I’ve written this blog post about moving from rooted Samsung to a Pixel running GrapheneOS. It’s a list of every root tool that I used, with a note on whether I’ll miss it. I wrote it as a checklist for myself initially, and decided to add links and more comments and publish it. Turns out I don’t really need root, which truly surprised me.
Do you have any apps or tools that hold you back from leaving root?
For me the biggest thing is having a full backup. I don’t want app developers to be able to decide if data on my phone gets backed up or not, that is not their decision to make, it’s my phone, goddammit. And I want to back it up to where I want to. Also in a similar vein, having access to all data on my system. In the worst case scenario to troubleshoot things.
Also, there are so many useful tweaks where I just wonder, why the fuck is this not part of Android, or why do I need root to change this? Like being able to rotate my phone 180°. Or having a battery bar instead of a battery icon. Or showing more icons in the notification area. Or not having it close apps after I haven’t used them for a certain amount of time (I left that video open for a fucking reason, maybe because I wanted to finish watching it tomorrow or the day after).
Oh, and an ad blocker that is much better integrated into the system is pretty nice.
GrapheneOS has a full system backup, but I haven’t used it yet.
Having access to all data feels great, but I personally used it only once: to move history and open tabs fom one firefox fork (Mull) to another (IronFox). It came very handy tho.
I completely agree on the system tweaks part.
And for an adblocker, I wonder what do you use? It was a big reason to root for me, but I switched back to RethinkDNS (DNS blocking using the VPN slot) after a while. The reason was that I use pretty aggressive filters, and need to unbreak apps often. With ADAway, I needed to start logging, then do the problematic request again, look in the logs, allow the domain, and then reapply the filters to my system.
For blocking individual apps from accessing the Internet entirely, I couldn’t find a good solution, although I feel like it must be possible with root. GrapheneOS, on the other hand, allows you to toggle the internet permission like any other.
can you expand on the backup and possibly restore that worked for you? no solution I tried on a rooted lineageos worked, tried phone to similar phone and restore to same phone after wipe. tried adb, seedvault, neobackup, a couple others (anything with backup on fdroid) none worked remotely acceptable.
Neo Backup does a fairly good job for me, at least for backing up app data. It has some bugs every now and then, but it gets the job done. What problems did you have?
never once succeeded in any meaningful way that I’m confident I can lose the thing and restore it on another device.
I do a full backup. transfer the backup file to the other phone. initiate restore - errors, incomplete data, apps are never to rarely transferred, a total mess. phones aren’t the same but are similar (SDM845) and the same LOS 22.2 with microG and magisk.