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GrapheneOS' rewritten Messages app is released
- LoganDark 15d agoThat was really fast, they only announced it like a day or two ago IIRC? Also: no screenshots of the redesigned interface?!
- getpokedagain 15d agoIf you look at the history they have been working on this for a few months. The announcement probably was tied to this public release being cut for testing.
- mewse-hn 15d agoDoes it do RCS?
- OneDeuxTriSeiGo 15d agoNo. RCS is still quite hard to actually implement. There's an open issue for it but the effort is mildly herculean. AFAIUI though GOS does intend on providing an RCS impl eventually even if it takes years to do.
- sterlind 15d agoWhat's so difficult about implementing RCS from a technical perspective?
- 0l 15d agohttps://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117225561294973728 https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117225561294973728
- prophesi 14d agoThanks! I noticed on one of my phones that RCS breaks once the Messages app is out of date by a certain amount of revisions. I hope this is an arbitrary decision by Google to invalidate older versions, given that the RCS protocol hasn't changed. I wouldn't want the Graphene team to have to keep up with each change Google makes with their Messages app, and instead is a security oversight Google has found in their own app.
- grapheneos 14d agoWe definitely will have to keep up with the changes. We already do in order to provide support for using RCS via Google Messages on GrapheneOS. Recently, they made a change which broke it on GrapheneOS and we had to quickly fix that in under a day.
- deleted 15d ago[deleted]
- Groxx 15d agoparticularly if you want to support all of the message-body features, of which there are MANY. it's very business-comms oriented. I broadly expect third-party RCS apps to drop that though, like how essentially none support all of MMS. did you know MMS supports slideshows (I built support for this once)? 3d objects (mimetype model/gltf+json)? "timed text" (mimetype text/mp4)?
- sicktriple 15d agoI'm really hoping they're doing this to pave the way for an RCS implementation. If it can be done, GOS is in the best position to make it happen, and without RCS, chatting with normies is both extremely inconvenient (large group chats straight up do not work) and categorically insecure. If I could convince all my friends and family to use Signal I would, but they just think I'm on about some weird Edward Snowden shit, and they just write me off as crazy. "Why would I checks notes download software to solve a problem when I could use the one that came with my phone?"
- loufe 15d agoDon't give up the good fight! Took some time but I got the whole family to adopt it as we had no common shared platform before, and it's been great.
- greatgib 15d agoI'm thinking quite the opposite. I hope RCS can die fast. We already have chat apps WhatsApp, signal, telegram, you can even create your own. I'm quite happy that SMS for one are not something centralized by the giant US big corp. Would be the dream of Google to get all your messages as a gateway.
- inquirerGeneral 15d ago[dead]
- sva_ 15d agoSo I looked into this because my idea of RCS was that it was pretty decentralized direct encrypted communication. TIL that RCS was designed as a fairly decentralized protocol where every carrier could run their own RCS servers, but it didnt get adoption. So Google stepped in and built their own routing infrastructure, and now mostly all RCS is centralized on Google's servers (even if you use an iPhone, because the RCS server is mandated by your carrier)
- emayljames 14d ago
- tcfhgj 15d agoalso I think RCS is way to insecure for Graphene OS - they have no way of making sure the communication is actually 100% secure. In my experience, Graphene OS doesn't make compromises.
- fph 15d agoWhy would they support SMS then?
- sellmesoap 14d agoSMS is a defacto carrier tech that people expect to work, people also don't expect e2ee or any kind of privacy scheme on SMS but it might be a place to hand communication off to a different tech. Whereas RCS leaks meta data to the goog or worse (I don't know the ins and outs of RCS) but by default I would trust it less then signal, who may also collect meta data leaked through the goog, so I guess the real solution is to be boring and assume there is no security or privacy for anyone of reasonable means.
- prophesi 14d agoSignal > RCS > SMS. Just because RCS can't be done without metadata doesn't mean it's a fruitless endeavor. Why not have someone use RCS to then get on Signal? That is so much better than plaintext SMS to Signal. And for most people, RCS between Android <-> iOS is the biggest advancement in encrypted communication for the layman that I've seen since Let's Encrypt.
