GrapheneOS

Reader supplied reviews for GrapheneOS Average rating 9.8 from 8 review(s) What are your thoughts on GrapheneOS? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 2025030300 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 2025030300 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-04-13 Votes: 3 I use GrapheneOS on a Pixel 5, Pixel 8 and the Pixel Tablet. The documentation is superb and very accessible though the website. It is found under the Features, Useage and FAQ tabs. The forum is also a valuable source of tips on how to setup/organise your profiles and apps (use the forum search field to find the best advice from older posts). What really makes the difference is the use of user profiles and sandboxed Google Play Services + better granularity of enabling or disabling what an app can access. Google Play can be switched on and off at will in different proliles. Please read the documentation to understand this better. You can have a profile dedicated to banking apps and which will therefore be entirely separated from any other profile and the other apps. You can run the Google Pixel camera in a different profile and disable its permission to access the network. It does take quite a while to become familiar with all the extra capabilities of GOS over Android/AOSP. In my case it was about 3 months before I had really understood how I wanted to structure my profiles and the app installs. GrapheneOS is very clever to let you choose your own balance between no google stuff and the default Android experience. In UI terms, the only big difference is that you use the phone without any Google Play Services or use the GOS Sandboxed GooglePlay (with full control to disable it whenever you wish, or limit it to profiles of your choosing) or have Google Play services enabled in some profiles and not in other profiles. GrapheneOS really is a beautiful thing. My tip would be to buy a cheap second hand Pixel 5, 5a, 6 or 6a and then install GOS and using it just through wifi, work your way through the documentation until you are familiar with how you want to configure GOS to do what you want. Then you are ready to buy a more expensive and supported Pixel device. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 2025030300 Rating: 9 Date: 2025-04-12 Votes: 0 Found the installation instructions easy to follow and everything went off without a hitch. Keeping that in mind I had researched the installation and setup process extensively. Honestly, after about a week I didn't miss any of the google apps at all as my phone isn't used as a device of entertainment. As for apps like amazon, I just use the browser (duck duck go) and clear the cache afterwards then switch to a bare bones user afterwards. This might not be a perfect solution for some people but PRIVACY is the main purpose of GrapheneOS and I believe this provides the level of PRIVACY I am looking for. If you want to take back SOME of your privacy, this is an excellent start just remember there is a difference between privacy and security. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 2025030300 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-04-01 Votes: 0 This OS lets you control what is revealed about you now that every commercial app is trying to farm data from you. The initial install is very pared down but security is why. You can add Google play but apps can be controlled for network access and other items that helps you control your exposure to leaking sensitive data. I like the function without the Google leak and bloat. I highly recommend this mobile OS, please support their efforts. It is a wonderful project to break with corporate controls. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 8 reader reviews of GrapheneOS...