So, in this video, I'm going to show you

what Graphene actually does, why people

are moving to it, and how to install it

on a Pixel phone before your phone

becomes the checkpoint. And there you

go, we've now got Graphene installed on

this phone. When you buy a new phone, do

you own it, or does the government own

it? Your phone, unfortunately, is

becoming the checkpoint. Notice what

this phone is displaying. We have age

verification on this phone. This phone

is registered in the UK, and I'm told

that I have to confirm that I'm 18-plus.

UK law requires you to confirm you are

an adult to change content restrictions.

I try and click that now, and it doesn't

work because I'm not connected to the

internet. So, I'll connect to the

internet, and I'll try that again. By

continuing, your ID or credit card may

be used to confirm that you are an

adult.

So, Apple are restricting what I can do

on the phone that I have purchased, and

they say it's the UK law. However, I

don't think they're being totally

honest. This is from Big Brother Watch.

Apple's new iPhone update is restricting

internet freedom in the UK. They talk

about multiple issues, including the

fact that this isn't required by UK law.

Now, think about this.

I have an iPhone that I've paid for, but

Apple are now restricting what I can do

on this phone. They are a US company.

I'm based in the UK. They are telling me

what I can and cannot do on my phone.

Despite what the update suggests, the

system is not required by UK law. Laws

like the Online Safety Act 2023 apply to

websites and online services, not to

entire phone operating systems. In a

similar way, other acts set standards

for protecting children online, but do

not mandate ID checks for all device

users. This is a voluntary decision by

Apple, not a legal obligation. So, this

is a phone that I purchased with my own

money, but Apple are going to restrict

what I can and cannot do on this phone.

Now, you might say, "Well, this doesn't

apply to me because I'm not based in the

UK. I don't care what the UK is doing."

But, this stuff is coming everywhere. In

California in the US, they want to

implement a law that all operating

systems have to verify your age. Now,

there's been huge pushback about this,

so Linux may be excluded, but we shall

see what happens there. We've got

Australia banning under 16s accessing

social media. The same thing is

happening in the UK. They are talking

about forcing social media companies to

promote certain official news sources,

such as the BBC, etc. This has been

rolled out in the states. It's affecting

many of us around the world. Now, love

what the Graphene team have said.

Graphene will remain usable by anyone

around the world without requiring

personal information, identification, or

an account. GraphenOS and our services

will remain available internationally.

If Graphene devices cannot be sold in a

region due to its regulations, so be it.

And I think that's the right stance

about this from a privacy point of view.

Do you really want to submit your iden-

-tification information and your facial

scans to some unknown third-party

website where your data can be leaked,

as has already happened with say Discord

and other websites? So, if you're

laughing because you don't have an

iPhone, laws are coming around the world

forcing age verification on operating

systems, iOS as well as Android. So, you

can be part of that world where you're

monitored, tracked, and age verified, or

you can have the freedom and privacy and

security of an operating system like

Graphene OS. What are you going to

choose to use today? I want to thank

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Age verification may sound harmless, but

once your phone has to prove who you are

before you can use an app or visit a

website or send a message, the question

changes. It's no longer just, "Are we

protecting children?" It becomes, "Who

makes sure the people in power don't

abuse this power that they have?" And

yes, Spider-Man was right.

>> With great powers comes great

responsibility.

>> But governments are not superheroes.

Power needs limits. Power needs

oversight, and power needs technology

that does not automatically trust the

people asking for more of it. Now, just

to be clear, this is not about breaking

the law. It's not about trying to hide.

This is about owning the device that you

have purchased and making decisions

about what you can and can't view online

yourself. In the UK, they already

restrict websites that you are allowed

to visit. So, as an example, these

websites are sanctioned in the UK. ISPs

are currently required to take

reasonable steps to prevent people in

the UK from visiting these websites. As

well as these websites, there's a whole

range of websites that are blocked in

the United Kingdom. The government can

decide which websites you're allowed to

visit and which websites you're not

allowed to visit. Graphene doesn't claim

to make you totally invisible, but it

gives you a phone that trusts Google

much, much less than stock Android. It

shares uh less information by default

and puts more control back in your

hands. So, in this video, I'm going to

show you what Graphene actually does,

why people are moving to it, and how to

install it on a Pixel phone before your

phone becomes the checkpoint that stops

you from accessing certain websites on

the internet where governments could

decide what you can and can't read

online which websites you're allowed to

visit. So, what do you need to get

started? You need a computer running a

supported operating system. That could

be Windows, macOS, or various

distributions of Linux. In this example,

I'm going to use a Windows computer to

install GrapheneOS. A lot of people

shout at me when I use Windows. The only

reason for doing that is because a lot

of people use Windows rather than macOS

or Linux, but those operating systems

are once again also supported. You need

a modern web browser that supports

WebUSB. That would be Chrome, Edge,

Brave, or and others. A good quality USB

to USB-C cable. In our tests, dodgy

cables will result in things not

working, so make sure that you use a

good cable. And it takes about 30 to 45

minutes to install the operating system.

Currently, GrapheneOS only runs on Pixel

phones because Pixels are the phones

that meet its hardware security

requirements. In other words, it has an

unlockable bootloader, full verified

boot, and long-term security updates.

Always make sure that you go to

grapheneos.org

/faq for the live list before buying,

but here's a list at the time of this

recording. Now, if you're not sure which

one to buy, the best phone to get is

Pixel 10 Pro. It has the newest hardware

and the longest update window. Best

value is the Pixel 8 series. The best

cost-to-support ratio for most people.

