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Asklemmy @lemmy.ml
pleasestopasking @reddthat.com

What apps have you tried to "de-google" yourself?

Right now a lot of us are trying to divest and diversify from having our entire lives on Google both because of the way Google spends its money and the long-standing privacy concerns seeming a bit more scary now.

What services have you switched to and what has your experience been? What do you like, what don't you like, would you recommend them?

49 comments

  • I guess I'll share my setup aha. Forewarning: I invested heavily into self hosting and being in full control of as much as possible, mainly to try to be 'Internet independent'.

    • Google ads, APIs, telemetry and everything else that is not necessary: AdGuard Home (selfhosted)
    • Android app store: Fdroid with IzzyOnDroid repo, failing that Aurora Store, if apps still whine about not being to use Play Services then I use the Play Store
    • Gmail: Mailcow Dockerized (selfhosted) with K9 Android client
    • SMS (not that I use it anyway): Fossify SMS
    • Instant messaging: Matrix (selfhosted) for Discord/Telegram style with Element client, or Telegram FOSS
    • File Manager (I goddamn hate that Google Files forces itself onto any phone after initial setup, even when there's a manufacturer installed one already): Material Files
    • GBoard (It's also really fucking invasive): HeliBoard
    • YouTube: via Revanced Manager, with Odysee as a hopeful replacement. Much lower userbase though, obviously.
    • Google Photos (refuses to settle for less than 100% file access): Part of a self hosted Samba share that I keep synced to via FolderSync (from Play Store - they charge €10 for the app outside of Google)
    • Chrome: Brave (I downloaded a script to debloat it of crypto and AI)
    • Google Search: My partner uses Ecosia for environment reasons, and I use DuckDuckGo for privacy reasons
    • Chromecast: I recommend a Roku
    • AndroidOS: CalyxOS if Pixel, LineageOS if not
    • Play Services: Gapps pico or nano because some things are still tied to Play Services
    • Maps is superior, unfortunately, but OSMAnd is a good alt
    • Google DNS, used by default by a lot of things like routers: Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1

  • I tried to minimize my dependency on Google by signing up for various email services like Petal Mail by Huawei, Proton Mail, and Yandex Mail. I also tried to find smartphones that don't have Google by default, such as Murena smartphones and Huawei smartphones. But it seems like it's too late to look for those gems without Google because I have so many apps that I bought on Google, amounting to around five digits in Malaysian Ringgit, which is not cheap. So I think I'll stay with Google for now, sadly.

  • Been degoogled for years at this point:

    • Stock Android --> LineageOS or GrapheneOS (no gapps)
    • YouTube --> Invidious, NewPipe
    • Google Search --> DuckDuckGo, Brave Search
    • Google Play Store --> F-Droid, Aurora Store

    I've also decoupled from other similar services:

    • Outlook --> ProtonMail
    • Calendar --> Nextcloud
    • OneDrive --> Nextcloud
    • Windows, macOS --> Linux (after years of distrohopping, I found LMDE is incredibly stable while still being a nice "out of box" distro)
    • Google Maps, Apple Maps --> OSMAnd, Organic Maps

    I never used any online password manager myself, I went from writing passwords in a literal book to KeePass, to now Vaultwarden for that

    - self hosted

    • Nice, I have also chosen most of the same as you. For custom ROM there's CalyxOS, which ironically makes a Pixel phone one of the best picks for deGoogleing
      I don't like the proprietary style of Proton Mail, plus they charge to have more than one account logged in, which is very inconvenient, so I set up my own Mailcow instance

      For YouTube I highly recommend ReVanced

      For notes I use Apache-CouchDB and connect using Obsidian with the LiveSync plugin. Live sync is fantastic and is as close as I think I'll ever get to OneNote.

      NextCloud is great, a pain in the arse to add existing files as you need to upload everything, but a few hours of uploading with Cloudflare set to DNS only is fine

  • I fucked off Google Photos and now run Immich from a Raspberry Pi with raid 1 SSDs.

  • I have moved away from Google Contacts and Google Calendar and am now using Synology Calendar/Contacts. I've left Google Drive for Synology Drive and I've left Google Photos for Synology Photos. Everything is self hosted and self maintained.

  • The #1 Google service/app that I used in the past was Google Maps. I've replaced it with Magic Earth for the last few years and it's been great. It uses Open Street Map for its navigation data, handles addresses very well, has live crowd-sourced traffic and hazard data, and can record rolling footage if you want it to act like a dashcam.

