@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1w ago

Replying to

Due to this major Android 17 QPR1 regression, we've been looking into reducing memory usage. We found a way to eliminate most extra memory use from our secure spawning feature without any significant downsides. We'll try to get that huge improvement shipped before November 2026.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1w ago

Replying to

Google is taking increasingly long to implement and ship fixes for major issues in Android. We're having to expand our workload to include handling basic updates, testing and quality control for the entire operating system. We have rapidly growing resources and we'll handle it.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1w ago

Replying to

Here's our fix for the awful Android 17 QPR1 regression causing lag, stuttering and freezes: https://gitlab.com/grapheneos/kernel_pixel_6.6/-/commit/ed5a9b87d99b45618fa55b3d6b53094cbd784b9f It's so severe that it's causing processes to be killed for stalls. It's unclear when Google will ship a fix for the issue. December 2026 wouldn't be a surprise.

gitlab.com

mm: restore CP2A synchronous mmap read-ahead behavior (ed5a9b87) · Commits · GrapheneOS / kernel_pixel_6.6 · GitLab

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1w ago

Replying to

Standard Android and Pixel updates have a severe issue with delays. It usually takes 2-3 months for Google to ship fixes for both severe regressions and security issues. They often get the issues fixed in days but the release engineering and testing process is completely broken.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1w ago

Replying to

Major Android releases including Android 17 QPR1 go through a long public testing period. It typically takes Google at least around 4 to 6 weeks to ship fixes for even the most severe issues. They either cancel the release (Pixel 11) or ship a broken release (everything else).

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1w ago

Replying to

Pixel 11 series received a bug fix release near the start of September 2026 with the 2026-09-01 patch level. That update wasn't Android 17 QPR1 and also doesn't include the September 2026 Pixel firmware/driver security patches. Perhaps they noticed this issue and cancelled it.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 3w ago

Replying to

It will be far easier for us to support upcoming Motorola devices than Pixels. Qualcomm will hopefully expand MTE support beyond the highest end flagship SoC soon so we can expand to more than flagships. Pixel 11 didn't remove it from hardware, only firmware, so that's good news.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 3w ago

Replying to

Google should not be gatekeeping security patches to the standard Android platform code from Android OEMs but that's what they've started doing. Other OEMs will get these patches in December 2026 via Android 17 QPR2. We can ship them early by reverse engineering the code instead.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 3w ago

Replying to

It would be interesting to know if Google's legal team is aware they're giving Pixels months of early access to new Android features and bug fixes including certain important security patches. Pixels being given this competitive edge over Google's OEM partners is very dubious.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 2w ago

GrapheneOS Messaging version 14 released: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Messaging/releases/tag/14 See the linked release notes for a summary of the improvements over the previous release and a link to the full changelog. Forum discussion thread: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/42224-grapheneos-messaging-version-14-released #GrapheneOS #privacy #security #android

GitHub

Release 14 · GrapheneOS/Messaging

Version 14 is a bugfix and performance follow-up to the Compose rewrite. Large conversations open instantly, a burst of incoming messages no longer stalls the app, Messaging no longer asks for acce...

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 2w ago

GrapheneOS Messaging version 15 released: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Messaging/releases/tag/15 See the linked release notes for a summary of the improvements over the previous release and a link to the full changelog. Forum discussion thread: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/42345-grapheneos-messaging-version-15-released #GrapheneOS #privacy #security #android

GitHub

Release 15 · GrapheneOS/Messaging

Notable changes in version 15: Stop View details crashing on messages from a SIM that isn't active Keep predictive back working after a cancelled swipe Improve predictive back animation Follow the...

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 3w ago

Replying to

Pixels are now significantly harder to support than many other devices. One of the only advantages of Pixels is now a disadvantage instead. They're still the best fit for us due to the updates and security features but it burns time we want to spend on privacy and security work.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 3w ago

