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Ha! Me too! Exact same. Bought a Pixel 10. Intended to do the default Android for a while. But it was filled with ads for “Wicked” which had me looking at my phone with a sneer on my face I couldn't erase - as if someone had smeared feces all over it and threw it on my bed.

So I jumped straight to GrapheneOS, which was way easier and less extreme than I had been warned. So beautifully minimal, with no crap. Now my phone feels like a simple Linux (Void/Arch) PC. So wonderful.

> [...] until I noticed Google had force bundled a 'Wicked For Good' movie promo theme with the latest security update.

This is how users learn to not update anything.

When I got a new phone last year, I purposely got a Pixel (open box 9a) to put GrapheneOS on it immediately. Been happy living the de-Googled Android life since.

I was sad that I had to go through the OOBE setup on the stock image to unlock the bootloader. At least it doesn't force an internet connection and login, unlike Windows.

Memories of Apple force pushing a U2 album to everyone's iPod (or maybe iPhone) back in the day.

Happy GrapheneOS user here too since 2+ years now.

Small point of critique: it would be nice if it was a little bit easier to switch between personas, for example by simply scrolling to a different workspace. Because now the feature is mostly unused on my phone.

What's the app data backup/restore story on GrapheneOS?

My understanding is that even with pseudo-D2D (device-to-device) transfers Seedvault doesn't backup everything[1].

Are there more-functional, non-root, local (non-cloud) alternatives?

[1]: https://github.com/seedvault-app/seedvault/wiki/FAQ#why-do-s...

I too, liked it.

However, some apps that I need for work, like Microsoft Authenticator, no longer work under GrapheneOS.

https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2026/03/10/microsoft-tig...

> Wicked For Good

Is this an antithesis to Don't Be Evil?

How's the P10 camera on graphene? Literally 90% of the reason I'm on a pixel is because I love the low-light smarts that the camera software has, but I don't know if I'll lose that with Graphene.

Any issues with banking insurance or healthcare applications?

What's the status of banking apps, Google / Microsoft authenticator, and Google Wallet? Those were the things preventing me from abandoning stock Android.

hold on, are you saying graphenos has no ads everywhere? I need swap it in then

I want to run graphene but I make android apps and need to test on device with a somewhat standard setup… login with google, etc. is this reasonable to do with graphene?

Makes you wonder who are clown employees coming up with these nonsense decisions

yeah the pixel 10 pro - which i have - only saving grace is graphene..

Same, I've got a Pixel 9 and GrapheneOS works perfectly on it. I really love having full control over the OS on my phone and being able to decide what actually runs on it.

would it have the desktop mode and linux terminal? That's the only reason I'm eyeing a Pixel

> Pixel phones are not sold worldwide

Still boggles my mind the fact Google doesn't sell their phones worldwide. Obtaining a Pixel has proven to be quite difficult for me.

AFAIK Motorola only lets certain geographical regions to unlock bootloader, not everywhere.

I just moved away from GrapheneOS to Motorola because I decided I needed an audio jack again. There's definitely some annoying things about leaving, but at least now I can use again the three apps that didn't work for me on GrapheneOS...

This is a thing now

https://volla.online/en/operating-systems/volla-os/

> The main things I miss are (1) when I'm entering text I can't swipe left and right on the space bar to scroll the cursor left and right,

GrapheneOS is compatible with the vast, vast majority of Android apps, so you can use GBoard or FUTO keyboard (which I recently switched to from GBoard), to get the ideal experience.

FUTO recently revamped their swipe to type model and it's now more accurate than GBoard in their testing. I am a huge swipe type person, so this is what held me in GBoard's clutches, but now I'm free.

The dataset is open source and anyone can add to it if you're on a mobile device here: https://swipe.futo.org

And you can learn about it here: https://swipe.futo.tech

> the texting app doesn't just attach reaction emojis to a message -- it quotes the whole message and prefixes it with something like "Marty like blahblahblah". When there is a whole family text chain it isn't uncommon to see the same message 7 times as various people react to the original message.

Google messages, the experience you get on PixelOS, is also compatible with GrapheneOS, but you will have to afford network access to sandboxed google play, among other things. I couldn't tell you specifically, but it will work out of the box before you restrict anything. Many people choose to use this setup because it opportunistically adds e2ee for chats between iPhones and other Androids using Google messages.

There's also other SMS apps, but I focused on switching people to Signal so I barely ever use SMS.

Once I replaced the default apps, GrapheneOS became a premium phone experience.

