Graphene OS boot animation

Wonderer

Hi, can someone please show me where or how to change the boot animation

MetropleX

Wonderer are you looking to build your own GrapheneOS with this change you want to make or are you just looking to swap the file in system with a custom one?

If the former let me know and I will let you know, if the latter and you want to be able to use a File Manager to do the swap for the bootanimation.zip then this will not be possible as it requires root access.

Wonderer

MetropleX hi metroplex, i just want to have a watchdogs custom animation played when it starts. I haven't been involved in custom ROMS for a long time but have beginners level knowledge. Apologies if i come across a bit nooby

Wonderer

I have done some research on it and people are saying it has changed with android 13 and its not like the old days where you could swap bootanimation.zip. anything done these days needs resigning with custom keys

Wonderer

But heres the weird thing. How come vendors like xiamoi offer it in their miui and Oxygen os too.. it comes as stock customisable feature

jarell

Wonderer GrapheneOS is built on AOSP. Most of GrapheneOS' features are therefore from AOSP with added privacy/security related features along with some bug fixes not present upstream.

The operating systems from Xiaomi and OnePlus are also based on AOSP but with their own added proprietary features. The option to select a custom boot animation in settings is not an AOSP feature.

This feature could of course be added into GrapheneOS but seeing how it's not security or privacy related it seems unlikely to be implemented unless it's included into AOSP first.

Wonderer

Any chance i can add this in to my own build?

Wonderer

Ideally i would like to have my own bootanimation with verified boot and locked bootloader

MetropleX

Wonderer to build GrapheneOS the instructions can be found here:
https://grapheneos.org/build

Follow the guidelines for your bootanimation here:
https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/master/cmds/bootanimation/FORMAT.md

You'll be responsible for updating your own device going forward too.

In all honesty I can tell you now that going to all this effort for a Watchdogs bootanimation is not worth it and would advise against it especially with only a beginners level knowledge. This is not a simple process.

Xiaomi and OnePlus might throw this feature in but they go months without updating their OSes with the latest security patches. This sort of adhoc customisation is antithetical to the project and you must understand that GrapheneOS is not a hobbyist cherry picking style project being run from the well known 3 letter forum.

By all means have a device you can tinker with such things and learn with but your day to day device if using a fully production grade OS like GrapheneOS should be left as is as far as the System is concerned and you can benefit from the prompt and regular updates/upgrades/security patches.

TallyHo

MetropleX if I build GrapheneOS from source can I still allow system update to do updates?

I expect that changing the bootanimation will not create a risk of having the system break after subsequent updates. Even if the bootanimation code gets updated the worst that would happen is that the animation would be replaced.

For some of us who are developers there are reasons why we might want to do our own builds and perhaps make some carefully considered mods. If doing our own builds knocks us out of the security model (including auto update) then that's a problem.

unwat

TallyHo if I build GrapheneOS from source can I still allow system update to do updates?

No. You will use your own keys when building GrapheneOS. Since your keys don't match the official keys, your phone won't accept updates from their server.

Like this section of the Android website says you can only sideload or install ota updates after the phone verifies the signatures match:

Sideloading does not bypass recovery's normal package signature verification mechanism—before installing a package, recovery will verify that it is signed with one of the private keys matching the public keys stored in the recovery partition, just as it would for a package delivered over-the-air.

daijizai

Yeah... Far be it from me to tell you what to do with your own device, but there will be a very hefty and regular burden to sync updates and rebuild the OS. As I understand it building GrapheneOS requires hundreds of GB of space for intermediary files and likely takes hours. It is up to you to determine if, at your current skill level, the time and hardware commitment is worth it for a Watchdogs boot animation... I will say that if you go this route and learn the required skills to successfully build and manage your own fork of GOS for a boot animation than in my mind you will have earned the right to use the Watchdogs boot animation and all it implies.

[deleted]

I've always thought that the 6-sided carbon ring would look very cool rotating around its center during boot. It would probably only need two positions in between the existing spokes to create a relatively smooth rotation effect. But that's just me.

Murcielago

[deleted]

Something like that?

[deleted]

Murcielago

Yes, although with the whole ring and spokes visible during the spin-up, not just the dots. Then the GrapheneOS text appears at the end.