Every time I so much as mention a phone, the comment section is filled with folks
insisting that I should have used graphine OS. Don't want any
pre-installed bloat on your Pixel? Graphine OS. Don't want anybody keeping
an eye on whatever it is you're doing? Graphine OS. Stop your toe running from
the cops. Graphine OS. It doesn't seem to matter
what the problem is. Ow.
or if there even is a problem. The answer always seems to be get graphine
OS. So I did and it turns out that the
things that make Graphine OS a great choice for narr also make it a pretty
great choice for anyone who cares deeply about [music] their privacy and their
security. If you're not already in the know, Graphine OS is based on the
Android open source project and it has Android app compatibility, but it comes
without [music] the corporate spyware and the bloat that's baked into
mainstream Android thanks to its dedicated nonprofit open-source team.
And the best part is you don't need any weird hardware to run it. It can be
installed with minimal hassle on any recent generation Pixel. So, let's see
if Graphine OS can fit my admittedly [music] rather unique needs. Right after this
unique segue to our sponsors, >> War Thunder. Immerse yourself in a
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>> Graphine OS boasts a truly massive list of enhancements that help ensure that
you are the one who's in control of your device and you stay in control [music]
regardless of your carrier. Unlike other mobile operating systems, and yes,
[music] that means even iOS, uncompromising privacy and security are
baked right into its fabric to the point where Graphine literally won't even ask
a third party server for the time of day unless you change a setting to
explicitly allow it to. Some of our highlights include pin scrambling, which
makes it harder to guess your PIN from looking over your shoulder or checking
for grease spots on your screen. The ability to use a second factor on top of
your fingerprint in order to unlock your phone. support for longer passwords, the
ability to schedule reboots to keep any unused data out of memory where it could
possibly be retrieved, and this last one's really cool. If you're ever in a
situation where the [music] data or the accounts on your phone could be used
against you, you can set it up with a duress pin or password that when entered
[music] will irreversibly wipe both your device and any installed eims. Just uh
be careful with that last one, though. The OS assumes that if you enter a
duress code, [music] you really mean it. And that wipe cannot be stopped. Now, I
could probably spend the rest of this video talking about more privacy and security innovations in graph OS. But if
that's your jam, you'd actually probably be better off checking out their website, which we'll have linked down
below. It's a fascinating read, even if you have no intention of installing it.
And [music] I'm not the only one who thinks so. There are a ton of features
that they don't mention there anymore because while they may have originated
in graphine OS, they've since been adopted by mainline Android or AOSP.
Now, let's talk about using it. Beyond just being more secure and more private,
or maybe because of those priorities, Graphin OS starts up with a lot less
software running or even installed versus what shipped on this Pixel 9a.
I'm talking 14 apps in the app drawer.
14. All directly from the good folks at Graphine OS themselves. These
pre-installed apps are meant to cover your basic smartphone functions. And
through this experiment, I've learned that many security and privacy conscious
users prefer to use progressive web apps or PWAs or even just plain old websites
rather than the permissionhungry native apps that [music] get pushed on us. So
that's where Venadium comes in. It's Graphine's hardened version of Chromium.
But that's not to say that you can't run native apps. Graphine does come with an
app store and that app store includes two additional app stores. Yes, that's
right. A full quarter of the apps in the graphine OS app store are themselves app
stores. [music] The first one is a Crescent, a privacy
and security focused app store that is currently in [music] alpha. It's only
got a few dozen apps so far and it could probably use a little UX love, but
clearly Graphine thinks it's got legs if they're including it as the only non-
Googlele non-graph OS app in the built-in app store. And it was through a
Crescent that I found two of the coolest apps of this [music] whole experiment.
Transcribe Bro is an ondevice speechtoext keyboard that works
remarkably well, at least in English, completely offline. It uses the OpenAI
whisper family of [music] models and Cero VAD for voice activity detection. I
do [music] wish the record button would go red when it's listening, but I mean,
hey, it's open source, so that'll probably be fixed by the time you watch
this video. I also want to highlight organic maps, a no ad, no tracking, no
data collection map app that works offline using open [music] street map
data. It comes with a basic map for the world. And then as you zoom in further,
I think it was around 10 km to 1 cm scale, you'll be prompted to download
additional details for that region. Once I figured out how to give it the right
location permissions to get GPS working, it was almost the perfect mapping app.
The only thing I missed was traffic overlay. And yes, I fully get why it
doesn't have real-time traffic. You don't need to privacy split it to me. I
just like avoiding traffic. The second
included app store is good old-fashioned Google Play. Oh, thank goodness. Where
else would I get all the apps I need? Okay, I know there are other places to
get them, but we'll get to those later because first, Google Play Store gives
me a chance to talk about Graphine OS's compatibility layer that lets you
install official releases of Google Play
into the standard app sandbox. This
forces Google Play and all of its supporting services to actually respect
your permission settings rather than getting special unfettered access to
your device. [music] It also expands on the typical Android
permission system, adding controls for network and sensor access. And Graphine
even lets you set limited scope access to storage and contacts, so you can keep
apps from snooping around where you don't want them to. And if that's not
enough, you can install your app stores and your apps into different user
profiles, which allows you to restrict their access to only what's in that
profile. Meaning that any apps in your Google profile can't talk to apps in
your Facebook profile. and vice versa. We found one example of someone using
eight separate profiles to segregate their various apps and data. Wow. But
I'm just a simple small time tech tuber. So if [music] the graphine OS usage
guide says it's simplest to run a single profile,
that's what I'm going to do. Sorry to disappoint the graphine OS hardcores,
but I'm three app stores deep and a dozen paragraphs into this video and I
can't even check my email yet. Okay, I could through my browser, but you guys
know what I mean. So, my next step then was to install all my typical apps. And
not going to lie, it was kind of a hassle, but [music] with good
intentions. Let me explain. See, I
switch phones a lot, and normally when I massinstall my app loadout, the store
just kind of gives me a couple catch-all permission prompts and then downloads
all my junk in the name of expediency. Graphine OS, not so much. It asked me
about everything, which really made me conscious of how much permission I'm
giving away, even if it did make the process drag on for so long that I ended
up reaching out to the development team behind Graphine OS to make sure that I
hadn't broken something. They were a massive help, by the way, for the entire
month of my experiment. So, uh, shout out Spring Onion, if that is your real
name. On the subject of apps, most of them
just plain worked. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that even my beloved
Pixel exclusive call screening worked immediately once I installed the Google
dialer. And this should hold true for other exclusive Pixel apps and [music]
features like the camera. Pretty cool.
