Fuck Google with a stiff wire brush.
I read somewhere that GrapheneOS devs have a strategy which they believe will work – they strip out something or other about app/device attestation (?) from APK files before installing occurs, or the enforcement code itself from their spin of the OS, so sideloading (ie., user-controlled installation) can still work.
I sure hope so… I think everyone in their respective country needs to scream at their local regulators about this.
Of course, this will only help those whose devices GrapheneOS can run on.
Google has already shared how apps’ developers will be verified. They’re adding another app that will have access to block installing apps or disable them. That won’t work on GrapheneOS because 1. the app won’t be installed and 2. the app won’t have that kind of privileged access.
Soooo we just block that app, right?
It just won’t work on GrapheneOS. Not sure if disabling it will work on the stock OS. We will have to wait and see on that one.
I think the issue is new hardware and google starting to close source android, so that Graphene devs don’t have the open source to work with. They’ll probably get binary blobs
It’s my understanding that the changes that were made didn’t make things more or less proprietary. Some drivers are still open source, others are still closed source. The device trees mostly have other things in them like configuration files and stuff like that.
I hope so as well. This debacle with RCS not working on GrapheneOS has been a real dick-punch. I really don’t want to go back to a stock OS.
It’s my understanding that RCS was fixed for most users after this update: https://grapheneos.org/releases#2025092700. You may need to grant permissions to Google Play Services first, then clear Google Messages’ storage, grant permissions to Google Messages, then try setting it up again.
It was not. I have been on the Discord #Testing channel working with others to troubleshoot. Those steps do not work.
It seemed to be fixed on the 20251003 release, a lot of people got it working for a while, including me. It died within 24 hours.
I said “most users”. There are some who are still experiencing issues, which is being looked into. Other people have had issues that were fixed by clearing the storage for Google Play, Google Play Services, Google Messages, then granting all necessary permissions before launching Google Messages again.
The GrapheneOS team is already in communications with an Android OEM to see if they can make a device that meets their specs, hopefully that bears fruit in a year or two.
Do you have source to this?
Just check the project’s X account. The OEM partnership is mentioned very regularly.