Problem (1) is a keyboard problem, not a GrapheneOS problem. Graphene comes with the stock AOSP keyboard which is very basic, but you can absolutely replace it. Personally I'm using the FUTO Keyboard and it does have that feature, as well as swiping, speech to text and much more.

Maybe you can try installing another SMS app for problem (2)? Much like the stock keyboard, the stock Messaging app is just the AOSP app. Honestly it works fine for me so I don't have a recommendation.

Regarding 2: that is literally how SMS reactions work. Apps that recognize it just interpret it as "put that emoji on that message". It is unfortunate that it doesn't do that tho.

RCS is different, which you can sometimes get working by installing Google Messages¹, which is essentially the only app that supports RCS any more. Google runs essentially all the servers too.

---

1: There are no third-party RCS apps² because, unlike SMS which has an API and a shared database on the device, RCS is extremely locked down and it's literally impossible to create one in stock Android. This is also why it's only "sometimes" on GOS, the details are very complicated and rather enraging.

2: Samsung had one, but they're shutting it down in favor of Google Messages. A tiny number of other devices / telecoms have their own too, but they're rapidly shutting down as well. RCS is very nearly fully controlled and implemented by Google now, except for iMessage as a client only, for now, and there's no encryption between iMessage<->Google Messages last I checked (but there apparently is between Google Messages... but no normal person can really verify that because it's Just Google Everywhere).

Other people have noted that you can switch out the keyboard and SMS app (which I did).

My single (minor) issue with GrapheneOS is the adaptive screen brightness. On the stock Android OS on a Pixel I'd mess around with the sliders for a week or two on a new phone and then it learned what I liked. Now it has a few set values, one of which is always too dim for me in darker conditions so I have to mess with the slider each and every time. I don't believe there's a way of fixing that.

Other than that I'm glad I switched, especially when I read about new "features" they add that I know I'd hate.

I use GBoard on GrapheneOS. I just deny it network permission so it can't phone home.

You should consider using signal as texting app?

You shall engage more with your apps, user!

Regarding (1), that's on your keyboard, which you can choose. Maybe you can give Futo a try? https://keyboard.futo.org/

I used to dread the promised deep system integration of AI, but honestly after setting Claude up on a server box and having it do sysadmin stuff for me that I've been putting off for ages I see the vision. I don't really want to mess with the details of working through system orchestration tasks, I want to say "spin up this service" and start using it, "change my config so X happens" and it does, and knows what needs restarting to pick up changes and all the fiddly knobs and configs that need syncing and their bespoke formats. I think Nix tried to unify this for people, but it arrived too close to LLMs so a lot of value (in this dimension) has been delivered by other means.

The point is, I'd like to be able to set up services, configuration, and run tasks on my phone this way too, ideally offline. If this system integration is what gives me programmatic control of my most personal computer and the ability to finally set up decent automated tasks and workflows then so be it.

The iPhone 11 was released almost 7 years ago and is still supported by the latest iOS.

For context, that would put it at the same release as Pixel 3 or Pixel 4. Those devices stopped receiving updates in 2022-2023.

The most hilarious is McDonald's app - it refuses to work without Play Integrity check. I wonder what braindamaged reasoning is behind this. Do they want to position themselves as a bank or something?

"Strava is an American internet service for tracking physical exercise which incorporates social networking features."

Sounds like spyware, to be honest.

I run Strava on my Pixel 10 Pro Fold running GrapheneOS. IIRC you need to have Google Play Store installed (with zero permissions, preferably) to make Strava work.

I know a friend is using Strava on his Pixel 10 running graphene so there should be a way

Why don't you connect with the makers of Madrid and see what they can do about it? That is sometimes the best way to fix these types of incompatibilities.

I feel like you'd be taking on a lot of pain for no real benefits though?

App optimization happens in the background now, and pops a notification when it is done, asking to restart all open apps.

I have multi day battery life and I only charge to 80% so it was either user error or a hardware failure.

GOS has much better battery than stock pixel ui because of less services and telemetry.

i have mine set to auto-restart for updates and i shortened the 'restart when idle for n hours' value so it usually just does everything at night

> GrapheneOS recommendation to this was to have fewer apps

Sounds reasonable. People tend to install way too many apps on their phones and than blame the phone about short battery life or too many notifications.

Fairphones are far from meeting the security requirements to run GrapheneOS and have chosen an incompatible path. It won't be available for their devices.

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand...

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116353973732143171

I don't think that fairphone is interested in privsec so it will never be supported.

I don't. GrapheneOS is worth the effort of pulling a card out of my wallet.

