Fair enough. I said “huge” because I guess some people care a lot. I personally don’t and have been on security preview releases since they started releasing them.

Not exactly. GrapheneOS has an OEM partner and has early access to AOSP changes that aren’t public. A huge downside to that is that security preview releases can’t be open source until after Google makes the code public.

I said “most users”. There are some who are still experiencing issues, which is being looked into. Other people have had issues that were fixed by clearing the storage for Google Play, Google Play Services, Google Messages, then granting all necessary permissions before launching Google Messages again.

It just won’t work on GrapheneOS. Not sure if disabling it will work on the stock OS. We will have to wait and see on that one.

The way Google will block apps with unverified developers won’t work on GrapheneOS. The change won’t be part of AOSP. On the stock OS, the functionality will be handled by another Google app that has privileged access. GrapheneOS won’t be affected directly.

Google has already shared how apps’ developers will be verified. They’re adding another app that will have access to block installing apps or disable them. That won’t work on GrapheneOS because 1. the app won’t be installed and 2. the app won’t have that kind of privileged access.

It’s my understanding that RCS was fixed for most users after this update: https://grapheneos.org/releases#2025092700. You may need to grant permissions to Google Play Services first, then clear Google Messages’ storage, grant permissions to Google Messages, then try setting it up again.