GrapheneOS version 2026091700 released: https://grapheneos.org/releases#2026091700 See the linked release notes for a summary of the improvements over the previous release. Forum discussion thread: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/42090-grapheneos-version-2026091700-released #GrapheneOS #privacy #security

grapheneos.org

Releases | GrapheneOS

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 3w ago

GrapheneOS version 2026091900 released: https://grapheneos.org/releases#2026091900 See the linked release notes for a summary of the improvements over the previous release. Forum discussion thread: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/42142-grapheneos-version-2026091900-released #GrapheneOS #privacy #security

grapheneos.org

Releases | GrapheneOS

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

GrapheneOS imposes a set of restrictions on how generative AI can be used in our project and community. It isn't forbidden but rather we imposed rules based on actual issues. Posts made in our forum, chat rooms, issue tracker and the rest of our project must be written by humans. There's an exception from this rule for translation and accessibility features. That means commit messages, pull request messages, bug reports and feature requests are expected to be written by humans, not a machine.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 3w ago

Replying to

Google is also once again failing to comply with our GPL source requests for weeks. We requested CD1A.260905.001.A1 sources on September 1st and were only provided access today. The kernel build IDs are the same for 17 QPR1 Beta 9 and 17 QPR1 so we have that already at least.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 3w ago

Replying to

We could have shipped an Android 17 QPR1 update already since our port was completed. Instead, we have to deal with ongoing pain until Android 17 QPR2 is released in December 2026. This will not be an issue for Motorola since we'll have official firmware and driver code provided.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 3w ago

Replying to

Non-Google Android OEMs and AOSP-based projects can ship yearly and QPR2 releases. There are also security backports to those releases. Security preview access is needed to ship patches without months of delay. We've had that since before our Motorola partnership via another OEM.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 3w ago

Replying to

We already ported our code to Android 17 QPR1 since before it was released on September 15th but don't have permission to release it yet. We're working on backporting Pixel firmware, kernel drivers, userspace drivers and HALs from Android 17 QPR1 to Android 17 for now instead.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 4w ago

Replying to

LLMs are a massively disruptive technology causing a lot of harm and information security is one of the areas most impacted by it. It has been heavily adopted for offense and defense. It's very scary how good the latest models are at finding vulnerabilities and even developing exploits for those. It isn't viable for GrapheneOS to pretend that isn't the case and skip protecting our users from it. There's an ongoing crisis for privacy and security but attackers only have a temporary advantage.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 3w ago

Replying to

@mhoye@cosocial.ca @mulchmaxxing@blahaj.zone Motorola Mobility (Lenovo) is officially partnered with us and helping to bring GrapheneOS to a subset of their future devices. The initial device with GrapheneOS support will be a high end flagship launching in 2027. It will come to other devices including eventually supporting budget devices once those meet our requirements. Their devices are being improved to meet all of our requirements for updates and security features. They're also helping with port GrapheneOS.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 3w ago

Vanadium version 153.0.8010.52.0 released: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Vanadium/releases/tag/153.0.8010.52.0 See the linked release notes for a summary of the improvements over the previous release and a link to the full changelog. Forum discussion thread: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/42105-vanadium-version-15308010520-released #GrapheneOS #privacy #security #browser

GitHub

Release 153.0.8010.52.0 · GrapheneOS/Vanadium

Changes in version 153.0.8010.52.0: update to Chromium 153.0.8010.52 A full list of changes from the previous release (version 153.0.8010.47.0) is available through the Git commit log between the...

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 3w ago

Replying to

Pixel Update Bulletin for September 2026 has additional patches to standard Android platform components used by non-Pixel devices. These patches are relevant to non-Pixel devices but haven't been made available via the September 2026 Android Security Bulletin or preview patches.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

Replying to

We don't forbid using AI models for writing code but pull requests largely created that way will typically be rejected or skipped due to not meeting our requirements. It needs to be well written code which appears to be regular code written by a human regardless of the level of AI assistance involved in making it. It should not look like AI generated code. We do want to know if AI models are being used and how they're being used rather than people using it but not telling us they're using it.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 4w ago

Replying to

Privacy and security on computers was always always thoroughly neglected. It is no longer nearly as viable to continue doing so and dismissing it as only mattering in targeted attacks. The vulnerabilities being discovered were nearly entirely already there and it's a good thing they're getting found and fixed. Many years of technical debt must be repaid. Decisions such as monolithic kernels and massive codebases written in C and C++ must be repaid. We have to somehow keep users safe through it.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

Replying to

@darkwolf@hear-me.social People's conversations, thoughts and financial transactions have been largely private for most of human history. Law enforcement still managed to do their jobs. They can continue to do so in a world where privacy technologies preserve historical privacy norms. We use and support open source projects working on restoring the privacy provided by cash including Monero. Moving from cash to credit cards, PayPal, etc. is an ongoing privacy disaster. Bitcoin and Ethereum currently are too.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 4w ago

