alt Hacker NewsGrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple
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Google is so much engrained in our lives that we can't really break free. You can't just don't use youtube and for that you need a google account.These projects are nice and good for tinkering, but can't use this as a dialy driver.
Break free from Android... by installing Android? I'm not sure it's really breaking free when the first task to do is intall Google Play Services so your banking app works.
Sounds like we can't actually breaking free from Android and iOS. Maybe with Linux like the Fedora Atomic for mobile devices? https://github.com/pocketblue/pocketblue Or PostmarketOS? https://postmarketos.org/
Even then banking would probably only work through the browser... Sad state of the world really.
Many are complaining about banking app compatability, but I've never felt compelled to use anything other than my browser for banking. What's the big deal with the banking apps? Am missing out on some huge advantage here?
It's weird that here on HN some people are trying to break free from Google and Apple and on the other side some people are married to Gemini, and both look like to be the majority at times.
GrapheneOS needs at least the modem blob provided by the OEM. It runs as root, it has full network control. Same could go for other "drivers" like wifi+bluetooth.
Privacy is more a dream than a real thing.
Break free from Google by paying money to Google for a Pixel phone? Even with a used Pixel, you're helping prop up their used market value which helps Google
How are the cameras on the latest devices running GrapheneOS? My last Android experience was the Oneplus One and the experience left me with the feeling that cameras are just too proprietary to work well once you go tinkering with custom ROMs and camera apps.
I'm not a photographer or anything, I just want to quickly point and shoot and get on with whatever I'm doing without thinking too hard.
I want to break free - Queen :)
Graphene is very attractive, the two things that prevent me from going are a) using your phone as a credit card, I'm too attached to that now. b) work profile does not work with rooted phones
Some privacy settings for GrapheneOS:
https://inteltechniques.com/blog/2026/01/05/grapheneos-2026-...
What is the smallest phone that Graphene will run on? I would love to switch but these massive pixel phones are a no go for me.
There's several AOSP based ROMs in forums like xda. Mostly developed by enthusiasts.
Recall using one years ago on my Samsung device with happy results. That was long before banking apps etc. Wondering what's the difference with this? Extra security?
> Break free from Google and Apple
Step 1: Buy a Google phone
This is so well-written with obvious care! Answers so much of what I've been wanting to know, as someone who's thinking about taking this plunge.
Is there a great phone with high end specs this runs on?
Currently have an iPhone 16 pro, and probably my next phone will be something like this.
I need to be able to share photos easily with my wife, typically I’ve been using airdrop.
I need to try this out.
GrapheneOS is Android isn't it? Same binary blob issues and such? Or is that not an issue on Pixel devices?
I had to replace my old phone a few months back and I went with a used Pixel 8 pro from Backmarket specifically so I could try GrapheneOS. I'll never go back if I can help it. I love this OS.
Has anyone tried monitoring traffic from this ROM and see whether their claim of having minimal analytics and booseted privacy is true?
It's very annoying that they restrict themselves to Pixels. I get they can't guarantee all the security features they want on other phones, but even a subset of those security features and the other advantages like the lack of cruft would make it very attractive to be able to run on other phones.
It's a sign of how far we've come that this article says "Break Free from Google and Apple", not "Break Free from Google, Apple and Microsoft".
They should get the same level of financing (donations) as Tor project at least. Some big organization like Open Technology Fund or NLnet should give them yearly grants.
My observation is - It is the ecosystem that is sticky not just the OS.
So you were happy in your orchard/garden but then plenti arrived offering the forbidden fruit; android. This is the slippery slope that led us here, open rebellion against the tech patriarchy
I really don't want to give Google money so the Pixel is off for me until GrapheneOS supports something else.
For now I consider smartphones as disposable toys that can't be trusted with anything sensitive and use a computer for privacy.
I also don't like the idea of running Android, I still hope for a real linux phone at some point.
Citibank app does not work in GrapheneOS
is it worth to buy google pixel just for installing grapheneos? in my country, it is kinda pricey and of course it cannot install bank apps because almost all of them are must non root phone.
If Apple partners with Starlink, this is my next mobile OS
Combine it with OnemanBSD to be really FREE. Lookhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wHaoQhXOYY
Breaking free from Google by using a Google phone with a Google designed processor
Hah, just talked with my colleague, his feedback is that it’s too raw to be used daily
Am I the only one who finds monospace font barely readable for articles? Good for code, bad for longer forms of text.
I can't take this seriously when their mission statement is to "break free from Google and Apple" and their entire output is a fork of a Google repo.
If you're based on AOSP, the project is still 100% reliant on Google!
It seems extremely cynical to me to depend on the work of a thousand-man team to build your OS, then patch out a couple of lines and claim you've broken free from them. Without Google, none of this project could exist.
