PSA: For folks looking for a swipe enabled keyboard on GrapheneOS without using Google's gboard, try Heliboard - https://f-droid.org/packages/helium314.keyboard/. It's 100% FOSS, but can also use the binary blob from google's gesture typing library "swypelibs" to provide swipe typing. Since helium can't access the internet, I am okay with that.
There's also FUTO Keyboard (https://keyboard.futo.org/). Nothing against Heliboard (I actually don't even remember why I chose it over Heliboard). Just another good option.
I have been using GrapheneOS now for 8 month and its been quite a smooth ride. The biggest worry I had was flashing it onto a brand new Pixel phone I had just bought. Everything else works fine though. Currently using 3 (german) banking apps and I haven't had a single issue. Also still using Google apps like camera and maps. Also Gboard as the default GrapheneOS keyboard is a bit uncomfortable. Really nice that you can just remove the network permissions and it works like a charm
Personally I would just love Apple to be forced by governments to open up their hardware by releasing complete documentation of their hardware and allowing to install another os or dual boot. iPhones hardware is really good and would love booting Linux on theses. And then force every services company to provide an API to their services so we have an alternative to their app. I guess Motorola partnering with GrapheneOS will not change anything in this space because contactless payments and some apps will not work and fundamentally because the sales will be way below mainstream brands like Apple/Samsung. Governments need to step up here.
Not necessarily this, but a legislation mandating long-term (10 years) support for software and security updates could result in Apple offering Linux after they decide they don't want to continue releasing macOS for older hardware.
I admire the de-Googled approach of GrapheneOS. As a lawyer, privacy concerns resonate with me too. I love the rebellious attitude of tech that presents an alternative choice in an overly duopolistic market.
That said, I wouldn't last 8.4 months like the author. Even though he admits to some Google app usage, I'm in too deep — I'd never be able to get out. But if I get the chance, I'd like to try it on a secondary phone. Those solid black icons are one reason. They look cool.
my take on this is to some advocates probably shocking. But I think you don't need to perfectly switch and never touch anything google again.
I personally just encourage people to take a look at what you are using, and if you could gradually change some of it. Who knows sometimes alternatives even offer better services. I am not saying never use anything google ever again. Just question your tools regularly and peruse the alternatives.
Graphene supports the 6a, which unlocked goes for ~$100 on ebay. I imagine you can swing that as a lawyer to play around.
I'll also echo the ideas from everyone else here. You can just use it as a normal Android phone the way you do any other and there's still big benefits. There's also really big benefits in terms of carrier privacy that aren't often talked about, like vpn routing and hotspot usage.
Not wanting to discourage you from trying Graphene, but the icons are probably not a good reason. Can always install an alternative launcher and icon pack on stock android.
Running Graphene for a long time now, everything works perfectly fine, but I don't do mobile banking.
My experience with seedvault is not as positive as the OP, it fails for about half my apps. I guess I have another year to fix this when the GrapheneOS enabled Motorola flagship comes out.
I carry both my iPhone 16 Plus and my Pixel 8 Pro, but limit my iPhone use to mobile banking, Apple Pay and Find My.
Seedvault is godawful and I'm saying it as a someone using GOS as a daily driver. Utterly awful.
Two backup runs can give different results (failing in different places or failing to restore everything), and I haven't heard of the one person it works for every time.
I’ve been using GrapheneOS for a couple of years now, and it’s been perfect for me. Contactless payments used to work fine, but then my bank switched to Google Wallet. Since then, I’ve just kept a physical card tucked behind my phone case so I can use it when needed.
For all the "My Banking Apps don't work", I'd raise one question:
Do you really need access to banking apps on the go? I get that it can be handy and maybe you legit do, but I'd wager most people don't really do. If you can pay by phone you can pay by card and the card has less potentially to weirdly break.
And if your bank demands a phone app to be used, you can always have a cheap stock android lying around at home. Can't get stolen or lost. Doesn't give big G any data on you, because that phone doesn't have anything but those apps.
But I also understand "just have a second phone" is not a tempting idea for many people. I am not much of a phone person, so I'm not a good case study, but it works fine for me.
I cannot speak for every country but in the Netherlands, your banking app also serves as a 2FA instrument if you place orders with your credit card. A pop-up notification will ask you to confirm if you have indeed placed the order. While I will admit that it is possible to predict such use cases and take your phone along, it is becoming a bit difficult to predict what part of some account or service's login flow will require a confirmation with your device.
