11 ms·

Freeing My Phone from Google

189 points by kbit 7y ago

Dejhavi 7y ago
Freedom > LineageOS + MicroG Privacy sucks! > LineageOS + MindTheGapps or NanoDroid or OpenGApps
mda 7y ago
I don't really understand how using tons of different services with probably much worse privacy and security teams and policies just for the sake of not using Google is improvement. It is actually much worse.
- kbit 7y ago
  Are you referring to a specific recommendation? I'll gladly change or remove it if I included something with worse privacy or security unknowingly. Overall though, Linus' law ("given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow") is a huge factor when it comes to privacy and security in my opinion. If an open source app is bad in one of those aspects, it will be noticed and fixed (or forked). Additionally, community driven projects like OSM simply don't have any reason or motivation to spy. They're a collaborative effort owned and developed by their users, not a company driven by capital and short-term profit.
clircle 7y ago
Do you really need to install UnifiedNLP to use location services? Doesn't the GPS radio work without google play services?
- kbit 7y ago
  I was surprised as well, I do believe that default GPS should work regardless. However, I tried 3 different spots and could not get a single location after minutes of trying. I'm not an Android developer, but could it be that applications are just expecting that API? It would make sense for Google to want to route location requests through what's usually their service...
  - izacus 7y ago
    There are two sets of APIs - one provided by Android AOSP where you choose whether you use GPS, network location or other provider and handle it manually. And then there's a more powerful version provided by Google Services, which automatically fuses all providers and talks to Google servers. Most apps these days opt for the Fused provider, since it's easier to use and automatically handles getting a reliable location in pretty much any environment. It's not available on "Google-free" phones though, since it depends on Google's infrastructure.
- flacks 7y ago
  GPS does work, but sometimes it takes anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to lock onto your position. It doesn't bother me now, but at times it's useful to have faster location lock, in which case UnifiedNLP + a few location providers does the trick.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    I wonder if somehow UnifiedNLP is providing the almanac? GPS is a standalone system but it doesn't have a lot of spare bandwidth for the metadata so the alamanac you need frequently updated to use it takes quite a long time to receive over GPS itself whereas you can download it very fast over even a mediocre GSM signal. Taking a few minutes, especially the first time you use it in a day for example, sounds like the time needed to receive the almanac. But I could be wrong.
- izacus 7y ago
  > Doesn't the GPS radio work without google play services? It does, but you'll have very poor reception unless you have a nice line of sight to the sky - large cities and forests are typically the most problematic.
cameronbrown 7y ago
There's two Google apps I just can't live without: YouTube and Google Maps. There's simply no alternative to the amount of value these bring me. OSM is getting good but it's just not there yet. I'm working on this in my area. I'd suggest to anyone worried about Google tracking to use Privacy Guard built into LineageOS, which aims to make each and every request for sensitive permissions explicit. A big benefit of free software is that we can also use useful proprietary apps without giving up control of our hardware.
- amelius 7y ago
  > There's two Google apps I just can't live without: YouTube and Google Maps. There's simply no alternative to the amount of value these bring me. Regarding YouTube, try using only their video widget, and not their recommendation engine.
- oil25 7y ago
  Check out NewPipe (https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe) to replace the proprietary YouTube client on Android. For Maps, thankfully it still works in Firefox, which entirely relieves me of Google Play Services and their proprietary apps on my phone.
- xref 7y ago
  Strong disagree on gmaps, especially with Apple Maps available for iOS users. Gmaps is strictly better, but not enough to balance their incentive to truly abuse that data against me.
  - lern_too_spel 7y ago
    Apple is strictly worse on location data collection than Google, so you are not solving GP's problem. The OSM apps on Android are viable options for preserving privacy. Apple Maps is not.
    - xref 7y ago
      Huh? Android is the epitome of the surveillance panopticon. Google has every incentive to monetize that data for their ad sales targeting. Apple doesn’t. Beside that I’m a big fan/contributor/user of OSM (maps.me is my app of choice there). But if you want to go with one of the big, polished players, I chose the one that has little to gain and much to lose from abusing my personal data.
lozf 7y ago
[META] This site becomes much easier to read with e.g. sakura css bookmarklet [0] [0]: https://oxal.org/projects/sakura/bookmark https://oxal.org/projects/sakura/bookmark
- JoshMnem 7y ago
  Or Firefox reader mode. Just click the icon in the address bar.
  - neogodless 7y ago
    I switched to Firefox early this year, but I still haven't cemented reading mode into my muscle memory yet. I'm a little better about it on mobile. But on desktop I did what I often do on sites like these; inspect, turn off color: #777 on body/p tags. Oh, there is text on this page after all!