"Break free from Google"
All supported devices are exclusively Pixels.
For some (and other not-so) obvious reasons I switched to Graphene a few weeks ago. For years I've been pushing towards de-cloudifying my digital life and there were several reasons for it: On one hand it was the constant content subscription which gave me 0 guarantees that what I am interested in will still be available the next morning, even though I've paid for it, and the other was, you guessed it, the idiotic LLMs everywhere and subsequently the complete annihilation of security practices by giving a probabilistic model unrestricted access to all of your data.
First things, first, kudos to the GrapheneOS team for making it this easy to install and the surprisingly rapid support for new devices. Sure, there are features which I otherwise liked in the stock android that came with Pixel phones(swipe typing is something I very much enjoyed) but all in all, I can't say I miss much from it otherwise. I've slimmed down my list of apps to basic functionalities backed by self-hosted services (nextcloud, immich, jellifin, etc. along with a VPN I maintain myself) and I honestly don't miss much from the stock Android.
I want to point out that for a very long time I worked for a company that developed games for mobile devices and while the data we collected was mostly anonymous(*unless you logged in with facebook and by implications we had your facebook id) and it was never even utilized all that much beyond bad attempts at maximizing sales(not effectively anyway cause the people in charge were as incompetent as they could get), I can say that we collected ungodly amounts of data: most of the cloud bills were storage for that specific reason. While we did not have bad intentions and had to operate under strict GDPR regulations, this was a large company that was constantly monitored. Small companies can fly under the radar and get away with not abiding by the rules and laws and commonly they are not even aware what the repercussions could be. Similarly, the US and Asia-based giants can simply shrug it off and toss a few billions in fines. Make no mistake, no company is looking for your best interest and with that in mind, I couldn't recommend GrapheneOS (and self-hosting everything) enough, assuming you know what you are doing.
The article is a wall of text with not a single screenshot.
And I couldn't easily find a link to a page that summarised GrapheneOS with some images so I could see how polished it looked.
This is one of the reasons why OSS fails to gain mainstream appeal (as much as I want it to)
After reading this blog post, going to grapheneos's site, and browsing a half-dozen or so pages that I thought might show me what it looked like... I cannot find a single image of it.
GrapheneOS team, I'm begging you... Hire or recruit one person with advertising or copy-for-public-consumption experience. Just one.
I switch from iPhone to a pixel 9 fold, and installed graphene after 2 weeks on stock android.
Look, it's better than stock android overall, UI much more simplified even though it gives you a lot more security control, battery feels slightly longer, but there are drawbacks, i.e. twitter/x wouldn't install, neither would my bank's app. However from time to time I go to use iOS on the iphone and it just feels like better software, with better ergonomics overall, the combination of the xnu kernel plus the design and feel of the..buttons.. on iOS is still years ahead in my opinion. So keep that in mind if you're switching away from apple to it, as android still feels like decade plus old software.
Now for the upsides.. there's a built in terminal and debian vm you can install and run your agentic AI tools (claude code,opencode etc) in a portable sandboxed environment which you just don't get onios. You can even fire up a graphical xfce session albeit that takes quite a bit of work to get it to go.
As for the tablet form factor of the phone itself when unfolded, i found it amazing the first few weeks and then later found myself rarely using it.
Overall I'm going to stick with itand will never go back to stock android, but am quite annoyed at how much better it could actually be.
I really doubt they have an issue tracking you despite all this added effort.
Why is it that Google find my doesn’t work? I can’t get it running on my pixel, seems like a known issue.
I use this and lineage, but in a few years time this could be moot if Google decides to completely lock down devices. That leaves commercial options like Fairphone
If you are using social media, you might get a shadowban, just because you needed to unlock your bootloader to install this OS.
the OS is great, but too risky in certain situations.
Anyone like GrapheneOS better? Like it has some features? Or is it a locked down version of Android?
GrapheneOS is like using Firefox. Works on most sites, but those few things just don’t. Maybe it’s a dealbreaker for some. And they’re dependent on Google.
What you want is a solar 6502 with lots of memory and GMRS mesh
Unless govts make web a primary citizen of information dissemination and acceptance, it will be only apple/google on the sim card linked access
I've been using it for more than 2 years, and I can't think of ever going back to a stock OS. I had to send my phone for a screen repair, in the meantime I picked up my old Samsung, and the sheer amount of apps I didn't want, notifications and dark patterns to tricking me into handing over my data made me anxious. I couldn't finish setting the phone up and drove to my parent's home to pick up their old, remotely nerfed by Google, Pixel 4a so I could install GrapheneOS into it and use it while I waited for my repaired Pixel 8.