My Sailfish OS Journey: I have my Jolla Phone, what now?
(I started writing this article on July 9, during my flight back from Helsinki)
So you got a Jolla Phone. What now?
I received my Jolla Phone about a month ago now, on Jolla Phone Day1. Every so often, I get a new Sailfish OS device, and have to set it up. It gets easier and faster every time, and I will forget the details after a few minutes.
This time was different though; I met a lot of new Sailfish OS users, and they asked questions and had experiences that I do not consciously have or live. This post is an attempt to take some notes.
Harbour, Storeman and Chum
I’ve talked about native apps in a previous post. What I didn’t realize is: for new users, setting up those “app stores” is possibly more complicated than the actual setup of the apps themselves.
The Jolla Store (aka. Harbour) is automatically prepared when you login with your Jolla account. That should be easy enough, and it contains some useful apps to get started.
For the any other app source, enable untrusted software through the settings app.
Chum is a well curated source of unofficial apps that for some reason don’t fit (yet) in Harbour.
Configure it by downloading the Chum GUI installer:
open that link, scroll to download, download the sailfishos-chum-gui-installer-noarch.rpm file on your phone, and open the file.
It should ask permission for installation, and it should appear a few seconds later.
I’ll go as far as saying that probably everything on there is quite safe to install and use.
Read the descriptions of apps before you do anything, though.
OpenRepos was historically the main unofficial source of apps, libraries, programs and general stuff.
Practically anyone can create an account and drop their binaries on there.
This means that some stuff is old, sometimes to the point where it stopped working.
It means that some stuff could be malicious, although I have not heard about any concrete incidents.
But, because it was the original unofficial “app store”,
it does also contain a lot of fantastic applications.
As such, I recommend having it around.
Install Storeman to access it:
download the Storeman Installer manually from OpenRepos,
by clicking on harbour-storeman-installer-2.3.0-release10.noarch.rpm (or newer);
same procedure as Chum.
Installation of OpenRepos packages is a two step process. First, you enable a user repository. This is the equivalent of deciding you trust this specific developer account. The “trust” goes quite far: this developer can in theory override official Jolla packages. Only after, you can install this dev’s apps. In practice, you navigate to the app you want to install, pull down to “Enable repository”, wait for some seconds, pull down again to “Install”.
Android apps
A big change with this device, is the automatic configuration of Aurora, F-Droid and microG. This is great for new users coming from a regular Google Android. You can install your Android apps like you’re used to, with the main practical difference being to use Aurora instead of Play Store. Launch Aurora, navigate through the setup, give it all the permissions it asks (yep, all, that’s coming from me), and use the anonymous account to access it. If you want to install and use paid apps: I have no idea, ask on the forum.
One app I will recommend you have installed is Fennec. In practical terms, it’s a stripped down version of Firefox for Android. Install it from F-Droid. If you have trouble with a website with the Sailfish OS Browser, try again in Fennec. It’ll likely work.
Android app compatibility: SailfishOS.app
Some months ago, a community member named sanginteret launched the SailfishOS.app website. This website lists Android apps (mainly those from Google Play), and gather compatibility reports from users. This is a great initiative, and I encourage you to submit your own experiences, especially for niche apps (your local bank?)
The tiny little things
I don’t recall whom it was, but someone complained that QR codes didn’t scan in the camera app. If found it odd at the time, until I had the same issue. Apparently, QR code detection is off by default. Open your Settings app (the gear icon), swipe left to Apps, tap the Camera app, and turn on QR code detection. While you’re there, you may consider storing your location in photos you take. In general: Jolla’s apps have their settings centralized like that.
Another such setting is the default search engine for the browser. Again, open your Settings app, swipe left to apps, click Browser, and select your favorite (I prefer Duckduck Go).
I like that most of Sailfish OS is quite dark: dark, colourful backgrounds, bright white text. Android apps seem to have the opposite preference. If you want Android to change the system theme, you can configure that as follows. Open the Android system configuration by opening the Settings app, scroll down, open Android™ AppSupport, and tap about 10 times on the Android version. I suspect this screen is deliberately hidden, because many of those settings are wonky at best. But the dark mode works just fine!
Whisperfish
I still want to write a more complete post about the Whisperfish third-party Signal app, but you may want some tips on installation. We’ve never really wrote a guide, because instructions were quite “in flux”. Therefore, I made a small status website for Whisperfish, such that you can check whether there are important known issues or regressions.
The first thing you’ll want to do, is to install it from OpenRepos.
Second, you need to decide your configuration. In theory, Whisperfish can work stand-alone: you install it as primary device, which “logs out” your previous installation. In practice, you want an accompanying official app: either Signal Android, Signal Desktop, Signal iOS, or Molly.
Only one app can be primary per registered phone number; the other devices are called “linked”. Whisperfish can function as either, and Molly can too. Contrary to popular belief, you can have two apps on the same phone. It’s just a bit … contrived. Read carefully below before attempting.
If you use your Jolla as daily driver, my recommended setup is: Signal Android (or Molly) as primary device on your Jolla, and Whisperfish as secondary on the same device. To set this up: start Whisperfish, select secondary device during setup. You will be presented a QR code to scan with the Android app, on the same device. One way to scan it, is to take a screenshot, open the screenshot on your computer via e.g. ssh, switch to the Android app, and scan it.
If you prefer Whisperfish to be your primary device, you can register Molly as secondary on the same device, with the same procedure reversed. To add a device in an active, primary Whisperfish, pull down to Whisperfish’ settings from the main menu, then pull down again to linked devices, then pull down again to add a device.
If you use another Android or iPhone as daily driver, my recommended setup is: Signal Android, Molly or Signal iOS as primary device, and Whisperfish linked. You won’t have the issue with scanning the QR code; it should just work.
If anything during setup goes wrong, you need to manually reset Whisperfish. You need to enable developer mode to carry out this command. This is annoying, and I am aware.
Once you get it setup, you’ll want to start some conversations. Since 0.6.0-beta.42, you can start conversations by username. Pull down on the main page, select “New Conversation”. Starting by phone number, or joining groups, needs to be initiated from another application.
If you have any trouble, leave a post on the forum, or shoot me a message on Signal (see footer for username). Preferably, get me some logs about the issue. I try to answer on OpenRepos as well, but that’s a bit hit-and-miss.
I hope I covered some interesting things. I absolutely forgot about many useful topics that I didn’t cover. Feel free to make me aware; I might add them.