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While you're doing that check out Immich - https://immich.app

One of the best solutions I've ever used for photos, backups, enrichment, etc

The source is here: https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/latinime

Featured prominently in the "Source Code" container on https://keyboard.futo.tech/

AFAIK everything FUTO makes is open source? I haven't seen a counter-example (I have not looked hard though!), and https://futo.tech/about claims the following:

>All FUTO-funded projects are expected to be open source or develop a plan to eventually become so. No effort will ever be taken to hide from the people what their computers are doing, to limit how they use them, or to modify their behavior through their software.

curious: what are the advantages of futo vs leantype? i use the latter but never looked deep into it, it just seemed the easiest better than aosp thing on f-droid

If you are referring to Heliboard as an AOSP board replacement, that cannot work, GrapheneOS cannot use GPLv3 projects.

If you mean it as a user installed app, please disregard.

I like Heliboard a lot, but its autocorrect gets stuck in the mud all the time.

It completely falls apart and starts injecting nonsense phrases made up of nonsense misspelled words moment you miss a space ('v' or 'b') or type a really long word it doesn't know.

It also stubbornly incorrects other things like 'a' into "and" if it thinks it knows a phrase fragment. It's always wrong. It just happened to me now twice. Above, "or type a" became "or type and". Also, "it's" became "IRS".

Heliboard would be perfect if it stuck to word-only spellcheck and never split words. Just now again, it tried correcting "heliboard" into "hellenized" and "he lib oars".

This is not a matter of just lowering how aggressive the spellcheck is. It will still generate slop every time. The only real option is to completely turn it off. Futo can have similar problems, but there are a lot more options to tweak and the defaults aren't so bad.

Google can shuttle network requests to any of their other apps (or play services, if that's running) via IPC, even with the network permission disabled in Gboard.

So if you're using Graphene for privacy from Google specifically, it's not safe to install things like Gboard even with the network permission disabled. Even if they don't use IPC in this way today, there's no telling what the Google-of-tomorrow will do.

The latest FUTO works just as well as Gboard for me. Their somewhat recent update to their swiping library really changed the game, and their voice recognition is also pretty decent.

fyi disabling network permission doesn't protect against deliberate and coordinated data exfiltration. Apps can still communicate with other apps, for example with Google Play Services or any other app.

As someone who uses and loves Unexpected Keyboard: the higher learning curve compared to other keyboards would be the main reason I can think of. The reliance on swipes in particular is something that's likely alien to a lot of smartphone users.

Its not part of the OS so why would it affect the Graphene OS license? Its an app, not a library.

Can the Linux kernel be included in the OS?

I'm really glad to read this. Thanks for putting in the effort to make quality software, far too few people are willing to do that these days.

RCS is an extension of SMS and has quite literally been "SMS but more capable" from the start. The protocol on the wire looks a lot like MMS over LTE. Registration and communication mostly happens over SIP and RTP like in the latest MMS specs.

The early versions of RCS were barely implemented. Android and iOS didn't bother including clients, carriers didn't bother hosting servers because the spec was optional, and third party applications made by carriers were launched and then died because carriers couldn't explain to customers why their app was better than WhatsApp e.a. for those in the market for alternative messengers.

I think it's safe to say that RCS would've died a quiet death had Google not used it as a basis for their own Hangouts alternative built into their SMS client.

When RCS was first (soft) launched back in 2008, E2EE messaging practically didn't exist. Google slapped E2EE on top when they hosted their own iMessage alternative to bring it into the modern era but the base spec was still "what if MMS wasn't so outdated and restricted".

RCS was DOA from day one as far as I'm concerned.

Agreed. Google used a standard that virtually nobody (except some carriers) cared about to get a foot in the door for better interoperability with iPhones, to try to solve an issue that is mostly US-only (green bubble anxiety),

In most of the rest of the world nobody gives a shit about RCS since we have adopted other messengers (than iMessage or SMS/MMS) ages ago, most of which are already end-to-end encrypted.

I understand why GrapheneOS has to spend time on this (the US is a large user base), but it's sad nonetheless.

The RCS spec has encryption in its documentation. I think the current spec version is 4.0?

I don't know much about RCS other than that carriers need to be involved, but there's a way to not involve them, which Google did for a while using some kind of compat-service (jibe or something?), and then they stopped doing it.

Never seen RCS working on any carrier ever since. I don't understand why Google couldn't just continue doing what it was doing. Why require carriers?

In LTE and 5G there exists no cellular signal without data. That was a 2G/3G thing. Since 4G everything is data. The separate sms and voice services are gone. And 3G is rapidly being deprecated.

GrapheneOS does not want to adopt RCS for public perception. It is still a better option than SMS/MMS and providing it is beneficial. GrapheneOS will still recommend using better platforms and protocols but RCS being bundled and cross platform are great reasons to implement it.

Eh, I don’t think you have to include Apple here. If it were up to them, the iPhone would still have zero RCS support right now. The current implementation of RCS, even in iOS 27 beta, is clunky.

To me, the only they’re trying to maintain control of is AppleOS-to-AppleOS text communication.

Thanks for clarification. Anything first party from Big Tech is a lost cause privacy wise. At the same time, nobody uses it (maybe that is different in the USA, don't know). So for me this would be ultra-low prio as I (and I expect almost every other GOS user) will never use it. But I believe GOS knows what it is doing.

