Welcome back to our latest update! We are excited to announce the release of our February 2023 update and share the changes and improvements we've been working on this past month. Our team has been hard at work, merging the latest February security patch along with some other under-the-hood changes that have been made.

The first change is the addition of an option to switch to an Immersive Navigation system, which brings a highly requested feature of hiding the space under the keyboard. Another much-requested feature that was missed after the QPR1 rebase was added: the ability to skip tracks with a long press of the volume button.

Moving on to the lockscreen, many enhancements have been made. The power menu can now be hidden when enabling the secure lockscreen feature. Another addition is the requirement of a password or biometric authentication to access sensitive Quick Settings tiles such as Wi-Fi and Airplane mode. Bottom keyguard shortcuts can now be picked, including a new addition of flashlight and camera shortcuts. A toggle to disable the screenshot shutter sound has also been added.

On the technical side, significant changes have been made to GMS and how we spoof devices. PropImitationHooks is now used to avoid spoofing all apps to Pixel devices, which was prone to causing issues. Instead, only the required Google apps are now spoofed to provide Pixel-exclusive features like the Google Photos and Google Search apps. GMS components are now updated from the Pixel 5 instead of the Pixel 7 Pro to avoid issues with the Pixel Launcher/ASI, and a fix to pass CTS/Play Integrity test again has been included (thanks to Dyneteve).

Lastly, we have switched to a new Network Traffic implementation, which offers more customization and fixes an issue faced by some people where the 4G+ indicator would cut out.

In summary, the February 2023 Update PixelOS includes the following updates:

• The February patch has been merged
• Switch to PropImitationHooks
• Updated GMS components from the Pixel 5 (redfin)
• CTS/Play Integrity pass again
• Switched NetworkTraffic implementation
• Switch to Immersive Navigation
• Added Volume Long Press Skip Tracks
• Allow hiding power menu on secure lockscreen
• Require unlocking to use sensitive QS tiles
• Allow disabling screenshot shutter sound
• Introduce camera & flashlight keyguard affordance
• Allow setting bottom keyguard shortcuts

We hope these changes and improvements enhance your experience with PixelOS. Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to hearing your feedback on the new update.

Welcome back after quite a long absence, the team has been extremely busy with their personal lives because of exams, scheduling, and other personal matters, but we’ve been working hard behind the scenes and are happy to say we’ve made a lot of changes and added a lot more functionality to PixelOS (some has been long requested).

The first major change isn’t apparent visually, but we’ve rebased every repository we have and have switched to tracking most repositories from LineageOS. Speaking of things being rebased, we’re happy to let you know that Android 13 QPR1 has been fully merged, which brings a lot of improvements and fixes to AOSP.

Something else to thank LineageOS for, we’ve also switched to their excellent Aperture as the default camera app (unless the maintainer chooses to include another default camera app).

The GMS components have been updated using the latest versions from the Pixel 7 Pro (cheetah) and include Henrique Silva’s fix for the Pixel Launcher issues plaguing devices after the November patch.

This release also includes an improved implementation of Smooth Display for devices with higher refresh rate screens, which should help improve refresh rate switching for a smoother experience and better battery life.

Now that we’re done with the under-the-hood changes, let’s move on to the fun stuff.

Next comes some features people have been asking about for a while, and we’re glad to let you know that we’ve included the option to display network usage stats in the quick settings, thanks to ghostrider-reborn. You can also now monitor your upload and download speeds with the new real-time network speed indicator available in the status bar.

Speaking of which, we brought back a much-requested feature from our 12L release, the network permission, to control which apps get access to your Wi-Fi and cellular data and which don’t.

Some additions to the quick settings tiles have been made also, with a new hotspot toggle in the Internet menu for quick access to turning your hotspot on and off. We’ve also made the Bluetooth menu something optional and restored the original Bluetooth tile for those who prefer a quick tap to turn it on and off.

The Settings menus have had some changes to tidy things up as well, reorganising the Sound settings menu to make things a little easier to find and navigate in a way that’s more intuitive.

