LineageOS 24.0 arrives on Android 17 with new image editor, browser-based flash tools and accessibility audit

LineageOS 24.0 is out. It is based on Android 17 and, according to the project's release post, it arrived earlier than the team expected.

The release comes just before a milestone. On December 24, 2026, LineageOS will turn 10. The team calls the project a community effort of developers, maintainers, contributors and users who have kept many devices alive, and it thanks them for their support.

The team says it has been rebasing its changes and features since Android 17 was released in June. Android 17's first release mostly had iterative improvements and some UI refinements. Earlier work adapting to Google's heavy refactoring over several Android versions helped the team move faster than planned.

On security, patches from August 2025 to October 2026 have been merged into LineageOS 18.1 through 24.0. The project will merge full security bulletins and update the security patch level string on branches where Google still publishes bulletins. As of writing, that means Android 14 (LineageOS 21) and newer. It also plans to keep backporting patches to 18.1, 19.1 and 20.0, but will not change the patch level string there, since Google provides no attestable set of patches for those versions.

Legacy branches 15.1, 16.0 and 17.1 have patches through November 2025. The December 2025 bulletins included some hard-to-backport patches that the team could not adapt. It asks anyone who can to push them to Gerrit, its code review system.

Many of the core apps have been updated to Material Design 3 Expressive, Google's latest design style. The biggest addition is Canvas, a new image editor that handles basic jobs like cropping, white balance and filters. It is meant to work alongside the Glimpse gallery and Aperture camera apps.

Other apps got changes too. The Catapult Android TV launcher gets a battery indicator for mobile devices and handhelds, plus updated animations and icons, with thanks to contributor Timi Rautamäki. Jelly, the browser, now supports PWA-like apps (web apps that behave like installed ones) through the shortcut mechanism. Twelve, the music app, loads faster with large libraries, shows most-played albums and genres, fixes tracks getting stuck with offload enabled, and improves Jellyfin support.

The Updater has been redesigned, with thanks to contributor pjgowtham. Updates are now streamed by default, which the team says should cut installation time on A/B devices. On non-A/B devices, the recovery partition is updated automatically on the first boot after a successful update. Tablet and TV layouts are also better.

SetupWizard has a full Material Design 3 Expressive rebuild and a reworked onboarding flow, thanks to contributor Saalim. It also adds hooks so device maintainers can insert their own pages for peripherals. Etar (calendar) and Seedvault (backup) are updated to the newest upstream versions, with several fixes sent back upstream. WebView is now version 155.0.8059.30.

There are also new browser-based flash tools at flash.lineageos.org. They use WebUSB, a browser feature for talking to USB devices, and cover ADB, Fastboot, the Amlogic Burn protocol and Samsung's Odin protocol. The aim is to avoid installing separate flashing software. Contributors Nicholas Lim and Luk1337 built them.

The tools do not replace the existing installation guides on the LineageOS Wiki, which remain the default and supported path. Availability will vary by device, browser, operating system and USB connection. The team warns that flashing custom software is risky, so users should back up important data and check they have the right files and device.

Behind the scenes, the project improved its testing. Continuous Integration now posts CI+1 or CI-1 votes on most app repositories and several core ones. It runs checks such as pre-commit, lint and formatting, and REUSE licensing compliance. Continuous Deployment now pushes APKs and other build artifacts through a GitHub Actions run each time a commit is merged.

LineageOS also completed a full accessibility audit of its installation process and app suite, done free of charge by the a11y project. Some changes, such as recovery navigation and UI, have already been reworked. The group also gave a web seminar on accessibility in development to more than 40 contributors. The team says it may publish a blog post on the outcomes.

The team says the 24.0 branch has reached feature and stability parity with 23.2. It will launch for a decent selection of devices, with more added as they meet the project's Charter requirements and their maintainers make them ready.

There is a policy change for older hardware. Some devices on Linux kernel 4.4 and 4.9 have been ported to 23.2 and 24.0, but the project will now accept only LineageOS 22.2 submissions for them. It says the legacy kernels carry many hacky platform commits that are hard to pull forward. LineageOS 22.2 will keep getting monthly builds and security patches until Google stops distributing Android 15 security bulletins, and new devices can still be submitted for it. On 23.2 and 24.0, the project ships only kernels with 1:1 eBPF backports that build fully without GCC and include other important backported features.

To upgrade from an official build, follow the upgrade guide for your device and choose the option to upgrade to a higher version of LineageOS. You do not need to wipe the device unless its wiki page says so, as with some devices that need a repartition. If you are coming from an unofficial build, follow the full install guide for your device.

Contributors have also been building common kernels for specific chips, which device maintainers can base their kernels on to save effort. Supported chips include Amlogic GXL, G12A, G12B and SM1 variants, and a long list of Qualcomm parts from MSM8998 and MSM8996 up to SM8850. The SM8850 kernel is on version 6.12 and is listed for Android 17 only.

The project is also commonizing shims, the libraries legacy devices need as compatibility layers. These were long managed by individual device maintainers. The team says pooling them should avoid duplicated work, and it invites contributors to add shims through Gerrit.