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.
deleted by creator
I wasn’t able to find those settings. It’s also not for installing new apps, but more for updates. You’ll have to check for updates manually because of it. It also wasn’t for the Play Store, but for F-Droid and such. I do think I’ll install it again at some point, but I do use some Google services like the photo’s backup and app backup. If I can find alternatives for that I will try it again.
deleted by creator
Yeah I’m trying to go Google-less on my phone (I’ll still use Youtube and such on my tablet), but I didn’t really think about all that’s synced with Google. I’m testing different solutions, but I haven’t found a solution for all of it, thanks for the suggestions!