Best Alternatives to Google’s Android Operating System (2026), Tested and Reviewed

Want Google out of your life? It’s pretty easy to find alternative search, email, and photo storage providers, but it’s much harder to come up with a mobile operating system that’s free of Google. The obvious answer is an iPhone, but if you want Google out of your life, you probably don’t want to immediately replace it with Apple. While a little better from a privacy standpoint, Apple is still not great.

Fear not, privacy-conscious WIRED reader, there are alternatives to Android. Technically speaking, most alternative mobile operating systems are based on Android, not alternatives to it, but these various projects all remove Google and Google-related services (to varying degrees) from the system. Typically that means all the Google services are stripped out and replaced with some alternative code (usually the micro g project), which is then sandboxed in some way to isolate it and restrict what it has access to. The result is a phone that is less dependent on Google, pries less into your privacy, and sometimes might offer a more secure experience. However, at their core, these are all still based on Android.

If you want a true alternative to Android, there are a few. I am sorry to say, free software fans, the best and most functional alternative to Android is still iOS. Most people looking for Android alternatives are not, however, looking to switch to an Apple device. There are a couple of Linux-based phone systems out there, most notably SailfishOS, which can run Android apps (I will be testing this next), but in my testing, none of the Linux-based operating systems are ready to be your everyday device.

The best de-Googled phone experience for most people is going to be Murena’s /e/OS version of the Fairphone 6. Not only does it offer the full /e/OS experience out of the box, with a strong focus on privacy and blocking apps from tracking you, but the Fairphone hardware is repairable, the battery replaceable, and the bootloader is locked. The catch, if you’re in the United States, is that the Fairphone 6 only works with T-Mobile and its MVNOs. Somewhat ironically, it worked great on GoogleFi when editor Julian Chokkattu tested it last year. I tested it using T-Mobile’s prepaid plan, as well as RedPocket’s T-Mobile-based service, and had no issues with either.

The Fairphone 6 gets even better when you put /e/OS on it. Thanks to the privacy-first design of /e/OS, apps no longer track you, but they do still work 99 percent of the time, which is often not the case with some apps on alternate OSes (looking at you, banking apps).

The core of the privacy features in /e/OS revolve around the Advanced Privacy app and widget. Here you can block (or chose to allow) in-app trackers, and there are other features such as hiding your IP address or geolocation when you feel like it. The IP and geo-spoofing are nice for limited-use cases, but the main privacy feature for most of us is the ability to block trackers in apps—and it turns out there are a lot of those.

Murena also ships /e/OS with a very nice custom app store, the App Lounge. It’s similar to the Play Store, but with extras like privacy information about each app. Under each listing in the App Lounge you’ll see a grade from 1 to 10, where 1 is horrible for privacy and 10 generally means no trackers. The App Lounge also grades apps according to which permissions they require. The fewer permissions (like access to your photos or geodata), the higher the rating.

It’s a nice way of providing complex information in a way anyone can easily parse. The /e/OS App Lounge combines apps from a variety of sources, including the Play Store and F-Droid, among others, making them all available in one place. You can also opt to show only open source apps, and install apps from the Play Store anonymously or with your Google account. You’ll have to use your own account to install any apps you’ve paid for, but you can then log out and install the rest anonymously, and /e/OS will block any app from using known trackers.

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

GrapheneOS is the best OS for Pixel devices. It’s security and privacy features are unmatched, and it’s dead simple to install, thanks to the online installation tool. It’s also the only OS here where it’s easy to lock the bootloader after install. Unfortunately GrapheneOS only works on Google Pixel phones and tablets. The GrapheneOS project claims to have hardware support coming for another phone later in 2026, but for now it’s limited to Pixel devices.

GrapheneOS is the most feature-complete of all the AOSP derivatives when it comes to security and privacy (see this chart for a good feature comparison). You can use your GrapheneOS phone without ever connecting to Google. In this scenario you’d be limited to open source apps from sources like FDroid, but it can be done. About the only thing that doesn’t work on GrapheneOS is Google Pay, but that doesn’t work on anything except stock Android, because Google actively blocks everything else.

Not only is your bootloader locked, and by default there is no Google whatsoever on your phone (you can install the Play Store from the GrapheneOS App Store and it will run sandboxed as an ordinary app), but GrapheneOS has some very nice features that limit how apps can get to your data. My favorite feature in GrapheneOS is the concept of “scopes,” which allow you fake full access to things like storage or contacts, so that apps work properly but only get access to what you give them.

Instead of granting phone-wide storage permissions, for example, you can use the Storage Scope to limit an app’s access to only the folders you choose. The app will still think it has full storage permissions and function as usual. The same can be done with contacts. For example, I have Gmail installed for work, but I limit Gmail’s contact access to a contact group I made with just my work contacts. This way, Gmail doesn’t have access to any of my personal contacts.

This is also very handy for controlling access to file and folders through Storage Scope. Similarly, GrapheneOS gives you fine-grained control over sensor permission, including sensors that stock Android does not, like an accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, barometer, thermometer, etc. When you deny an app access, GrapheneOS gives that app zeroed data and provides an alert to let you know that the app requested it and was denied.

The one downside to GrapheneOS is that to really set it up so that apps are limited by scopes and your privacy is protected does take a fair bit of effort and will probably involve some troubleshooting to get some apps working. I do have one banking app (for a small, local credit union) that, for reasons I still can’t figure out, just doesn’t work on GrapheneOS. Overall, though, I find the GrapheneOS experience to be as close to “just works” as you can get with an Android alternative. I wish GrapheneOS had something like /e/OS’s Advanced Privacy widget, because I think it’s fun to keep track of things like that, but otherwise, if you have a Pixel phone, this is the OS I recommend.

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

You can install /e/OS yourself on a wide variety of phones. I’ve used it on Pixels, an older OnePlus, and a couple of Fairphone models. I’ve never had any hardware issues, though some of those were done using community images and therefore do not have the same level of support as the phones Murena explicitly supports. For most people reading this article, support probably isn’t a top concern, so I wouldn’t worry about it. /e/OS will work with a long list of devices, and I’ve yet to have a problem with it.

Installing /e/OS on your own device does require connecting it to a PC and running some code, but so long as you’re OK pasting some commands in a terminal window it shouldn’t be too difficult. There are good installation instructions on the Murena website.

If you’re using hardware other than a Pixel or Fairphone, note that you can’t relock the bootloader. As I outlined above, that is a security vulnerability, and even if you’re OK with it, you should understand it, so make sure to read through our FAQ above.

Courtesy of LineageOS

If you don’t have a Pixel phone, and want to really dig deep into customizing your ROM and tweaking every detail, the LineageOS project is the best option. Installation takes a little more work. You’ll be using a PC of some type to “sideload” code, meaning you’ll plug in your phone via USB and run some commands in a terminal window to get everything installed.

Again, it’s not hard, and there are plenty of good, step-by-step tutorials online. The code you sideload varies by device, but the basic process is the same. Anyone with a modest amount of programming experience should be able to get LineageOS up and running.

Whether or not you want to add Google Services to Lineage is up to you. By default LineageOS contains no Google services, nor does it have the Play Store installed. If you want those you’ll have to flash them separately when you install the system. You can’t add them later.

LineageOS is also the best operating system if you want to “root” your phone and have complete unfettered access to everything. Rooting is a giant security hole and not something I recommend in a device you actually use, but if you just want to tinker and learn on an old phone, this is the OS to do it with.