Microphone privacy indicator not working in some cases under iodé 3.0

Operating System Bug reports
1

Hello, I just updated to iodé 3.0 and while testing the new features I noticed that the privacy indicator for microphone usage has a very inconsistent behaviour. It sometimes shows up when one app is using the microphone, but sometimes it doesn’t. More surprisingly, for the same app it can show up in some cases and not in others. Here’s what I’ve tested so far:

The microphone privacy indicator is not showing up for me in the following cases:

  • when recording a Voice Message in Signal (version 5.40.4 downloaded from Aurora Store)
  • when recording a Voice Note on the system Recorder App (org.lineageos.recorder Version 12)
  • when recording a video with Open Camera (com.iode.opencamera Version 1.49.2-iode.3)
  • when recording a video in WhatsApp (Version 2.22.11.82 download from Aurora Store)

However, the microphone privacy indicator shows up properly in the following cases:

  • when recording a video in Signal (version 5.40.4 downloaded from Aurora Store)
  • when recording a Voice Message on WhatsApp (Version 2.22.11.82 download from Aurora Store)
  • when recording a video in GrapheneOS Camera app (app.grapheneos.camera Version 40 probably downloaded from GitHub but I honestly don’t remember for sure)

I have searched on internet and found no reports for such issues under Android 12 or LineageOS 19. Is anyone experiencing this with iodé 3.0?
How can the apps “choose” to escape a system feature meant to protect our privacy from sneaky apps?

2

Hi, thanks for this report. We did not modify at all the behavior of the privacy indicator, so it should behave exactly as in lineage (and probably aosp). We also observed some inconsistencies with this indicator. As it’s a new feature in aosp, I suppose that there are a number of bugs that will be fixed later.

3

Thanks for your quick reply. I suspected you hadn’t modified it, and that’s why I was surprised to find nothing on my (quick) online search. I am somehow relieved to see that you also observed inconsistencies: it’s not a good thing, but at least I am not experience a weird and irreproducible bug.

I will ask in the LineageOS Subreddit and see if people are facing this issue. It would also be nice if other iodé users could confirm my observations from the original post, so we can know: are some specific uses of the microphone by some speficic apps not working or is it a random thing?

4

Same behavior in LineageOS 19.1 with voice recorder. It works for the lineage camera app though. Independent tests are welcome :wink: