Interesting. Definitely test it out. Plus, it’s not like GOS is permanent. Your can always revert to OEM Android if needed.

I can’t emphasize how important it is for you to control your phone, especially notifications. Every notification is literally a mind hijacking attempt. Regardless of the type of notification, it’s something that disrupts our thinking and our flow.

Some of them are necessary—but most aren’t.

All the native apps will of course try to get as much permission from you as possible, including notifications. Don’t allow this permission freely.

Get really strict about which apps need to send you notifications, and when. Take it from a dude who used to give free reign to all apps for notifications.

Once I started thinking in a more digitally minimalistic way, it made a huge difference.

Running GrapheneOS actually helped with this a lot. But you don’t need GOS to do this and feel the difference.

I got some notifications turned on, but most of em are silent. So they still get delivered, but they’re not time-sensitive. They’ll be there when I check my phone next. I don’t need em interrupting whatever I was doing or thinking.

TL;DR: Be strict about which notifications you allow, and when. It’ll do wonders for your thinking, productivity, and mental health.

Item 11. 🫠

One of my ideas for increasing GrapheneOS market share is to market GOS as the minimalist phone so many crave.

In recent times, I’ve stumbled across a handful of articles about how dumbphones are back, and how people crave more minimalist phones to curb smartphone addiction or otherwise.

GrapheneOS is a great minimalist phone that’s still “smart,” yet secure and private.

GOS is a way better option than dumbphones because:

1. Chances are you’ll need some sort of smartphone functionality. For example: Digital “live” tickets that you can’t screenshot and need to be opened on your phone directly (Ticketmaster, MLB, etc.)
2. Using a dumbphone reverts you to older technologies and protocols, like cell towers and SMS. These are inherently insecure and shouldn’t be used anymore. So even though you might “feel” like you’re better off, your communications (text, audio, video) take a huge leap backwards in terms of privacy and security.

Might be overkill (since it’s a Figma alternative), but try Penpot.

I’m waiting for the day someone decides to challenge the behemoth that’s Canva with an open source alternative. That’d be dope.

FWIW, GrapheneOS is in talks with phone manufacturers to also reduce/remove reliance on Google Pixels.

Also: You can technically put GOS on some non-Pixel devices, but it’s not officially supported (and thus not recommended). Just FYI.

It’s barbones Android, without the Google. You can add the Google stuff if you want, but by default, it comes completely de-Googled.

It also comes with some extra features, like granular app-level permissions, sandboxed Google Play Services (which a lotta apps use), duress PIN, and more.

Widely regarded as the safest and most private “commercial” mobile operating system.

Disclaimer: I run SwapMyOS, a GrapheneOS/custom ROM installation service.

Hello from GrapheneOS 👋

Tech savvy Lemmings don’t need SwapMyOS, but for more non-technical folk, it’s there just in case by demand.

AMA.

Added.

Might add this to the pinned posts at the top of idcaboutprivacy… Any objections?

That’s dope, glad it could help 🤟

I’m starting to edit idcaboutprivacy more and more often (and that’s not a good thing)

Don’t mind me, just adding it to idcaboutprivacy

Thanks. Built from scratch.

Gives me no pleasure to add it to idcaboutprivacy

Free and open source—feel free to contribute.

You can technically put GrapheneOS on a Fairphone, but it’s not officially supported.

Long term, the GOS team is looking to branch off from their reliance on Pixels.

Shameless plug for SwapMyOS

Appreciate that. Got a backlog of 200+ topics I still need to write about, so little by little.

Fair enough. Sometimes it can make a difference though (speaking someone’s specific platform language). But yeah, I get it.

Me too. I wrote a blog post about it with a similar title and would love some feedback. I’m sure it could be expanded even more to include stuff like this.