Graphene OS: a security-enhanced Android build

>>madars+(OP)
Happy long term user, great project. Here is a list of Open Source Apps, I use to replace Google stuff:

  Aurora Store - Anonymized frontend for Playstore
  F-Droid - Open Source App Store
  Obtainium - App Store for other sources (e.g. github)
  Organic Maps - Open Source navigation (not as good as proprietary ones though)
  SherpaTTS - Text to speech for Organic Maps
  PDF Doc Scanner - Little Trickster, Open Source document scanner
  Binary Eye - Barcode reader
  K9 Mail / FairMail - Mail client
  LocalSend - Cross Platform File Transfer
  Syncthing Fork - Catfriend1 Syncthing fork to sync files
  VLC Media Player - media player
  KOReader - ebook reader
  Voice - Paul Woitaschek, local audiobook player
  AudioBookShelf - Remote audiobook player
  Immich - image backup
  Fossify File Manager - file manager
  Substreamer / DSub - Audio streamer for navidrome self hosted server
  OpenCamera - Open Source camera app

I wish I had this list from the start... Hope it helps someone :-)

>>sandre+yS
How do push notifications and similar things work on GraphenOS? Do they work reliably out of the box on most apps, or did you have to set up MicroG/whatever GrapheneOS's equivalent is?

>>labada+LI1
> How do push notifications and similar things work on GraphenOS?

Some apps require Google's FCM for push notifications. You need to install Sandboxed Google Play services from the GrapheneOS App Store and grant them unrestricted battery access (so they can run in the background, which is required for maintaining a network connection to FCM and delivering notifications). https://grapheneos.org/faq#notifications

Other apps like Signal use their own background connections, for example WebSockets, to deliver push notifications, but keeping a connection open for each app consumes more battery life than just having one background network connection. Also, not every app supports this.

For Signal specifically, the GrapheneOS project recommends either using FCM via Sandboxed Google Play, or installing Molly (https://molly.im/), a fork of the Signal client for Android, which makes some changes to reduce battery consumption when using WebSocket-based notifications. It also allows you to use UnifiedPush (https://unifiedpush.org/) for notifications instead, but that requires an application called mollysocket (https://github.com/mollyim/mollysocket) running on a server.

>>Androm+Ob2
Awesome! Thanks for sharing this.

zlacker