I'm definitely open to trading some security/privacy features in favour of some QoL features Lineage had last time I used it - moving the clock back to the right (where persistent notifications belong) and power button for flashlight. It's a shame this has to be a "or" but as I use a burner phone when crossing borders anyway...

Contact Scopes and Storage Scopes are a small subset of the privacy features provided by GrapheneOS. It's also adding major privacy improvements on a regular basis including the recently added secure paste feature and ongoing fixes for upstream Android VPN leaks. There are many other privacy features beyond those.

Privacy heavily depends on security. GrapheneOS greatly improves both privacy/security patches and privacy/security protections. The sole reason for the focus on security in GrapheneOS is because it's a privacy project. It has no other reason to work on security.

Android 17 was released in June 2026 and has been required for full standard Android privacy and security patches since then. Only a subset of the patches Google deems to be High or Critical severity are backported. Keeping up with the standard backports and major updates is important but increasingly inadequate.

Don't forget proprietary security patches are only open sourced 3 months after -- GOS has them due to their partnership with Motorola.

A sufficiently motivated threat actor will have them (the exploits) too.

GrapheneOS actually feels just like LineageOS, except that it has faster upstream updates, better security, and greater usability...

I don't understand why it took LineageOS so long to update to AOSP 17, while GrapheneOS managed to update to 17 in just 3 days. LineageOS really should be based directly on GrapheneOS.

You're losing a lot more than that:

- secure app spawning (huge because without it, many hardening improvements are useless)

- extremely secure memory allocator

- fully enabled MTE on shiba and newer

- relockable bootloader

- stronger forensics resistance

- more trustworthy developers (ever heard of LOSCoins?)

- rapid support for new Pixels

- lightning fast security updates faster than most OEMs/ODMs

- built-in TTS without GMS

- real GMS that isn't priv-app

and so much more

While not great, a private space or work profile with Shelter can work in a a pinch. I use it e.g. WhatsApp, where I just need three people, but which is almost unusable if you don’t give it the permission.

It’s a bit more annoying but also isolates stuff like photos etc. by default, so you don’t have to think about it.

What a weird take. I see it the other way round: if you can run GrapheneOS, run GrapheneOS, period. If you can't, then there is a really cool project called LineageOS that you probably can run, and you should look into it :-).