Simple question really! Are any of you running a Custom ROM? Furthermore, are any of you running a De-Googled ROM?
Why do you run your custom ROM, and what are the drawbacks?
Yes, I bought a Pixel 6 specifically to run GrapheneOS. I can proudly say that every single app on my phone is open source, no GSM and no Google. I don’t really mind paying a company like Google for the phone, I just don’t want to hand them my data.
Yup same here. Two profiles, one is my daily driver and open source, they other is for the few apps I need with Google services. This is the perfect compromise between what I want, and what I need.
Yes, I’d rather fuck around with custom ROMs than endure the user-hostile crapware that most vendors bundle. I’d also rather try to make an app work despite safety net or whatever not passing out of the box than not have any defenses against the dumb bullshit software vendors put in their apps. I’d rather go back to a feature phone than live with a walled garden full of spyware and ads.
CyanogenMod user since the 6.x days, currently running LineageOS 20.
I like my phones to work and be usable. I stayed on the stock ROM for my OnePlus 8T for 2 years and went right back to LineageOS.
Manufacturers just can’t make ROMs that work correctly without bullshit.
Been running CalyxOS for 3 years. Compile it myself from source with some extra tweaks and such. I’ve even got a nice build server going that automatically compiles builds monthly and pushes updates to my phone via OTAs. It was a little work to get set up, but now it doesn’t feel any different from the stock Android experience.
It started because I was tired of all the unchecked spying Google does, and I wanted to get away from that. But now I can never go back to “regular” Android, because the vendor bloat in “stock” ROMs is incessant, and I am maintaining patches for quite a few features Google has either removed, or never supported in the first place (2-button navigation, AM/PM clock, automatic call recording).
Honestly, there hasn’t been any drawbacks. The phone works perfectly, calls are fine, it runs great, and I haven’t needed Google Play Services for basically anything. My banking app still works. I don’t use Google Pay so I don’t really care that it doesn’t work. Android wearOS doesn’t work, but at this point Google has dropped the ball so severely, I don’t have the motivation to bother with a smartwatch.
Most of my paid apps continue to work without patches, and I get them from Aurora Store. For the ones that don’t work, I just patch them myself to remove the license checks. I paid for them, so I should be able to use them regardless of what ROM I use.
Damn dude, self compiling with your own OTAs is rad as hell. Kudos to you for getting and keeping that running.
Thanks! But I can’t take all the credit. Calyx maintains the OTA updater and it’s very configurable. Just change the domain name, make sure your webserver has all the right files, and you’re off!
Same here (CalyxOS on Pixel Phone). Except for me not compiling it myself. Its super easy to install and runs super smooth. In my case for two years without a single issue.
I want to do that to but with grapheneos so I have more freedom and control over my mobile.
Sadly not anymore because I need my banking apps to work reliably. Making them work isn’t the biggest problem, but I’ll never know when an update blindsides me and breaks something.
On a sidenote, I’d really like to know why banks think that an ancient phone that hasn’t seen a security update in years is somehow more secure than an up-to-date Lineage or GrapheneOS.
Eh, banks don’t want to piss off their customers over something they have less control over.
However I do know that my bank does keep Android version updates in mind. The app won’t work on anything less than Android 10, which is about 4 years old. So no working on any kind of ancient phone.
I run GrapheneOS without any Google Play Services. I don’t want to be locked into any software and I selfhost all my backups except having encrypted backups in one cloud provider for very important things to keep them off-site.
Most of the things people generally would consider drawbacks like lack of google assistant, chrome, play store, youtube etc. I consider to be a positive thing. I am in mostly full control of permissions and I have a siloed work user when I do need to access Slack and other apps for company use.
Oneplus 7 Pro + Crdroid 9.5 + Magisk + LSPosed and my safetynet is green Google pay / bank app work and L1 DRM certificate work for netflix/prime…
I have a lineage phone I keep on dial and I was using graphene OS for a minute but
The thing is that I live by my phone. Passwords, banking, pretty much the entirety of my actual life daily. I think graphene OS is great! But I also don’t have time or a the ability to have an AI review the codebase to validate that what I’m putting on my phone is safe. The truth is that these are unpaid strangers making a great product who’s work Im not a subject matter expert in. Android is a large codebase. I’m friends with a guy who works on it full time and even he feels lost sometimes. So I reversed my phone back to stock Android for my daily driver.
If I’m doing better financially in a few months I’ll likely buy another pixel phone or try fair phone with graphene. I just can’t justify the purchase right now and my phone works fine.
Just a reminder if you like these projects, donate to them!. I dropped about $1000 on open source stuff over the last year to include joplin, EFF, vueJS, graphene, lineage, and quasarJS. Every one of them does great work.
yes, grapheneos on pixel 7
I think custom Roms respects us a lot more than stock is which treats us like product
No, for the same reasons as another commentator said: I don’t want to be locked out of a Safety Net-enabled app when I need it. Ran with LineageOS back in the day though, and it was a really nice experience.
I do not, mostly because I’ve gotten busier and I use mine for work, which requires me to pass safety net and I really don’t feel like arguing with compliance.
Pixel 6 Pro here
Yeah, I use Lineage on a Pixel 5 since I switched back from an iPhone a few months ago. My intention was to run Graphene or Calyx, but I can’t get wifi calling working without gapps installed, even with Graphene’s sandboxed play services and the dialer. I think ATT Prepaid is using the new wifi calling negotiation that Google implemented in Android 12. I have zero coverage from any carrier for miles around me, so wifi calling is pretty critical. So I installed mindthegapps, enabled wifi calling, and then disabled all the Google stuff again. I didn’t want root, so I’m not too thrilled with this situation.
I’ll be switching to T-Mobile/Mint or Verizon/US Mobile in the next few months, so I’ll try again then. But I’m seriously considering getting a Light Phone. Then I’ll use a Pixel Tablet with Graphene/Calyx and a Garmin Fenix for handling music, calendar/email, hike mapping, browsing/media while lounging, maybe a work account, etc. I’m also considering just limiting the software footprint on the Pixel, but… that’s too easy to override on a whim.
Another option is a Unihertz Jelly Star, so the screen is too small to do much. I’d really like Spotify in the car, and mostly just my downloaded daily/weekly playlists since I have such limited cell coverage. I’m not entirely sure if the Fenix can play to the head unit over Bluetooth.
I suspect the decades of infinite scroll is destroying my attention span and already limited emotional response, which is combining with my autism to put me in a place of pretty much near constant burnout. That leaves me on the cusp of meltdown at all times, it’s not a good place to be. Luckily reddit gave me an excuse to do what I’d been leaning towards for over a year, and there isn’t such an overload of content over here yet.
you can install sandboxed google play services on grapheneos which so much better than microg on lineage
I tried that, and couldn’t get it working. There must be some other package I’m missing. I tried some stuff like carrier services, but no luck. Or maybe it’s the sandboxed nature of gsp, but I think there’s something else missing. There’s a dialog that launches in Lineage without gapps and Lineage with MicroG, but fails to register the feature still. But in Graphene and Calyx, that dialog never launches.
Thanks to Treble I’m using LineageOS. My device, a Redmi Note 10, doesn’t officially have the ROM, and for my use case the GSI version is good enough
I run degoogled LineageOS
Yep, LineageOS 20 ON A onePlus Nord N200 with no gapps installed at all.
i run Lineage because 4 years ago i had enough of all the tracking and switched off and deleted my google account completely. I also deted Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, etc accounts in the same time period. I really cant see any drawbacjs to running Lineage the way i do.