GrapheneOS () is an open-source mobile operating system focused on security and privacy, available for Google Pixel and future Motorola devices, including smartphones, tablets, and foldables. It is built on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and was first released in 2016.
The project focuses on researching and improving the privacy and security of Android, primarily through defense in depth improvements and attack surface reduction. The hardening includes low-level system components, as well as improvements to application sandboxing and the permission model.
GrapheneOS is free and open-source. The system components are mostly published under permissive licenses, such as the MIT License or Apache License 2.0, with some components using the GNU GPL-2.0 license. GrapheneOS can be installed using a web installer or a traditional command-line-based installation environment. Due to its hardware security requirements, GrapheneOS is only officially supported on Google Pixel devices released between 2021 and 2025, but the project announced in 2026 that it plans to also certify selected devices from Motorola Mobility.
The nonprofit GrapheneOS Foundation was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, by Daniel Micay, Dmytro Mukhomor, and Khalykbek Yelshibekov in March 2023. It received large contributions from donors such as Ethereum developer Vitalik Buterin and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. As of April 2026, the operating system had approximately 400,000 active users.
Contents
History
The main developer, Daniel Micay, co-founded and originally worked on CopperheadOS until a schism over software licensing between the co-founders of Copperhead Limited led to Micay's dismissal from the company in 2018. Micay continued working on the Android Hardening project, which was renamed to GrapheneOS and announced in April 2019 as the "true successor" to CopperheadOS, with the goal of restoring the same functions. The project's website states that CopperheadOS was renamed to GrapheneOS.
In March 2022, two GrapheneOS apps, "Secure Camera" and "Secure PDF Viewer", were released on the Google Play Store, along with Android 12L for Google Pixel devices.
In July 2025, the GrapheneOS Foundation stated it was pursuing a partnership with a "major Android OEM" with the goal of engineering devices with official GrapheneOS support that meet the project's extensive hardware and vendor support requirements.
In March 2026, during Mobile World Congress, an official announcement was made, revealing that the new partner of GrapheneOS is Motorola Mobility.
As of April 2026, GrapheneOS developers reported they had around 400,000 active users. The figure is an inexact estimate based on statistics generated from the access logs of the update servers. This is the only way for the GrapheneOS Foundation to approximate the number of users, since no telemetry mechanism is included in the operating system.
Features
Sandboxed Google Play
By default, Google apps and services are not present on GrapheneOS, but users can install a sandboxed version of Google Play Services from the pre-installed "App Store". The sandboxed Google Play Services implementation allows access to the Google Play Store and apps dependent on it, along with features including push notifications (Firebase Cloud Messaging) and in-app payments.
This differs from other custom Android distributions, such as CalyxOS, iodéOS, or /e/OS, that replace Google Play Services with microG. According to some analysts, the microG implementation is problematic because it can log users out of the Play Store and not allow them to download more apps.
In December 2023, Android Auto support was added to GrapheneOS, allowing users to install it via the App Store. The Sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer settings add a new permission menu with 4 toggles for granting the minimal access required for wired Android Auto, wireless Android Auto, audio routing, and phone calls.
GrapheneOS provides stub implementations for multiple features of Google Play Services, including Wi-Fi positioning, address geocoding, and reverse geocoding. By default, all location requests are rerouted to the regular AOSP geolocation subsystem, which uses Assisted GNSS (A-GNSS) data and performs the location calculations locally. The GrapheneOS Foundation provides proxy servers for both Secure User Plane Location (SUPL) and Predicted Satellite Data Service (PSDS).
GrapheneOS improves the privacy of PSDS on devices using Qualcomm GNSS hardware by removing the User-Agent header containing unique hardware identifiers, such as the serial number of the chip.
The use of the Google Wi-Fi positioning service can optionally be enabled in the settings if Sandboxed Google Play is installed.
Alternatively, the Apple Wi-Fi positioning system can be used, either directly or through a proxy hosted by the GrapheneOS Foundation. The GrapheneOS Foundation also hosts an instance of the Nominatim geocoder, which uses OpenStreetMap data.
Security and privacy features
GrapheneOS introduces revocable network access and sensor permission toggles for each installed app. It also adds a PIN scrambling option for the lock screen as well as a duress PIN/password, which will wipe all data and installed eSIMs on the device when entered on the lock screen instead of a regular PIN/password. The duress wipe is performed instantly and cannot be interrupted.
GrapheneOS randomly generates a new MAC address every time a Wi-Fi connection is established, instead of the default Android behavior of randomizing the address per Wi-Fi network.
GrapheneOS includes a feature that automatically initiates a reboot of the device when at rest for a set time period in order to revert from the after first unlock (AFU) state to before first unlock (BFU), wiping the cryptographic keys used for disk encryption from RAM. It aims to make brute-force attacks significantly more difficult by enforcing the throttling of unlock attempts through the secure element. The automatic reboot feature is enabled by default and configured to activate after 18 hours. The time period can be set to values between 10 minutes and 72 hours in the settings. iOS 18 implemented a similar feature called Inactivity Reboot with a fixed time of 7 days. The time period was shortened to 72 hours in version 18.1.
