LineageOS has pushed out version 24 of its open-source Android build, and the headline upgrade is also the most ironic one: the degoogled alternative to stock Android now runs on Android 17 under the hood.
The update, detailed in Changelog 32 and first spotted by Linuxiac, carries over a long list of security patches from Google's latest release. The LineageOS team says it is also backporting as many of those patches as possible to older, legacy builds that no longer get official support from their original manufacturers.
Beyond the version bump, LineageOS 24 adds a new app called Canvas, a lightweight image editor built to work alongside the project's existing Glimpse photo gallery and Aperture camera app. It is meant for quick edits rather than replacing a full photo editor, but it gives Lineage users a built-in option that doesn't route through Google Photos.
A few smaller changes round out the release. Catapult, Lineage's Android TV launcher, now shows a battery indicator when it's running on a phone or tablet instead of a television. Twelve, the project's bundled music app, loads faster for people with large local media libraries, according to the changelog.
Device support keeps growing too. LineageOS 24 adds 24 more phones and tablets to its supported hardware list, though the full roster is long enough that it lives on the project's downloads page and in the changelog itself rather than in any single summary.
None of this is meant to pull people away from Android entirely, despite the "alternative OS" framing LineageOS has carried for years. The project's real target is what it calls the "Googlefication" of Android: the baked-in Google services, manufacturer skins and preloaded bloatware that come with most phones out of the box. LineageOS lets users strip that back, running a close-to-stock build without ceding control to whichever company made the handset.
The tradeoff is the same one it has always been. Apps that lean heavily on Google's own services, things like push notifications through Firebase or anything requiring Google Play certification, can behave oddly or refuse to work at all on a device without those services installed. For everything else, the project says the experience should hold up.
People running supported devices can check the downloads page now to see if their hardware made this release's list, with the full device breakdown sitting at the bottom of Changelog 32.
SDFiled by The Software Desk
Apps, platforms, operating system releases, security fixes and the features arriving in them.
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