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GrapheneOS' rewritten Messages app is released

95 points microtonal 2 hours ago 51 comments

LoganDark 1 hour ago | parent

That was really fast, they only announced it like a day or two ago IIRC? Also: no screenshots of the redesigned interface?!

getpokedagain 1 hour ago | parent

If you look at the history they have been working on this for a few months. The announcement probably was tied to this public release being cut for testing.

mewse-hn 1 hour ago | parent

Does it do RCS?

OneDeuxTriSeiGo 1 hour ago | parent

No. RCS is still quite hard to actually implement. There's an open issue for it but the effort is mildly herculean.

AFAIUI though GOS does intend on providing an RCS impl eventually even if it takes years to do.

sterlind 41 minutes ago | parent

What's so difficult about implementing RCS from a technical perspective?

Groxx 40 minutes ago | parent

particularly if you want to support all of the message-body features, of which there are MANY. it's very business-comms oriented.

I broadly expect third-party RCS apps to drop that though, like how essentially none support all of MMS. did you know MMS supports slideshows (I built support for this once)? 3d objects (mimetype model/gltf+json)? "timed text" (mimetype text/mp4)?

sicktriple 30 minutes ago | parent

I'm really hoping they're doing this to pave the way for an RCS implementation. If it can be done, GOS is in the best position to make it happen, and without RCS, chatting with normies is both extremely inconvenient (large group chats straight up do not work) and categorically insecure. If I could convince all my friends and family to use Signal I would, but they just think I'm on about some weird Edward Snowden shit, and they just write me off as crazy. "Why would I checks notes download software to solve a problem when I could use the one that came with my phone?"

mmooss 1 hour ago | parent

With a seemingly insurmountable workload - maintain an actually secure OS fork - for a small team, I wonder how GrapheneOS prioritizes things like messaging apps? I'm not saying it's wrong at all; I am just interested in the thinking inside a project like that.

I can imagine many reasons to devote resources to it:

* A platform is only as good as its apps. If they want to grow GOS in the general public, it requires a good SMS/MMS messaging app.

* LLM tools greatly reduce development costs, especially for well-known functions like text messaging.

* Without secure messaging (as far as SMS/MMS can be secure), the platform security is greatly reduced.

* GOS got a big donation, or has a volunteer that wants to do messaging ...

But idk what I'm talking about. What is their approach?

ravenstine 1 hour ago | parent

Well they're going to be shipping GOS on Motorola and I think some other devices, so basic things like the messaging app need to actually have some polish to them. I really like GrapheneOS overall as-is, but the messaging app felt like baby's first texting app. Not necessarily their fault since it's pretty much straight out of AOSP if I understand correctly. But any time I've installed GrapheneOS, the messaging app is one of two things I must replace every time (the other being the downright bad AOSP keyboard).

If they fix(ed) their messaging app and their keyboard, then they've really eliminated a lot of potential complaints if a less tech-savvy crowd ends up buying future Motorolas.

flexagoon 55 minutes ago | parent

I you look at the commits of the new Messages app it's mostly made by 2 people whose Github profiles show them as employees of GrapheneOS and who are mostly committing to different system apps. So I assume they have a separate team of devs whose job it is to make the system apps.

IIRC when they started first announced their replacement for the AOSP camera they said they hired a developer specifically for it.

microtonal 35 minutes ago | parent

A bunch of the AOSP apps feel like you have to rewrite them for modern standards now and then you can basically have them in maintenance mode for years. The AOSP messaging app has also lasted for 15+ (?) years and has basically had no maintenance from Google for many years.

Modernizing these apps seems very high-impact. These are the very first things a new user sees and after the initial modernization, they should be relatively cheap to maintain.

cloudie78 1 hour ago | parent

How about some screenshots?

qweqwe14 1 hour ago | parent

I constantly see those projects that would benefit from a screenshot in a readme, but for some reason the thought about adding one doesn't even come to the authors' mind, even though it's pretty obvious. I'd really like to know what's going on.

gbalduzzi 50 minutes ago | parent

I think in many cases the authors value functionality much more then esthetics.

Which is a bummer because it is a complete different point of view from the more typical user experience

xboxnolifes 34 minutes ago | parent

An image is functionality, as it provides significant information to the reader.

gremlinunderway 18 minutes ago | parent

Yeah but see, we're talking about a functionality that is inherently visual. Ergonomics has nothing to do with esthetics, and it's such a dumb excuse to hand wave aside interface issues as of they are just about "making things look pretty"

em-bee 7 minutes ago | parent

exactly, i am looking at screenshots for apps to get an idea about their functionality.

embedding-shape 18 minutes ago | parent

> I think in many cases the authors value functionality much more then esthetics.

In many cases the repository isn't meant to be more than for source code too, not everyone use their git repository as also the marketing page, that'd go somewhere else.

With that said, grapheneos.org doesn't seem to have any screenshots either, which I also don't understand and think is a bummer. Even though the point of the differences with GrapheneOS might not be mainly visual, just showing what it looks like seem like a no-brainer.

Dig1t 25 minutes ago | parent

"A picture is worth a thousand words"

It's like we've had this ancient knowledge passed down for generations but people constantly just ignore it.

sakisv 9 minutes ago | parent

I think the reason is that you can get quite much of a tunnel vision while developing. Everyone involved already knows what they're building and how it looks, so it's very easy to overlook it.

