8 ms·

I actually want Play Store apps to be equally configurable. Apps like Truecaller refuse to work without so many permissions. Being Android you'd expect some way

I actually want Play Store apps to be equally configurable. Apps like Truecaller refuse to work without so many permissions. Being Android you'd expect some way to provide a dummy contact book, location & other accesses that apps need. Heck I'd want an option to freeze apps once I'm logged in & only unfreeze them when I need to use them. Would absolutely improve battery life.

Xeamek 2y ago
It's up to app maker to ensure it will work without permissions granted. ...but ofc most app makers are lazy and just throw up error whenever they don't get what their wont, forcing users to give up. I guess google could introduce a dummy system for every single service and feed that to the apps when the permission is not granted, but I imagine that would be a lot of work. Maybe some day...
- bzzzt 2y ago
  Providing dummy data would also diminish the value of Android users to Google itself, unless they give themselves an exemption from such a setting which would mean they would be dragged to court by the competition.
- xmprt 2y ago
  Android already does something like this for location services. For example, give precise location vs approximate location. And then for other permissions, there's a popup for whether to give permissions only this time, always, or to not. I guess there could be a 4th option for "mock" permissions. I wonder if an OEM could provide something like this because at the end of the day, the OEM has control over the sensors that are providing the data that's consumed by these apps.
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
    Just to drag us out of the techie land of make-believe, this presents such a horrendous user experience for everyone except advanced users that Google or any mainstream OEM is completely sensible to dismiss it on those merits alone. It’s just another layer of crap that moves smartphones one step closer to being as ridiculously complex as Windows PCs.
    - Hasu 2y ago
      > It’s just another layer of crap that moves smartphones one step closer to being as ridiculously complex as Windows PCs. So, useful computing devices? I'm for anything that pushes this plastic toy towards being a real tool.
  - izacus 2y ago
    I have apps constantly refuse to work if I only allow Approximate location on Android. Even stuff like weather apps.
    - catlikesshrimp 2y ago
      Tangential: there are websites which provide good weather info. (eg, not affiliated https://www.windy.com https://www.windy.com ) Everything weather related, I uninstall, and if it is bloatware I "pm disable-user" in shell
  - prirai 2y ago
    There is an exact same feature in developer options called Mock location app. Just download an app which does this and enable it there. It works.
- noirscape 2y ago
  Dummy/empty data is already a thing in Android if I'm not mistaken. It just needs ADB/App Ops to activate it. There's three states of permissions in android land from a permission request perspective: * Granted. Just full access to all things behind the permission, no questions asked. * Ignore. Returns no rejection, but all permission-restricted functions will return no/default data. This can technically be checked for by the app but usually isn't. * Deny. No data, return an explicit error to the app to tell them the permission isn't granted. For some reason that second one isn't available for the default UX; you need to manually set it with ADB or use App Ops to do it.
  - capybara_2020 2y ago
    Don't apps just refuse to work now a days if ADB is activated? It has been a few years since I tried it. But I remember my bank app refusing to working with the developer options(forgot what this is exactly) turned on. Also if I remember right, some apps do not work on rooted phones. Or are we talking about different things?
    - noirscape 2y ago
      ADB requires USB debugging to be enabled, yes, although modifying the appops settings (App Ops = app that can modify appops on the device itself using ADB, appops = android service that handles application permissions and application operations) doesn't need it to be continuously enabled. You can just activate it, change the settings and disable it afterwards. Pretty annoying but it is what it is. This doesn't require root either, although enabling USB debugging is an important step towards rooting, which is probably why you think it's related.
    - sgc 2y ago
      I have never had an app refuse to work because of developer mode, but several if rooted. Anecdotal, but it would seem the two are treated differently by developers.
      - baseballdork 2y ago
davotoula 2y ago
+1 for freezing unused apps. Would lower the attack surface nicely!
- johnisgood 2y ago
  See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40142394 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40142394 If you give SuperFreezZ App stopper permissions (it needs to be registered as an accessibility service, and requires usage access as well) to check for usage of applications, then it will freeze unused applications automatically. You can even specify after how many days of not having used them you want to freeze them.
- Jochim 2y ago
  fwiw this seems to be partially in place already. Requests for access to files, location, mic, and camera usually give me the option of allowing them all of the time or only when the app is open. I've also noticed system notifications stating that permissions will be used from unused apps. Greater configurability is always nice though.
- awiesenhofer 2y ago
  Interesting, so this isn't a standard Android feature? My Galaxy S-series phones have been doing this for years.
- kyriakos 2y ago
  Samsung's Android flavour removes permissions from unused android apps automatically, and sends a notification to let you know. Close enough I guess.
poisonborz 2y ago
The question you need to ask, how would this profit Google? It's an advanced setting that would need user interaction, a fraction of them would do this. This "Enhanced Confirmation" is also about automatic restriction.
