GrapheneOS version 2025022700 released:
https://grapheneos.org/releases#2025022700
See the linked release notes for a summary of the improvements over the previous release.
Forum discussion thread:
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/20369-grapheneos-version-2025022700-released
This release adds an opt-in GrapheneOS network location client providing location detection based on nearby Wi-Fi networks using a local trilateration algorithm run on the device. It fetches a list of nearby Wi-Fi networks from Apple's location service either directly or through a GrapheneOS proxy.
It currently only has a very basic approach to altitude estimation which we'll be properly integrating into the trilateration algorithm in the near future.
It currently only uses Wi-Fi networks but we'll be extending it with support for using cell towers as a fallback in the near future.
We're in the process of building our own network location database based on scraping all of the cell tower and Wi-Fi data from Apple's service. Scraping all the cell tower data is quick and will be easy to keep rapidly updated. A contributor scraped more than 2 billion Wi-Fi APs over 3 months.
This data isn't copyrightable and Apple freely offers it without requiring authentication. It will be the initial basis for our database, but we'll add other sources including an option to send us data from GrapheneOS devices. We'll provide database downloads to support offline network location.
@GrapheneOS Good thing that US does not recognize database "rights". EU and UK do, for example.
@elgregor Apple gathered the data from scraping data from Wi-Fi APs and cell towers and they scrape a lot of the web to train search, AIs, etc. so they'd have a lot of trouble arguing we're doing anything wrong using open access public data provided by them with no authentication. It's unlikely they'll care. We do plan to move towards having people submit data in the future but it's not a short term viable approach especially with a privacy focused userbase who aren't going to want to send data.