Since GrapheneOS is the standard recommendation for a custom ROM on Pixel devices and comes up very often, I figured we should have a thread about it.
For those who are using it, what Pixel device are you running GrapheneOS on and how is the overall experience? What are the things that you like about GrapheneOS and what are things you miss from the factory Android install?
As for me, my curiosity got the better of me and I finally went and installed GrapheneOS on my Pixel 7a using the web installer on Arch Linux and a USB cable.
So far, nothing unexpected and I’ll have to do a bit of exploring of the OS’ security features. The OS works just fine and feels obviously way cleaner and less bloated, the annoying search widget finally went away without having to install a custom launcher. The only thing that scared me a bit in the beginning was the contacts not syncing and some purchased apps not transferring over as the sandboxed Google Play saw the device as a different one but that was solved by giving it permission to access contacts and also waiting for Google Play to do its thing. Google Camera and Google Photos also worked fine without network permissions.
I haven’t tried Google Wallet’s NFC payments yet and I have no hopes for that one to work on GrapheneOS, but that is certainly a feature I will miss.
still using my pixel 3a XL, graphene was great until suddenly it wasnt. As soon as google drops support for the device you’re on your own. Most of the apps still get updated but the OS no longer gets security updates, which is understandable but unfortunate.
It seems CalyxOS still offers extended support for your phone until August 2024 (see https://calyxos.org/docs/guide/device-support/ )
This is just to give people an opportunity to move off of the device.
Once this happens, and the phone is no longer getting hardware security patches, graphene OS and calyx OS both drop support for the device, with the exception of fair phone… were they pretend they’re getting hardware security patches but they’re not. That’s a separate discussion
For a device with no hardware security patches, you can run lineage OS, with an unlocked bootloader which isn’t great… or divest OS DOS… which locks the bootloader, but strips out a lot of the Google services. It might be a more extreme environment than you want, lineage might be the sweet spot of usable but not secure.
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I have a pixel 3A as well, and I went through this exact same thing. My only complaint with graphene OS in this scenario is they should have pop-up notifications when support is being discontinued, so that you know you need to start migrating.
I only really noticed when I thought, hey I haven’t installed a operating system update in a long time… That’s not great.