It is important to remember that all apps on Android are sandboxed, regardless of which profile they’re installed in. For most use-cases, using secondary user profiles to further isolate apps is unnecessary. However, isolating apps to different profiles does have a few advantages, some of which are listed below:

  • Apps cannot communicate with apps in other profiles via inter-process communication (IPC).
  • Apps cannot discover which apps are installed in other user profiles.
  • In cases where apps don’t support multiple logins, profiles can be used to get around this kind of limitation.
  • All profiles have their own unique encryption keys, even if they share the same PIN or password.
  • It’s possible to end secondary user profiles’ sessions, putting their data at rest (a reboot is necessary to put the owner profile’s data to rest). This also stops apps from running in the background.
  • The owner profile can control secondary user profiles’ access to: continue running while other profiles are in the foreground, phone calls and SMS, and installing apps.
  • Each profile has its own set of contacts, files and media directories. Apps in different profiles, which have been granted the necessary permissions, can only access data from that profile. The Storage and Contact Scopes features in GrapheneOS allow users to choose exactly what contacts, files and media any app can access, providing a more convenient way of achieving isolation of these data types.
  • Each profile has its own VPN setup, so even if two profiles are running at the same time, they can use servers in different countries, using different VPN providers, or even no VPN at all.

In some rare cases, some apps will not work when used in a secondary user profile and will require you to use them in your owner profile.

Source: Best User Profile Setup on GrapheneOS

I am really enjoying using Helium as my browser of choice. It uses ungoogled-chromium as its base and adds some niceties to make it a daily driver browser.

I wanted a similar experience for my phone as well - where I can make it more of what I want it to be - and less appliance. My primary drivers are: control over tracking; control over resources - these devices have excellent processors with very low power capabilities, yet barely last a couple days left alone. This suggests to me a lot of activity that I don’t want happening. I wanted more control.

I didn’t do a ton of research - but GrapheneOS seems to be a reasonable choice here. Similar to ungoogled-chromium, it seems to be starting off AOSP without any google services - and then runs everything in a sandbox.

They had an easy WebUSB based installation and honestly in under 30 mins, I had recreated what I had in my Pixel with stock google-OS to now running GrapheneOS.

It’s Day 1 and I am only installing apps as I need them to try and keep it as light as possible. So far everything I’ve needed to install - signal, bluebubbles etc work fine on the sandboxed Google Play Services.

I read that there are issues with Google Wallet requiring highest level of Play Integrity, which GrapheneOS will not pass. I’ve not installed it yet. Let’s see if life can be lived without Google Wallet. That would be a first for me in a very long time.