flaxton 7y ago
Speaking of phones, did you try to read this on a phone? Tiny font, not responsive design and faint color (no contrast) makes it very hard to read. Ugh.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  That is horrible. Fails both FF Reader Mode and Outline.org w3m (via Termux) and unv.is both win: https://unv.is/hexaquo.at/posts/2019/06/29/Freeing+my+phone+from+Google https://unv.is/hexaquo.at/posts/2019/06/29/Freeing+my+phone+...
- kbit 7y ago
  Sorry! I just set up my blog and only tested it on my phone, where it worked well. I can see why fonts could be small, the default stylesheet is using absolute values. Should've checked that before... Will fix as soon as possible! Edit: It should be somewhat better now, with relative font size values. Still not ideal, I gotta refresh my CSS skills and work more on the stylesheet sometime soon. Thanks again for letting me know.
- StavrosK 7y ago
  Use Firefox's Reader mode.
  - ivanstegic 7y ago
    It keeps failing for me trying that. So weird.
    - commoner 7y ago
      It works for me. What happens when you turn on reader mode?
ekianjo 7y ago
I really dislike people recommending Signal in a post about free software since Signal has a pretty bad track record when it comes to allowing non official clients to connect to its network. So much for user freedom.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  can anybody here comment on the state of Wire? The last time I heard about them a while ago but they also seemed reasonably serious about security.
- webmobdev 7y ago
  Most people haven't even heard of https://jami.net/discover/ https://jami.net/discover/ ... and that's the problem with messengers - you have to educate your social network and coax them to use the same product or you will be forever stuck with Facebook Messenger / WhatApp, iMessage et al.
  - akvadrako 7y ago
    Indeed, I had never heard of it until this comment. If you want more people to notice it, someone just submitted it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20311324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20311324
  - meruru 7y ago
    Riot.im and the broader Matrix ecosystem are doing pretty well. Matrix was even adopted by the French government for internal communications. I tried Jami when it was called Ring and I couldn't figure it out after some fumbling with the app and skimming of the website. If I can't figure it out how can I expect nontechnical people to? That was one of the reasons why I ended up adopting Riot/Matrix back then and have been pushing it since, but I'm still interested in alternative communication systems if they can bring any benefits to the table. Does Jami bring any?
    - beatgammit 7y ago
      My problem with Riot specifically and Matrix generally is that the adoption process isn't very gentle. Yes they have bridges, but my experience has been that they're way more pain than they're worth, especially if you're the odd one out. The thing I like about Signal is that I can use it for regular texts as well as encrypted communications. Instead of converting all of my friends at once (or even just a significant subset), I can just replace my texting app with Signal and get my friends to move over one as a time. I tried that with Riot, but it just didn't work out. I tried the Slack bridge, but it required admin access on the Slack server (fortunately I had that at the time) and only one channel could be created at a time, which was tedious. That's not Riot's fault, but it's not particularly important who is at fault. I want to replace some app with Riot and slowly phase everything else in, but nothing really gave me the confidence to do so. I heard rumors that they were planning to support VoIP, but this doesn't seem to extend to making/receiving regular calls or texts, but merely providing audio and video chat along with their regular text service. Maybe that has changed (I check back periodically), but unless it solves a problem that doesn't require me to convince everyone else to switch, I'm probably not going to make the effort. And that's why I like Signal. It's not the best secure messaging system out there, but it's a drop in replacement for something I use today and doesn't require me to get everyone to switch at once.
butz 7y ago
Any suggestions for Google Keep replacement? I really hate that all reminders end up in Google Calendar. I've already tried almost all Tasks apps from F-Droid, but each has some or other annoyance that prevents me from using it.
- kbit 7y ago
  Omni Notes is the best Google Keep replacement I've found yet. You're right though, it's surprising how hard it is to find a note taking app that's just simple and intuitive.
- MayeulC 7y ago
  Carnet is one I like, though it's quite early in its development cycle (started less than one year ago, I think). Author is supported trough donations. It also syncs with nextcloud (and is available as a webapp --nextcloud or standalone), and explicitly takes google Keep as an inspiration. The desktop version has a barebones google keep import feature. https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/carnet https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/carnet https://github.com/PhieF/CarnetDocumentation https://github.com/PhieF/CarnetDocumentation https://carnet.live https://carnet.live I've been on the lookout for such an app as well, and after trying a lot of different ones, this is my favorite so far.