Case in point, I recently wrote a CLI to show which of your AWS infra is not captured in terraform, and you can either print the result as a json to consume by a machine or generate a dashboard with some charts. It took me an embarrassing while to realise that I should have included a damned screenshot in the README, in fact I think I only realised when I wanted to show it to my brother.

chadgpt3 1 hour ago | parent

Everyone who values privacy should use GrapheneOS

bramhaag 1 hour ago | parent

I do not see Electron anywhere? It looks like a native Android app that uses Jetpack Compose.

gib444 42 minutes ago | parent

N.B. User completely rewrote their comment - it previously claimed the app used Electron

gib444 1 hour ago | parent

Looks prettier but a shame an obvious regression happened for one of my primary use-cases: copying one-time codes. Long pressing on a link selects the entire SMS instead of bringing up a menu for the link. [0]

Makes me wonder about all the testing now

And the issue worded/tagged as a feature instead of a regression. Are the devs aware the feature existed before?

later:

It's doubly disappointing because just 4 days ago the project wrote [1], on using AI for the new Messaging app:

"it's also helping us raise our standards for our own work by pointing it at that to get extremely pedantic criticism catching many things we would miss...We've hired multiple experienced app developers who have spent months working on modernizing the Messaging app and carefully reviewing it"

[0] https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Messaging/issues/292

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49592770

microtonal 30 minutes ago | parent

It's doubly disappointing because just 4 days ago the project wrote [1], on using AI for the new Messaging app:

Why? Using an LLM as an additional reviewer seems like a good use of LLMs? Personally I have found LLMs very useful for that and they catch issues that other experienced programmers do not always find. It’s not like they are vibecoding a messages app.

gib444 25 minutes ago | parent

My comment makes it pretty clear what the disappointment is:

> shame an obvious regression happened for one of my primary use-cases: copying one-time codes

Then the "later" is that even with frontier AI review tools, it was still missed

I am not alleging vibe coding - that's a strawman.

mvdtnz 22 minutes ago | parent

What do you mean "why"? For the exact reason he stated in his first paragraph - a serious regression impacting his workflow.

Maskawanian 1 hour ago | parent

Does anyone know if this is something that we can install now, or if it will show up in the next OS release?

gib444 1 hour ago | parent

It's in the alpha channel. Go in to the 'App Store' app, go to Messaging, 3 dot menu and change release channel.

novafunc 1 hour ago | parent

They mentioned you can use the Alpha from their app installer.

Maskawanian 1 hour ago | parent

Good to know! For others: You open their app store, go into messaging, hamburger menu, select release channel, and choose alpha.

flexagoon 1 hour ago | parent

You can go to the GOS App Store, choose the Messaging app, click 3 dots at the top and choose the Alpha release channel to get it now

lollobomb 58 minutes ago | parent

Now, can we please get the long-awaited full system backup feature? We pay you for a reason!

(sarcasm obvious, but indeed full system backup is sorely missing. Seedvault is crap, not an option)

preisschild 30 minutes ago | parent

I had a scary bug on an older version where for months the contact names didnt match the actual senders/recipients. I have received SMS from my WISP under the same contact as Github MFA codes but also send mssages to relatives that never where received...

mvdtnz 21 minutes ago | parent

Wake me up when I don't need to ship hundreds of dollars to Google to use this OS.

mrd3v0 13 minutes ago | parent

So..next year?

jasonvorhe 5 minutes ago | parent

Set an alarm for the typical Motorola flagship schedule then.

I_am_tiberius 17 minutes ago | parent

Everytime I read GrapheneOS news I search for news related to Fairephone. It's such a shame that there's still no official plan for Fairephone to work on requirements for GrapheneOS. The combination of those 2 would be fantastic. It would also open a big new market (I assume) for Fairephone so not sure why there seems no clear sign in that direction at all (to my knowledge).

saligne 16 minutes ago | parent

You should search for the many times where GrapheneOS has stated they won't work with Fairphone

mrd3v0 14 minutes ago | parent

Given the state of Fairphone hardware, software and business, it is not surprising.

tcoff91 12 minutes ago | parent

For those of us out of the loop, could someone summarize the situation?

bramhaag 11 minutes ago | parent

  > Fairphone has said they don't plan to add a secure element. It can be seen from their current devices that they don't fully keep up with privacy/security backports and lag a year behind on shipping yearly OS releases. They skip over the monthly and quarterly releases entirely. They replaced their own non-GMS Fairphone OS with a dramatically less secure /e/OS option in partnership with Murena. They clearly demonstrate that security and even privacy are not the priorities.
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114733211017800480

NewJazz 10 minutes ago | parent

Yep. Gos isn't the only mfg in town if you have or want a fairphone.

https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_(Gen._6)_(fairp...

jasonvorhe 10 minutes ago | parent

Everytime I see Fairphone mentioned whenever there's news about GrapheneOS I'm confused as to why people keep on conflating both when they obviously have very different goals.

module1973 17 minutes ago | parent

Would have been cool to have encrypted SMS messages like the SMSecure app while we wait for RCS

mrd3v0 11 minutes ago | parent

I wish they prioritised the call app. It is beyond appalling. You can't even determine when a call happened, beyond the generic low fidelity "[time] ago". It also almost feels like tapping anything makes me accidentally call people. Abhorrent UI/UX to be completely honest.

subscribed 7 minutes ago | parent

What? :)

You mean the perfectly functional (if barebones) AOSP call app? :)