Replying to

Directing endless hate towards us with lies, misrepresentations, bullying and vitriol is not going to convince us that we've made any incorrect decision in our approach to this. We believe we're doing a large amount of good with our approach and that it massively outweighs the harm. AI is being used to harm our users with far more powerful surveillance tech, rapid vulnerability discovery, rapid exploit development and much more. If we did not adapt then we would be failing to protect our users.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

Replying to

A small subset of apps including those written in Flutter implement their own text selection toolbar. We've worked around this by adding a Paste button to the default keyboard. We'll be replacing AOSP Keyboard with a much better keyboard and will carry over adding this feature to the new one too.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 4w ago

Replying to

We strongly believe in privacy including for financial transactions. People should expect nothing less from a privacy project. It should be obvious we aren't fans of traditional banking and financial services built to enable mass surveillance. We also aren't fans of unencrypted blockchains and believe those should be fixed. We believe in the privacy of cash being preserved in the same way we believe in people's private conversations and thoughts being protected. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117249893761790371

Quoting

GrapheneOS

@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

@darkwolf@hear-me.social People's conversations, thoughts and financial transactions have been largely private for most of human history. Law enforcement still managed to do their jobs. They can continue to do so in a world where privacy technologies preserve historical privacy norms. We use and support open source projects working on restoring the privacy provided by cash including Monero. Moving from cash to credit cards, PayPal, etc. is an ongoing privacy disaster. Bitcoin and Ethereum currently are too.

Open quoted post

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

Replying to

GrapheneOS is based on projects heavily using AI including the Linux kernel. Cellebrite, NSO and other exploit developers are using it to exploit these projects. They currently have a major advantage thanks to AI which will likely be turned into a major disadvantage over the long term. It's getting a huge backlog of bugs fixed and creating enormous pressure to make systemic improvements. Here's what Debian adopted, which is a similar idea but much more permissive: https://www.debian.org/vote/2026/vote_002#texte

debian.org

General Resolution: LLM usage in Debian

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

Replying to

Our approach is replacing the inherently problematic API-based clipboard access approach used by both desktop and mobile operating systems. It's another overhaul of the privacy model for apps similar to our Contact Scopes and Storage Scopes features. We have many of these privacy features planned.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 4w ago

Replying to

Many of the recent threads attacking us are doing so with fabricated stories where they falsely claim we've covered up how we use technologies. In reality, these attacks started because we've been transparent. The recent attacks began when we replied to a question about how we use AI. After the attacks began, we made a top-level thread explaining our AI policies and how we arrived at those: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117236529351603001 We believe it's the right approach for us minimizing harm and maximizing good.

Quoting

GrapheneOS

@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

GrapheneOS imposes a set of restrictions on how generative AI can be used in our project and community. It isn't forbidden but rather we imposed rules based on actual issues. Posts made in our forum, chat rooms, issue tracker and the rest of our project must be written by humans. There's an exception from this rule for translation and accessibility features. That means commit messages, pull request messages, bug reports and feature requests are expected to be written by humans, not a machine.

Open quoted post

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

Replying to

Our approach still allows apps to read the clipboard if they set the current content themselves. It only takes away the ability to read content set by other apps. It preserves usability as much as possible by only blocking the most problematic part of the API and replacing it with an alternative.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

Replying to

Android only permits the currently focused app and keyboard to read the clipboard. However, sensitive data often lingers around in the clipboard for a while and privacy invasive apps can read it. Android shows a notice for apps reading clipboard content set by other apps but by then it's too late.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 4w ago

Replying to

Cryptocurrency enables us to reliably pay a team distributed around the world. It has provided the majority of our funding and is how we're able to run GrapheneOS as a non-profit entirely funded by donations. Many other privacy projects also receive the majority of their donations via cryptocurrency. We're being attacked because we're transparent about how we're funded, how we pay our team and our general belief in technology protecting people from authoritarian states. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117249820677840570

Quoting

GrapheneOS

@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

@darkwolf@hear-me.social GrapheneOS is an open source privacy project with a development team spread around the world. It exists to protect people from corporate and government surveillance. GrapheneOS isn't a business and our legal entity is a Canadian non-profit organization. GrapheneOS is entirely funded by donations. The majority of the donations are made via cryptocurrency. We pay people an hourly rate set in USD or CAD. We currently pay around 14 people with Ethereum donations and 1 person with CAD.