- theferalrobot 7y ago
  Zoho notebook might fit your bill - its basically a keep clone
maitredusoi 7y ago
Wouldn't it be simpler to just use one of this 9 alternatives ??? https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/ https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/ By the way PureOS seems a good shot. I just can't understand people claming to run free of Google and stay on Android !!! ;) ;) ;) ;) Good luck with your fight againsn't the Google devil. Me ? I am staying on Apple devil device, but I just take responsibility for that choice.
- kbit 7y ago
  It's true that Google plays a big role in Android development, but that doesn't mean there's something inherently wrong with Android. It's a good operating system, it's free and open source, and its huge ecosystem and existing userbase (to whom something like LineageOS or Replicant will be immediately familiar) is the reason I stuck to it. Because it's open source, Google can't put their objectionable code directly into Android - that's what their proprietary apps and services are for, and those are where you begin to lose your freedom and control.
  - OrgNet 7y ago
    the worst part about android apps is that they are android apps...
    - OrgNet 7y ago
      but the same is true for most proprietary formats... which is why I was hoping for web apps to catch ON more
  - est31 7y ago
    This: Because android has a larger general ecosystem, the open source ecosystem is larger, too. Also, building independent operating systems that reach as many devices as android or android based distros like LineageOS do is next to impossible because of driver issues. In fact, it's only thanks to standardization pushes by Microsoft that you can build a single ISO and run it on different IBM PC's. There is no such standardization push by Google. They are okay with each vendor forking stuff, changing source code, and then providing their own version of Android instead of requiring one google-built binary for all devices. This has detrimental effects on anyone wanting to build an alternative to android because they need to maintain a large number of kernels sometimes with millions of lines of diff to torvalds mainline. There are some meek pushes by Google and other parties to mainline more stuff to Linux and implement ARM GPU drivers in Mesa, but I doubt that we'll get a situation that's equally nice to the IBM PC situation any time soon.
muhmas 7y ago
Google is evil by all means. I'm so happy that people start to use alternatives.. Ditch evil doers, be in positive side to support companies that actually have people's privacy in they priority.
RealStickman 7y ago
I find it sad that there is no recommendation for microg in this article, since some apps refuse to work without the Google APIs. I'd also add Aurora Store as an alternative Playstore apps downloader. You can even log in with an anonymous account, so Google can't link app downloads to your personal account.
- kbit 7y ago
  Absolutely, microG is a great project, especially when you need to use proprietary apps which rely on Google APIs. However, with the goal of also generally moving towards free software on my smartphone, I personally only needed the UnifiedNlp part (which is mentioned in the Map section) - in my experience, most free apps don't depend on other Google services.
IloveHN84 7y ago
I would immediately switch from Google if I get the same integration between services, all encrypted and for free.
- toxicFork 7y ago
  Which services are your top 3? I am working on integration between email and calendar in my spare time :)
- nielsbot 7y ago
  what about Apple?
charliebrownau 7y ago
Gday I would recommend all people shift to free speech platforms Facebook >> Minds + Mewe + pocketnet.app Twitter >> Gab + Parler Youtube >> Bitchute + invidio.us Twitch >> joshwhotv Pateron >> subscribestar Instagram >> Pixelfed Meetup >> @GetTogether Skype >> Wire or Jami/GNU Ring Firefox >> Waterfox browser Chrome >> Iridium browser Brave >> Gab Dissenter Browser MS Office >> Libreoffice suite Windows >> Linux Android >> LinageOS & F Droid Store (Waterfox browser is available for Android phones) Google Search >> Duckduckgo Google Mail >> Proton mail or Tutanota mail Google Maps >> OpenStreetMap Regards Charliebrownau
fithisux 7y ago
Any phones that can be used for FOSS experience?
- kbit 7y ago
  The Fairphone seems to offer the option to buy it with an open Android OS and no Google apps preinstalled. It also has the added benefit of trying not to kill people in its production process.
Jowsey 7y ago
The only thing preventing me fully leaving Google is YouTube, but a massive amount of my News, Entertainment, Music, basically everything, comes from YouTube.. Does anyone know a way I can watch YouTube videos without sending my stuff to Google? Some sort of custom client with telemetry disabled or something? Honestly I'm not even entirely sure what Google does with my video watching data but it'd be foolish to think they're doing nothing.
- kbit 7y ago
  The app NewPipe and its web version https://invidio.us/ https://invidio.us/ were recommended in the comments here. They allow you to use YouTube quite well without an account and without the official website/app. However, I imagine through loading videos, YouTube can still collect some data. (I might be wrong though, I don't know exactly how much they pipe through their servers.) If you want to be completely private, you'll probably have to use TOR together with those alternative clients.

