Description

LineageOS is the community continuation of CyanogenMod: a free and open-source Android distribution that keeps older phones alive and hands customisation back to the user. It runs on hundreds of device models from more than 20 manufacturers — including plenty that their vendors stopped updating years ago — and delivers a clean Android experience without the manufacturer’s skin, bundled apps or nagware. Monthly security updates go out to every device still on a maintained branch.

Key Features

• Very broad device support — current branches (22.2, 23.2 and 24.0) cover roughly five hundred device builds from more than 20 manufacturers, from Pixels and OnePlus to Samsung, Motorola, Xiaomi and Sony.
• Monthly security patches — the security patch level is brought forward for supported devices every month rather than when a vendor feels like it.
• Trust — a built-in dashboard that reports the state of your device’s security and warns about threats.
• Deep customisation — themes, icon shapes, status bar layout, button remapping, gestures and per-app notification control, all without root.
• No Google services by default — the ROM ships clean; add Google apps, microG or nothing at all, depending on what you want.
• No vendor bloat — installing it removes the manufacturer’s preinstalled apps and the tracking that comes with them.
• Tools for power users — Unix command-line utilities, and debugging and development tooling that turns a phone into a development target.
• Open development — community-maintained, with source and build recipes published for every supported device.

Why Use LineageOS?

Longevity is the real argument. A phone that stopped getting security updates can usually keep going for years on LineageOS, which is both cheaper and less wasteful than replacing it. It is also the cleanest Android you can put on a device with a heavy vendor skin: no duplicate apps, no uninstallable bloat, and customisation the stock ROM never exposed.

Use Cases

• Bringing an out-of-support phone back to a current security patch level
• Removing manufacturer bloat and tracking from a daily driver
• Customising the interface far beyond what stock Android allows
• A clean Android base for development, testing and app work
• Second-life devices for family members, media players or test handsets

Supported devices

Android phones and tablets from more than 20 manufacturers. Coverage is per device: some are officially maintained builds, others are community or unofficial ports, and older devices sit on older branches.

Related

Compare with GrapheneOS, CalyxOS and /e/OS.

Licence

Apache-2.0, on an Android Open Source Project base.