Open quoted post

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

Replying to on grapheneos.social

Going from having a working implementation of a feature to code we can merge often takes a long time. It can take months or even more than a year. It doesn't always work out. Sometimes we decide a feature ended up being too invasive or risky for other reasons and don't want to include it. We'll often do rewrites. Contributors need a full understanding of what they've submitted and need to be prepared to make substantial changes including fully rewriting it multiple times. AI slop isn't accepted.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

Replying to

@ludonaut@timetheft.rip You would probably be fine with us running a 256 core machine 24/7 doing fuzzing but yet us paying hundreds of dollars to get far more useful results is somehow us destroying the environment. We do not understand where you're coming from or why you're so incredibly angry with us. It's not justified and does not make sense. Many of the people attacking us travel around the world to conferences on airplanes, drive to work and probably have the carbon footprint of half our team or more.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

Replying to

@bekkaboo@girlcock.club Linux itself is heavily using AI models. Therefore, every Linux distribution moving to recent kernel versions is heavily built on top of using AI models. Creating a Linux distribution not heavily using it would require a hard fork of the Linux kernel and many other projects. It's unclear what would be accomplished by banning AI for a tiny portion of the code while continuing to use Linux, AOSP, Chromium and hundreds of other projects heavily using it. We'd still be benefiting from it.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

Replying to

@ludonaut@timetheft.rip We spend hundred dollars per month on it and you're claiming we're destroying the world. We disagree with the premise in the first place but even if we did agree, it's such a disproportionate response. How is it that this is such a big deal to you but you're not attacking everyone you know who eats meat, drives a car, travels by airplane and other wasteful things? Somehow we are the problem for using less resources on this than we've used for plenty of far less useful things.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 4w ago

Replying to

There are numerous accounts malicious towards GrapheneOS on Hacker News which show up to make disingenuous attacks on it and downvote/flag all of our posts. Here's an example of one of those accounts which openly promotes Kiwi Farms harassment content: https://archive.ph/JAunG

archive.ph

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 2w ago

Replying to

@securitybrahh@ioc.exchange Location Scopes is a planned feature as a per-app replacement for Android Mock Location. Android Mock Location is global and only available as a developer option via a Mock Location app. We can add a new API for querying if it's enabled so apps banning Mock Location would work but would have the option to ban Location Scopes instead of banning GrapheneOS, which seems to be the best way to do it to maximize compatibility. It requires thought since avoiding app bans is important.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

Replying to

@ludonaut@timetheft.rip That's the direct opposite of what we've said. We're primarily using it to improve the quality of our code through additional passes of code review. We started doing that after multiple external contributors used AI to find a bunch of issues throughout our code. Most of those were issues like crashes but some were more important. Some of our low-level hardening features were not providing as much security as they were meant to be. We began using it proactively to catch issues early.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

Replying to

@ludonaut@timetheft.rip As you're well aware if you use GrapheneOS, there are a bunch of abandoned AOSP apps which haven't had any active development for years. Those apps are stuck in the state they were in back in Android 5 or even earlier. Many even regressed. They've had bare minimum maintenance for years which gradually ended upstream. The issues with those apps include them not being overhauled with privacy and security improvements applied elsewhere. It includes outdated dependencies missing patches.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

Replying to

@ludonaut@timetheft.rip We're in the process of overhauling these apps by rewriting nearly all of the code in phases. It's becoming much higher quality code with many bugs getting fixed as part of it. That includes fixing upstream privacy and security issues which have been around for years. Vast majority of experienced developers working at tech companies are using AI. Most of the people applying to us are using them. We have to filter through people who can pass our tests but are too reliant on AI.

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GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social

· 1mo ago

Replying to

@ludonaut@timetheft.rip People using AI models doesn't imply the end result is lower quality. We hired the people who we decided are capable of producing high quality code and being productive with their usual approach to development. For people who made it past our initial screening, we gave test projects and we learned a lot about what they'll produce for us from it. All of the work they're currently doing is clearly massively raising the code quality compared to the starting point of that AOSP app code.

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