Saving this for when I finally make the leap to Graphene. Thanks for the list!
this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
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DeGoogle Yourself
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Today is my first day using Graphene full time after two weeks of delays and familiarising with things. Very satisfied right now. Everything works smoothly, and the granular app permissions and storage scopes are a dream.
I threw the last couple of Google services I still need into a separate user profile while I phase them out, and I really wish I could ditch WhatsApp but it's almost impossible for me at the moment. Nevertheless, I'm pleased with my progress and highly recommend leaping.
Do it!
Depending on how much WhatsApp functionality you need, you could use a matrix bridge. That's what I do for google and facebook.
Nice thanks for the suggestion I will look into it.
I'm thinking about switching to GrapheneOS, but sadly I need to continue using WhatsApp too. Do you have WhatsApp installed in a separate profile? Notifications aren't cross-profile aren't they? How do you get notified about a WhatsApp message when it runs in a separate profile?
Hey Squirrel, notifications do work across profiles if you are logged in with a session on the other profile, too. This will work until you restart your phone or explicitly end your session on the other profile otherwise you will stay logged in when switching profiles. There is a setting in graphene under System > Users > Send notifications to current profile to toggle this feature on but only the profile name, app name and time is displayed so if you wanted to see the message from WhatsApp then you won't be able to if it's in another profile.
I decided instead to put WhatsApp into a Private Space in my owner profile by itself so it's isolated, but I can access and use it on my main profile normally, only that the private space needs to be unlocked when I restart my phone.
Personally I don't have WhatsApp notifications turned on, only when I recive voice or video calls from WhatsApp then my phone will vibrate, but you can get notifications properly with this setup if you like.
You can read about how the private space feature works with GrapheneOS here: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/16670-private-space-on-android-15-grapheneos
You will find, as mentioned all over GrapheneOS forums, that there are millions of ways to setup profiles and lots of discussions around it so you just gotta work out what works best for you.
My setup is kind of a half way house to full degoogling.
- Owner profile: mostly FOSS with Fdroid, Obtanium, sandboxed Google play with a new burner Google account for the few things that needed it.
- Owner's Private profile: WhatsApp
- Secondary profile: banking apps
- Google profile: my left over Google services. Profile will soon be deleted entirely.
Sorry for the long reply, hope it is helpful.
Thank you very much. I didn't know about private space. This is really nice.
Happy to help and best of luck. I'll drop one more link here for you that I found useful on this topic: https://seprand.github.io/articles/best-user-profile-setup/
That's the neat part. You don't!
Seriously though, if its in a separate user profile or a work profile you won't get any notifications unless it's active. The simplest solution is to use something like Shelter to get create a work profile. Put G services in that and WhatsApp and anything else. Then you can pause the whole profile when you don't want it running, and G can only see what's in that profile. This is what I do and I keep it paused 99% of the time.
Does whatsapp not work with microG? If it does, I'd reccomend that over creating a separate profile.
highly recommend leaping
i like you choice of word on a platform that shares its name an animal that's commonly known for blindly-following cliff diving. lol
Well, they did engineer that for a fake nature documentary. Maybe there is hope for us
i'm aware; i just like that there's reference it on lemmy -- intentional or not. lol
🍻
I did the same: sat on a lot of these resource alternatives to prep for the transition. Turns out these are just proofs of concept and there are soo many more alternatives out there, including use cases that the big guys don't create for. It becomes as simple as searching forums or asking ai for a "genuinely foss, privacy-respecting app compatible with GrapheneOS that does x."
My god... you have a really tall phone...
I'm curious about scrolling screenshot apps, on that note; it seems only Samsung has it really down, or am I missing a flawless FOSS app that everyone can use?
looks good 🤜🤛
Good shit.
Thats a big phone
I'm curious as someone who has been increasingly getting annoyed by the Play Store. Has Aurora prevented you from doing anything that only the Play Store can do?
no, my experience with the aurora store has been very good actually. I simply manage to download and update what I need, I dont see ads or a thousand useless buttons. the maximum that has already happened was some app refuse to run because of the absence of the playstore
Right, that's what I was referring to; unfortunately, I'm heavily reliant on certain such apps... Thanks for the clarification.
Yeah, anything paid is going to be a problem. Or anything with in-app purchases. You could try setting up a work profile with G services and those remaining apps. That's what I do.
I also jumped into grapheneos a few months ago. Mostly smooth process. The few google apps I have left to change are on a separate profile. Couple of questions, what phone app do you use? Not being able to identify spam calls right now sucks. Also can you explain morphed apps? Keep seeing people use them
fossify phone, I don't think you can handle this spam for him yet but it doesn't bother me because I rarely get that kind of call. And Morphe is a app to apply patches in Reddit and YouTube apps to remove ads, tracking and another improvents. their site: https://morphe.software/
Thanks I'll check that site out.
Fossify phone is great, minus when my screen is off in my pocket and I get a call (90%of my calls) I pull my phone out and it doesn't light up, no draw over lock screen, so I have to hurry and click on phone icon to wait for the notification to load.
I really like welefon. I don't know that any foss apps have built in spam handling though
I did come across this at one point https://f-droid.org/packages/spam.blocker/ but I never figured out how to use it
I've seen spam blocker too but haven't looked into it yet. Seen people using google dialer but don't wanna do that
Gone grapheneOS here, having trouble with not receiving texts from iPhone users because they don't know their phone's SMS is off. Anyone else?
You mean you went from iPhone to GrapheneOS?
No. I went from Android to GrapheneOS. Have clients on iPhone. I'm now using stock messages on grapheneOS instead of Google message. IPhone seems to have default settings with SMS protocols off
I've noticed QUIK has better support than the stock messages app. It might be worth checking out.
Could you provide the exact settings menu you are talking about in the iPhone? I switched to graphene from iPhone and ran into a bunch of mostly solvable problems. One that was out of my control was how Apple was storing my information for other iPhone users. For example, for my mom's Apple account, Apple stored the metadata that I had an Apple device and it would therefore first try routing messages over imessage and would simply fail to deliver after I switched to Graphene. I had to go into my mom's phone and manually force her phone to send the message via SMS. It correctly remembered my number for her after that, but you apparently have to do that for every person if they have the same situation. I ended up getting a new standard cell number through Cape and I use that through Graphene's stock messaging app now without any issues so far.
That is weird. I recall users having trouble after switching from iPhone to Android a couple years back - root cause was their number still being associated with iMessage, so texts from an iPhone went nowhere.
It’s possible to disable RCS and MMS. I don’t even see the option of SMS being disabled.
I hadn't heard of Haven before. I've been using Terminus until now but Haven is at least as good if not better with no subscription and it's FOSS!
Nice job! I've done a handful of these migrations myself. My journey has looked very similar.
Cool, how do you make the icons all uniform like that on Graphene?