As Google Chrome warns uBlock Origin may soon be disabled in the future. They’re going to eventually ban adblockers for chromium. We need to quickly respond with alternatives to android, we must end this market consolidation.
What are the current viable choices for everyday use? I currently use a Pixel 6a with Graphene and I like it a lot as it does everything I want it to. It doesn’t work with my bank app but I don’t really care about that as I just use a browser when I need to access it.
Ubuntu touch, postmarket and sailfish are the ones I have heard of but I don’t know what state they are in in terms of how usable they are on a day to day basis.
I can only comment on postmarketOS as I‘m using that on a near daily basis. It is great and fund to use. It’s not end user ready yet though. Normal stuff works. Watching videos on firefox or a native app, music, phone, messages. All no problem. Just cameras are a problem atm, next to some quirks that need ironing out.
Thanks for the reply. I really don’t care about camera use, that is like bottom of my list of things I give a shit about on a phone, so I may give this a try at some point and see how I find it.
Hey I’m curious. Is there a speciffic feature Graphene doesn’t support that your bank app requires? I’m in Australia, and am planning to use GrapheneOS on a Pixel phone, so I’m wondering if my bank app would be affected too.
Hello, pixel 8 grapheneOS user here. I was going to say that some bank apps don’t work like chase bank and I went to look for a compatibility list and it said it worked. As it turns out, I just had to enable a setting for that app and now it works just fine. So I guess look at the compatibility list and the comments listed.
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/
Thanks, my bank is compatible according to that list.
When I first started using graphene my bank app worked fine but at the beginning of this year my bank decided that it would dent access to any phone that is rooted.
So it isn’t really an issue with graphene itself it is more that I dare to root my device and my arsehole bank believes I shouldn’t do this!
Meh, for me it doesn’t take any more effort to just log in from my browser. It just has an added step each time of having to receive a text and enter a code. I only really use it maybe twice a month anyway so it is no drama for me.
When government/corporate services are involved, I suggest doing as much as you can via the web browser as opposed to app, in the interests of privacy and civil liberty.
So long as it’s going through the browser we have a degree of control over functionality and connectivity. Apps strip that away. Apps are you doing everything on their terms, while suffering an ad (their logo) on your home screen rent-free. You can pin browser bookmarks to home as well in Android.
True. For some reason I was sure I remembered the mobile version of my banks website not working for actual banking, but it turns out it does, at least currently. Hopefully it stays that way and they don’t push too hard for the app. If they do drop it, I can always block app trackers with a DNS service like Mullvad or Quad9
What does this have to do with Android? 100% expected this to be about the Graphene issue, but instead it’s a simple “use Firefox or a fork.”
Stop using Chrome? Firefox works with uBlock Origin just fine.
Yeah. Google want to be a monopoly in any field they engage with. We as consumers don’t have any obligation to treat them as such.
Why are you using Chrome or a Chromium based browser. Change now, as the first step.
I’m using Librewolf, Firefox and Safari.
Fun fact! That’s all just safari with a chrome or Firefox skin on top :)
Where did they say they were using iOS?
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Yea not sure how that was missed…
Well, that and the Mac, of course.
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Nah. Mac OS and iOS shares a lot of code and principles, but they’re very different
Kind of a spicy comment don’t you think?
Who the fuck is just running through and down voting me? What’s the point in that? I’m trying to ask questions to fix my mistake.
Huh?
What the hell are you talking about safari uses webkit/jscore, chrome uses blink/v8, and mozilla uses their own engine and renderer
On iPhone?
In that case yeah, but you really gotta be more specific then. Apple mobile devices are the exception, not the rule.
Also that exception is about to go away in the EU.
Well he said safari, it was a 50/50 shot. Although him using desktop browsers should have given it away.
I can’t fucking agree more honestly. I already use LineageOS on my phones and not the stock ROMs that they come with, but even then, Google’s way of locking you in with their “open-source” Android kernel is very annoying. Some of the most popular Android apps won’t work because of their Safety-Net and Google Services dependencies. And let’s not even get started on the dozens of binary blobs in the firmware that you can’t get rid of if you want your phone to keep on working.
It’s all so shitty. I’d drop my android phone for a Linux one in an instant if there’s even a decent one out there that works reliably. It’s so sad to see that it’s just a niche yet for privacy obsessed people and that’s it. It definitely needs more attention and funding.