In the UK at least, banking apps are how you give people cash when you owe them for dinner, drinks, whatever. It's also needed to authorise online payments. And for travel, location services is often used by the better banks as an alternative to immediately blocking your card every time you go anywhere. Then there are account perks[0] like airport lounges, co-working spaces, exercise classes, etc. that all use the app for access.
It'd be more than just a bit inconvenient to lose all of these things…
Luckily, all of my personal and business banking apps work fine on Graphene. Even the apps for the crusty old "bricks and mortar" banks that I still have backup accounts with.
[0] As an aside, Revolut Ultra in the UK costs less than the FT Digital subscription it includes so if you're an FT subscriber, all the other stuff that comes with the account is cheaper than free.
> And for travel, location services is often used by the better banks as an alternative to immediately blocking your card every time you go anywhere.
I routinely use my (U.S.) credit card abroad and never had issues. I don't have any banking app on my phone, which runs Graphene, because I do not need access to banking on the go. Things such as airport lounges, co-working spaces, exercise classes, may be valuable, but none of these things is more important than my freedom. I do not tolerate the thought that some company may track which services I use and where I go without my consent. I therefore do not use proprietary apps on my phone. If something does not work in the browser (Vanadium), I will do without it.
Some info in case someone is on the fence about this, and are living in the UK. I use Monzo, and that works perfectly on GrapheneOS.
If they ever stopped working, I would just CASS to another bank. A bank that has a posture that something like GrapheneOS is too insecure to use their app on is a bit of a red flag.
Mobile apps are how most people do banking these days, and it shows. In my experience banking apps are a lot more maintained and modern than classic online banking interfaces.
So you're not just sacrificing "on the go" banking, you are likely sacrificing use of the best interface your bank offers.
Also, most smartphones (especially GrapheneOS, iOS, Pixel, etc) are far more secure than desktops/laptops. So also from a security perspective it's better to do banking on a phone.
I don't have the same experience. My main bank is a huge European bank, and their app is laughably bad. You have to jump to an impressive number of screens to reach anything other than "last / upcoming transactions" lists. Many are actually just janky webviews, yet they still somehow manage to work worse than their website. Bonus points for it being "temporarily under maintenance" seemingly every other day.
I should note that the website is pretty janky itself, but at least it works fine (meaning "not worse") on Firefox on Linux, and it doesn't even pester me to change browsers or anything.
I also have an account with one of those new "online" banks for when I travel, since they have better exchange rates, and, importantly, no conversion tax. Their app is somewhat better, but they have no website whatsoever, AFAIK. But, at least, they allow me to set up a proper password instead of clicking on 6 digits as the other bank.
Is the UI really that important though? I assume most people use internet/app banking mainly to do two things: make payments, and look at transactions. I also assume most people don't do these things very often. Sure, a good UI is nice to have, but it isn't going to affect my life much if it's missing.
Sadly true, while not being a phone person, I have started using my home banking phone for tasks I used to do on my desktop. Still never leaves my office.
> Do you really need access to banking apps on the go?
Not strictly, no, but it's useful to be able to relatively-quickly check my balances (and possibly shuffle funds around between checking/savings and my credit-union-issued credit card). I could use my credit union's website for that, but it's faster to open the app and scan my thumb.
Thankfully, my credit union's app has no issues with GrapheneOS, aside from needing to enable “exploit protection compatibility mode” to keep it from crashing on startup.
I've never used a banking app on my phone, and I have no desire to. It's the least secure device I own (in spite of running Graphene). It's the most likely device to get lost or stolen.
I currently have accounts with 3 different banks in Belgium. They all offer an app which I ignore. Online banking works just fine, heck, better than fine, it's excellent. One bank uses auth derived from my debit card (which I have to insert into a card reader to sign transactions). The other two use hardware tokens. The hardware token for my business account has a built in camera which scans QR codes displayed by the website. When signing a payment, I scan the code and the token asks "Confirm payment of 123eur to XYZ?".
That's fine when you're lucky enough to be able to avoid a banking app, but for many banks its essentially compulsory. I can't login to internet banking without entering a 2FA code from the app. I'm even forced to have my Android settings a certain way, otherwise the app detects that my phone is "insecure" and refuses to run.
Sorry but thats a statement thats just willfully ignorant.
Yes people need to have access to their financials when under way.
That can range for PushTans, CreditCard Confirmations, to checking their budgets, moving something from one account to another, topping up your Prepaid Card. Or just being able to Pay with a Card on your Phone when you forgot your Wallet.
