GrapheneOS project: pixel 11 no longer supports hardware memory tagging (MTE)
- ID
- 19492
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 29 Aug 2026, 11:26 PM
- Fetched
- 31 Aug 2026, 11:25 PM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://bsky.app/profile/grapheneos.org/post/3mua32q4ds22e
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 5.0
- Created
- 01 Sep 2026, 12:34 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersai_agent_users
What happened
GrapheneOS reports that the Pixel 11 will no longer support ARM's hardware Memory Tagging Extension (MTE), a feature present on Pixel 8 and 9 that catches memory safety bugs at the hardware level. The HN discussion drew 316 points and 189 comments, indicating significant developer concern about the regression.
Why it matters
If you build or test Android apps on Pixel hardware and relied on MTE for catching heap memory corruption during development or fuzzing, Pixel 11 is no longer a viable target for that workflow. Security-focused teams should factor this into device procurement decisions and may need to keep older Pixel units for MTE-based testing.
Discussion angle
What does it signal when Google removes a proven hardware security mitigation from its flagship line — cost pressure, or a shift in their memory safety strategy toward software-only approaches like Rust?