Meanwhile, you’ve been able to use ad blockers on Safari for iOS for years and years. Once the EU forces Apple to let developers publish actual other browsers on the App Store (and not just reskinned Safari), iOS should be pretty great in terms of browsing liberty & comfort.
We need to push for more countries to regulate the tyranny of the app store.
In the EU only. Fuck Apple.
Yes, fuck apple. But also fuck all politicians who are not as stringent with legislature as the EU.
One can use firefox or deviations.
Won’t stop google from putting in ads in android apps
Try Ad-Away
Ads have been in Android apps for 15 years, you can generally block them all with Private DNS
Pihole might solve that.
Either way, though, I would love for linux phones to become valid alternatives to android.
Netguard is also great. I set it to block all apps network access by default, and have a whitelist with apps that actually need it. It has significantly reduced the amount of ads and tracking significantly from my phone.
I have a pihole as a DHCP server. Easy does it.
Sorry but thats not true. A lot of seevices bake ads into their video signal. Neither a dhcp nor a dns can change that. You need to have something that reads that signal and decides on that.
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Tempfixes are good, independence is better
We need a safe home for ReVanced and to give google less of an argument for removing as it would be ran on a Linux phone os
I wish I could, but I’m broke as a badger and need to get a GrapheneOS phone first, moving onto getting a Linux phone second and using it to contribute towards development.
Yup. We need to get away from Google, if we really want privacy. I’m glad I switched to a Linux desktop, but Google collects a crap load of info.
Every day, I inch closer to nuking my phone…
From what I’ve heard uBlock Origin Lite only barely falls short of the ad-blocking coverage that regular uBO offers, so there will still be options for Chrome users after this happens, not to mention the multitude of alternative browsers and app stores for Android.
I still think that making Linux phones a viable alternative is very important, but it’s not significantly more important now than it was a month ago.
I agree with you.
Linux phones have always been important and some ad-blocking controversy (which I don’t know the details about) isn’t making it more important than before.
Linux on desktop is now user friendly and I hope one day will reach that on phones too, even if for now it sounds way too complicated for me.
If Manifest 3 becomes mainstream, ad software developers will simply create stuff that bypasses it.
Hypothetical example: there will be a 30 000 domain name blocking limit. Result: ad networks now have 30 001 domains.
Isn’t Firefox an alternative? Works today.
Google could remove FireFox from the PlayStore
I don’t know if they legally can do that. Would be an antitrust violation.
I dont know if they legally can but that has never stopped them do anything.
Not in the EU. I think they’d face antitrust problems in USA too.
I think they’d get pushback from Samsung too
I don’t get it from the PlayStore. Android is open source. If they ever go crazy lock down then we can run AOSP or variants.
More importantly, mozilla is in google‘s pocket due to google being by far the largest financial contributor. Expect them to ruin firefox at some point. Also, the recent ad drama should have taught you that one lone competitor does not make a market.
There’s also WebKit.
Sideloading it or using a different app store would still be possible. Would Google remove the ability to do those things? Would a fork of AOSP not easily restore that functionality? Regardless, I’m all for more OS options for consumers.
Just use obtainium
Android has always had support for sideloading
Currently running DivestOS on my second-hand fully degoogled Fairphone 3 and everything works pretty much perfectly (a couple minor things are glitchy but it’s only aesthetic). I get 80 % of my apps from F-Droid and the remaining from Aurora Store. Things like my bank apps also work after setting up microG
My bank won’t support unlocked phones with custom ROMs. For security reasons. But sure, online banking using any browser is no problem…
Well, I’m going to ditch them soon anyway but I wonder whether it will be better with the next one.
My banks technically don’t either but after some tinkering with the aforementioned microG they’re none the wiser :)
You can check your laptop/desktop for banking information twice a day as a compromise until your bank/credit union supports Linux phones.
It’s encouraging to see people making their banking apps on alternative OS, as that would be the main obstacle for me if I wasn’t able to pay with my phone nowadays .
While we’re on this topic:
Anyone running PostmarketOS for daily driver? I got a Fairphone 4 running LineageOS but am thinking to switch to it. I looked on the wiki but seems the support is incomplete…
Only issue is that you can’t interact with most corporate services… I want to see Linux phones succeed as well
