I've recently switched too, from iPhone 15 pro to pixel 10 pro. I'd also spent a few weeks slowly swapping out iOS apps for as many Foss as possible. I'm still fumbling my way around GOS, but mostly love it. I loathe iOS 26. Seriously wtf was that? I'm finding battery life better on the pixel, I like the Foss and android apps better. I enjoy using a bare minimum of Google apps without allowing them access to everything. If I could ditch them altogether I would, but my travel apps wouldn't work without Google play.

For profiles, I ended up with bare minimum on my daily driver, including Gplay and travel stuff. I put my socials (decentralised only) and book apps on a separate profile. This adds a layer to access these, which helps reduce time on them.

I haven't had a chance to play with camera apps yet, and I need to try different keyboards as I'm not loving the GOS one.

A minor complaint is not being able to send emoji reactions to text messages. I know, I know, privacy is more important than emojis. But I like annoying my husband with exploding unicorns every now and then.

Anyone thinking of changing, do it! I'm a tech noob and it was really easy to switch. Just takes a bit of research to get your head around it all.

The noteless app has not been updated since 2021, you should replace it. If you need something minimal check out notally, if not there are other feature rich apps that are actively maintained.

One tip for persistant notifications, if you long press on it and go to settings then drill down through 2 or 3 screens there's an option to minimise. It makes it smaller on the notifications drawer and doesn't show on the starus bar.

Still sucks that apps have to do this to run in background.

What phone did you put it on? I keeping finding myself unable to choose which pixel I should get.

If anyone knows how to use one Mullvad device across all my profiles, please let me know.

If you're using wireguard, or a wrapper that's on top of wireguard, then you prob can. I'm not 100% sure about mobile, but I do that with desktop VMs. The limitation is, you can't use more than one at the same time for a given PrivateKey. They let you have several PrivateKeys. I forgot the number, it's like 5 or 6 or sth like that. You can share the PrivateKeys between devices or profiles as long as you won't connect more than one at a time for each key.

issues from side loading

Totally not aiming this at you at all! But I hate this term side loading. It normalizes the idea that we should require permission from the co who made our device, to install and run s/w on it.

I'm all for having a process to check apps and try to safeguard against malicious ones. But that can happen without an iron fist.

Thanks for writing this post. I too am hoping to switch soon.

Have you tried heliboard as your keyboard? I hated default one.

I've tried a second user a few times but found it annoying.

What I do is everything in one user. I disable any app that I need once in a while that doesn't respect my privacy. For example, the Amazon app. I need this app (pin is not an option) to open their locker a few times per year. I leave it disabled until I'm standing in front of the locker.

Maybe you could try Orbot or the free tier of Protonvpn for some of your profiles instead of using three Mullvadvpn devices?

Can I ask why would you need Signal and Molly? I use only Molly at the moment.

What does the File Manager app do? Is it the same as Files from GoS?

I’ll be taking this journey some time soon as well. Never had an android in my life but I very badly want Graphene. I already downloaded and have been trying out SimpleX as a messenger and have reached out to a few friends about using it when I ditch my iphone and they thankfully are open to it. Right now my only set back is saving up for a secondhand pixel while also trying to save for multiple other things that are a higher priority in the midst of things becoming more expensive. But thanks for this post. Glad to see another iphone user make the jump and hear what your experience has been.

Small question, but does GOS allow for an interface that's more similar to the Apple and e/OS ones?

I know, to each their own, but personally I actually do like their interface.

Profiles are nice and all, but remember, that there are still ways to track you across profiles (serious determination required), like the network stack being mostly shared. Here's the thread.

If you truly need isolated apps, consider getting multiple phones. I personally have three devices for this. For example, my main device (where I actually use the web browser and which is connected to my private network) runs only a limited set of foss apps. This will solve the alarms issue as well as this device has only one profile.