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?
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.
Does GrapheneOS actually backup all app data? My understanding was that Graphene uses seedvault, which is subject to the same limitations (i.e. a developer can prevent backups of app data).
I personally use adaway. I used to have a VPN slot ad blocker before, but it kept getting killed, and I just generally notice it much more. With Adaway, no VPN slot is used, and I don’t even notice it’s there. I could deal with the VPN slot ad blocker in the worst case scenario, but it just makes things easier for me.
For blocking internet access, I’m pretty sure there’s a an xposed module for that.
Mind you, there’s one glaring problem for me with graphene: it isn’t available for my phone, and apart from the usual android nonsense, I quite like it and don’t want to give it up.