bengale 2y ago
I'm a big fan of how iOS lets you decide which images are available from the camera roll. So the app can have "access" to the camera roll but there is that intermediate stage where I can scope down which images are in it.
- p_l 2y ago
  That's present already under limited access, afaik - where images made available to application are mediated through file picker
- shantara 2y ago
  Some iOS apps like Google Photos refuse to work unless you give them full access to the camera roll. I don’t know how they detect the limited access scope, but it is a fundamental design flaw that it is possible at all for an app to do this.
  - soraminazuki 2y ago
    It's egregious how it won't even let you view photos if you don't give it full access. This was one of the motivating factors for me to de-Google.
    - shantara 2y ago
      Same here, it was the final straw that pushed me away from using Google services. But I would argue that Apple's behavior is equally egregious here for not enforcing the same permission usage guidelines they require the smaller devs to comply with.
franga2000 2y ago
> Heck I'd want an option to freeze apps once I'm logged in & only unfreeze them when I need to use them I have this on Android 13, it's called "pause app" and seems to do just this. Might not be available on all variants tho, I'm running crDroid.
- johnisgood 2y ago
  There is "pause app" on my stock Android 12 as well, although I have no clue how well it works. I use https://f-droid.org/en/packages/superfreeze.tool.android/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/superfreeze.tool.android/.
normaler 2y ago
GraphenOS offers that, since the Playstore/Google Applications are non privileged applications. Big Plus for being easy installable from the Graphenos Appstore Applications. It currently offers 8 applications and 4 of them are GraphenOS own applications.
- jamaicahest 2y ago
  GrapheneOS is nice for people using Google Pixel phones. And useless for anyone else.
  - treypitt 2y ago
    FWIW the Pixel 8, the newest device offering Advanced Memory Protection, sells for less than $600 brand new right now. You can tune memory tagging & hardened memory allocation on a per-app basis. It's a game changer
    - prmoustache 2y ago
      You are saying that as if it was cheap. I am pretty sure most people buy <$250 smartphones. That is at least the case in my social circle, very few iphones, pixel, an awful lot of cheap Xiaomi Redmi and the Samsung Galaxies are usually the A line instead of the S line.
      - nbdy 2y ago
        If someone uses Xiaomi they probably also don't worry about privacy.
        kaanyalova 2y ago
        At least it is possible (really annoying process) to unlock the bootloader on Xiaomi devices.
  - GordonS 2y ago
    Forgive my ignorance, but what is it about GrapheneOS that makes it better on Pixel devices?
johnisgood 2y ago
In Developer options you can select a mock location app like Private Location[1], and there is an app named Shelter[2] that allows you to freeze and unfreeze (depending on what you mean by the terms, you may want the last mentioned app, see [3]) applications in your personal and work profile (and to isolate and run multiple instances of apps using Work Profiles). Additionally, you might find SuperFreezZ App stopper[3] useful and it might be what you are looking for. It allows you to entirely freeze all background activities of apps (unused apps, too, automatically). All of the apps mentioned work without root, and are worth checking out. [1] Private Location - https://redplanet.gitlab.io/fdroid-website/en/packages/com.wesaphzt.privatelocation/ https://redplanet.gitlab.io/fdroid-website/en/packages/com.w... [2] Shelter - https://f-droid.org/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/ https://f-droid.org/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/ [3] SuperFreezZ App stopper - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/superfreeze.tool.android/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/superfreeze.tool.android/ --- EDIT: According to https://f-droid.org/pl/2023/10/19/twif-client-alpha-kde-removal-by-google.html https://f-droid.org/pl/2023/10/19/twif-client-alpha-kde-remo..., > Private Location was also removed as was no longer functioning and development has stopped years ago, as reported in #3096 (https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/issues/3096 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/issues/3096). That is a shame. The other applications are fine, at least.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  I can't find private location in the f droid app and the APK downloads don't work. I tried fake traveler but it was crashing constantly and was not able to fool organic maps
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    Apparently it was removed for the reasons mentioned in my edited comment. Thank you for pointing this out.
- bonki 2y ago
  Wasn't Private Location removed from the store though? If it's the app that I'm thinking about I used it before but it stopped working because the map API changed which broke the app and it never got updated, so it was removed. There should be a github issue about that somewhere.
Tmpod 2y ago
> Being Android you'd expect some way to provide a dummy contact book, location & other accesses that apps need. Yeah, definitely. It would be so nice to have that built in. With LSPosed and XPrivacyLua, you can block/give garbage data to a lot of permissions, including contacts, though unfortunately it only works by sharing your favourites, with no way to configure a per-app list.
netdevnet 2y ago
Doesn't this "freezing concept" effectively kill the idea of background services?
- johnisgood 2y ago
  It does, but you can do it on a per-application basis.
  - netdevnet 2y ago
    My point is that the suggestion is effectively asking for the removal of background services
    - SpaghettiCthulu 2y ago
      That's up to the user, not the developer.
      - netdevnet 2y ago
        It's up to the developer. Users don't know what background services are
        ryandrake 2y ago
