Is Graphene's long term future secure?

xxxborisxxx

I am thinking of switching to Graphene.

I recently came across, "Google says Android Open Source Project not being ‘discontinued’ amidst Pixel change impacting custom ROMs" — https://9to5google.com/2025/06/12/android-open-source-project-pixel-change/

"
This response — from the Android team — does seem to suggest that Pixel device trees will no longer be offered. Moving forward, AOSP wants to offer a “reference target” that is “independent of any particular hardware, including those from Google.”
"

I saw Grpahene devs complain about how Android 16 have become very hard to develop on.

Three questions.

a) Will this move by Google cripple Graphene in the near future?

b) How exactly does this affect Graphene

c) Will the "reference target" be sufficient for Graphene OS to continue providing privacy features and the same standard/quality?

Delaney

xxxborisxxx a) Will this move by Google cripple Graphene in the near future?

No. The worst thing that happened was that the port to android 16 took longer, but that's sorted now.

xxxborisxxx b) How exactly does this affect Graphene

More resources must be put towards major android ports. As I understand, the team is building automation tools to make this much easier and will have relatively minimal impact going forward.

xxxborisxxx c) Will the "reference target" be sufficient for Graphene OS to continue providing privacy features and the same standard/quality?

Yes

other8026

xxxborisxxx Will this move by Google cripple Graphene in the near future?

No. We already have a port to Android 16.

xxxborisxxx How exactly does this affect Graphene

Slightly harder to update device-specific stuff, but the developers are working on making this faster and easier for them.

xxxborisxxx Will the "reference target" be sufficient for Graphene OS to continue providing privacy features and the same standard/quality?

Unsure what this means, but GrapheneOS ported to Android 16, including device-specific stuff (not old code and configs from Android 15) without losing any security or privacy features, so I guess the answer is yes?

avaluedcustomer

See here:

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/21315-explanation-of-recent-changes-to-aosp-and-the-lack-of-major-impact-on-grapheneos

other8026

There are so many threads about this now. Here's one. I'd suggest using the search function to find more.

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24264-google-shutting-out-gos