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.
GrapheneOS is amazing. So many privacy and security features. I finally feel in complete control of my phone. It’s not only secure and private, it’s also smooth and stable too, much more so than the buggy mess that is stock Pixel OS. And did I mention that it updates faster than stock OS!? It’s also far more stable than every other alternative OS on every other phone I’ve had. I loved it so much I sent my first 5$ to a FOSS project ever LOL. This is my endgame OS and I’m never using anything else ever again.
I also like it, but installing apps takes such a long time and auto updates don’t always work. When you open aurora store or f-droid you’ll get a dialog to allow an app to install. Battery drain was also higher than on stock. Not sure why that is, even without Google apps.
It takes longer because of the security, which you can disable, but that would be stupid. Unless you constantly install apps all day, hardly an issue.
You could also give play store a bunch of permissions that it doesn’t need, and it would update “normally”, but again, that would defeat the entire purpose of taking all the per.iaaik s from it in the first place.
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.
It’s the exploit protection and native code debugging options that slow the installs down (updates are still installs), but again, disabling them would be a terrible idea. The only reason disabling them is an option is for troubleshooting purposes and shouldnt be done otherwise.
Ente is a great E2EE zero knowledge photo backup solution that’s multi platform and fairly priced. Immich, while still pretty new is a self hosted solution that’s a near clone of Google Photos, allowing Google to either back up your photos, which may or may not have metadata attached, or your contacts especially, should be given further thought if privacy is a concern of yours. Many email providers offer CarDAV/CalDAV solutions for that, you can self host radicle to back them up, or just manually do it and sync the backup folder somewhere. Going to Graphene and then syncing highly personal things…to Google, doesnt make a ton of sense. That’s your call though.
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!