I'm in Europe, but I had accepted that I had to do without. I hadn't heard of curve, going to check that out.

Garmin pay if you're ok with Garmin is one possibility.

There is no replacement. Strap a credit card to the back of your phone or pay cash.

There are a few other banks running their own NFC payment systems, like Swedbank in my country.

I am not North American, but instead of Google Pay I use my bank's app for contactless payments.

I have these cards I keep in my (RFID-blocking) wallet, one for each credit account. Then I just pull them out and tap to pay. It's super convenient - no app required!

Cash for most things, and just use a card like normal otherwise.

I don't really see the appeal of contactless payment, pulling a card out really doesn't take much time.

Putting my credit card in my phone case

I can say the same. Been using LineageOS and GrapheneOS for most of my life. Some things are not super convenient (I generally dont install non-free-software applications and don't have Google Play services enabled), but the rest of the experience is great. No crashes, no bugs, no unexpected behavior. Currently I'm using the Pixel 9 Pro XL.

I can also recommend Gadgetbridge for BLE smartwatch integration.

1) any currently-supported device is good, but i'd say go for minimum pixel 8a if you can

it ships with Memory Tagging Extensions (armv9 security feature) and two more years of support than previous generations; pixel 7 might be eol in oct 2027 https://grapheneos.org/faq#device-lifetime

official recommendation page: https://grapheneos.org/faq#recommended-devices

2) there is no real graphene alternative for other devices. I would say DivestOS at least made sane compromises to support less secure devices, but it's unfortunately defunct now. Yes lineage is still around and still the go-to clean 'ROM' but far from security focused. just avoid stuff like /e/ os

I would suggest Pixel 8 series or later, since they get 7 years (instead of 5) of updates, which is also decisive for Graphene support duration.

1) I'm typing this in a pixel 7 pro running grapheneos. I'd say these are plenty good enough. Device support is pretty solid compared to cyanogenmod of previous times. App installation is a bit slow using sandboxed play store. Not sure why that is.

We Have been successfully using graphene on a pixel 4 plus, 5 plus and a 6pro. They all work. Very well. They were cheap to buy. Super easy to install graphene (remember they have a very easy stepu by step process, takes about 10 minutes) It's a good way to test and see if you like it. Truly amazing operating system. Simple and beautiful control of your apps and their behaviors.

Pixel 7 is definitely good enough if you don't have special needs. I'm writing this from a 6a right now.

Any phone that is good enough with stock Android for your case is good enough with Graphene. If you really just want to try it out, it's the cheapest old Pixel *a you can find.

Checking which phones are supported by Lineage and Graphene can be done by everyone in a matter of minutes.

If you want to try it out, you can easily buy an 8a for like 250 euros used. 128GB is certainly good enough, unless you plan on migrating your mp3 library to it or you take a lot of videos. My only qualms is the lack of SD card, for the aforementioned mp3s.

And trust me you'll like it ;)

That looks like a good intro!

And they accept XMR donations, so instant credibility boost.

Desktop mode is new and exciting.

This should have the full list; it's not a ton of changes, which speaks to how perfected Android has become.

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/06/Android-17...

Presumably any new Android 17 features that aren't counter to GrapheneOS's mission, such as "Bubbles allows you to turn any app into a compact, floating window" https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android...

You will find that a lot of banks and other companies have old fashioned websites that open work better (and more privately) than apps. Even Google Voice should be usable through its website. However what is usually recommended by the Graphene community is to call or text via Signal instead.

No, only devices meeting the hardware requirements will be supported and it's a lot of manual work per device for them to support a device.

Reqs: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

Currently that means modern pixels and the next generation Motorola flagships once they come out.

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116761945417419946

>Those are just the devices we initially tested it on which mainly has to do with which devices were available to the people working on the port.

>To clarify the 2nd paragraph, we've ported GrapheneOS to Android 17 for all of the supported devices. That's a list of the devices we already built and tested it. Our initial public release will be available for all the supported devices and we'll have tested it on each by then.

How much flexibility is there in changing appearance?

As an iPhone user, I really like what Oppo is doing with their ColorOS: https://www.oppo.com/nz/coloros16/

It looks very plain (black background, monochrome icons, very few apps included). You can customize all that if you want. I personally quite like the default appearance, but I am also the kind of person who uses the default GNOME or KDE theme on Linux and does not bother with custom themes or anything beyond daily Bing wallpapers.

There are numerous video walkthroughs of GrapheneOS. This would be one starting point:

<https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=aNgupWEV13M>

Visually, it generally looks much like stock Android in terms of capabilities, though a stock install generally has far fewer apps installed.