- sellmesoap 14d agoThat is a positive progression for sure. I guess it sounds like RCS is gatekept behind a play store API on the android side so there isn't an open source solution quite yet? Mostly I'm lamenting that even with signal there's meta-data you can infer behavior from. I know Session messenger has a bit of a network shuffle (is it garlic routing?) That blurs metadata collection a bit, but then they watered down several of Signals' security/privacy choices. I'm constantly curious and overwhelmed at the choice of text communication platforms, just so many!
- seany 14d agoRCS is really the only thing I truly am annoyed by with rooted devices. If GrapheneOS can build something open that works we should be able to rip it apart and get it to work without passing play integrity.
- grapheneos 14d agoRCS already works on GrapheneOS via Google Messages using sandboxed Google Play. We have an ICC authentication toggle for granting the required access to Google Play services. We want to provide our own implementation within our Messaging app to replace Google Messages and then we want to provide an alternate backend not depending on sandboxed Google Play, at least for carriers with their own implementation.
- seany 12d agoright, but I haven't used a phone with out magisk or something like it since... 2009? And you guys hate rooting; so...
- grapheneos 14d agoIt may take a long time to make a fully standalone implementation and that may not be compatible with most carriers. However, we plan to provide it in the short term through support for using the Google RCS infrastructure. We can have it start out supporting using sandboxed Google Play for RCS activation in the same way Google Messages uses it to replace Google Messages.
- deleted 15d ago[deleted]
- HybridStatAnim8 14d agoNot yet, but they do plan to add support for it.
- Markoff 14d agoRCS requires Google account and Google Play services, completely useless, I'm better off with Whatsapp not requiring any of these to function, heck I xan even download APK directly from whatsapp website without play store or aurora
- grapheneos 14d agoWe've announced our plan to add RCS with Messaging Layer Security (MLS) for E2EE compatible with Google Messages and iOS. SMS/MMS will only be a fallback once that's implemented.
- ImJamal 14d agoI don't know enough about how RCS works, but if I have an existing conversation in Google Messages would I be able to migrate it over to when this gets implemented?
- phh 14d agoFor the context, the vast majority of carriers do RCS with Google's RCS servers (https://github.com/phhusson/rcs-scanner https://github.com/phhusson/rcs-scanner). I'm a bit rusty, but to my knowledge the only exceptions are Jio in India, all Chinese telcos, and some Japenese telcos. Of course it is relevant privacy-wise (Google still gather a lot of metadata about who speaks to who and when), but that's not even the reason I'm mentioning it. In the RCS specification, there are three lines on a killer-feature: device attestation. A server can whitelist which devices are allowed to connect to it. And of course Google uses this, allowing only Google-certified devices and Apple devices. And then, there is actually one RCS client for Google's RCS servers. Because Google Messages doesn't use RCS, it uses a custom protocol based on protobuf. My personal guess is that this protobuf is a 1-to-1 matching with actual RCS, and it's both-way compatible. But still, that means that potentially the Google device-attestation won't work with an RCS client. Sibling comments say that GrapheneOS plan on implementing it. I think it can reasonably work. TBH I'm expecting that giving a LLM the publicly available information about RCS on microG should give a working "send message" within a day (even when using Google apps rather than microG, it's just that the microG work explains the API). And once RCS work in GrapheneOS' message app, it should be pretty straightforward to port to microG, so yay. However I have to admit I'm not optimist about how long it will keep working. I'd say we are two years away from Google enforcing RKP device integrity for RCS, and uh, good luck passing that. Of course, I'm hoping that, in the EU, the DMA will break this Google/Apple-only device-attestation, but I'm not aware of anyone pushing that ATM.
- mmooss 15d agoWith a seemingly insurmountable workload - maintain an actually secure OS fork - for a small team, I wonder how GrapheneOS prioritizes things like messaging apps? I'm not saying it's wrong at all; I am just interested in the thinking inside a project like that. I can imagine many reasons to devote resources to it: * A platform is only as good as its apps. If they want to grow GOS in the general public, it requires a good SMS/MMS messaging app. * LLM tools greatly reduce development costs, especially for well-known functions like text messaging. * Without secure messaging (as far as SMS/MMS can be secure), the platform security is greatly reduced. * GOS got a big donation, or has a volunteer that wants to do messaging ... But idk what I'm talking about. What is their approach?