        Users understand the idea of an application "doing things in the background". Multitasking operating systems have been a thing for decades. If the user doesn't want that happening for a particular application, the user should be able to turn it off. Mobile OSes have given way too much control over to developers. Whose device is it anyway? The user's or the app developer's?
        netdevnet 2y ago
        I would argue that most don't. If you ask most senior citizens or simply most users of computing devices to explain what they think about "background services", most won't know what you are talking about. Just because a functionality has been present in a system for a while does not mean that everyone will know about it. Ask people about dual booting, most won't know about it. Ask most people about "SSL", most won't know about it. Ask users about the command line, most won't know about it. And so on. Even the abstract concept of a search engine (separate from the concept of Google Search) is likely to fly over the head of many people. You vastly overestimate your audience. Let's put it this way: most computing devices nowadays are mobile phones and for many people this is their first and main interaction with computation. The modern ubiquity of phones is bigger than that of personal computers by an order of magnitude imo. Personal computers were huge but mobile phones have a level of penetration PCs could never reach. When you buy a device, you agree to the terms of service. Most manufacturers like Apple have something along the lines of "don't interfere with the proper working of the system". Freezing apps sound like it breaks the ToS. Buying a device is less like buying a toothbrush and more like buying a tractor. You don't own it inconditially. You own it under certain terms. Those terms give the manufacturers lots of power.
MzHN 2y ago
As others have mentioned GrapheneOS does give some control back to the user. You can set up contact scopes and file access scopes, you can remove the Internet permission as easily as any other permission. Managing running apps is still a nightmare though. I regularly go through the battery history of the previous night, to see if any apps were running while I slept. So far I've, for example, found my banking app running something called a telemetry service, in the background, even if I set its battery profile to restricted. No way to stop that other than to uninstall the app. GrapheneOS has one more feature that almost solves this called "Disable app". The downside is that it will remove the app from your home screen and it is a pain to re-enable it. My current workaround is this: I use a custom home screen shortcut app to create a shortcut to the settings page of the app I want to disable. Then each time I want to use it, I tap it on the home screen, tap "Enable", tap "Open" and after I'm done I tap "Disable" one more time and close the settings. However now I've found a new culprit eating my battery. I use Google Meet through a browser, since the app won't work without Play Services. The browser I use for this is Brave. Now every time I leave a meeting, Brave will be listed as using most of my battery when idle. Nothing will remove it. Force stop, nope. Running services list, not listed. Only restarting the phone will stop it. With all the rabbit holes I've gone through, I've only come out with one response to all this: "This is how Android is designed to work." so I'm not hopeful this will ever get better.
- CommitSyn 2y ago
  > So far I've, for example, found my banking app running something called a telemetry service, in the background, even if I set its battery profile to restricted. No way to stop that other than to uninstall the app. Have you considered creating a new 'banking' user account that you only log in to when you need to access that app? Its incredibly easy with Graphene.
andrepd 2y ago
I do this with XPrivacyLua
newscracker 2y ago
> Apps like Truecaller refuse to work without so many permissions. Android apps have had bad habits for a very long time because Android didn’t have the granular runtime permissions system like iOS did (Android had only install time permissions that was either grant all or no install allowed). Even though Android brought granular runtime permissions from version 6 (?), apps have continued to badger users for every permission that allows them to collect more data. Android users have also been conditioned from the beginning to provide all permissions. So apps expect them to provide what they ask or refuse to work. On iOS, Apple has stated in its policies for a long time that apps should continue to work even when permissions are denied (with obvious caveats, like for example camera not working if camera permission is not granted). It’s a stark and disturbing contrast when comparing how Android apps refuse to work whereas the same app by the same developer on iOS would be a lot better behaved even when various permissions are denied. BTW, Truecaller on iOS will work without getting permissions to access contacts. It will also work if it’s not given access to SMS.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  Do a CTRL-F (or CMD-F) through these comments and look for the word "refuse". It comes up way too often. This seems to be a huge problem: Apps taking it upon themselves to "refuse to work" until the user gives in to their demands. It's like a hostage negotiation. Developers really shouldn't have the power to say "well I'm in charge, user, not you, so fuck off."
segmondy 2y ago
Folks have been asking for this for a long time, but for whatever reason they won't implement it.
lostSeaPlan 2y ago
The way I do it to freeze apps is using focus mode. You can flag these apps as "distracting" and enter "focus mode". Their icons will turn gray, only run when explicitly opened, and auto-freeze in 5 minutes. After 4 minutes a notification appears to extend this run time. This works for me for most of the cases.
ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
Sounds like GrapheneOS is exactly what you want.
nijave 2y ago
Afaik disabling apps is built into Android but not directly accessible. I think there's a way to do it with ADB. SwiftBackup can also freeze & unfreeze

