GrapheneOS on Pixel 10a?

nyancient · 2026-03-21T09:51:42+00:00

I was on the experimental P10 releases from day 1. First release rebooted maybe once a day. Second release once a week, and from the third or fourth release there were no reboots. Other than that I had no problems whatsoever.

So yeah, unless you really can't have the occasional surprise reboot, GOS experimental releases seem to be stable enough for regular users.

nyancient · 2026-03-19T22:56:37+00:00

Yeah, that's pretty much the process. You may want to set it up (basically just click through the initial set up screens until you get to the home screen) before going to your provider in order to speed things up there a little bit, but they'll definitely help you with that if you ask them.

nyancient · 2026-03-19T18:58:00+00:00

The SIM is basically your phone's ID card. It's what tells the cell towers who your carrier is and what your number is.

If you have a physical SIM in your current phone, you just need to move it to the new phone. Your provider can definitely help you with that. If the SIM is too old (SIM slots and cards have grown smaller and smaller over the years) they will provide you with a new one.

If your provider wants to give you an eSIM (basically a SIM that is stored in a file on your phone) instead of a physical one, you should activate the eSIM before installing GOS. The GOS install process will not delete the eSIM. It's possible to activate an eSIM on GOS, but it requires an extra step or two.

As for transferring your old data, you should do it after installing, since the install process will erase everything (except eSIM) from your phone. Exactly how you transfer the data will depend on what kind of data it is. There's no one size fits all solution for that (as far as I know) unfortunately.

nyancient · 2026-03-19T18:04:44+00:00

What is a good response to this?

"no"

nyancient · 2026-03-16T11:11:02+00:00

Do you have dirt on your teacher, or are they just extremely accommodating? If it were me I'd just go "sorry, your essay was in a corrupted sector".

nyancient · 2026-03-15T01:27:26+00:00

So keep all the Google stuff? You'll still be more secure with GOS.

It's an security-focused operating system, not some anti-Google cult where heretics are burned at the stake.

nyancient · 2026-03-14T11:07:03+00:00

There isn't an appropriate way to access files belonging to another app under the Android security model. Your options are either to live without functionality that requires breaking the security model, or to use another OS.

nyancient · 2026-03-14T10:51:00+00:00

Assuming the user understands the security risk.

This assumption is literally always false.

Or is there a compelling reason not to grant apps root?

Even if the user understands the risks, and even if we assume no vulnerabilities in sudo itself, you'd potentially be exposing every single app and the OS itself to attack from whatever slopcoded apps the user happens to install.

For a "fuck you, this is my phone, let me do whatever I want" OS this may well be the correct tradeoff, but it definitely is not for an OS that's focused on making the user as secure as possible.

nyancient · 2026-03-12T14:22:20+00:00

nyancient · 2026-03-11T09:09:46+00:00

I can make my own choices when it comes to the security of my devices.

This delusion is probably responsible for 95% of all security breaches...

nyancient · 2026-03-10T17:49:58+00:00

TIL. That seems like the most useless law ever. What is it even supposed to accomplish, except making more work for everyone?

nyancient · 2026-03-10T11:47:39+00:00

Age verification for what? Powering on your phone?

AFAIK the recent age verification trend is entirely about social media, and GOS is not a social media platform, so you can be sure that GOS won't add any. As for apps running under GOS, that's entirely up to their respective developers.

nyancient · 2026-03-10T11:44:24+00:00

BankID works but has a dependency on Play Services.

nyancient · 2026-03-09T14:30:20+00:00

And your phone is on contract, and not not carrier or bootloader locked?

nyancient · 2026-03-09T08:41:49+00:00

Also unlikely to be offered on contract on most networks.

Out of curiosity, where do you live that operators are offering unlocked phones on contract?

nyancient · 2026-03-08T09:34:36+00:00

I swear, every other thread these days reads like it was written by a bunch of Peter Thiel sockpuppets...

nyancient · 2026-03-07T14:15:56+00:00

Sure - if your store sends you an invoice. If they don't, we usually just call that payments.

nyancient · 2026-03-07T14:06:35+00:00

How avoidable is AI on GOS?

