Conversation
Vanadium is the WebView provider on GrapheneOS. Read grapheneos.org/usage#web-brow. There's a warning when disabling system apps like Vanadium, but users have been disabling it anyway, and then blaming GrapheneOS or third party apps for the breakage they caused despite the warning.
1
2
2
Since the warning and documentation have proven inadequate, the toggle in the user interface for disabling Vanadium has been disabled as is the case for the core system apps. It can still be disabled by more technical users, but hopefully they understand what they're breaking.
1
1
1
I don't understand why people want to disable it. It's a core part of the operating system and is a major part of what GrapheneOS is working on developing. If you don't want to use it as your browser, that's fine, but you're still using it for the WebView in other apps anyway.
1
1
1
Including the unified app providing both the WebView and browser avoids including two separate releases of Vanadium. It makes the updates substantially leaner and reduces memory usage when both are being used, since they map the same shared libraries / resources from the apk.
1
1
3
On the stock OS, the WebView is provided by Chrome. If users disable Chrome, it triggers updating and using the standalone WebView provider built from the same Chromium source tree. This requires the OS to bundle both of them as system apps to work around users disabling Chrome.
2
1
2
GrapheneOS could provide a toggle to disable/hide the standalone browser activity, but it's not something that I want to spend my time implementing. I might accept a clean patch, but I wouldn't commit to porting it forward. Vanadium will also be the strongly recommended browser.
2
1
3
IMO overkill solution with time better spent elsewhere. Keep defaults sane and be opinionated with what you allow/disallow the user to do. Plenty of other options for users who want the total freedom to screw themselves
1
2
Since the intention is to make Vanadium into the all around best choice over time I'd rather work on addressing whatever makes people want to use a different browser. Due to the WebView, every GrapheneOS user is a Vanadium user, and ideally Vanadium suits their browser needs too.
1
1
It's great that the vast majority of third party apps use the WebView for web content. It's one of many ways GrapheneOS can defend apps from vulnerabilities without needing to fork each app and publish releases. The hardened malloc and various other features work like this too.