It turns out that Android works very well on the Rabbit R1. It seems like Android was meant to be on this device from the start. The Rabbit R1 has been a controversial gadget. It was supposed to use advanced AI technology but ended up disappointing many people. The device uses a custom operating system made by Rabbit, which is different from typical systems because it is supposed to understand and act on spoken commands.
This didn’t work well in practice. The device was slow and did not do what Rabbit promised at its launch. Many see it as an unfinished product from a startup trying to release a device too soon.
A YouTube channel called HowToMen changed the software on their Rabbit R1. Instead of using Rabbit’s custom software, Facundo, a member of HowToMen, installed Android on it. This made the device work much better.
The Rabbit R1 is actually built on a version of Android designed for it, even though the company initially denied this. Soon after it was released, someone installed a common Android version called LineageOS on it.
HowToMen did something similar, and they got Android to run almost perfectly on the Rabbit R1. With Android, the keyboard works better, the camera can be used freely, and even a new feature lets you easily control the camera’s privacy settings.
One of the best things now is that Google’s AI assistant, called Gemini, works great on this device. The Rabbit R1 now has useful buttons that make it easy to take screenshots and adjust the volume.
If you want to install Android on a Rabbit R1, you can find the instructions on a website called GitHub, under the project name “R1 Escape.” HowToMen used these instructions, but be careful if you try it because we haven’t tested it ourselves. If you follow the steps, you might end up with a fully working device.