- ravenstine 15d agoWell they're going to be shipping GOS on Motorola and I think some other devices, so basic things like the messaging app need to actually have some polish to them. I really like GrapheneOS overall as-is, but the messaging app felt like baby's first texting app. Not necessarily their fault since it's pretty much straight out of AOSP if I understand correctly. But any time I've installed GrapheneOS, the messaging app is one of two things I must replace every time (the other being the downright bad AOSP keyboard). If they fix(ed) their messaging app and their keyboard, then they've really eliminated a lot of potential complaints if a less tech-savvy crowd ends up buying future Motorolas.
- flexagoon 15d agoI you look at the commits of the new Messages app it's mostly made by 2 people whose Github profiles show them as employees of GrapheneOS and who are mostly committing to different system apps. So I assume they have a separate team of devs whose job it is to make the system apps. IIRC when they started first announced their replacement for the AOSP camera they said they hired a developer specifically for it.
- microtonal 15d agoA bunch of the AOSP apps feel like you have to rewrite them for modern standards now and then you can basically have them in maintenance mode for years. The AOSP messaging app has also lasted for 15+ (?) years and has basically had no maintenance from Google for many years. Modernizing these apps seems very high-impact. These are the very first things a new user sees and after the initial modernization, they should be relatively cheap to maintain.
- cloudie78 15d agoHow about some screenshots?
- qweqwe14 15d agoI constantly see those projects that would benefit from a screenshot in a readme, but for some reason the thought about adding one doesn't even come to the authors' mind, even though it's pretty obvious. I'd really like to know what's going on.
- gbalduzzi 15d agoI think in many cases the authors value functionality much more then esthetics. Which is a bummer because it is a complete different point of view from the more typical user experience
- xboxnolifes 15d agoAn image is functionality, as it provides significant information to the reader.
- gremlinunderway 15d agoYeah but see, we're talking about a functionality that is inherently visual. Ergonomics has nothing to do with esthetics, and it's such a dumb excuse to hand wave aside interface issues as of they are just about "making things look pretty"
- em-bee 15d agoexactly, i am looking at screenshots for apps to get an idea about their functionality.
- embedding-shape 15d ago> I think in many cases the authors value functionality much more then esthetics. In many cases the repository isn't meant to be more than for source code too, not everyone use their git repository as also the marketing page, that'd go somewhere else. With that said, grapheneos.org doesn't seem to have any screenshots either, which I also don't understand and think is a bummer. Even though the point of the differences with GrapheneOS might not be mainly visual, just showing what it looks like seem like a no-brainer.
- chadgpt3 15d ago[flagged]
- gib444 15d ago[flagged]
- microtonal 15d agoIt's doubly disappointing because just 4 days ago the project wrote [1], on using AI for the new Messaging app: Why? Using an LLM as an additional reviewer seems like a good use of LLMs? Personally I have found LLMs very useful for that and they catch issues that other experienced programmers do not always find. It’s not like they are vibecoding a messages app.
- jasonvorhe 15d agoYou're using software from an alpha channel. People sometimes.
- gib444 15d agoAlpha lowers the expected level of polish and stability - it doesn't make every regression equally acceptable. It is a reasonable criticism even when released to the alpha channel. Further, I believe it's reasonable for users' expectations to be influenced by what the project itself communicates about the development process. > People sometimes. I have experienced many (relatively minor but some annoying) bugs in GrapheneOS the past few years, without complaint to the developers. And have submitted bug reports and logs. I'm "in the trenches", not just slinging mud from the outside. If I were in a better financial situation right now, I would be donating too.
- Maskawanian 15d agoDoes anyone know if this is something that we can install now, or if it will show up in the next OS release?
- gib444 15d agoIt's in the alpha channel. Go in to the 'App Store' app, go to Messaging, 3 dot menu and change release channel.
- novafunc 15d agoThey mentioned you can use the Alpha from their app installer.
- Maskawanian 15d agoGood to know! For others: You open their app store, go into messaging, hamburger menu, select release channel, and choose alpha.
- flexagoon 15d agoYou can go to the GOS App Store, choose the Messaging app, click 3 dots at the top and choose the Alpha release channel to get it now
- lollobomb 15d agoNow, can we please get the long-awaited full system backup feature? We pay you for a reason! (sarcasm obvious, but indeed full system backup is sorely missing. Seedvault is crap, not an option)
- preisschild 15d agoI had a scary bug on an older version where for months the contact names didnt match the actual senders/recipients. I have received SMS from my WISP under the same contact as Github MFA codes but also send mssages to relatives that never where received...