Xeamek 2y ago

It's up to app maker to ensure it will work without permissions granted. ...but ofc most app makers are lazy and just throw up error whenever they don't get what their wont, forcing users to give up. I guess google could introduce a dummy system for every single service and feed that to the apps when the permission is not granted, but I imagine that would be a lot of work. Maybe some day...

bzzzt 2y ago
Providing dummy data would also diminish the value of Android users to Google itself, unless they give themselves an exemption from such a setting which would mean they would be dragged to court by the competition.
xmprt 2y ago
Android already does something like this for location services. For example, give precise location vs approximate location. And then for other permissions, there's a popup for whether to give permissions only this time, always, or to not. I guess there could be a 4th option for "mock" permissions. I wonder if an OEM could provide something like this because at the end of the day, the OEM has control over the sensors that are providing the data that's consumed by these apps.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
  Just to drag us out of the techie land of make-believe, this presents such a horrendous user experience for everyone except advanced users that Google or any mainstream OEM is completely sensible to dismiss it on those merits alone. It’s just another layer of crap that moves smartphones one step closer to being as ridiculously complex as Windows PCs.
  - Hasu 2y ago
    > It’s just another layer of crap that moves smartphones one step closer to being as ridiculously complex as Windows PCs. So, useful computing devices? I'm for anything that pushes this plastic toy towards being a real tool.
- izacus 2y ago
  I have apps constantly refuse to work if I only allow Approximate location on Android. Even stuff like weather apps.
  - catlikesshrimp 2y ago
    Tangential: there are websites which provide good weather info. (eg, not affiliated https://www.windy.com https://www.windy.com ) Everything weather related, I uninstall, and if it is bloatware I "pm disable-user" in shell
- prirai 2y ago
  There is an exact same feature in developer options called Mock location app. Just download an app which does this and enable it there. It works.
noirscape 2y ago
Dummy/empty data is already a thing in Android if I'm not mistaken. It just needs ADB/App Ops to activate it. There's three states of permissions in android land from a permission request perspective: * Granted. Just full access to all things behind the permission, no questions asked. * Ignore. Returns no rejection, but all permission-restricted functions will return no/default data. This can technically be checked for by the app but usually isn't. * Deny. No data, return an explicit error to the app to tell them the permission isn't granted. For some reason that second one isn't available for the default UX; you need to manually set it with ADB or use App Ops to do it.
- capybara_2020 2y ago
  Don't apps just refuse to work now a days if ADB is activated? It has been a few years since I tried it. But I remember my bank app refusing to working with the developer options(forgot what this is exactly) turned on. Also if I remember right, some apps do not work on rooted phones. Or are we talking about different things?
  - noirscape 2y ago
    ADB requires USB debugging to be enabled, yes, although modifying the appops settings (App Ops = app that can modify appops on the device itself using ADB, appops = android service that handles application permissions and application operations) doesn't need it to be continuously enabled. You can just activate it, change the settings and disable it afterwards. Pretty annoying but it is what it is. This doesn't require root either, although enabling USB debugging is an important step towards rooting, which is probably why you think it's related.
  - sgc 2y ago
    I have never had an app refuse to work because of developer mode, but several if rooted. Anecdotal, but it would seem the two are treated differently by developers.
    - baseballdork 2y ago