A pitch-black dark mode is something a lot of people really enjoy having, especially on devices with OLED displays. We’ve implemented idoybh’s improvements to the pitch-black theme so it should be working better at applying around the UI

A lot of people seemed to prefer the expandable volume menu accessible from the volume slider and missed it from PixelOS 12/12.1, some good news is that we’ve brought it back.

One new addition is an ADB root toggle in the developer options, this means you can use a built-in root alternative to Magisk that can be easily enabled and disabled at will without having to patch and flash your kernel.

Auto rotate has now become more granular as well, with configurable rotation angles available so you can choose from 360 rotation or can set it to only rotate to certain angles.

In summary, the January 2023 Update PixelOS includes the following changes and updates:

• Network speed indicator for monitoring internet connection
• Organized sound settings
• Improved smooth display implementation for devices with higher refresh rates
• Updated GMS components from the latest Pixel release
• Improved black (dark) mode
• BT dialog tile is now optional, with both custom and stock options available
• Expanded volume dialog implementation
• Hotspot toggle in quick settings internet tile

We are thrilled to announce the release of our January 2023 Update. With a host of new features, optimizations and improvements, we believe that this update will enhance the overall user experience for our PixelOS users. Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to hearing your feedback on the new update.

Update: 29 January 2023​

We have a small hotfix update. The changes include:

• The hotspot option has been removed from the internet dialog tile.
• One-shot auto brightness has been added
• Fixed an issue where dark mode conflicts with "hide pill"

Builds released after January 27 2023 will have these fixes included.

Merry Christmas! The holiday season is upon us, our hearts are thriving with excitement. The twinkling lights, and the jingling bells. The warm gatherings with loved ones! All these together contribute to the magic of Christmas.

Banner by: Danyscape (Github | Telegram)

This year has been a rollercoaster, with many ups and downs, but Christmas is a time to forget those hard turns and congregate to find joy in the little things. Whether it's spending time with family, exchanging gifts, or simply enjoying the holiday spirit, there are so many ways to celebrate the season.

May your Christmas be filled with love, laughter, and all the things that bring you happiness. May it be a time of reflection, gratitude, and hope for a bright future.

The year 2022​

As the year 2022 comes to a close, we at PixelOS would like to reflect on the past year and share some updates with our community.

In 2022, PixelOS underwent a significant transformation, evolving from a small project with limited scope and structure to a more expansive and well-organized endeavour. While the name remained the same, virtually everything else changed, including the team members, the addition of a website, automation processes, and blog pages. It was a year of growth and development for PixelOS, and we are proud of the progress we have made.

We are thrilled to report that PixelOS has seen tremendous growth in downloads and website traffic this year compared to previous years. We have had about 400,000 downloads this year (we started to properly count downloads during the tail end of the year, actual figure must have been higher), and our website has seen almost 15,000 weekly visits (not including traffic to our blog page)

We are also proud to announce that PixelOS is now actively supporting 27 devices across 6 different brands, including Asus, Micromax, Motorola, OnePlus, Realme, and Xiaomi. We are grateful to be able to work on such a wide range of devices.

Finally, we want to give a special shoutout to our growing Telegram community, which is now over 5.4k members strong. Your support and engagement have been integral to our success, and we are grateful for your ongoing involvement in the PixelOS community.

Overall, 2022 has been a fantastic year for PixelOS, and we are excited to see what the future holds. While we are proud of our accomplishments, we also recognize that there is always room for improvement and growth.

We want to take this opportunity to thank all of our users, supporters, and community members for your continued loyalty and engagement. We couldn't have made it this far without you, and we look forward to continuing this growth in 2023.

What about the December 2022 update?​

Unfortunately, our planned updates have been delayed. We understand that you may be looking forward to these updates, and we appreciate your patience as we resolve any issues and get everything back on track. Be sure to keep an eye on our update channel for updates on the status of our releases. We can't wait to share what we've been working on with you.

We wish you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year! See you in 2023, with a new update of PixelOS!