And a budget phone would be a Pixel 7a

or 8a. This is cheaper, well supported,

and you can get great second-hand

versions of this phone. Now, the big tip

here is to buy the longest supported

phone that you can afford. GrapheneOS

support ends when Google ends firmware

support for that device. So, look at

your budget and try and get the phone

that will be supported the longest.

Don't just necessarily get the cheapest

phone. So, I'll go to grapheneos.org

and I'm going to click on install

GrapheneOS. We're told here that there

are two officially supported

installation methods. You can use the

web USB based installer, which is

recommended for most users, or the

command line installation guide, which

is aimed at more technical users. So,

I'm going to select the USB based

installer. Prerequisites are shown here,

including the operating systems that are

supported. I'm using Windows 11, but

again, you could use macOS or you could

use various versions of Linux. Here are

the officially supported browsers. So,

I'm using Brave in my example, and I've

disabled shields, as they say here,

we need to make sure that the shields

are disabled.

Now, scrolling down, we need to enable

OEM unlocking. So, what we're going to

do is go to settings. I'm going to

scroll all the way down, go to about my

phone, scroll all the way down, and now

on the build number, we need to press

that repeatedly until developer mode is

enabled. So, I'll keep pressing that,

and you can see we are now a developer.

So, we then need to go to settings,

system, developer, and toggle the OEM

unlocking setting. So, I'm going to go

back. System is just above about phone

in my example.

I'm going to go down to developer

options,

and we should see OEM unlocking, which

we do, so I'll select that option and

allow the bootloader to be unlocked. We

have now enabled that option. So, the

next step is to boot into the bootloader

interface. So, the easiest approach is

to reboot the device and begin holding

the volume down button until it boots up

into the bootloader interface. Okay, so

now we need to reboot the phone, but

while I'm doing that, I'm going to press

the power button down and then press

restart. So, I'm going to keep holding

the volume down button. We are now in

the bootloader interface. Now, per the

documentation, they say that that's the

easiest way to do this. Otherwise, you

can turn off the device and then turn it

on while holding the volume down button.

We told that the step is not complete

until we see the red triangle and we see

the words fastboot. So, now we need to

connect the device to a computer. So,

I'll connect that to my Windows

computer. That's now connected and we

can press the button here to unlock the

bootloader. So, we can see that the

Pixel 10A has been discovered. So, I'm

going to click connect and there you go.

At the moment, it says do not unlock the

bootloader. We want to change that to

unlock the bootloader. So, we're going

to select that option and then accept

it.

So, as you can see here, the bootloader

has been unlocked. We now need to

download the Graphene OS factory image.

So, I'm going to click download release

to start the download. You can see the

software is now downloading. This

process, once again, is really simple

because I'm basically just connecting

the device to my computer, doing a few

changes to it, and then Graphene is

doing all the work to download the

correct release of software for my

phone. Okay, so the download has

completed, so we can now flash the

image. This will replace the existing OS

installation and wipe all existing data.

So, make sure that that's what you want

to do. I'm happy to do that, so I'm

going to click flash release to flash

the phone. Now, what's great about this

is, again, Graphene have made this

really easy. We just need to wait for

the flashing process to complete. It

will automatically handle flashing the

firmware, rebooting into bootloader

interface, and flashing the OS. So, as

you can see here, we get an update of

what's happening, but we are told to

avoid interacting with the device until

the flashing script is finished. Then,

we can proceed to locking the bootloader

before using the device

as locking wipes the data again. Okay,

so I'll speed up the video at this point

because all we're going to see is the

writing of the software.

Okay, so the image is now being flashed

to the device. Now, we need to lock the

bootloader.

This is important as it enables full

verified boot. Verified boot will detect

modifications to any of the OS

partitions, and it will prevent reading

any modified or corrupted data. Okay, so

I'll click lock bootloader. I'm going to

press the volume button to select lock

the bootloader,

and then I'm going to choose that

option. Now, if you don't do that, and

you simply boot with an unlocked

bootloader, Graphene will warn you. You

can see the bootloader here is locked,

so we can start the device. So, device

is now booting up.

We can see a Google icon, and there you

go. We've now got Graphene on screen.

So, we are now booting into Graphene OS.

Okay, welcome to Graphene OS. I'll

choose start.

I'll select Wi-Fi.

I'll select next.

I'll choose the default date and time.

I'm not going to enable location. Notice

we can enable various options here like

geolocation, Wi-Fi scanning, network

location, etc. to harden the device or

make it less hardened. I'm going to turn

off all of those options and press

start. I'll select a PIN and press next.

I'll confirm my PIN.

I'm not going to use biometric.

Remember, in certain countries like the

US as an example, they are allowed to

unlock your phone by using biometric

information about you, but they're not

allowed to do that with a PIN code. So,

I'd rather just use a PIN code.

Now, you can get security preview

releases. I'm going to do that. You

might not want that.

I'm not going to restore data.

And I'm going to skip

this introduction.

Make sure that you leave this option

checked. So, don't change that. We want

to disable OEM unlocking and press

start. And there you go. We've now got

Graphene installed on this phone. So,

congratulations. You're now running

GrapheneOS. A phone that starts from

less trust, shares less by default, and

answers to you instead of an ecosystem.

Now, if you found this video useful,

please consider subscribing to my

channel. I'll cover setting up sandboxed

Google Play app recommendations and

hardening tips in another video. Links

to everything, including the official

Graphene install guide, are in the video

description. So, hopefully you enjoyed

this video. Hopefully you learned

something. Graphene is my recommended

operating system if you want a secure,

privacy-focused operating system where

you get control of your device rather

than a company in the US, like Google or

Apple, or a government controlling your

device. But, let me know your thoughts.

Do you use GrapheneOS? Do you recommend

something else? What do you use to make

sure that you have a privacy-respecting

and security-focused operating system on

your phone?