Periodic Phone Wipe Notes

I got into the habit of wiping my phone every 6 months (takes about an hour) in order to:

My phone is Poco X3 NFC with lineage + micro-g, it has an always-on mullvad + home VPN, and a lot of self-hosting related apps.

The main feature of this setup is great idle battery consumption with up to 7 days on a single charge.

Backup

Enable USB debugging on the phone
Get adb working on your PC, on ubuntu for example:
- Download android platform tools
- Install udev rules sudo apt install android-sdk-platform-tools-common
- Reload udev rules sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
- Add the user to the group sudo usermod -a -G plugdev `whoami`
- Logout & login or reboot
- Check that adb works (adb devices)
Remove fingerprint and pattern
Download
- OS & recovery - I use lineage + micro-g
- Firmware - the latest official
Reboot to bootloader (adb reboot bootloader)
Install recovery (fastboot flash recovery recovery.img)
Reboot to recovery (fastboot reboot recovery)
Format data and cache from recovery
Install firmware (adb sideload firmware.zip)
Install OS (adb sideload os.zip)
Reboot to OS (fastboot reboot)

Copy exports and snapshots back
Initial configuration
Apps
- Aegis (2FA)
- AnySoftKeyboard (keyboard)
- Audiobookshelf
- Aurora store (anonymized play store)
- Bitwarden (password manager)
- Davx5 (sync contacts)
- Discord
- F-droid (foss app store)
- Gadgetbridge (cloudless gadgets)
- Gcam
- Gelli (music)
- Gotify (server notifications)
- Jellyfin (media)
- LibreTube (youtube)
- Microsoft lens (scan documents)
- Mull (browser)
- Nextcloud (self-hosted cloud)
- Nextcloud news (rss reader)
- Nextcloud notes
- Nextcloud phonetrack (track phone)
- Proton calendar
- Proton mail
- Termux
- SimpleLogin
- VLC
- Waze (navigation)
- Wireguard (vpn)
Configure all apps
Set folders to auto upload to nextcloud
- Photos
- Videos
- Call recordings
- Lens documents (auto upload to paperless-ngx)

Last update: 2022-11-27
Created: 2022-03-26