Time flies by and before we know, it has become another month! Here we are, with November Update of PixelOS

What's new?​

Merged android_13.0.0_r14 | November Security Patch​

Face Unlock​

One-Shot Auto Brightness​

Choose not to lower refresh rate while using battery saver mode​

Haptic on back gesture​

Smart Pause​

Black Background Mode​

Invert Navigation Bar Layout​

Bluetooth Dialog​

More status bar icons​

Added Wi-Fi standard icon in statusbar

Full Changelog​

• Merged android_13.0.0_r14
• Use Google Sans systemwide
• Added bluetooth dialog
• Added face unlock
• Added optional haptic on back gesture
• Added one shot auto brightness
• Allow disabling refresh rate lowering in battery saver
• Add button to upload crash log to memocho
• Added Smart Pause feature
• Added navbar inversion turning
• Added optional Wi-Fi standard icons
• Fully switched to Pixel sounds
• Added black mode
• Moved dev refresh rate controls under display settings
• Organized sound settings
• Fixed call vibration settings not showing up on some devices
• UI/UX optimizations and Privacy improvements
• Minor UI/UX changes
• Updated translations

Errors..issues..fixes..more errors..more and more isssues..testing.. The last few weeks have been a very challenging experience for the PixelOS team. I'm sure some of you have noticed our CI channel with lots (and lots and lots) of builds going through it. Things have been taking longer than expected and a lot of testing needed to be done, but we have some good news.

The "Stable" Release​

Anyways, a couple of weeks of "Soon" later, we are finally ready to present the October update of PixelOS [Patch level 2022-10-05]. With this, PixelOS Android 13 is officially leaving the beta stage. We needed that extra time to work on fixing bugs and implementing features until we felt confident we could change the "Beta" to "Stable".

About Phone: October Security Patch

Let's talk features​

System-wide Google Sans Font​

Smartspace on lock screen​

Optional separate Quick Settings tiles for Wi-Fi and Mobile data​

Unlimited Google Photos Backup​

In-call vibration customizations​

First-class implementation of Repainter app to allow for rootless theming​

Optional Unlink Ring and Notification Volume​

Allow removing the screenshot and screen recording limits for all applications​

excluding DRM content

Double-tap to wake and to sleep on statusbar​

Additional gesture control options​

Full Feature List​

General Enhancements:​

• Performance improvements from ProtonAOSP
• Reduced log spam verbosity
• Under the hood optimizations
• Optimized UI responsiveness
• Flattened apexes for faster access

Pixel Goodies:​

• System-wide Google Sans font integration
• Spoofed Google Photos as Pixel 1XL for unlimited Photos backup in original quality
• Pixel spoofing for various pixel exclusives
• Smartspace on lockscreen (weather)

UX Improvements:​

• Material You boot animation
• Material You colors on fingerprint authentication ripple animation
• Bluetooth battery icon in status bar
• Material style 4G/LTE icons
• Themed icons for a lot of 3rd party apps
• Extended Material You theming to more UI elements
• Add/remove Quick Settings tiles with one click
• More font size options in 5% steps from 80% to 130%

Additional features:​

• Various additional Quick Settings tiles:
  • Caffeine
  • Heads up
  • Sync
  • Adaptive Brightness
  • Ambient display
  • Always on display
  • USB tether
  • Live display
  • Data Switch
• Optional separate Quick Settings tiles for WiFi and Mobile data
• Optional Quick unlock
• Pin Scramble layout
• Allow removing the screenshots and screenrecords limits for all applications (excluding DRM content)
• Allow disabling combined signal icon
• Status bar icon manager
• Allow hiding gesture navigation bar
• Allow toggling screen off FoD for supported devices
• Unlinked ring and media notification volumes
• In-call vibration customizations
• Optional inverted layout for 3-button navigation
• Three-fingers-swipe to screenshot
• Double-tap/long-press power button to toggle torch
• Double-tap to sleep on lockscreen
• Double-tap to sleep on statusbar
• Double tap to trigger doze
• Volume button long-press media controls
• Allow disabling screenshot shutter sound
• First-class implementation of Repainter app to allow for rootless theming

Release schedule​

At last, for those who ask "wen updoot sar?????", it will roll out within the next few days depending on the maintainers for each device. We hope to have the update rolled out to all supported devices before the month ends.

After our recent announcement of Android 13 builds of PixelOS coming to devices very soon, we'd like to give a quick rundown of the changes for these builds.

