LineageOS 19 based on Android 12 is now officially available

LineageOS has been a strong driving force in the world of aftermarket Android development. As a successor to CyanogenMod, the project spans literally hundreds of devices, offering the enthusiast community a way out of heavy and inflated systems and a dive into modifications for those with minimal skins. Now the LineageOS team is marking its big version increase to LineageOS 19 with Android 12 as the base.

Why LineageOS 19 (and not 19.0 / 19.1)?

If you take a look at our list of custom Android 12 and 12L ROMs, you can find the numerous entries corresponding to LineageOS 19.0 as well as 19.1. In fact, the initial set of unofficial builds took “19.0” due to the obvious major platform update. The subsequent minor change of the version number happened with the release of Android 12L.

Meanwhile, Google switched to the quarterly maintenance model for Android. Of course, the existing subversion nomenclature in LineageOS would be cumbersome for regular users in the long run. Because of this (and to match AOSP’s version conventions), the team has decided to drop the subversion string. The new release is simply called “LineageOS 19”, although you can still find references to “19.1” in the ROM file name and code base.

New features in LineageOS 19

LineageOS 19 comes with a host of new features and improvements:

• Security patches from March 2021 to April 2022 have been merged into LineageOS 16.0 to 19.
  • 19 builds is currently based on the android-12.1.0_r4 tag, which is the Pixel 6 series tag.
• WebView has been updated to Chromium 100.0.4896.58.
• The team has completely redesigned the volume panel that was introduced in Android 12, and instead turned it into a side-pop-out expansion panel.
• Branching the AOSP Gallery app has seen a large number of fixes and improvements.
• The Updater app has seen a large number of bug fixes and improvements.
• The LineageOS web browser Jelly has seen a number of bug fixes and improvements.
• The team has contributed a number of changes and improvements upstream to the FOSS Etar calendar app, which they integrated some time ago.
• The team contributed a number of changes and improvements upstream to the Seedvault backup app.
• The LineageOS Recorder app has seen several bug fixes, enhancements, and added features.
• Android TV builds now come with an ad-free Android TV launcher as opposed to Google’s ad-enabled launcher.
• Android TV buildings now come with a key manager that allows us to support custom keys on a wide range of bluetooth and IR remotes.
• LineageOS adb_root the service is no longer tied to the build type property.
• The project extraction tools now support extraction from most types of factory images / packaged OTA images, which greatly simplifies unit upbringing and blob extraction.
• High-touch polling rate support has been added to our SDK, enabling it to be enabled on supported devices.
• The AOSP Clang tool chain is now the default tool chain used to compile LineageOS cores.
• Qualcomm’s Snapdragon camera has been dropped, and devices that previously used it will now use Camera2.
• Dark mode is now enabled by default.
• There’s a brand new setup wizard with all new Android 12 style icons, animations and lots of new configurable pages.
• A brand new set of icons for almost all apps, including system apps.

In addition to the improvements mentioned above, the following changes have also been incorporated in both LineageOS 19 and the older 18.1 code base:

• A brand new standard wallpaper and a complete set of wallpapers to choose from. These wallpapers are designed with Android 12s Monet theme features in mind.
• Wi-Fi display is available to all devices that choose to sign up, either via Qualcomm’s proprietary interface or the newly restored older Miracast interface!
• Support for custom charging sounds for different types of charging, wired or wireless.

Further changes

Network restrictions

The built-in firewall, limited network mode and data isolation features per. The app has been rewritten to support AOSP’s new restricted network mode and the Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) facility. In addition, the data limitation and network isolation features have been merged into a single implementation.

eBPF over iptables

AOSP now includes an Extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) loader and a library that loads eBPF programs at startup to extend the core functionality. It basically deteriorates iptables, and there is no easy way to back up the feature to older Linux kernel variants. The LineageOS team has created a functional backport for devices with Linux kernel 4.4, but porting the same to 3.18 kernel or older is a rather cumbersome job. Also, you can not recover iptables in the AOSP code base without ruining things.

As a consequence, there will be no official support of LineageOS 19 for Android devices running Linux kernel 3.18 and below until a proper solution of BPF is brought to these kernel versions.

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LineageOS 19 – Official builds for supported devices

The following is the official build list for the initial batch of the LineageOS 19 rollout:

More devices should soon switch to LineageOS 19, so keep an eye on our front page as we will be running regular stories on the same.

Generic goals

Like last year’s release, the LineageOS team supports Android Virtual Device (AVD), i.e. the standard emulator environment provided by Android Studio, as a build target. This development continues with LineageOS 19, which also supports Android Automotive build targets. Developers can also build Generic System Image (GSI) packages in both mobile and Android TV configurations, though the official download portal will not host such precompiled builds.

What if my device is not listed here?

Just because your device is not listed here does not mean that you can not enjoy LineageOS 19 now. Due to its open source nature, there are a number of unofficial builds for many devices on our forums, many of which will eventually end up becoming official builds as development progresses. What’s more: most of them are now perfectly stable as daily drivers, with occasionally minor quirks.

LineageOS XDA forums

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How to upgrade to LineageOS 19 from an older version

If you are not familiar with the process behind installing custom ROMs or generally modifying your phone, first unlock your device’s bootloader and install an updated custom recovery, such as LineageOS Recovery or TWRP, before attempting to do anything. So, when official LineageOS 19 builds become available for your device, install them through the custom recovery environment. Device-specific instructions may vary, so check the corresponding wiki page beforehand.

As for Google apps, they do not come pre-installed on a LineageOS release. You must select an appropriate GApps distribution and install it yourself.

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LineageOS 18.1 – Official builds for supported devices

While maintainers are working to bring devices up to the official LineageOS 19 based on Android 12, you can still find automated builds for these devices supported by LineageOS 18.1:

Like LineageOS 19 builds, we should see more devices enter the LineageOS 18.1 build list.

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Source: LineageOS blog

Thanks Mishaal Rahman for the tip!