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This is a super interesting prospect using WebUSB to administer mobile devices...

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Jan 4, 2021

GrapheneOS has funding available for developing an open source WebUSB-based installer as an alternative to our installation guide. It's low-level programming work despite being in JavaScript. Get in touch with us (contact@grapheneos.org) if you're interested in working on it.

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It'll be a lot easier for most people than setting up their OS to perform the flashing. WebUSB will reduce trust in the site for most users since they only need to grant it access to fastboot mode on the phone. Most operating systems lack signify or a usable fastboot package.

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If someone understands the instructions on a deeper level than blindly copying them and their OS has signify and fastboot packages, they can avoid trusting the site by verifying the signature of the factory images. Otherwise, they might as well be installing using WebUSB instead.

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Dealing with the differences between platforms and trying to have usable installation instructions covering all of the corner cases is painful. There are too many issues. It would presumably be possible to flash one phone from another using WebUSB too. That would be pretty neat.

4:44 AM · Jan 5, 2021Twitter Web App

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I agree. Also, if the user trusts downloading and installing binary firmware from somewhere, I don't see the trust requirements of using WebUSB being much different (just simpler and faster). Very excited to see how this pans out!

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Fastboot protocol turns out to be quite simple so the low-level portion is straightforward: android.googlesource.com/platform/syste WebUSB itself handles more than I expected. I expected it to be a lot worse. Hardest part will be tying it all together as a robust process with error handling.