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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 f…
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Investigate this subjectGrapheneOS () 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Source: GrapheneOS (CC BY-SA)
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