I recently acquired a pixel phone and set up gos. Prior to trying gos I was using an iPhone hardened as much as possible based off of recommendations and guides from respected OSINT experts.

It’s only been a week but I’ve found gos extremely frustrating and mostly useless except for web browsing.

I can’t seem to get my Yubikey to work so my 2FA is borked. Works fine on my iPhone.

I’ve previously managed to degoogle my life but now certain apps require me to use sandboxed google apps just to run.

I’m facing the nearly insurmountable task of convincing my friends, family, and colleagues to download and use signal when they are all using encrypted iMessage.

Most of my banking apps just simply do not work. Mobile banking is unfortunately something important that I need in my occupation. A part of the appeal of gos was being able to have an isolated dedicated profile for banking.

There’s also a few features that I’m assuming are iPhone exclusive that it really sucks to have without. Double tapping the bottom of the screen to shift everything down so you can reach the top of the screen with your finger when using one hand. Holding down on the space bar to move the text cursor between characters. Maybe these exist on gos though?

I understand most of the issues lay on the shoulders of the app developers. I’m grateful for the devs for creating and working on this project. I’m not bashing anyone here. I’m simply asking for some guidance on how I can break through the hurdles and make this work for me, from the mouth of those who were once in my position.

Hardware tokens are handled by Google Services and not by Android itself :( That means you have to have Google Services installed if you want to use your Yubikey.

For banking apps I recommend to have in seperate profile (like you wanted) together with Google Services. You should also disable everything under Exploit protection section in settings for every banking app.

Appreciate the info.

It seems absurd to me that a third party online service is required for a hardware key to work in the first place. I figured it would be authenticating strictly between the locked service and the user.

Yep, its stupid. But its not online service, you just have to be installed and have file permission, thats it.

https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Vanadium/issues/61

looks like android 14 is the path forward here without requiring google play

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