CalyxOS was removed as a recommendation in July 2022. At this time, CalyxOS is not a recommended tool. Consider using GrapheneOS instead.
CalyxOS is a custom Android operating system which uses microG for Play Services compatibility.
CalyxOS has delayed operating system and WebView (browser) updates compared to our other Android operating system recommendations. The risk that those with CalyxOS installed could go days, weeks, or longer without critical security updates outweighs the benefits of CalyxOS in our opinion, especially because alternative recommendations exist which do not have this issue.
microG does not provide strong privacy protections from Google that we would hope it does, in many cases it is just as reliant on Google services as the actual Google Play Services are. In light of this, GrapheneOS’s approach of using actual Google Play Services—but sandboxing them so that they have no system-level access—is preferable to us.
There is an open discussion on our forum to recommend CalyxOS, if you wish to voice support for its re-evaluation. At this time, the benefits of CalyxOS over GrapheneOS or DivestOS are not clear to us.