The development team of LineageOS announced a few days ago the availability of the new version 19 of its operating system, in which several improvements have been made such as a built-in privacy-oriented firewall, compatibility with the Android build targets for cars, as well as documentation, among other things.
For those who are new to LineageOS, you should know that this is the successor of CyanogenMod and an open source operating system for smartphones and tablets. It is based on a stripped down version of Android and adds additional features including root access, notification bar shortcuts, extended lock screen and different interface themes. Also, there are often performance improvements over software that a manufacturer provides.
Main new features of LineageOS 19
Of the improvements that version 19 of LineageOS brings stands out for example the integrated privacy-oriented firewall, restricted network mode and data isolation features per application have been rewritten to take into account the new restricted network mode and AOSP GMP. In addition, the data restriction and network isolation features have been merged into a single implementation.
In an effort to make LineageOS more accessible for developers or anyone interested in trying out LineageOS, the LineageOS team has documented how to use them in conjunction with Android Emulator/Android Studio. Additionally, similar targets can now be used to create GSIs on mobile, Android TV, and Android Automotive setups, making LineageOS more accessible to devices using Google's Project Treble.
However, the LineageOS team clarifies that it will not provide official builds for these purposes, due to the fact that the user experience varies entirely depending on how well the device manufacturer has met the Trebles requirements. Please note that Android 12 diverged the goals of GSI and Emulator.
LineageOS is now compatible with car android build targets. Note that this is Android Automotive, not Android Auto, which is dependent on mobile devices. Automotive Android is a fully autonomous car operating system with extensible controls for common car devices.
Of the other improvements made in LineageOS 19:
- Security patches from March 2021 to April 2022 merged into LineageOS 16.0 to 19
Builds 19 are currently based on the android-12.1.0_r4 tag, which is the Pixel 6 series tag. - WebView has been updated to Chromium 100.0.4896.127.
The volume panel introduced in Android 12 has been completely redone and replaced with a side-opening expansion panel. - The AOSP Gallery app fork has received a lot of fixes and improvements.
- The Updater app has seen a lot of bug fixes and improvements.
- The Jelly web browser has seen a lot of bug fixes and improvements.
- Various changes and improvements have been made to the FOSS Etar Calendar application which was integrated some time ago.
- A number of bottom-up changes and improvements have been made to the Seedvault backup application.
- The Recorder app has received many bug fixes, improvements, and feature additions.
- Android TV builds now come with an ad-free Android TV launcher, unlike Google's launcher.
- Android TV builds now come with a key manager that supports custom keys on a wide range of Bluetooth and IR remotes.
the adb_root service is no longer bound to the build type property. - The extraction utilities now support extraction of most types of factory images or packaged OTA images, greatly simplifying device loading and block extraction.
- High polling rate support has been added to the SDK, allowing it to be enabled on supported devices.
- The AOSP Clang toolchain is now the default toolchain used to compile kernels.
- Qualcomm's Snapdragon camera has been discontinued and devices that previously used it will now use Camera 2.
- Dark mode is now enabled by default.
Finally If you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details in the following link