- mvdtnz 15d ago[flagged]
- jasonvorhe 15d agoSet an alarm for the typical Motorola flagship schedule then.
- mrd3v0 15d agoSo..next year?
- mvdtnz 14d agoI'll believe it when I see it.
- edent 15d agoGo down to literally any 2nd hand phone store and buy a refurb. None of your money will go to Google and you'll have your phone at a fraction of the new price.
- subscribed 15d agoIt's maybe $250 for someone's old phone. Other than that -- next year. And this is other companies' choice, not GrapheneOS team, to fix on releasing grossly insecure hardware or NOT releasing patches and fixes.
- 15d ago
- I_am_tiberius 15d agoEverytime I read GrapheneOS news I search for news related to Fairephone. It's such a shame that there's still no official plan for Fairephone to work on requirements for GrapheneOS. The combination of those 2 would be fantastic. It would also open a big new market (I assume) for Fairephone so not sure why there seems no clear sign in that direction at all (to my knowledge).
- saligne 15d agoYou should search for the many times where GrapheneOS has stated they won't work with Fairphone
- mrd3v0 15d agoGiven the state of Fairphone hardware, software and business, it is not surprising.
- tcoff91 15d agoFor those of us out of the loop, could someone summarize the situation?
- bramhaag 15d ago> Fairphone has said they don't plan to add a secure element. It can be seen from their current devices that they don't fully keep up with privacy/security backports and lag a year behind on shipping yearly OS releases. They skip over the monthly and quarterly releases entirely. They replaced their own non-GMS Fairphone OS with a dramatically less secure /e/OS option in partnership with Murena. They clearly demonstrate that security and even privacy are not the priorities. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114733211017800480 https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114733211017800480
- em-bee 15d agoThey replaced their own non-GMS Fairphone OS with a dramatically less secure /e/OS it sounds like they are saying that /e/OS is less secure than fairphone's own OS. with all criticism against /e/OS taken into account, i highly doubt that fairphone would have been able to make their own version of android more secure than /e/OS when they are not even interested in working on that.
- module1973 15d agoWould have been cool to have encrypted SMS messages like the SMSecure app while we wait for RCS
- mrd3v0 15d agoI wish they prioritised the call app. It is beyond appalling. You can't even determine when a call happened, beyond the generic low fidelity "[time] ago". It also almost feels like tapping anything makes me accidentally call people. Abhorrent UI/UX to be completely honest.
- subscribed 15d agoWhat? :) You mean the perfectly functional (if barebones) AOSP call app? :)
- gpvos 15d agoThe one with the terrible UI, yes.
- HybridStatAnim8 14d agoIt will get ported to kotlin, material 3, and jetpack compose, just like Messaging.
- okanat 15d agoI'm using LineageOS so I have the AOSP Phone app. If Graphene uses the same, then you can actually determine the exact time of call, but you need to jump through a couple of hoops: Go to "Call History" from the three dots then click on the call of interest. You'll see a button called "Call Details". Then you can see the exact time.
- azdle 15d agoCan confirm the same works on Graphene. Also works directly from the "Recents" list.
- loufe 15d agoThis is completely false. Tap the call, tap "call details" and its there. Took be 2 second to disprove. This is lazy to the point of being seemingly malicious commentary.
- andrepd 15d agoSeeing "Material 3/Material You" is a negative point for me, not a positive. It's almost comical just how atrocious the UI is. Yes let's make all phones 20% huge-er and all whitespace 40% wider, said no sane person ever.
- tsunamifury 15d agoIt’s amazing that you don’t think any of this is based on real HCI. People prefer larger tap targets on touch screens.
- andrepd 15d ago> People prefer larger tap targets on touch screens. Only in a completely stupid, nonsensically A/B tested notion of "prefer". I'll refer you to this ~~excellent piece of satirical writing~~ actual post from Google design team: https://design.google/library/expressive-material-design-google-research https://design.google/library/expressive-material-design-goo...
