Hi,

I am (very, very early) in the process of degoogling. I am definitely not a high risk as far as needing to be completely locked down. It’s more about trying to have a little more control over how my data is used.

I am looking at Graphene OS, but I am a little confused how certain apps (that rely on Google services) work. I have a Pixel 8 and will have it for the foreseeable future.

The apps I currently use that I would still need (or their equivalents) are:

  • Clash Royale (Supercell)
  • Notion (Notion Labs)
  • Clickup (Mango Technologies)
  • Business Calendar 2 (Appgenix)

  1. If I installed these exact apps “sandboxed”, what exactly does that mean from a user standpoint? Will I have to use a separate account, reboot my phone, etc, or is it a quick process to use the app?

  2. Is there a list of apps that I could browse to find equivalents to the above? Recommendations here are also ok.

  3. I saw that Firefox isn’t exactly private(?) and that Vanadium is better in that aspect but I don’t understand why. Can someone ELI5, and help me see if this is a relevant concern for me?

Thank you! 😁

  • Certainly_No_Brit@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    8 months ago

    You don’t install the apps “sandboxed”. You can install the Google services like any normal app (in the “Apps” app). The Google services will then only have very limited permissions, for example they won’t be able to see your location, camera, contacts etc. by default and you can grant these permissions like to any other app.

    The only thing that changes is that you have the option to install Google services and that you have the option to grant them permissions they would have limitlessly on a “normal” Android phone.

    Your four mentioned apps should work on GrapheneOS without any problems, the only apps I had difficulties with were banking apps. The Google Play Store won’t be installed by default though, so you will need to install it in the “Apps” app. (I recommend using F-Droid to find alernative apps, although you won’t find something like Clash Royale on there. If you don’t want to use a Google account, you may want to look into Aurora Store (it provides anonymous access to the Play Store), which is also available of F-Droid)

    I personally still use Firefox (Mull to be exact), because Vanadium doesn’t seem to have any good way of blocking ads. I found this on the internet in some R*ddit comment:

    Chromium-based browsers like Vanadium and Bromite provide the strongest sandbox implementation, leagues ahead of the alternatives. It is much harder to escape from the sandbox and it provides much more than acting as a barrier to compromising the rest of the OS.

    (Long version of the above quote: https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing)

    • LWD@lemm.ee
      1·
      8 months ago

      FWIW Cromite should be the recommendation now (Bromite has been long discontinued!), although I too don’t worry too much about the sandboxing benefits and use a FF fork for much/most of my browsing these days.