You can turn off the shutter sound just fine. This can even be done on Japanese Pixels.
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/7649-camera-shutter-sound-on-pixel-6a-jp-version
I'm not sure if they're popular or not but I didn't see them mentioned in this thread and I rely on these fantastic open source apps daily:
- AntennaPod -- podcast app
- Orgzly -- Todo lists / reminders / notes via org files. Can be synced via syncthing.
- Aves -- gallery app
- KeePassDX -- keepass client
- Prognoza -- weather app
- Olauncher -- minimalist launcher
Honourable mention: Harmonic -- hacker News app. Not "essential" by any means but it's quite good.
Edit: added prognoza and olauncher
Magic earth is not open source, if that matters to you.
Voice is wonderful https://github.com/PaulWoitaschek/Voice
In addition to GPay contactless, Android Auto will also not work on GrapheneOS.
Huh? It has a dark mode in Settings->Theme.
As for ad-blocking, I have found that system-wide blocking works great as suggested in the docs https://grapheneos.org/faq#ad-blocking. YMMV...
Cromite indeed looks great.
This may not be helpful, but if you're willing to flash GrapheneOS on a pixel, Vanadium is wonderful.
Bromite has been abandoned. https://github.com/bromite/bromite/issues/2641
Ungoogled chromium binaries are built by anyone so don't get them from there. https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium#third-party-binaries