LineageOS gets new features, a new custom recovery, and new leadership

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The team behind the most popular custom Android ROM – LineageOS – just posted a huge update on what’s going on behind-the-scenes. Although updates to LineageOS ROMs come out on a regular basis, we don’t see news updates too often from the team.

There are a lot of changes announced today, so we’ve broken it down into bite-size chunks. Check it out below.

New Leadership

One of the biggest pieces of news in the LineageOS blog post is that Abhisek Devkota (aka “ciwrl”) is stepping down from his position as director. Devkota spent seven years working on LineageOS’s predecessor, CyanogenMod, and then another two on LineageOS.

Devkota is being replaced by Kevin Haggerty (aka “haggertk”), who was voted in as the new director.

New Devices

LineageOS 15.1 is the version number referring to Android 8.1 Oreo. At launch, only a handful of devices saw 15.1 updates, but that list has gotten much longer since. LineageOS announced the addition of over 20 new devices, including the wide range of Samsung Galaxy S5 variants, the Motorola Moto Z2 Force, and even the OnePlus One.

Unfortunately, it looks like the HTC One A9 has been removed from 15.1, for unexplained reasons. It’s likely that no one is around to maintain the build, so the device is now dormant.

To see the full list of devices that support LineageOS, head here.

New Custom Recovery

The Android recovery is an essential part of the flashing process when you switch from one ROM to another. The recovery that is pre-installed on your device usually has security protocols that prevent you from flashing other ROMs, so one needs a custom recovery to bypass that.

Traditionally, the incredibly popular TeamWin Recovery Project (TWRP) has been the go-to for custom ROM enthusiasts, but it looks like LineageOS is going to get into the game by adding a new contender, predictably called Lineage Recovery.

At the moment, Lineage Recovery only supports A/B devices, which are specialized devices that allow seamless operating system updates. The idea is that one can flash an OTA update without touching the boot system. According to the Android website, this approach “reduces the likelihood of an inactive device after an update, which means fewer device replacements and device reflashes at repair and warranty centers.”

Eventually, Lineage Recovery will also work with non-A/B devices, which would be most devices on the list of currently-supported LineageOS units. However, the LineageOS team doesn’t give any kind of ETA for the release of that product.

New Features

Finally, the team posted a laundry list of the new features and updates that LineageOS 15.1 received since May 25. Although the list doesn’t have many “sexy” updates, there are some cool things like a new “completely black” dark UI, a new interface called Trust, and the usual monthly Android security patches.

Head to the LineageOS changelog to see all the new features and updates to the custom ROM.

NEXT: Whatever happened to CyanogenMod? What is LineageOS?