Sure you could say I do not go out and do not need that but realistically this is just how the world works now.
How about using cash for all of this? This has the added benefit of not enabling tracking by financial institutions in addition to tracking by Google, the phone OEM, and possibly other third parties.
Some people will suffer some inconvenience for something that they think is worth it and some people will do everything to no do anything because it is
too much trouble. Sometimes they are the same people but in regards to different areas. For example I would never grow my own carrots. What for? I can buy them. And my wife would never built self hosted media server. Why spend 5k$ on PC when you can just buy Netflix?
And there is 3 kind of people that do one of the above and go around in real life and online and tries to convince everyone that THE THING that they are doing is THE ONLY, TRUE SOLUTION. Like vegans or cyclists.
In reality none of this is true. If Graphene OS would tomorrow became, magically the only mobile OS in existence they would became next evil tech company in few years. Because power corrupts.
so use a card? there is always something. breaking free is never going to be without ANY inconveniences, it's how they build their moat after all. okay so once those two work, one goes to the next thing on the list; "I wish I could switch but I can't use gboard on it and the swiping is 0.5% better than the stock keyboard so it's unusable to me"
(you can use gboard, that was just an example - but it's always these small inconveniences, just like in the chrome vs firefox threads)
I use 5 different banking apps and 3 other financial/investment apps and they all work fine, you should check compatibility with yours [1]. And to be precise, contactless payments work but not through Google Pay - I've heard that Curve is a viable alternative, and some banks might have their own systems that aren't based on Google Pay (though most seem to be).
In Europe contactless payment is nearly everywhere - nearly every store supports it. Even in Germany (which is historically very pro-cash), since Covid more and more people pay with card and many of whom pay contactless.
In the EU we have some rules that even contactless payments with card sometimes, but not always, need to have some kind of additional authentication in the form of entering your PIN. Contactless payment methods via phone or watch don't have this need because they already have their own authentication methods. That's why so many people pay with their phone or watch. Its just more convenient and always contactless. (no PIN needed)
How is it in the US? Are things like Apple Pay still limited to certain stores?
In Europe? Debit cards. Hardly anyone uses a credit card in a supermarket.
If I'm going out I'll have both a debit card and cash in my wallet. Given that large scale outages of payment networks are no longer theoretical but to be expected, not carrying cash is just silly. Since I have a wallet in any case, I see no point in using contactless payments on a smartphone — I usually don't take it with me when getting groceries.
I have no idea if I can even do contactless phone payments on GrapheneOS, but since everything else works (including my bank's app), I don't care.
I think it's healthy for a population to not have as part of day-to-day life to pay with credit, effectively paying with money you might not actually have, going into debt. How many US citizens are crippled by credit card debt, and the interest on it?
Readit News
https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/latinime/-/blob/master/LICE...
That said, I wouldn't last 8.4 months like the author. Even though he admits to some Google app usage, I'm in too deep — I'd never be able to get out. But if I get the chance, I'd like to try it on a secondary phone. Those solid black icons are one reason. They look cool.
I personally just encourage people to take a look at what you are using, and if you could gradually change some of it. Who knows sometimes alternatives even offer better services. I am not saying never use anything google ever again. Just question your tools regularly and peruse the alternatives.
I'll also echo the ideas from everyone else here. You can just use it as a normal Android phone the way you do any other and there's still big benefits. There's also really big benefits in terms of carrier privacy that aren't often talked about, like vpn routing and hotspot usage.
Running Graphene for a long time now, everything works perfectly fine, but I don't do mobile banking.
I also work in mobile app/SDK publishing as a business dev and it's critical that I can install my clients' apps (thousand+) in private space.
It works great for me.
also you can restrict some apps network permissions, for example i use the google camera app with the network disabled :p
My experience with seedvault is not as positive as the OP, it fails for about half my apps. I guess I have another year to fix this when the GrapheneOS enabled Motorola flagship comes out.
I carry both my iPhone 16 Plus and my Pixel 8 Pro, but limit my iPhone use to mobile banking, Apple Pay and Find My.
Two backup runs can give different results (failing in different places or failing to restore everything), and I haven't heard of the one person it works for every time.
I wish I could just run Titanium Backup :(
sync files,
new phone set up.
Do you really need access to banking apps on the go? I get that it can be handy and maybe you legit do, but I'd wager most people don't really do. If you can pay by phone you can pay by card and the card has less potentially to weirdly break.
