Alternatives for apps requiring root plus other features.

Standardwaste

I only have experience relating to your last 3 questions:

For theming/Amoled themed apps, every app I am currently using supports a Amoled/black theme. This includes Bitwarden, the proton suite, Molly-Foss, Neo Store, Aurora Store, QKsms.

Gesture based navigation is a option, no need to root to remove navigation bar.

GrapheneOS includes enhanced permission toggles for apps, including 3 settings under battery: Unrestricted, Optimized, Restricted. I keep the majority of installed apps restricted to conserve battery. I am coming from Ios, and find battery life much better than Iphone 12PM.

Fireeyeeian

Standardwaste thank you for the reply.
I'll need to look into the gesture features thanks for this.

Orphee

All my phones were rooted until now.
I bought a Pixel 6a to give a chance to grapheneos.
You can root it, even if not recommended. I did it for test (I tried to pass safetynet but did not work).
I'm now back on stock grapheneos non-rooted ROM.
I give it a chance.
Regarding AdAway, I enabled Private DNS in network settings: adblock.doh.mullvad.net
It seems to work.
Sadly you can forget call recording currently.
Tasker or Automate should still work without need of root.
A cool feature of grapheneos is the ability to block network access to any apps, no need to have afwall firewall (root).

So for my need, private DNS and network restrictions address 80% of the job.
I still miss call recording and Google pay/wallet.

Fireeyeeian

Orphee thank you for this.
So what's the situation regarding call recording?
I'm really happy that Graphene has an afwall feature built in and probably implemented better too.
Sounds like the DNS option will work and I like mullvad so it sounds promising I'll need to test the DNS on my current daily driver to see how it compares to my AdAway setup.

Orphee

Fireeyeeian Without root/LSPosed, I don't think there is an option for call recording.
It is up to you to consider root or not. , but it is quite standard as long as you know how to retreive boot.img and patch it with magisk, and play with fastboot.
I did not try any magisk or lsposed modules for call recording on GOS so I can't confirm it will work, or not.
I only tried to make safetynet work with magisk module 2.3.1-mod but it failed, probably because of "sandboxed" Google play services.

Fireeyeeian

Orphee Currently I have a magisk module that enables call recording. I was actually under the impression that you couldn't root GrapheneOS but I guess I was mistaken.

italian_job

there is an app Call Recorder in f-droid

Orphee

italian_job

From app description :

MOST PHONES DOES NOT SUPPORT CALL RECORDING. Blame Google or your phone
manufacturer not me!

If it fails with high quality sound recording (voice line) this app will switch
back to the MIC recording, no ads, open-source, GPLv3.

Edit : As expected, does not work.

Orphee

Fireeyeeian
Yes you are, it is just not recommended so not discussed here.
But perfectly doable the same way you would do it on a Samsung but with fastboot.

MetropleX

For call recording Josh/Side of Burritos has this installed, can't recommend or support as havent personally used it but something to look into:

https://cubeacr.app/

Fireeyeeian

MetropleX I think I got that one for my mother a while back I'll have to have a look at it. I currently use a magisk module to just unlock it in my default dialer app. Thanks for the lead.