It also includes automatic Wi-Fi and Bluetooth disabling, along with software and hardware-level disabling of the USB-C port and pogo pins (as found on the Pixel Tablet). The USB interfaces can be operated in 5 modes, which can be configured in the settings:
Off (disables charging to prevent the exploitation of possible USB-PD vulnerabilities; charging is still possible when the device is powered off)
Charging-only (disables all data connectivity)
Charging-only when locked
Charging-only when locked, except before first unlock
On (standard Android behavior)
Hardware compatibility
GrapheneOS maintains an extensive list of hardware and OEM support requirements.
These include bootloader requirements, such as Android Verified Boot with rollback protection, the ability to unlock the bootloader, and relock it with a custom signing key.
A high-quality secure element is required in order to facilitate full disk encryption and storage of sensitive cryptographic secrets. The secure element must provide support for the Android StrongBox key storage mechanism, Weaver API, which handles the throttling of unlock attempts, insider attack resistance, i.e., requiring authentication before firmware updates can be applied to the secure element, and hardware-based key attestation (for example used by the built-in Auditor app).
The USB controller must be configurable by the operating system via device drivers and must allow completely disabling USB at a hardware level in order to minimize the attack surface.
The wireless hardware must fully support Wi-Fi anonymity, including MAC address and probe sequence number randomization, and shall not leak unique identifiers in other ways.
JTAG or other debugging interfaces must be disabled when the device is locked to further reduce the attack surface.
GrapheneOS mandates a minimum OEM support period of 5 years for smartphones and 7 years for tablets. This includes regular updates to firmware, drivers, hardware abstraction layers, and other device-specific code without delays longer than a week.
As of March 2026, GrapheneOS is only officially compatible with Google Pixel devices released between 2021 and 2025, including the Pixel 6 through the Pixel 10, Pixel Fold, Pixel Tablet, and "a" models, due to the specific requirements listed above. In October 2025, GrapheneOS said that it was working with a "major" Android OEM on future devices that would support the OS on Qualcomm Snapdragon platforms,
Installation
The operating system can be installed from various platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android devices. Two installation methods are available: a web-based installer, recommended for most users, and a command-line-based installer, intended for more experienced users.
The web installer makes use of the WebUSB API and is based on the fastboot.js library, a JavaScript implementation of the Fastboot utility developed by Danny Lin. It was inspired by Google's Android Flash Tool, which uses the same API for performing the installation in the browser. It is currently only supported in Chromium-based web browsers. Unlike the command-line installation script, it does not require the installation of any additional software.
Recommended post-installation steps include disabling OEM unlocking, which the setup wizard offers as a pre-checked toggle on its final screen, as well as verifying the Verified Boot hash of the installed OS image. The installation can additionally be verified using the Auditor app, either with the help of a second device or by using remote attestation.
Jack Wallen of ZDNET described the installation process as follows: "It sounds difficult, but it's really not", and that it took him roughly ten minutes to complete the installation.
Reception
In 2019, Georg Pichler of Der Standard, and other news sources, quoted Edward Snowden saying on Twitter, "If I were configuring a smartphone today, I'd use Daniel Micay's GrapheneOS as the base operating system."
In discussing why services should not force users to install proprietary apps, Lennart Mühlenmeier of netzpolitik.org suggested GrapheneOS as an alternative to Apple or Google.
Svět Mobilně and Webtekno repeated the suggestions that GrapheneOS is a good security- and privacy-oriented replacement for standard Android.
In a detailed review of GrapheneOS for Golem.de, Moritz Tremmel and Sebastian Grüner said they were able to use GrapheneOS similarly to other Android systems, while enjoying more freedom from Google, without noticing differences from "additional memory protection, but that's the way it should be." They concluded GrapheneOS cannot change how "Android devices become garbage after three years at the latest", but "it can better secure the devices during their remaining life while protecting privacy."
Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Bluesky, promoted GrapheneOS in January 2021. According to the GrapheneOS Foundation, he later donated US$1,000,000 to the project as part of his StartSmall initiative.
In June 2021, reviews of GrapheneOS, KaiOS, AliOS, and Tizen OS were published in Cellular News. The review of GrapheneOS called it "arguably the best mobile operating system in terms of privacy and security." However, they criticized GrapheneOS for its inconvenience to users, saying "GrapheneOS is completely de-Googled and will stay that way forever—at least according to the developers." They also noticed a "slight performance decrease" and said, "it might take two full seconds for an app—even if it's just the Settings app—to fully load."
In March 2022, writing for How-To Geek, Joe Fedewa said that Google apps were not included due to concerns over privacy, and GrapheneOS also did not include a default app store. Instead, Fedewa suggested, F-Droid could be used.