Install LosOS on a phone
This page writes LosOS Desktop to an Android phone over USB, from this browser. It works on Treble phones that take generic system images and run Linux 5.10 or newer, which is every phone that launched with Android 12 or later. It keeps the phone's own kernel and drivers, and erases everything on the phone.
Prepare the phone
- Back up anything you want to keep: installing erases the phone.
- In Android, open Settings, About phone, and tap Build number seven times. Then turn on Developer options, OEM unlocking.
- Turn the phone off, hold Volume down and Power until the bootloader's menu appears, and connect it to this computer with a USB cable.
Connect
Unlock the bootloader
The phone asks for confirmation on its own screen, then erases itself.
The phone's boot image
This phone has no init_boot partition, so LosOS goes into its boot partition beside the phone's own kernel. That needs the boot image the phone runs now: read it from the phone, which restarts it into fastbootd first, or choose boot.img from the factory image of the exact Android build installed.
Get LosOS
The newest release is downloaded into this browser's own storage and checked against the release's SHA-256 sums before anything is written.
Install
Writes vbmeta, init_boot (or boot) and userdata. Keep the cable connected until it finishes.
Start LosOS
The bootloader warns that it is unlocked on every start. That is expected: LosOS cannot relock it.