- tsunamifury 15d agoUh. This HCI fact has been known for 30 plus years. Are you this … poorly informed
- Dylan16807 14d agoLarger than what? That only goes so far. And tons of whitespace doesn't make the tap targets bigger. It exacerbates the problem of bigger targets causing less to fit on the screen.
- qingcharles 14d agoDesign is so personal. I love Material 3 Expressive personally. Each to their own :)
- HybridStatAnim8 14d agoAt least it is now consistent with the rest of the OSs UI.
- jcul 15d agoWhere I live, an sms app is not very important. It's almost exclusively used for two factor authentication messages. Everyone uses WhatsApp, signal, telegram etc, even businesses and services. So having a bare bones aosp messaging app was never an issue for me. Having said that, I find fossify messages pretty good. Will try out the new GOS app too.
- beepbooptheory 15d agoThe biggest issue I have with the degoogled Androids is no RCS chats out of the box. At least for me, it stinks these days to not have it, and you're forced to do sneaky things to get it.
- HybridStatAnim8 14d agoGrapheneOS wants to eventually support RCS in the default chat app. It may take a lot of time for it to work without google components/google services but it is the eventual plan.
- grapheneos 14d agoProviding it via the built-in Messaging app is planned but not straightforward to implement since it's not an open platform. GrapheneOS has official support for using RCS via Google Messages rather than it requiring anything sketchy. It's currently essentially the only remaining Android RCS client.
- gib444 14d ago> out of the box Right. Installing Google Messages is not "out of the box" just to clear up the sibling comment as they are a stickler for accuracy. It is not installed by default
- Evidlo 14d agoSome screenshots since the repo doesn't have any for whatever reason: https://imgur.com/a/C8yV83v https://imgur.com/a/C8yV83v
- dvh 14d agoThe reason is Waterluvian's Law: > The more an article would benefit from photos, the less likely it’ll have them.
- grapheneos 14d agoIt's not an article but rather release notes for people who already use it. The app is only available to users on GrapheneOS as the default SMS/MMS app (eventually RCS). Our users try out the new version directly instead of looking at static images of it.
- DeepDyno 14d agoOne feature I just found out about after trying it is that you can text email addresses. Unfortunately I think that feature is shutting down. https://www.verizon.com/support/vtext-vzwpix-shutdown/ https://www.verizon.com/support/vtext-vzwpix-shutdown/ I'm still waiting until RCS is supported before I actually use it.
- Denatonium 14d agoIt's probably for the best. As recently as 2016 (and probably more recently; that's just the last time I tested this), they weren't even validating SPF records on their email-to-SMS gateway. You could spoof the "From" address to any email address you fancied and your messages would go through, appearing to be from that sender. Back in high school, my childish self had a field day showing off my phone's SMS inbox filled up with spam Viagra ads that were "sent by" Hillary Clinton's "hacked" email server. It's not as funny in hindsight, given the unexpected results of that election, but at the time, it felt like top-tier humor.
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]
- gib444 14d ago[flagged]
- Markoff 14d agoI just wished there was some IM app supporting ordinary SMS, so I can have extra communicator where I could also receive all notifications from courier, 2FA codes, etc. Such a shame Signal removed it, it was one of the reasons why we ditched it completely with family (other would be unreliable delivery, fixing errors when US dev wakes up, half screen nag prompts about PIN, etc.). So now I must have extra dedicated app just for SMS, which could be replaced easily with another alternative messenger if ANYONE bothered to implement simple SMS support, but seems nobody is interesting in this, so I am not interesting in your messengers if you cant be bothered to support at least SMS and use Whatsapp (and have Telegram as backup if WA would block me again, appeal took ~5 hours to resolve).
- grapheneos 14d agoWe've announced our plan to add RCS with Messaging Layer Security (MLS) for E2EE compatible with Google Messages and iOS. SMS/MMS will only be a fallback once that's implemented.
- Markoff 13d agounless it will work without Google account/Google play services, this will be just another Google messages app clone (why not use directly Google messages then?) or dumb SMS app without IM (if I'm not willing to use play services/Google account) and I have already plenty of those to choose from
- unlocked7565 14d agojuste tried it... still no search fonction ? back to QUIK app...
- worldsavior 13d agoMessaging app is a bit a laggy. If I scroll down, then all the way up, it seems there is a lag until the "Start chat" fully appears.