The first and biggest change is our rebase to AOSP, meaning our team has built the ROM from the ground up to be as optimised as possible at every step and allows us to release builds faster each month as we only need to wait for the security patch from Google.

In addition to the features normally present in stock AOSP, we've brought back the following:

Pixel Features​

• Smartspace (At-a-Glance and weather on the lock screen)
• Unlimited original quality Google Photos backups
• Google fonts
• Pixel boot animation
• Pixel battery graph

PixelOS Features​

• 3-Finger Swipe to screenshot
• Double-tap to sleep on lock screen
• Bluetooth device battery indicator on status bar
• Delete screenshot button in bottom chip
• Single tap to add quick settings tiles
• Advanced reboot
• Navigation bar layout inversion
• The following additional quick settings tiles; Caffeine, Data switch, USB tethering, Auto-brightness toggle, Heads-up notifications toggle
• Icon manager for statusbar
• Applied Material You colouring to more system elements
• Fine tuned status bar padding
• Tweaked friction levels for improved scrolling
• Reduced log verbosity
• Remove system recording audio limits
• 2-button navbar option
• Performance improvements from ProtonAOSP
• Sensitive quick settings tiles require unlocking the phone
• Backup tools (Magisk doesn't have to be flashed again after every update)
• Refresh rate settings under display options (on supported devices)
• Font size in finer 5% increments with more scale options from 80% to 130%
• Add package name to installed app details
• More themed icons for the Pixel Launcher home screen

As always, we hope you continue to enjoy the project and we'll be back next month with another build and post.

PixelOS, the journey so far​

PixelOS began with its roots in the Davinci community (the Redmi K20/Xiaomi Mi 9T) starting with Android 10. The idea behind the project was to provide an experience as close to Google Pixel phones as possible while still adding a small amount of features that are useful every day to users, as well as some performance enhancements for a better experience when using it. Pixel Experience was chosen as a base for this, as it was a clean and minimal ROM that provided a solid base to add features to. This continued on with Android 11 where word spread about PixelOS to other communities, and soon developers began to build it for other devices as well. With Android 12, the project grew substantially into what it is now, with many talented developers coming together to add more quality of life features and to introduce new bleeding edge enhancements as soon as they were available, resulting in the optimised and performant PixelOS we have now.

What's next for us​

With Android 13, we are going to be rebasing from Pixel Experience to pure AOSP with our own added touches on top. The reason for this being that with the accumulated skills and knowledge of the much larger team we have now, we have our own processes and ideas for doing things in ways that may not always align with what Pixel Experience chooses to do. At this point it's only right to thank Pixel Experience for their hard and excellent work that has let PixelOS become what it is now, as it wouldn't have been possible without them.

What does rebasing on AOSP mean for PixelOS though? It provides numerous benefits for us, allowing full control of how the ROM is built from the ground up, letting us refine the build process further and allows easier additions, enhancements and optimisations in terms of adding or improving features in our own ways. The aim is to provide an even more clean and performant build of Android while still keeping the look and feel as well as the features you know and love.

When will it be released?​

We focus on stability and reliability, we want our "stable releases" to be actually stable enough for using it as a daily driver. For this, we would like to take our time with testing. The new PixelOS based on Android 13 will start to rollout for supported devices by Mid-September. Our unofficial maintainers can also expect the source to be made by available to them around the same time. The devices which are stable will release first and gradually the rest. We ask everyone to allow your maintainer to take their own time and not spam for ETA.

This marks the end of development on PixelOS Android 12, we thank all our supporters for being with us. All Android 12 download links are here to stay, they will not be down anytime soon. Android 13 marks a historical milestone for us and we can't wait, just like you. We will be back with another blog to explain more about the September 2022 release of PixelOS.

Some Teasers!​

Xiaomi 11 Lite NE 5G

Redmi Note 10 Pro/Max

Redmi Note 10

Xiaomi Mi 9

Redmi Note 8/8T

Redmi Note 4/4x

Poco X3

Poco F1

Realme C3/Realme Narzo 10A

Realme GT Neo 2

The screenshots are from beta versions of PixelOS and may not be an exact representation of the release version.