But nothing's perfect, and that includes graphine OS. Check out this issue that I
had with Facebook while I was live on the WAN Show. And my new BFF, Spring
Onion, had to jump in and save me from some other, let's call them, unintuitive
experiences as well. See, it turns out that some apps really need play services
running in the background all the time. I hadn't enabled that, so I found some
pretty weird behavior. Oh, Swift Key. This one had me totally stumped. I
couldn't use dictation, and it kept telling me I needed this dependency app,
but then it wasn't the right one. No, see, I had to go get a separate speech
recognition app, and then I had to give that app microphone access before I
could dictate. Oh, okay. Also, some apps
that use the Play Integrity API, it's mostly banking apps, just plain didn't
work. Maybe that's the issue we had with eBay. I'm not sure. That app just tells
me it's not available for my device. And as for screenshot editing, that required
a separate install of markup from the graphine OS app store. See, it's not in
Google Play for some reason and is also not part of the default install.
Finally, there's Android Auto. That was a special experience. See, there is a
sandbox version in the graphine store, which is great. [music] But even after
enabling all the permissions I could find, it was still struggling to
connect. I then discovered that, oh, of
course, the default behavior when you connect [music] a USB cable is charge
only and there is no prompt to enable data transfer. Well, that is very
secure. It just means that in order to get around it, you need to know to go
find the menu to enable data transfer, and you have to know that [music] that
includes Android Auto. So, then I was all set, right? Wrong. Android Auto
continued to be a problem for a little while yet. It was mostly just dumb
little hiccups like slow navigation and [music] GPS position updates, uh, not
having access to my contacts, etc., etc. and I would dutifully go digging through
the permissions to figure out what I'd missed, but it was enough to be
annoying. Now, to address the herd of
elephants in the room, some folks will insist that installing Google Anything
on this means that I'm doing Graphion OS wrong. And if I'm honest, putting Google
Play on here did feel a little dirty. But the fact is, guys, I use products
and services from companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple every day to
do my job. And in most cases, they really do need most of the permissions
that they're asking for in order to function properly, which kind of bummed
me out. But my new pal, Pummer Alien,
had a really great perspective on this, pointing out that Graphine OS is
designed to improve the privacy and security of everyone, not just the
hardcores and the obsessives. And their team totally understands that we're not
all able to ditch the apps that we need for work or for communicating with our
kids. and they work hard to ensure that you'll still be much better off running
those things in graphin OS than you are in a Google flavored version of Android
or a Xiai flavored version of Android. [music] With that said, if you're lucky enough
that you don't need to rely on things from our corporate overlords, maybe
[music] you could get away without the official Play Store. Aurora is an option
that I saw mentioned a lot on the graph OS forums and on the [music] subreddit.
There are some disagreements as to whether it is technically an app store,
but its main purpose is to search for apps and download apps from the Play
Store anonymously, which seems close enough in my books. And it's pretty
awesome for any apps that you don't need to log into. Foid would be another
option, and there's many other app stores with rabid fans that I'm sure I'm
angering right now by not providing an exhaustive list. So, um, sorry for that
in advance. Another option is to just download the APK files you need and
sideloadad your apps. [music] However, if you're going to take that approach,
please do your due diligence. Make sure you can trust the source and always
check the hashes of anything you download before you install it on your phone. If what I said was confusing just
now, just use an app store until you get up to speed. Anyway, that was a lot and
I still haven't given a bottom line. Graphin OS reminded me a lot of my past
experiments daily driving Linux. And like the Linux crowd, many Graphine OS
users probably don't even notice the little side quests that crop up during
regular use. But for others, these this
should just work moments can be very frustrating. And if you're wondering
which bucket you fall into, we came across a really great perspective on
this question on the graphine forums that I'm going to have to paraphrase
because we lost a link. It all comes down to trade-offs. Are you willing to
give up a little bit of convenience for more security and privacy? Or do you
prefer to give up a little bit of privacy for, say, live traffic data in
your mapping app? Do you prefer to tinker and tweak and have control over
your phone? Or do you want your OS to just fade into the background of your
life and just work? So, is Graphine OS
for you? Well, based on the questions that I just asked, you probably already
have the answer in your mind. [music] If you're the sort of person that would try
a different OS on your phone, Graphine OS gives a ton of control in a package
that I would call polished enough for the kind of person that doesn't mind a
little bit of tinkering to keep things running smoothly. And if you're trying
to deleg your life, it seems like a major piece of that puzzle. As for me,
at the moment with companies, kids, wife, not to mention other hobbies that
I just plain enjoy more than tinkering with OSS, Final Fantasy Tactics remaster
just came out. I am loving it already. Maybe not today, [music] maybe not
tomorrow, but soon. And for the rest of my life. You know what else I'll do for
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devices. If you like this video, maybe check out the time that I had three
Android users switch to [music] Apple for a month. It's a two-parter and
provides a lot of interesting insights on what it's like for a regular [music]
but techsavvy user to make the