee7b84bd88762d88778dde80b6ba50927de75999849579.mp4
https://blossom.primal.net/bd1fd97a404101c130e7ad56ae9503494c7e1a724f5afabccd5ece0af10bf838.mp4
Settings -> Wallpaper and Style -> Home Screen -> Icons
Won't be available to all users yet. Part of the latest release based on Android 16 QPR2.
- Icons should now be themed regardless of if the app supports them.
- You can now change the shape of app icons on the home screen. This also includes PWAs(!!)
- You can add a Widget in the home screen that is a user profile switcher.
#GrapheneOS
edited, link if Nostr clients don't work with edits:
Running other distros in the VM manager other than Debian would be desirable and something we'd like to work on when we are less ambushed with major update porting. Unsure how broad OS support will be yet.
Not as much as you'd think, to be honest, but don't expect to be blown away with the performance.
Yes. In this setup the device is plugged into a USB-C monitor that has a keyboard and mouse connected to it.
The standard phone display is still useable during this.
Essential reading for hard-line GrapheneOS users in the quote note.
Almost all of the major state-sponsored or mercenary exploits you hear about are possible through memory corruption vulnerabilities in their exploit chain. They make up most of the Critical / High vulnerabilities in Android even when the amount of them have reduced due to an increase in code written in memory safe languages.
I wouldn't know details without knowing more from your app.
Check out the documentation on background tasks, or if you discussed it elsewhere with a different team member then what they said should be helpful to you.
https://developer.android.com/develop/background-work/background-tasks
No way to tell how the account compromise happened, but if you are a developer working a large project - for the love of God please use two-factor authentication and unique credentials.
Please also install only trusted software from trusted sources... avoid being hit with infostealers.
nostr:naddr1qqcxzjzjxp35snfkf3unj6tptpfx5c3jd36ky46xdev4sursvfk42a2exguhgnr689m4q4z3xf84gjf4qythwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnswf5k6ctv9ehx2ap0qgsv4cpufp925svhy23depvl96qrudpu8xu6px4k46kg4ck39f7kvugrqsqqqa280tjl7c
We are yet to see how the upcoming Pixels will be like, however we have seen nothing in news or leaks to suggest other operating systems cannot be installed on those.
Regardless, there are many Pixels that are currently supported that will receive security updates for a long time. We are certain we will have devices by other OEMs available by then.
GrapheneOS isn't a Google certified OS and some banking apps already block running on operating systems that aren't. The Play Integrity API allows an app developer to do this.
I did hear Block is considering implementing https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-guide to support GrapheneOS for their apps including Cash App. But right now there isn't much we can do about it.
On a personal note. That really Blue 'indigo' Pixel 10 is gorgeous. It's the color I used on my profile for a long time :) I would upgrade to it if we are able to port!
Swissquote has launched official support for GrapheneOS for their main app instead of it only being available for Yuh:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.swissquote.android
> What’s new
> - We now officially support GrapheneOS!
> - Bug fixes and minor improvements
They're verifying GrapheneOS via hardware attestation.
#GrapheneOS information on Cellebrite referenced in Amnesty International report "A Digital Prison" about Serbian protest suppression.
I don't think I'd be the person to ask. My impression would be you would need to port the entire Android runtime and have all the available APIs for apps, have full support for all of the hardware supported devices use and more. For virtualization a hypervisor would need to be built if an existing solution doesn't work out. There's probably a lot more I'm missing. Exiting Linux is an extremely far future wish and I think the team would prefer these projects to mature first. I'm also not a microkernel developer so there's countless details I think I would likely be missing out...
I'd be more interested to see a deliverable high-security daily driver desktop operating system with a microkernel with app sandboxing, permission controls, exploit mitigations etc.
Disposable VMs would be something the project would look at when making a VM manager. Running apps in GrapheneOS VMs would be part of that idea.
⚡️🚨 WATCH - GeoSpy can help track the location of a person using just a few grainy pixels from a profile picture
https://blossom.primal.net/232f7dae7f9fa9c327fb51bc34d919de462edb86f5e394feb98852f90b4ce65a.mp4
This is a small part of a very deep OSINT rabbit hole. The service also allows tracking of insides of buildings, even without visibility of the outdoors.
This service also had a freely available test a while back where you could export to PDF. I used it briefly but I hadn't ever been their customer. Huge ethical concerns.
You can actually do the above yourself in some cases but the service (which is LE only) is likely to be way more accurate. If I upload a photo showing too much of my home and throw it into Google Lens it shows old photos of the inside when it was for sale many years ago. This is why I rarely take pictures. It means very little for me in the grand scheme as I consider myself a public individual and I posted photos in this very Nostr feed but if you are heavy on your opsec you should not do this.
I also managed to help a colleague with this a very long time ago by identifying the house of a photo subject who took a mirror selfie in his bathroom. I put Google Lens of the background of the image and it identified a Zillow listing of the house with every room inside. This is a very low effort thing to try out.
There's also equivalent services for tracking faces with AI. Some having very dodgy opt-out schemes and I had seen being marketed as law enforcement tools but ended up having malicious intentions. One of the largest ones had Reddit accounts where they posted on 18+ content subreddits for the purpose of using it to ID online sex workers.
Around 2 hours, 14 minutes.
Welp... #GrapheneOS
If our funding and manpower was unlimited, GrapheneOS wouldn't be using the Linux kernel at all, ideally something akin to a microkernel with a hypervisor written in a memory safe language like Rust. We'd then have an Android compatibility layer to run the apps. Android userspace already provides a lot of the safety by apps being developed officially in Kotlin or Java.
Linux kernel security flaws make up a lot of Android issues and are what ends up getting exploited in the wild by companies like Cellebrite. The Linux kernel itself is the biggest security liability. Having a more secure base means less hardening work. There was a post I made a couple months ago about Linux kernel (and Android specific) vulnerabilities that Android didn't fix but GrapheneOS had.
This type of OS is interesting: https://www.redox-os.org/
These projects need to get contributions and growth, these are the type of operating systems developers should be working on.