Essential? no.
Worth it? maybe.
Nice to have control of your own device? absolutely.
I have two devices, primary with root (through Magisk as KernelSU still has some issues for me) and secondary without root. Anytime I have to do something more demanding on the unrooted device I really wish I had root. Local terminal access, ability to disable some annoying "features" (verified app links) and multiple other things I use daily make it worth it for me.
EDIT: I saw mentions of custom roms in other comments. I have a custom rom installed (AOSP based). If I was on a stock rom (or god forbid something like MIUI) root would be a must for me.
Taken on Redmi Note 10 Pro with Gcam astrophotography mode. XML (telegram). Full resolution (108MP)
Doesn't play in the jerboa, but I love it regardless.
I think getting it submitted to fdroid would be a lengthy process. As an alternative IzzyOnDroid repository could be considered.
Sort of. Already mentioned classicshell allows for some customisation. Things like FancyWM introduce window tiling to the os, but none of it is comparable to what android launchers can do.
Also an obligatory linux mention. If you do not depend on certain, windows only, applications, Linux provides much more customisation. Different desktop environments can be though as something analogous to android launchers.
But, but... It looks kind of nice. Honestly I'm wandering what would it taste like.
That's one hell of a controversial opinion.
I personally prefer gestures. I find them quicker (you don't have to move your fingers as much to do anything, especially back gesture) and more intuitive (like swiping on the navigation pill or whatever it's called to quickly switch apps, much better than double clicking recents button). Gestures also integrate nicely with the rest of os (like swiping from backspace to erase whole words in gboard).
One thing I hate and I can't understand how that's not fixed in stock AOSP is opening left side menus (those hamburger ones) with gestures enabled. Half of the time instead of opening the menu it will just go back, even if sensitivity on left edge is set to minimum.
This is something that custom roms address nicely as most of the time setting sensitivity to minimum would actually disable gestures in this area (take note Google). If this is something that's bugging anyone, you can disable gestures on left edge over adb (without root) with:
adb shell settings put secure back_gesture_inset_scale_left 0
or with:
su -c "settings put secure back_gesture_inset_scale_left 0"
if you have root access (for more info look here).
I'm not a fan of xiaomi (even though it's my daily driver), but most of their phones fit your needs. In the past I used redmi note 4, note 9 pro and now note 10 pro and they've all been great.
Custom roms community really is something.
One more reason to use a custom ROM. Death to the bloat!
Currently I use Bitwarden on both my phone and my pc, but I'm looking into self hosting it with vaultwarden. This gives you access to premium features (such as TOTP support, for which I currently use Aegis Authenticator). It also gives you full control over your data.
I love this. Thank you so much.
I got this one while playing human or not. Please help.
Xmanager doesn't compile the apk. I downloads the same files you have on telegram.
The main advantage of it over manually downloading the files is somewhat easier usage and update notifications.