It's valid question for people unfamiliar with the project, but it is the AOSP in terms of looks, GrapheneOS does not customize the UI in any way beyond what their own features require as additions. Note that Pixel OS is not AOSP. The default home app of course also influences the experience quite the bit unless you replace it, which is what I'd personally recommend everyone to do as it's so incredibly barebones. Lawnchair is already a big step up as an open source alternative.

Perhaps screenshots and sleek UI is not their selling point (and it isn't).

It means they rebased all their changes on top of the new version. This is usually time-consuming because AOSP is not developed in the open, so you can't do this incrementally as things change -- you just get a massive drop sometime after release.

Android makes yearly releases. It is developed in cathedral-style. Google releases the source as a single big update. GrapheneOS is a fork. They need to port their customizations and extra software on top of the new release.

It's a fork of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) with major privacy/security improvements and alternatives to Google apps/services. The massive set of changes needs to be ported to new major versions of AOSP.

The apps also need to be updated to the Android 17 target API level but that can happen over several months following the OS itself being ported to it. The app aspect is something all Android developers need to deal with due to new target API levels bringing backwards incompatible improvements.

Think of GrapheneOS as being a set of patches on top of the Android Open Source Project that Google releases:

https://source.android.com/

They've ported the patches to work on top of the latest release.

Well, both, probably. GrapheneOS requires a lot of framework and device side changes.

See https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa... for banking apps. Anything that's not a banking or government app is extremely likely to work. Very few other apps ban using a non-Google-certified OS and that's the only significant reason for incompatibilities. GrapheneOS has a per-app exploit protection compatibility mode to work around memory corruption bugs caught by the features. It's in the process of overhauling the secure spawning feature to avoid tripping rare anti-tampering measures in certain banking apps. Play Integrity is increasingly the only compatibility issue. Some apps using Play Integrity have explicitly permitted GrapheneOS though.

In terms of apps, I fully believe it will only get worse from here: Google’s trajectory has been pretty hostile, and third‑party developers tend to follow it.

That’s why I have two phones. One runs GrapheneOS and is my daily driver; the other (considerably less private and secure) stays at home connected to my server so I can always scrcpy into it.

Might be worth switching banks

I refuse to ever use a banking app on my phone, so I don't even know if my bank's app would work. But every other app I've tried to use works just fine on GraphineOS.

If you've confirmed your banking app won't work on GOS, have you considered accessing your bank's website through your phone's browser instead?

Only Google Pixel’s and Fairphone’s currently provide bare minimum for 3rd-party OS support: working verified boot with user-provided signing keys. None of the other phones doing that yet

Fairphone cant be supported because it does not keep up with Android updates and in particular Linux kernel updates. Currently supported Fairphone’s have EOL (outdated, not supported) Linux kernel version. They are bad in terms of other aspects like lack of MTE, lack of USB port(s) control from software level on hardware level (Pixel 6 and newer have that), etc. You cant have privacy without security

But in 2027 this may change due to Motorola and GrapheneOS partnership

From two months ago:

In the USA, I think most people can easily afford a Pixel 9a at $56/year of device support starting from today. Calculator checks yearly cost based on device support: (https://ibb.co/xq82YQCw)

Sources for device lifetime from calculator: (https://grapheneos.org/faq#device-lifetime)

I used a New+Unlocked+Pixel+X on eBay to find a rough price of the phone.

Most people get scammed by their carrier and pay $25-45 per month just for their wireless subscription, and many more get caught up in the device bundles which gets you the "latest and greatest", at a huge price. So people are paying, per month, what you can pay, per year for a Pixel.

For me it's the added security features: per-app network permissions, scoped storage/contacts permissions, and a bunch of system hardening measures.

The ability to sandbox Google Play Services (if you need it, but realistically, you probably do) and to simply not assign it more permissions than it absolutely needs is awesome. I run it with very restricted permissions, where it by default requests every single permission it can. In stock Android, it has all those, and you can't limit it. Just that is worth it for me.

If you actually degoogle, supposedly battery life is better but if you start adding back in sandboxed play services, you lose some of the gains.

Greatly improved privacy and security and end-user control of your phone and its data. In those areas, possibly the best option, though iPhones might be better in security (not necessarily the other two areas) - Apple has a slightly bigger budget and a few more engineers, and directly controls the hardware.

It will depend on your banks/services. If those apps strictly implement Play Integrity API, you won't be able to use them on Graphene OS

I started rebuilding my phone from factory tonight, and I opted for the private profile partition inside of the main profile for my play store apps. It's accomplishing everything I wanted a fully separate profile to do without the hard switch.