And if your bank demands a phone app to be used, you can always have a cheap stock android lying around at home. Can't get stolen or lost. Doesn't give big G any data on you, because that phone doesn't have anything but those apps.
But I also understand "just have a second phone" is not a tempting idea for many people. I am not much of a phone person, so I'm not a good case study, but it works fine for me.
(Not saying that you claimed they didn't.)
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
I've had a government app not working once and one of the devs actually showed up on the GrapheneOS forums and now it does.
It'd be more than just a bit inconvenient to lose all of these things…
Luckily, all of my personal and business banking apps work fine on Graphene. Even the apps for the crusty old "bricks and mortar" banks that I still have backup accounts with.
[0] As an aside, Revolut Ultra in the UK costs less than the FT Digital subscription it includes so if you're an FT subscriber, all the other stuff that comes with the account is cheaper than free.
I routinely use my (U.S.) credit card abroad and never had issues. I don't have any banking app on my phone, which runs Graphene, because I do not need access to banking on the go. Things such as airport lounges, co-working spaces, exercise classes, may be valuable, but none of these things is more important than my freedom. I do not tolerate the thought that some company may track which services I use and where I go without my consent. I therefore do not use proprietary apps on my phone. If something does not work in the browser (Vanadium), I will do without it.
If they ever stopped working, I would just CASS to another bank. A bank that has a posture that something like GrapheneOS is too insecure to use their app on is a bit of a red flag.
So you're not just sacrificing "on the go" banking, you are likely sacrificing use of the best interface your bank offers.
I should note that the website is pretty janky itself, but at least it works fine (meaning "not worse") on Firefox on Linux, and it doesn't even pester me to change browsers or anything.
I also have an account with one of those new "online" banks for when I travel, since they have better exchange rates, and, importantly, no conversion tax. Their app is somewhat better, but they have no website whatsoever, AFAIK. But, at least, they allow me to set up a proper password instead of clicking on 6 digits as the other bank.
Not strictly, no, but it's useful to be able to relatively-quickly check my balances (and possibly shuffle funds around between checking/savings and my credit-union-issued credit card). I could use my credit union's website for that, but it's faster to open the app and scan my thumb.
Thankfully, my credit union's app has no issues with GrapheneOS, aside from needing to enable “exploit protection compatibility mode” to keep it from crashing on startup.
I currently have accounts with 3 different banks in Belgium. They all offer an app which I ignore. Online banking works just fine, heck, better than fine, it's excellent. One bank uses auth derived from my debit card (which I have to insert into a card reader to sign transactions). The other two use hardware tokens. The hardware token for my business account has a built in camera which scans QR codes displayed by the website. When signing a payment, I scan the code and the token asks "Confirm payment of 123eur to XYZ?".
It's plenty convenient for my needs.
Yes, I do.
The larger population is getting pushed towards banking on the phone, and on top of that, many people don't own a PC/Laptop anymore.
In my case it's also the 2FA for credit card usage (as I have the visa/mc via my bank), not only bank transfers.
Paying by card in 2026 is akin to sending physical letters.
Luckily it works well on GrapheneOS though.
Sure you could say I do not go out and do not need that but realistically this is just how the world works now.
And there is 3 kind of people that do one of the above and go around in real life and online and tries to convince everyone that THE THING that they are doing is THE ONLY, TRUE SOLUTION. Like vegans or cyclists.
In reality none of this is true. If Graphene OS would tomorrow became, magically the only mobile OS in existence they would became next evil tech company in few years. Because power corrupts.
Are you putting me in the third kind of people?
(you can use gboard, that was just an example - but it's always these small inconveniences, just like in the chrome vs firefox threads)
[1] https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
In the EU we have some rules that even contactless payments with card sometimes, but not always, need to have some kind of additional authentication in the form of entering your PIN. Contactless payment methods via phone or watch don't have this need because they already have their own authentication methods. That's why so many people pay with their phone or watch. Its just more convenient and always contactless. (no PIN needed)
How is it in the US? Are things like Apple Pay still limited to certain stores?
If I'm going out I'll have both a debit card and cash in my wallet. Given that large scale outages of payment networks are no longer theoretical but to be expected, not carrying cash is just silly. Since I have a wallet in any case, I see no point in using contactless payments on a smartphone — I usually don't take it with me when getting groceries.
I have no idea if I can even do contactless phone payments on GrapheneOS, but since everything else works (including my bank's app), I don't care.