RCS provides far better support for group chats, many small feature improvements and end-to-end encryption (E2EE) via Messaging Layer Security (MLS). E2EE for talking to GMS Android and iOS users without them needing to install another app is the main reason we care about it, but far better group chat support matters too. iPhone users very often don't want to have SMS/MMS users in their group chats.

All carriers I've tried in my country have even disabled MMS entirely. They're not running RCS servers either, though, everyone is on WhatsApp anyway.

In theory carriers could increase the max resolution for MMS now that 3G is essentially dead, but I doubt they will now the slow move to RCS has started.

Perhaps it's different in other countries, but I've never seen anyone use MMS. (Everyone uses WhatsApp nowadays, but even before WhatsApp existed, I never saw anyone use MMS.)

Indeed. I don't use most of the stock AOSP apps on Graphene because the UI is so awful, but there are decent alternatives so it hasn't been a bother. I'm looking forward to seeing their work.

FUTO Keyboard or Heliboard (both FOSS) will give you key symbols without shifting, as will likely several other FOSS keyboards.

Yeah, I know you guys are using LLMs responsibly. I just found those anti-LLM crusaders funny they way they were calling it an unethical and fascist technology.

As long as the code is being held to the same standards (which have been very high), it's only going to help the developers.

Btw, please save yourself some energy and mental peace by ignoring these people who haven't written a single line of serious code and are only there for bandwagoning and pushing their political agendas. Love the work that you guys do that's why I'd love for you guys to be able to focus on the mission and not get distracted by them. Thanks for all the hard work!

Yes I think this is the main reason for WhatsApp's popularity in Europe. Our providers were hanging on to sms as a cash cow and they were pretty much the most expensive bits you could send.

Malicious providers like kpn in the Netherlands even sought to charge extra for WhatsApp traffic because they lost so much revenue. However the EU shot that down hard under net neutrality.

But I remember it well and this is why I always disable RCS. I don't ever want to give my provider the chance to do that again. And I don't trust Google either. SMS is completely dead here too. It's been years since anyone sent me a personal message. It's just spam and poorly implemented 2FA shit.

It's not an issue here in Spain anyway. The only phone with iPhones are rich expats. Most of the people I know use cheap budget androids.

Text messages in iMessage or SMS are a fairly US-centric relic. That's not to say overseas is better - Europe depends on Whatsapp - but outside the US the whole 'blue box' thing isn't even a thing.

It makes group messaging work a lot better, too. Previously, group chats with a mixture of ios and android users were really buggy leading to iPhone users significantly preferring group chats with all ios, which led to some social exclusion for android users in the US, leading to market dominance for iPhones. Now, with RCS, you can make a functional group chat across platforms and you don't have to convince anybody to install something new.

RCS provides properly working group chats and end-to-end encryption with iOS and GMS Android users without having to succeed at convincing people to use Signal instead.

Their post history has several posts related to PostmarketOS on the Fairphone, so kind of, possibly? pmOS does have Waydroid to run Android apps, though, which also relies on AOSP.

If they hard fork, a lot of apps that are generally "necessary for the average person" (e.g. Uber, banking apps, Gmail, Whatsapp/Wechat/Line) might stop working.

Seriously, I don't see a mediocre android provider like Motorola running and maintaining a hard fork.

Forking is all easy, keeping it up to date year after year as codebases diverge is a whole different story.

I could see Samsung doing it. But they won't, they're too good buddies with Google. But they have the resources. A Motorola no. The grapheneos team won't either, maintaining a disparate fork and introducing new features independently from aosp would just be beyond their scope. You're not just hardening at that point. You're basically doing everything.

Don't forget when Huawei didn't fork. Well they started with that but then replaced every component with their own design. It's easier because if you fork you're still bound by decisions made by the original party. Better to greenfield the whole thing then.

And look at how many people made a soft fork of chrome with some ui changes. There's tons of those. There's no hard fork that no longer follows Google. Even a large company like Microsoft didn't.

Remember when we thought IE's monopoly could never be broken? Or windows?

Anything can and will go down. Nothing is forever.

> There is no alternative.

There have been several projects like Ubuntu Touch to create an open Linux for smartphones.

That would be an open alternative.

Android is not open.

Yes RCS is a pig with lipstick. Invented by the carriers to recoup some control over instant messaging, then abandoned and picked up by Google for the same reason. They're the ones that added encryption to it.

It was always meant to be a walled garden. Exactly what an open system shouldn't be.

It's important for us to provide out-of-the-box end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging for contacts on Google Messages and iOS. Both Google Messages and iOS provide RCS with end-to-end encryption via Messaging Layer Security (MLS). Google Messages is the standard text messaging app on Google Mobile Services Android and iOS now also supports RCS with MLS. The vast majority of people have an E2EE messaging app on their smartphone and it's important for us to provide compatibility with it. Currently, a growing number of our users are installing Google Messages to have better usability and privacy for texting with contacts on Google Messages and iOS.

People can already install the messaging apps of their choice on GrapheneOS. It would go against our approach to choose specific messaging apps and protocols to bundle with the OS beyond SMS/MMS/RCS. We shouldn't be the ones choosing Signal vs. SimpleX vs. Element or other options but rather that's up to users to decide. We need a messaging app to handle carrier-based messaging in the OS including providing end-to-end encryption for it and the rest is up to other open source developers.

Unless one wants interoperability with other people who use Apple and "Samsung" (because they don't know the word Android refers to an OS). It's a de facto standard now, whether you like it or not.

Remember Pidgin and Trillium?