davotoula 2y ago

+1 for freezing unused apps. Would lower the attack surface nicely!

johnisgood 2y ago
See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40142394 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40142394 If you give SuperFreezZ App stopper permissions (it needs to be registered as an accessibility service, and requires usage access as well) to check for usage of applications, then it will freeze unused applications automatically. You can even specify after how many days of not having used them you want to freeze them.
Jochim 2y ago
fwiw this seems to be partially in place already. Requests for access to files, location, mic, and camera usually give me the option of allowing them all of the time or only when the app is open. I've also noticed system notifications stating that permissions will be used from unused apps. Greater configurability is always nice though.
awiesenhofer 2y ago
Interesting, so this isn't a standard Android feature? My Galaxy S-series phones have been doing this for years.
kyriakos 2y ago
Samsung's Android flavour removes permissions from unused android apps automatically, and sends a notification to let you know. Close enough I guess.

poisonborz 2y ago

The question you need to ask, how would this profit Google? It's an advanced setting that would need user interaction, a fraction of them would do this. This "Enhanced Confirmation" is also about automatic restriction.

bengale 2y ago

I'm a big fan of how iOS lets you decide which images are available from the camera roll. So the app can have "access" to the camera roll but there is that intermediate stage where I can scope down which images are in it.

p_l 2y ago
That's present already under limited access, afaik - where images made available to application are mediated through file picker
shantara 2y ago
Some iOS apps like Google Photos refuse to work unless you give them full access to the camera roll. I don’t know how they detect the limited access scope, but it is a fundamental design flaw that it is possible at all for an app to do this.
- soraminazuki 2y ago
  It's egregious how it won't even let you view photos if you don't give it full access. This was one of the motivating factors for me to de-Google.
  - shantara 2y ago
    Same here, it was the final straw that pushed me away from using Google services. But I would argue that Apple's behavior is equally egregious here for not enforcing the same permission usage guidelines they require the smaller devs to comply with.

franga2000 2y ago

> Heck I'd want an option to freeze apps once I'm logged in & only unfreeze them when I need to use them I have this on Android 13, it's called "pause app" and seems to do just this. Might not be available on all variants tho, I'm running crDroid.

johnisgood 2y ago
There is "pause app" on my stock Android 12 as well, although I have no clue how well it works. I use https://f-droid.org/en/packages/superfreeze.tool.android/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/superfreeze.tool.android/.

normaler 2y ago

GraphenOS offers that, since the Playstore/Google Applications are non privileged applications. Big Plus for being easy installable from the Graphenos Appstore Applications. It currently offers 8 applications and 4 of them are GraphenOS own applications.

