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

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

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

GOS is a way better option than dumbphones because:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hello from GrapheneOS 👋

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

AMA.

Everything is so enshittified now, that we need to redefine the concept of “free”

Added.

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

Synology NAS. Had it for a few years. Comes with Synology Photos, which is like Google Photos in terms of functionality (but local, of course).

I’ve heard good things about immich too, but haven’t tried it yet.

I’ve tried Ente and that’s also a good solution for how turnkey it is.

Microphone Fiend by Eric B. & Rakim

It’s really this old.

Probably for adding articles to my open source project, idcaboutprivacy