GrapheneOS and Nextcloud
As my iPhone SE is no longer supported, I bought a refurbished Pixel phone and installed GrapheneOS, a ‘private and secure mobile operating system with Android app compatibility’. I use Nextcloud for syncing. Below I describe some of the steps involved. This is not meant as technical advice, but merely to give a general idea of some of the things one might want to think about when considering a similar switch.
GrapheneOS
GrapheneOS is an operating system that gives you more control over your data. This video, by Veronica Explains, explains what it is and how one might want to use it. GrapheneOS currently only works with Pixel phones, because of the ‘powerful hardware security features not found in other Android-based devices’.
GrapheneOS can be installed using a web interface. Note the requirements, including what types of browsers can be used for this (not Firefox). I found that if you closely follow the instructions, the installation is easy and doesn’t take very long.
GrapheneOS comes with a limited number of apps installed. You can install additional apps from sources like F-Droid or by installing the Google Play Store. In order to install apps from the Play Store, you’ll need to log in with some Google account.
If you want to pay for apps, you will need to attach payment details to the Google account you’re using. It should be possible to buy a Google Play gift card in the supermarket and use that to pay, but Google still insisted I gave them my address (huh?) and phone number (huh?). Next they needed ‘more information’ including a photo of the gift card and the receipt. After several days, I could redeem the card.
There is some online discussion about whether official apps such as banking apps work on GrapheneOS. I was able to install and use the Triodos banking app, as well as the official Dutch government identification (DigiD) and message (Berichtenbox) apps.
It appears that some apps need notifications permission in order to give feedback during their configuration.
Nextcloud
Without thinking much about it, I used to use iCloud to sync calendar, contacts and music. As a replacement, I now use Nextcloud, an open-source platform. It should be possible to install Nextcloud on rented server space or on a device at home, including a Raspberry Pi. For now, I choose to rent storage with pre-installed Nextcloud (I opted for Hetzner).
If you install the Nextcloud desktop app, you can set it to sync one or more folders on your local machine with Nextcloud.
Calendar, contacts and tasks
There are different ways to sync calendar, contacts and tasks between your phone and Nextcloud. This is the approach I followed:
- I installed the Nextcloud Calendar, Contacts and Tasks apps via the Nextcloud web interface;
- I installed the Nextcloud app on my phone, as well as Fossify Calendar, Contacts (pre-installed with GrapheneOS) and Tasks.org;
- I installed the DAVx5 app which provides a bridge between Android apps and Nextcloud. It is a paid app in Google Play Store, but if you don’t want to give Google your payment details you can install it for free from F-Droid;
- I further installed ICSx5, which allows me to subscribe to my Outlook work calendar (get a webcal url from Outlook webmail and enter that in the ICSx5 app).
(With an iPhone, the process appears to be simpler.)
A limitation of the Nextcloud tasks app is that it seems not possible to create recurring tasks through its web interface. However, if you create recurring / repeating tasks in an app linked to the Nextcloud app, they will reportedly be synced anyway.
Music
On my phone, I currently use the Musicolet music app. On my laptop, I’ve stored some of my music files in a folder that is synced with Nextcloud and thus available on my phone. Giving Musicolet access to these files requires that you select the relevant folder after selecting settings / folders to scan. I found navigating to the relevant folder somewhat unintuitive: internal storage -> android -> media -> com.nextcloud -> nextcloud.
Perhaps it’s not necessary to use Nextcloud for syncing music after all; I guess it should also be possible to simply transfer music files to your phone using a cable. However, I haven’t figured out an efficient way to transfer the files as yet.
Joplin
I use Nextcloud also to sync the Joplin notes app. I created a separate user in Nextcloud with access to the folder where Joplin files are stored. As explained here, you need to obtain a WebDAV url from Nextcloud to make this work. This url contains the user name, so if you’ve created a separate user for Joplin, make sure that it contains the correct user name and use the corresponding password. I subsequently got a somewhat confusing message that the target was either corrupted or empty. This was solved by selecting Show Advanced Settings and then Re-upload local data to sync target.
Conclusion
The new setup took some work and some getting used to, but I found it quite doable. So far, everything works smoothly and I’m very happy with the result.