    It works on Android and iOS, and supports Apple watch and Android car play if you use those.

    For email I use Protonmail, for Google drove I use Proton Drive and my own self hosted NAS. For browsing I use several different Firefox forks like Zen, Floorp, LibreWolf, etc. UnGoogled Chromium for the rare times that a website "needs" Chrome to run.

    My phone runs GrapheneOS which works great.

    • I'll have to check out Magic Earth. My biggest fear switching from Google Maps was not having up to date road closures or accident reports.

      • The traffic data, at least in my area of the US, is pretty good.

        Road closures are a rough point for sure. Generally, Magic Earth does have them marked, but not always. And the map data is only updated once a month. So even if a new closure does show up on Magic Earth, it takes several weeks to a month.

        This isn't a terrible issue for me in my area, because I know the major roads and highways decently well, but when in other states or cities, it can be a problem.

        That being said, it's still about 80% accurate on the whole. And on rare occasion, it has actually had a closure marked correctly that Google Maps didn't.

  • These are what I use:

    Browsers: Fennec, LibreWolf

    Email Clients: K-9, Fair Email, Proton Mail, Thunderbird

    Pictures: Fossify Camera, Fossify Gallery

    File Sharing: Proton Drive

    YouTube: Tubular

    SMS Messaging: Textra (It's not FOSS, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a FOSS app in existence that shows the actual name of the person who's sent the message in group chats. They just show an icon, which isn't enough for me to keep track)

    App store: Droid-ify (F-Droid), Aurora Store

    Password Manager: Bitwarden

    eBook Reader: Librera FD

    Books: Bookwyrm

    Translation: LibreTranslator

    Calendar: Proton Calendar

    What I can't find good alternatives for:

    YouTube itself - enough said

    Phone screen translation - I still use Google Assistant, and I'm not aware of anything else that grabs and translates all text on my phone screen

    Maps - Rant time. This one is so annoying because there are FOSS navigation apps based on OpenStreetMap that are excellent in every way except one that makes them unusable for me: Using POV navigation instead of observing the convention of up = north. I did find one that lets you maintain a normal map view during navigation, but it doesn't keep your position centered automatically, which makes it impossible to use while driving. I have no idea who all you deranged people are who actually like the POV navigation, but there are definitely a lot of you because I can't find a replacement for Google Maps. I even tried Mapquest because at least it's not Google, but when I tried using it to navigate the first time, it somehow autocorrected "St" to "Ave" and I ended up lost lol. This maps situation really grinds my gears. I do still try to contribute as much as I can to OSM though because it's an important project, and hopefully someday an uninsane developer will make a proper alternative to Google Maps.

  • Firefox.

    Immich for photos

    Radicale for calendar and contacts

    My own mail domain and server, for mail

    Lineages on android

    The only thing I cannot do without, is google maps.

  • Here's my list:

    • Proton Mail: super painless to migrate over and a very similar user experience. Feels good knowing that Google can't read my emails and that they can't be subpoenaed by our insane government. Highly recommend. There's a free plan that offers 1GB of storage but I went straight to a paid account so I can't speak to that.
    • Proton Pass: LOVE this. It was easy to import my passwords from LastPass and Google. The best feature is the "hide my email alias" which on my plan I can make unlimited ones. It's basically making an anonymous throwaway email that automatically forwards to your inbox. If you start getting junk mail you can see who sold your address, but also with one click you can delete it if it gets compromised. It's basically the equivalent of making a bunch of different Google accounts but way easier.
    • Proton Drive: It came with my subscription but I haven't gotten that deep into it yet. It has a Docs alternative but not Sheets which I use a lot, so I'm hoping they develop something like that. Otherwise like a lot like drive. It's technically a photo backup too but the interface is trash (see next item). My goal is to get enough transferred that I can cancel my Google One subscription and maybe just use that for Sheets as needed.
    • Ente Photos: Cloud-based photo backup. I'm slowly getting my photos transferred over but it seems to be pretty user friendly. It has some but not all of the features of Google Photos, like organizing by faces.
    • Brave Search: They have a browser too but I'm just using the search in Firefox at the moment. I like that it's not based on Google's index but it sometimes means the results are not quite as good. Honestly for the payoff of not being algorithmed to death I'm fine with that.

  • https://cartes.app/ is a new kid on the block to replaces Gmaps, looks very cool bit is also very alpha atm. But I'll keep checking it, it has some very cool features already (French only atm which I don't speak at all but it's still super usable.)

49 comments