I made the same mistake after being burned by the PinePhone, buying a heavily discounted Pixel 6 to test various Android forks, which eventually included GrapheneOS. I quickly knew I'd found home upgraded to a 9 Pro XL.

Rethink DNS is in the Play Store though:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.celzero.br...

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48563154>

You can't install Graphene OS on Samsung phones.

That completely goes against what they're working towards. I understand why you would want to root your own phone, but GOS is targeting highest security standards and root ain't one of them (for good reason).

But in that case why you would need to use GrapheneOS at all? Without security you cant have privacy and OS with security as priority cant just add hole in the system because it would allow to bypass all security features added on top of AOSP and AOSP features too. Most features people use root for can be achieved without root by modifying Android Framework itself with SystemUI/Settings app

If you wish so you can gain root privileges on your own in your own build or with modifying GrapheneOS existing builds. It wont be compatible with GrapheneOS provided updates because of signature mismatch

They value privacy and security. Allowing userspace apps to completely circumvent Android's permission system massively weakens both.

If you value freedom to do what you want on your devices, then you may want to consider Librem 5 instead. It runs a desktop Debian derivative with full root access.

The kernel drivers are fully open source and moving to new kernel branches is a standard part of the update process. Pixels are currently moving from 6.1 and 6.6 to 6.12 with Android 17 QPR2. This is part of the hardware requirements for GrapheneOS listed here:

https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

>but I found some odd performance quirks - apps would be slow to install and run, downloads were slow, etc. Has anyone had similar issues?

not sure about downloads specifically, but app installs are slow because grapheneos forces AOT compilation (JIT is disabled), presumably for security reasons.

A lot of developers are lured into building in a dependency on Google services, so yes you'll need microG or, as GrapheneOS prefers, the original Google code running on your device for those apps to function. Or patch the app, like Langis does for Signal (not necessary for it to function without Google in this case, but it removes its calling out to Google's apps and services for those who don't want that). If you're happy with that setup and don't need protect-from-the-government levels of security (street thugs aren't going to ransomware your device by abusing an unlocked bootloader or send exploit chains that work on anything but the hardened allocator), LineageOS is probably the better choice for you. GrapheneOS has some nice things like easily denying the network permission for an app (even if they could theoretically work around it with intents) and having a custom A-GNSS server, but you can do the same on LineageOS by using root and something like AFWall+ for the network and configuring Graphene's A-GNSS (SUPL) proxy in the system settings (don't forget to donate if you use it and are able)

To get a sense of the project and its goals I recommend reading this post[1].

Buying a used Pixel is economical, environmental, and likely doesn't support Google. Pixels are the only secure and open android devices that could work for the project and meet the extensive requirements[2]. This is because GrapheneOS takes real steps to protect user privacy and security, not features that degrade security and don't increase privacy. You are going to be doing much more against Google by using GrapheneOS because it comes with 0 google services by default and takes advanced steps to protect you from all apps and services you install.

If you are still not willing or able to purchase a Pixel, GrapheneOS has a partnership with Motorola to help them create compatible devices which will be available soon[3].

[1] Privacy and security on computing devices need to become far stronger to protect people from pervasive violations of their rights. https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/2044440381803069778#m

[2] https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

[3] https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/2028448871374803007#m

Only silver lining to this is they run a lot of discounts and promotions on them, and it's possible to buy them at a significant discount. Got my first Pixel 10 on a very cheap contract with trade-in promos on top, and got a second Pixel 10 at a 70% discount from the RRP.

If you buy used, you save a bundle and google gets no money from you.

I still don't want a pixel, so I went with a used ebay phone and installed lineageos.

They have no choice at the moment, this is the ONLY hardware secure enough to even make effort in hardening the OS.

Everything else is meh, bad, or atrocious.

Next year we'll have Motorola flagship(s) to choose from. Can't wait.

GrapheneOS is highly usable and compatible with nearly all Android apps. It has a similar experience to a mainstream Android OS if you choose to set it up that way such as using sandboxed Google Play in the main profile (which does not ruin what it provides at all, it's a perfectly valid setup). The purpose of GrapheneOS is to provide far better privacy and security than the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). AOSP is a lot more private and secure than a traditional desktop OS including one ported to mobile.

See https://grapheneos.org/faq#recommended-devices for the device recommendations. There are going to be Motorola devices with GrapheneOS support within a year too.

Do you not encrypt the microSD card?