The LineageOS Project has released LineageOS 19 based on Android 12L

New update brings features like Material You, but the support of some devices is ending
Anonymoussaurus

A year ago when the 6/6T received their last OOS11-based Open Beta, we also wrote about them receiving LineageOS 18.1 nightly builds. These devices were recently marked EOL (End-of-Life), so we decided to write about LineageOS 19, based on Android 12L! Both the OnePlus 6 and the OnePlus 6T are on the list of devices receiving LineageOS. For EOL devices, it makes sense to switch to a custom ROM so that you still receive new Android updates, or at the very least, new security patches. If you wish to install LineageOS, make sure that you follow the installation instructions for either the OnePlus 6 or OnePlus 6T. There are upgrade guides as well. As of now, LineageOS 19 is only available for two OnePlus devices: the 6 and 6T. The 9 and 9 Pro have been added to the LineageOS 18.1 devices while the OnePlus Nord is removed from LineageOS 17.1. We'll update this article if more OnePlus devices receive support for LineageOS 19 from its maintainers.

In LineageOS 19, a handful of new features are available like Material You. Besides, LineageOS' own applications have been updated as well. The team claims this release was easier because they've been adapting to Android 11's changes, meaning there's more time to work on Android 12 in a more efficient way. Here's a full list of changes posted by the LineageOS team:

  • Security patches from March 2021 to April 2022 have been merged to LineageOS 16.0 through 19.
    • 19 builds are 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.
  • We have completely redone the volume panel introduced in Android 12, and instead made it a side pop-out expanding panel.
  • Our fork of the AOSP Gallery app has seen a large number of fixes and improvements.
  • Our Updater app has seen a large number of bug-fixes and improvements.
  • Our web browser, Jelly has seen a number of bug fixes and improvements!
  • We have contributed a number of changes and improvements back upstream to the FOSS Etar calendar app we integrated some time back!
  • We have contributed a number of changes and improvements back upstream to the Seedvault backup app.
  • Our Recorder app has seen numerous bug fixes, improvements, and features added.
  • Android TV builds now ship with an ad-free Android TV launcher, unlike Google’s ad-enabled launcher.
  • Android TV builds now ship with a key-handler that enables us to support custom-keys on a wide-array of bluetooth and IR remotes.
  • Our adb_root service is no longer tied to the build type property.
  • Our extract utilities now support extracting from most types of factory images/packed OTA images, simplifying device-bring up and blob-extraction greatly.
  • Support for high-touch polling rate has been added to our SDK, allowing it to be enabled on supported devices.
  • The AOSP Clang toolchain is now the default toolchain we use to compile our kernels.
  • Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Camera has been dropped, and devices that used it previously will now use Camera2.
  • Dark mode is now enabled by default.
  • We have an entirely new Setup Wizard, with all new Android 12 styled icons, animations, and ton of new configurable pages!
  • We have a brand new set of icons for almost all apps, even system ones!
  • (18.1 too) We have a whole new default wallpaper, and a full set of wallpapers to choose from, check them out! These wallpapers are designed with Android 12’s Monet theming features in mind, so go try them out and see what accent color you like best!
  • (18.1 too) Wi-Fi display is available for all devices which choose to opt-in, via either the Qualcomm proprietary interface or the newly restored legacy Miracast interface!
  • (18.1 too) We now support custom charging sounds for different types of charging, cabled or wireless.

Furthermore, they have updated their networking restriction mode (to restrict network access on app-basis), to comply with AOSP's new firewall implementation BPF.

Due to AOSP's removal of iptables (front-end for managing a firewall in Linux) in favour of eBPF, a handful of devices cannot be supported any longer, because they lack a new kernel version (it requires kernel version 4.9 or higher). The team says the following about the compatibility: "these things can be backported to older kernel versions, but at the moment, even something as close to version 4.9 as 4.4 proved challenging due to the sheer number of commits and structure changes in BPF’s introduction. Those of you on a 4.4 kernel, fear not, a backport has been created, but for devices using kernel versions 3.18 and below, this may be the end of the road.

Additionally, iptables can’t be restored in any meaningful way, which makes things all the harder. At the moment, with some hacky workarounds (that we won’t be merging, as they break packet filtering, etc.) legacy devices can boot, but until a proper workaround/backport of BPF is brought to older kernel versions, don’t expect legacy devices to ship LineageOS 19."