An alternative to Android. The GrapheneOS operating system

An alternative to Android

GrapheneOYes is an operating system for mobile devices built from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). According to the developers improvements are made to ensure security and privacy, while maintaining the usability and compatibility of the applications.

The goals of GrapheneOS

According to those responsible:

GrapheneOS focuses on substance rather than branding and marketing. It doesn't take the typical approach of piling on a bunch of insecure features relying on attackers not to know about them and backtracking on actual privacy / security. It is a very technical project that integrates privacy and security into the operating system, rather than including a series of unhelpful frills or subjective options of third-party applications.

In a way, the Achilles stub that some users find in this type of alternative operating systems is that they do not include Google services (Something like missing hamburgers on the menu of a vegan restaurant) Graphene's plan is to find a way to add them together without being part of the operating system or setting up a security risk..

Troubled history

The project started in 2014 with a single developer called Daniel Micay making major contributions to the Android open source base.

At the end of 2015, a company was established that would be in charge of financing the project which was renamed to CopperheadOS. The intention was to build a business around GrapheneOS by selling support, contract labor, and custom proprietary variants of the operating system. The agreement established that GrapheneOS would remain the property of Daniel Micay, but, according to him, the agreement was not fulfilled and the company kept the original project.

In 2018 (always according to the founder of GrapheneOS), the CEO of the former sponsor tried to take over the project through coercion. He also claimed that the company seized the infrastructure by fraudulently claiming ownership and authorship.

After parting ways with the previous sponsor, GrapheneOS now has multiple full-time developers and part-time supported by donations and with multiple companies that collaborate with the project.

An alternative to Android, but not for everyone

The officially supported devices are:

  • Pixel 5a (barbet)
  • Pixel 5 (redfin)
  • Pixel 4a (5G) (Bramble)
  • Pixel 4a (sunfish)
  • Pixel 4 XL (coral)
  • Pixel 4 (flame)
  • Pixel 3a XL (nice)
  • Pixel 3a (bream)

These devices comply with strict privacy and security standards and have significant back-and-forth enhancement specific to each of them.

Security and privacy features

GrapheneOS uses an improved version of the file system-based disk encryption implementation of the Android open source project. Officially supported devices have hardware-based support to enhance the security of encryption implementation. The operating system fully supports hardware-based encryption features, as well as other hardware-based security features.

Disk encryption keys are randomly generated with a high-quality CSPRNG and are stored encrypted with an encryption key. Encryption keys are obtained at run time and are never stored anywhere.

Sensitive data is stored in user profiles. User profiles each have their own unique randomly generated disk encryption key and their own unique encryption key is used to encrypt it. The owner profile is special and is used to store sensitive data for the entire operating system. Therefore, the owner profile must log in after a reboot before other user profiles can be used. The owner profile does not have access to the data of other profiles. File system-based encryption is designed so that files can be deleted without having their data keys and file names, allowing the owner profile to delete other profiles without them being active.


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  1.   March said

    1-add to comment from Telegram

    2- I mean ... What? And the rest of thousands of devices?

    I stayed

    GrapheneOs- / e / -lineageOs

    Anyway, should I change the operating system?
    I do not know, at least on the ubuntu pc it works fine