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For those of you wishing for a lower-surveillance experience on Android: please try LineageOS (AOSP) without any of the Google apps or Play Services. Instead, g
by chrismartin 8y ago
For those of you wishing for a lower-surveillance experience on Android: please try LineageOS (AOSP) without any of the Google apps or Play Services. Instead, get your apps from F-Droid and Yalp Store. Firefox with NoScript plugin, AdAway, Syncthing, etc. This has been my daily driver for years. Google Maps works well enough in a browser -- I use it as a 'homescreen-installed' web app. Google sees my location only when I am actually using Maps.
I'm missing out on a few slick features in the Google native apps (mostly in Maps), but I'll gladly trade that for a device that is not trying to erode my privacy at every possible opportunity.
- Markoff 8y agoGoogle maps are anyway inferior outside US to other apps like Maps.me which has anyway superior map design, much easier to navigate and read than Google maps with those isometric/3D buildings Firefox it's too slow on android, better use Brave, Bromite or Kiwi browser i run also LOS15.1 without gapps
- hodorhodor 8y agoWhat are you doing about the missing GCM/FCM? Especially with messaging apps it's super annoying when they only receive updates when you actually open them.
- thsealienbstrds 8y agoAs someone who has been doing this for a while, I find sometimes I don't get a notification until I open an app. You get used to it. Anyway, when someone calls me on Whatsapp it still works fine for instance.
- chrismartin 8y agoSorry for the late response: email (K-9 Mail) uses IMAP idle, Signal uses a persistent websocket, and XMPP (Conversations) also uses long-lived TCP connections. I don't use any proprietary messaging apps that rely on Google's push notifications.