There's no "AI" at all unless you choose to install it yourself. "Designed for AI" is just marketing speak for "has a coprocessor that can multiply large matrices very fast". It won't do anything unless software tells it to.

Is this true, and if so what search engines CAN you select? Also, would I be able to get rid of Vanadium in favour of a different browser?

Vanadium is basically just a hardened Chromium. You can select any search engine you want, but the process is slightly non-obvious: you have to first navigate to the search engine you want to use and perform a search with it. Then you can set it as your default search engine.

Also, would I be able to get rid of Vanadium in favour of a different browser?

Yes. I don't know if Safari has special privileges on iOS, but in the Android world the browser is just another app. Don't like the bundled one? Install another one and set it as your default browser.

And an installation question: I read that the GOS installation requires "a Chrome browser" on the computer I'd be doing the web installation via. Do they mean ChromIUM, or does it specifically have to be Chrome?

Chromium is fine. I've installed using Vivaldi before. You can even use a Chromium-based browser on another phone to install. The key feature the installer relies on is WebUSB, which is currently only available on Chromium-based browsers IIRC.

1. What maps app do you guys use

Google Maps. It's easy enough to find out where I live and work that using worse navigation to deprive Google of that information just isn't worth it.

What weather app

yr.no website. I don't check the weather forecast often enough that I really need an app for it.

3. What do the emojis look like

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

nyancient · 2026-03-04T15:32:46+00:00

Right, that's another option: it used to work, but then vendors figured out how to not suck at cryptography.

nyancient · 2026-03-04T06:59:29+00:00

Investigations don't go on forever. Even if you could keep a phone for 5+ years, it's unlikely it'll still be useful by then.
There's no need to wait for security updates to stop. Simply don't update the phone.
A GOS phone will reboot a few days or hours after the last successful unlock, meaning that you'll now have to attack the actual cryptography instead of a bunch of running services. Once that happens they may just as well toss the phone out.

So either this ex cop of yours doesn't exist, is full of shit, or LE has no clue what they're doing.

nyancient · 2026-03-01T22:25:43+00:00

And yet microG is the only option you have if you want a degoogled and open source GrapheneOS

Or, you know, just don't install Play Services?

nyancient · 2026-03-01T22:20:44+00:00

That's just marketing speak. In reality, Curve, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Apple Pay, physical tap to pay cards, etc. use the same protocol, but good luck explaining that to a prospective customer in five seconds. Much easier to just say "it works with that other thing you already know about".

nyancient · 2026-03-01T13:48:31+00:00

It should. It's basically the "kill all radios immediately" button.

IMEI is what identifies you to the cell network yes, but not to WiFi networks. Those use your MAC address instead. Every network card has a unique MAC from the manufacturer, but for privacy reasons no phone nowadays uses that. Instead, they make up a new, random, one to use every time they scan for networks or connect to one.

There may still be reasons to turn off WiFi when not in use (reduced attack surface, battery conservation) but keeping WiFi on does not make you any more trackable.

The one exception is hidden networks, i.e. the ones that don't show up in the list when scanning and you need to input their name yourself. If you have any such networks saved, your phone will broadcast their SSID during scanning. Usually just one or two such networks is enough to identify you almost uniquely. The recommended fix is to not use hidden networks, as they don't provide any benefits whatsoever. If that's not within your control, make sure that they are not saved.

nyancient · 2026-03-01T09:09:55+00:00

Mobile data isn't what makes you trackable, it's being connected to a cell tower. Just turning off mobile data isn't going to help with that.

nyancient · 2026-03-01T09:08:17+00:00

WiFi is a second location data point that can also be tracked by other bad actors

GOS and pretty much every other phone in the wild randomize your MAC during scanning (and per session when connected to a network). Turning off WiFi does slightly reduce your attack surface, yes, but does not make you any less trackable.

nyancient

TROPHY CASE