Please excuse any grammatical errors. I used a tool to generate the transcript and haven’t had a chance to read through it yet. So today I’ll be covering how to install stock Android OS on a Google Pixel currently running GrapheneOS. This process should still work if you’re running a different operating system than GrapheneOS looking to install the stock OS on your device, but for the purpose of this demo, it’ll be a Google Pixel 7 running GrapheneOS. So to get started, we’re going to head on over to grapheneos.org. Select install GrapheneOS. Select web USB-based installer. Scroll down in the table of contents to replacing GrapheneOS with the stock OS. This is the one part that’s specific to GrapheneOS, and that is GrapheneOS factory images. Flash a non-stock Android verified boot key, which needs to be erased to fully revert back to the stock device state. Before flashing the stock factory images, you should boot the device into fast boot mode and make sure the boot loader is unlocked. Then erase the custom Android verified boot key to untrust it. And then regardless of which OS you’re using, we’ll be using the Google web flashing tool. So we’ll get to that shortly. But the first step in this process is to enable OEM unlocking and USB debugging. So to do that, swipe up on your device, go to settings, scroll down to about phone, tap on that, scroll down to the bottom, tap on build number, I think four or five times. You’ll be prompted for your PIN code. Enter that. We can now swipe back. Go to system right above about phone. You should now see developer options. Tap on that. We’re going to scroll down. The first one is OEM unlocking. Toggle that on. Enter your device PIN again. Allow OEM unlocking. Enable. Scroll down some more till you get to USB debugging. Enable that. Allow USB debugging. Okay. So now the next step is to boot into fast boot mode and make sure the boot loader is unlocked. So for that, we need to connect a USB cable to our device. This USB cable should be plugged into whatever device you’re using to perform the installation. I’m using my laptop with Brave Browser. Now that we have that plugged in, we need to boot into fast boot mode. And to do that, we’re going to press the power button. And as soon as we press restart, hold the volume down button down. So, press restart, hold volume down while it’s rebooting. If that worked correctly, you should be presented with the fast boot mode. And if we look here, we see device state locked, but it is unlockable since OEM unlocking is enabled. And on the GrapheneOS page, we’re going to scroll up to unlock bootloader. It should be the first step at the top. Press unlock bootloader. Your screen should change to this if everything’s working successfully. But before we unlock the bootloader, I do want to say this process will erase all data on your device. So if there’s something you want to save, stop now. Transfer that data off. Otherwise, it’ll be gone, and you cannot recover it. So now on this screen, we have do not unlock the bootloader. To change that, press the volume up or down. And when it says unlock the bootloader, press the power button to execute it. And if that was successful, you should see device state unlocked. Now at this point, we can proceed with the GrapheneOS-specific step, which again, scroll back down to the bottom, press the remove non-stock key. Key erased. We are good to proceed. Once that’s completed, you can then right-click on the Google web flashing tool, open link in new tab. Let’s go to the new tab. You can click get started. You’ll see a popup like this. Grant access to ADB keys. Allow ADB access. Press the button. Now at this point, if everything was successful, you should see one available device that you can select. So click on that now because we used the GrapheneOS page to remove the stock key. You might see an error like this: connection error. Just try reconnecting your device cable and plug it back in again. So once I did that, I now see that my device is available to connect to. It says connected slow because I’m using a crappy cable, but that doesn’t make a difference. It just makes the process take longer. So once you see this, you can then go ahead and select your device. We’re going back to default. Once you do that, press the install build button again. Here’s another warning. Factory reset will result in all data on the Android device being erased. It’s already erased because we unlocked the bootloader. Do not unplug your device. Do not interact with your device unless instructed. Once you give that a quick read, select continue or confirm. You must agree to the license. I accept. Preparing your device in progress. Now, this step will take different amounts of time depending on your internet connection. So, I’m going to give this a minute to download, and I’ll be back in a moment. So this is about done. So we should see our device flash in a moment once this finishes. Now that that has finished, the next step is to lock the device. Your bootloader must be locked to complete the process. So select start. And now on our phone, we see do not lock the bootloader. We want to lock the bootloader. So, press volume up or volume down. Lock the bootloader. Press the power button to execute that. Once that finishes, we saw device state locked. Your device will now reboot. You can press done on the page. We are finished here. Give our device a minute to start up. So, at this point, we are back on stock Android OS. The device is ready to be sold, traded in, use it, whatever. The web user interface makes the process pretty straightforward, but if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave those down below, and I’ll see you next time.📝 Transcript
Transcript
Please excuse any grammatical errors. I used a tool to generate the transcript and haven’t had a chance to read through it yet. ✔️
I am upgrading to the Pixel 7 and after nearly two years of using Graphene OS, I have decided to leave the stock Android OS installed on it. Let me be clear, I did not want to do this, but I figured in order to offer a fair comparison between stock Android OS and Graphene OS, I should probably test out the stock OS and see how it is. My first impression with stock Android OS is that it has a very friendly setup. It wants you to log into your accounts to sync your settings and it comes with a ton of popular apps installed, as well as the Google Play Store, installed by default. I am speaking objectively for someone new to the OS, not from a privacy or security perspective. The whole initial experience was very welcoming. To keep things equal in my testing, I am going to be using the Play Store on both OS’s by signing in so I can download apps. I also wanted to try and embrace the stock Android OS as much as possible to see if there were any features I might miss.
