In my daily life, I use some Linux virtual machines to do things that require a higher level of privacy. However, because we are now in the era of mobile internet, I have to use some things that only support mobile apps.
I am thinking: can I use mobile operating system virtual machines to run these things, so I don’t have to install those privacy-disrespecting apps on my real phone?
I want to use Google’s official Android Studio or PlayCover. Can these two provide me with a privacy environment?
If you use GOS, you can run untrusted apps in different profiles. What mobile OS are you on?
I use iOS.
I wish that the apps I use on my phone and the tasks I do on it could also be done on my computer because a keyboard, mouse, and a larger screen are always more comfortable for me.
So, rather than installing a privacy mobile operating system and running those apps, I would prefer to achieve this through a virtual machine on my computer.
Android studio’s emulator would work since it also supports virtual devices with larger screen sizes (such as tablets).
GOS is not reaaally private in that sense. Android already hides some unalterable hardware IDs since version 10 or 11, but fingerprinting is still there. Apps can guess your phone’s model and OS. You can read about it on the project’s FAQ. And there are other identifiers that are not yet there, like DRM ID, that the developers are still investigating.
Android Studio is open source, so I guess no shenanigans happening there. But there are no GOS builds for AS (unless you build it yourself - every time), so you’re stuck with Pixel OS. Still better than having those apps on your phone, and I have a dozen Android Studio VMs set up.
For your regular VMs, a hint: one Ubuntu VM will need ~25GB, so you can’t have many of those. Meanwhile you can comfortably install Fedora on a 10GB VM. Set up a second drive in VMs that require lots of storage (like for torrenting), so the OS doesn’t get too greedy. Tumbleweed also uses no more than 6GB, even though it demands a 10gb drive to install. It has somewhat of a learning curve for those of us who are not fluent in Linux.
Thank you for your help.
Thank you for your detailed response.
You might also look into waydroid. Dont know about the performance in a linux vm though
Thanks a lot
Sorry for disturb you after such a long time. I’ve been using Android Studio for a while, and I would like to ask you some questions:
The apps are sandboxed anyway so they can’t really do much outside of whatever permissions you give them.
Not all apps are sandboxed. You can check which are using Activity Monitor. Notably, Chromium/Electron apps only have subprocesses sandboxed. The main process is unsandboxed. You need to open Activity Monitor → right click the top bar → check “Sandbox”. Then you will see a column of the table showing whether each app is sandboxed.
I use it for really simple things, haven’t really put the time to learn much beyond the basic. If you ever learn how to do these things please let me know =)
There must be a subreddit for android studio, although it’s should be focused mainly in development.
Not really. My knowledge is very limited. I use Android Studio and UTM on a Mac.
What OS are you referring to?
MacOS
That’s a nice feature. Didn’t know it existed, thanks!
(btw, I think @fria was commenting on my reply about GOS, though)