Virtual Privacy Switch

Feature Requests
1

So Jolla Phone 2026 is all the rage at the moment and one of its exciting features is the physical “Privacy Switch”.

This FR is not about that.

This is is for devices/ports which do not have such a switch.

Proposal: for such devices, substitute the physical switch with a Settings/TopMenu equivalent.

Users should be able to toggle a ‘virtual’ or ‘software’ button on such devices, and all applicable functionality related to the PS should react the same way for physical and virtual Privacy Switches.

10 Likes
2

As I’ve stated many times before and some people share this opinion: Privacy switch is dumb because if you don’t trust the software, you should just change it to one you trust.

But with physical switch you can argue that it cuts off stuff physically so even if bad actors were to happen they could do anything.

Now software one? That has 0 merit. I trust sailfish software. If i didn’t, i would just switch to something else. And if bad actors were to take control the software privacy switch won’t do anything about it.

So yeah pointless as they go

2 Likes
3

The privacy switch is working like its promised, but like mentioned here it needs more features i dont understand what you two mean, but in my opinion it only lacks the do not disturb and silent mode toggle, mobile connection off and maybe also powersafe mode? For privacy business and military usage?

I dont think the switch can have much more features unless they also somehow add custom toggle which can be coded by the user

Its already a huge future that you can turn off android apps.

2 Likes
4

You are correct from a security but not a convenience stand point.

2 Likes
5

@Schlens is on point here. It is a convenience (“eyes free”) thing, not some sort of hardening thing.

And extrapolating from that; i think the feature request doesn’t quite make sense - as all the assignable functions should already be available as top menu buttons. (And if they aren’t, that’s the problem/bug - not the lack of soft privacy switch).

1 Like
6

My thought here is:

An app can react to the switch. E.g. require a password on open depending on the state of the switch, or show/not show things on the cover.

Such an app could offer these features only on JP26.

With the FR, users could emulate the physical switch and see such features also on other devices.

2 Likes
7

There actually already is a top-menu toggle to emulate the physical switch, which was used in early prototyping and testing. But it’s not installed by default and seems that it’s not functional at the moment. Probably got broken at some point when the development focus moved to the actual physical switch.

13 Likes
8

I think such toggle (i was about to link example how to add such toggle) is precisely what author of this thread wants, so would be nice if you could nudge jolla :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
9

I think it does make a lot of sense for convenience. Just like the hardware switch it would toggle a group of settings - “all the functions” as you say.