jamaicahest 2y ago
GrapheneOS is nice for people using Google Pixel phones. And useless for anyone else.
- treypitt 2y ago
  FWIW the Pixel 8, the newest device offering Advanced Memory Protection, sells for less than $600 brand new right now. You can tune memory tagging & hardened memory allocation on a per-app basis. It's a game changer
  - prmoustache 2y ago
    You are saying that as if it was cheap. I am pretty sure most people buy <$250 smartphones. That is at least the case in my social circle, very few iphones, pixel, an awful lot of cheap Xiaomi Redmi and the Samsung Galaxies are usually the A line instead of the S line.
    - nbdy 2y ago
      If someone uses Xiaomi they probably also don't worry about privacy.
      - kaanyalova 2y ago
        At least it is possible (really annoying process) to unlock the bootloader on Xiaomi devices.
- GordonS 2y ago
  Forgive my ignorance, but what is it about GrapheneOS that makes it better on Pixel devices?

johnisgood 2y ago

In Developer options you can select a mock location app like Private Location[1], and there is an app named Shelter[2] that allows you to freeze and unfreeze (depending on what you mean by the terms, you may want the last mentioned app, see [3]) applications in your personal and work profile (and to isolate and run multiple instances of apps using Work Profiles). Additionally, you might find SuperFreezZ App stopper[3] useful and it might be what you are looking for. It allows you to entirely freeze all background activities of apps (unused apps, too, automatically). All of the apps mentioned work without root, and are worth checking out. [1] Private Location - https://redplanet.gitlab.io/fdroid-website/en/packages/com.wesaphzt.privatelocation/ https://redplanet.gitlab.io/fdroid-website/en/packages/com.w... [2] Shelter - https://f-droid.org/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/ https://f-droid.org/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/ [3] SuperFreezZ App stopper - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/superfreeze.tool.android/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/superfreeze.tool.android/ --- EDIT: According to https://f-droid.org/pl/2023/10/19/twif-client-alpha-kde-removal-by-google.html https://f-droid.org/pl/2023/10/19/twif-client-alpha-kde-remo..., > Private Location was also removed as was no longer functioning and development has stopped years ago, as reported in #3096 (https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/issues/3096 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/issues/3096). That is a shame. The other applications are fine, at least.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
I can't find private location in the f droid app and the APK downloads don't work. I tried fake traveler but it was crashing constantly and was not able to fool organic maps
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- johnisgood 2y ago
  Apparently it was removed for the reasons mentioned in my edited comment. Thank you for pointing this out.
bonki 2y ago
Wasn't Private Location removed from the store though? If it's the app that I'm thinking about I used it before but it stopped working because the map API changed which broke the app and it never got updated, so it was removed. There should be a github issue about that somewhere.

Tmpod 2y ago

> Being Android you'd expect some way to provide a dummy contact book, location & other accesses that apps need. Yeah, definitely. It would be so nice to have that built in. With LSPosed and XPrivacyLua, you can block/give garbage data to a lot of permissions, including contacts, though unfortunately it only works by sharing your favourites, with no way to configure a per-app list.

netdevnet 2y ago

Doesn't this "freezing concept" effectively kill the idea of background services?

johnisgood 2y ago
It does, but you can do it on a per-application basis.
- netdevnet 2y ago
  My point is that the suggestion is effectively asking for the removal of background services
  - SpaghettiCthulu 2y ago
    That's up to the user, not the developer.
    - netdevnet 2y ago
      It's up to the developer. Users don't know what background services are
      - ryandrake 2y ago
        Users understand the idea of an application "doing things in the background". Multitasking operating systems have been a thing for decades. If the user doesn't want that happening for a particular application, the user should be able to turn it off. Mobile OSes have given way too much control over to developers. Whose device is it anyway? The user's or the app developer's?
        netdevnet 2y ago
        I would argue that most don't. If you ask most senior citizens or simply most users of computing devices to explain what they think about "background services", most won't know what you are talking about. Just because a functionality has been present in a system for a while does not mean that everyone will know about it. Ask people about dual booting, most won't know about it. Ask most people about "SSL", most won't know about it. Ask users about the command line, most won't know about it. And so on. Even the abstract concept of a search engine (separate from the concept of Google Search) is likely to fly over the head of many people. You vastly overestimate your audience. Let's put it this way: most computing devices nowadays are mobile phones and for many people this is their first and main interaction with computation. The modern ubiquity of phones is bigger than that of personal computers by an order of magnitude imo. Personal computers were huge but mobile phones have a level of penetration PCs could never reach. When you buy a device, you agree to the terms of service. Most manufacturers like Apple have something along the lines of "don't interfere with the proper working of the system". Freezing apps sound like it breaks the ToS. Buying a device is less like buying a toothbrush and more like buying a tractor. You don't own it inconditially. You own it under certain terms. Those terms give the manufacturers lots of power.

MzHN 2y ago

As others have mentioned GrapheneOS does give some control back to the user. You can set up contact scopes and file access scopes, you can remove the Internet permission as easily as any other permission. Managing running apps is still a nightmare though. I regularly go through the battery history of the previous night, to see if any apps were running while I slept. So far I've, for example, found my banking app running something called a telemetry service, in the background, even if I set its battery profile to restricted. No way to stop that other than to uninstall the app. GrapheneOS has one more feature that almost solves this called "Disable app". The downside is that it will remove the app from your home screen and it is a pain to re-enable it. My current workaround is this: I use a custom home screen shortcut app to create a shortcut to the settings page of the app I want to disable. Then each time I want to use it, I tap it on the home screen, tap "Enable", tap "Open" and after I'm done I tap "Disable" one more time and close the settings. However now I've found a new culprit eating my battery. I use Google Meet through a browser, since the app won't work without Play Services. The browser I use for this is Brave. Now every time I leave a meeting, Brave will be listed as using most of my battery when idle. Nothing will remove it. Force stop, nope. Running services list, not listed. Only restarting the phone will stop it. With all the rabbit holes I've gone through, I've only come out with one response to all this: "This is how Android is designed to work." so I'm not hopeful this will ever get better.

CommitSyn 2y ago
> So far I've, for example, found my banking app running something called a telemetry service, in the background, even if I set its battery profile to restricted. No way to stop that other than to uninstall the app. Have you considered creating a new 'banking' user account that you only log in to when you need to access that app? Its incredibly easy with Graphene.

andrepd 2y ago

I do this with XPrivacyLua

newscracker 2y ago

> Apps like Truecaller refuse to work without so many permissions. Android apps have had bad habits for a very long time because Android didn’t have the granular runtime permissions system like iOS did (Android had only install time permissions that was either grant all or no install allowed). Even though Android brought granular runtime permissions from version 6 (?), apps have continued to badger users for every permission that allows them to collect more data. Android users have also been conditioned from the beginning to provide all permissions. So apps expect them to provide what they ask or refuse to work. On iOS, Apple has stated in its policies for a long time that apps should continue to work even when permissions are denied (with obvious caveats, like for example camera not working if camera permission is not granted). It’s a stark and disturbing contrast when comparing how Android apps refuse to work whereas the same app by the same developer on iOS would be a lot better behaved even when various permissions are denied. BTW, Truecaller on iOS will work without getting permissions to access contacts. It will also work if it’s not given access to SMS.

ryandrake 2y ago
Do a CTRL-F (or CMD-F) through these comments and look for the word "refuse". It comes up way too often. This seems to be a huge problem: Apps taking it upon themselves to "refuse to work" until the user gives in to their demands. It's like a hostage negotiation. Developers really shouldn't have the power to say "well I'm in charge, user, not you, so fuck off."

segmondy 2y ago

Folks have been asking for this for a long time, but for whatever reason they won't implement it.

lostSeaPlan 2y ago

The way I do it to freeze apps is using focus mode. You can flag these apps as "distracting" and enter "focus mode". Their icons will turn gray, only run when explicitly opened, and auto-freeze in 5 minutes. After 4 minutes a notification appears to extend this run time. This works for me for most of the cases.

ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago

Sounds like GrapheneOS is exactly what you want.

nijave 2y ago

Afaik disabling apps is built into Android but not directly accessible. I think there's a way to do it with ADB. SwiftBackup can also freeze & unfreeze