I am a simple person and my phone habits stick to that theme, so it’s likely I missed a bunch of features that these OS’s offer. With my time on stock Android OS, there are a few major things I noticed. The OS wants you to sign in a lot, which I guess is no surprise. You are always reminded to log in, sync, and use your Google account. I did my best to avoid this, even though I signed into the Google Play Store. I didn’t want to sync any of my phone data with my Google account. As far as navigation goes, I noticed that Google Maps is very helpful for traffic. As someone who lives in a busy city that I think has some of the worst drivers in the United States, Google Maps saved me time at least on three different occasions by helping me take a different route instead of the one that had multiple traffic accidents during rush hour. Now the biggest difference I noticed right off the bat, which I was not expecting, was Google Keyboard, otherwise known as Gboard. It makes the initial feeling of stock Android OS very fluid and cohesive. My typing felt more accurate while using it and I’ve heard people in the past suggest using a different keyboard from the stock one that comes with Graphene OS. Now, I can see why they suggested it. It really makes a big difference. The phone and clock apps on stock Android OS are very well designed as compared to the AOSP versions used on Graphene OS. While I didn’t use any of the extra features offered by the phone or clock app on stock Android OS, aesthetically, they are very nice looking.
In terms of functionality, the way I use them, there was no difference. There are two features on stock Android OS that are not available on Graphene OS. The first is Android Auto. The reason for that is that it requires system-level integration, and that is not something the project is willing to support, which I completely understand. The second feature that I found, which I really liked, is the now playing feature. Now playing listens to background audio in your environment and will show you the song that is now playing on the lock screen, if it can identify them. It does sound a little bit counter-intuitive from a privacy perspective, but I liked it. Now playing doesn’t send audio or background conversations to Google, according to their documentation, and all processing takes place locally on your device. I can already hear the people typing ’lies, Google’s collecting my audio and listening to my conversations.’ I’m going based off of the information available and documentation, not speculation. So with all that said, at the end of the day, I still did not like being on the stock OS. You are reminded that Google is there for your convenience, ready to save your passwords, collecting telemetry in the background, and the inability to uninstall a lot of the bundled apps. All you can do is disable them. There’s just something uncomfortable about knowing that Google services have system-level integration, and therefore do not follow the regular permission controls available for sandboxed apps. So after almost two weeks, I went and installed Graphene OS on my Pixel 7.
The first things I did to make it a fair comparison were to install sandboxed Google Play services, all of my apps, I installed the Google keyboard, and I set the same wallpaper. I was happy to be back. No annoying prompts to sign in, and I felt like my privacy was back under my control pretty quickly. I noticed some of the visible features that I missed that Graphene OS offers. Those features were the network permission, when you install an app, the sensor’s permission, and storage scopes. Stock Android OS does not have these features. If you want to learn more about those, I’ll link my video covering those down below, but overall, with the Play Store, Gboard, and a wallpaper set, the experience felt very familiar to stock Android OS. I honestly thought there would be a jarring difference when I switched back, but there wasn’t. A popular question I see is, ‘Am I getting any benefit to using Graphene OS with sandboxed Play Services installed?’ And the answer is yes. On Graphene OS, they are installed as sandboxed apps, like any other app you install. They have no access beyond what other apps can access, and you can set the permissions on the apps installed. This implementation provides a great balance of usability and privacy. Now, this was an oversimplified explanation. The official documentation goes over this in great detail and explains it very well. I’ll link that down below, and I do suggest you give it a read if you plan on using them or want to learn more. So, at the time of this recording, I’ve been using Graphene OS on my Pixel 7 for nearly two weeks, and I haven’t noticed any issues or bugs for my specific use cases. As far as battery life goes, I haven’t noticed much of a difference between the two OS’s. I feel that they are similar for the setup that I’m using, but I haven’t done any official tests for battery life. Now, the setup in this video isn’t how I’m going to leave my Pixel 7. I’ll be covering a new setup that I’m going to try in a future video, but if you have any hesitations about moving from stock Android OS to graphene Os from my basic phone usage habits with sandbox to play services installed I don’t think you’ll have much of an issue.
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