Android 14 test build for Pixel 6a

CalyxOS 5.0.0 - Android 14 is now available for testing for the Pixel 6a.

It’ll be available for Pixel 5 and newer next week, depending on how well testing goes.

We’ll look into Pixel 8 support, and also porting Android 14 Pixel 4 / 4a after that.

We decided to do the first few test builds only for the Pixel 6a, to make things easier for us
We like to test every single build before release, and as you can imagine doing that for just 1 device instead of 11 is a lot faster
Every CalyxOS developer has a Pixel 6a. Some have 2. That makes working much easier. Not everyone has every other device.
We figured that it’d be easier to start with just one device, fix some bugs and then release it for all.
We didn’t want to release something too buggy / non functional.
At the same time, no matter how much testing we do, there’ll always be something we missed, so it’s better to release it and get some feedback.

All hardware should work
5.0.0
If you’re using secondary users + work profile a lot, suggest waiting for a future build, some fixes are missing.
Hide apps functionalty is missing.

Make sure your phone is running the latest CalyxOS version 4.14.0
Backup your data - you can use SeedVault, the included Backup app.
Enable USB Debugging on your phone.
From your computer: adb shell setprop sys.update.channel fourteen
Then, on your phone: Settings -> System -> System update settings -> Check for updates

Download the factory images from the links below.
Please follow the installation instructions at Install CalyxOS, but use the latest factory image you just downloaded instead of the one linked on that page.

Device	Link	Signature	SHA256
Pixel 6a (bluejay)	Download	Signature	e7649a2341cefb7f90b438ba68259588f961524c05ed0919a6f34ca85fae1435

The below gives an overview of how the CalyxOS team went about the Android 14 work.

We planned out some of how we’d like the Android 14 port to go, and starting doing some work in preparation

Android 14 was originally rumored to release in September, but apparently it got delayed due to a last minute issue.
We were waiting for it, and also used this opportunity to do some more preparation work.
A big part of that was going through every single change we made to Android 13, and re-organizing / cleaning them up for easier porting. This was done at staging/android13-rebase

Google released Android 14 to AOSP, and also for the Pixels 5 and newer on this day.
We started working on it right away, watching the source code get uploaded, looking at the changes made, and bringing those in for CalyxOS.

We ported a good chunk of our changes to Android 14.
A Chromium Early stable update was released, version 118. We started porting our changes to that too.
Also started working on updating the various included apps for Android 14.

We finished doing the code changes required for the various Pixels which got Android 14 (Pixel 5 and newer).
This includes things such as carrier support, tweaks to run Google Camera, and more.

Started looking at the features that were pending to be ported to Android 14.
Tested an upgrade from Android 13 to Android 14, making sure that no data was lost.
SeedVault backup app testing - ensuring backup and restore works.
Tried porting Android 14 to Pixel 4a real quick. It didn’t boot, so we’ll try again later after releasing 14 for the other devices.

We’ll continue working on Android 14. Our plan is to release regular test builds.