189 points by kbit 7y ago

Freedom > LineageOS + MicroG Privacy sucks! > LineageOS + MindTheGapps or NanoDroid or OpenGApps

mda 7y ago

I don't really understand how using tons of different services with probably much worse privacy and security teams and policies just for the sake of not using Google is improvement. It is actually much worse.

kbit 7y ago
Are you referring to a specific recommendation? I'll gladly change or remove it if I included something with worse privacy or security unknowingly. Overall though, Linus' law ("given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow") is a huge factor when it comes to privacy and security in my opinion. If an open source app is bad in one of those aspects, it will be noticed and fixed (or forked). Additionally, community driven projects like OSM simply don't have any reason or motivation to spy. They're a collaborative effort owned and developed by their users, not a company driven by capital and short-term profit.

clircle 7y ago

Do you really need to install UnifiedNLP to use location services? Doesn't the GPS radio work without google play services?

kbit 7y ago
I was surprised as well, I do believe that default GPS should work regardless. However, I tried 3 different spots and could not get a single location after minutes of trying. I'm not an Android developer, but could it be that applications are just expecting that API? It would make sense for Google to want to route location requests through what's usually their service...
- izacus 7y ago
  There are two sets of APIs - one provided by Android AOSP where you choose whether you use GPS, network location or other provider and handle it manually. And then there's a more powerful version provided by Google Services, which automatically fuses all providers and talks to Google servers. Most apps these days opt for the Fused provider, since it's easier to use and automatically handles getting a reliable location in pretty much any environment. It's not available on "Google-free" phones though, since it depends on Google's infrastructure.
flacks 7y ago
GPS does work, but sometimes it takes anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to lock onto your position. It doesn't bother me now, but at times it's useful to have faster location lock, in which case UnifiedNLP + a few location providers does the trick.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  I wonder if somehow UnifiedNLP is providing the almanac? GPS is a standalone system but it doesn't have a lot of spare bandwidth for the metadata so the alamanac you need frequently updated to use it takes quite a long time to receive over GPS itself whereas you can download it very fast over even a mediocre GSM signal. Taking a few minutes, especially the first time you use it in a day for example, sounds like the time needed to receive the almanac. But I could be wrong.
izacus 7y ago
> Doesn't the GPS radio work without google play services? It does, but you'll have very poor reception unless you have a nice line of sight to the sky - large cities and forests are typically the most problematic.

cameronbrown 7y ago

There's two Google apps I just can't live without: YouTube and Google Maps. There's simply no alternative to the amount of value these bring me. OSM is getting good but it's just not there yet. I'm working on this in my area. I'd suggest to anyone worried about Google tracking to use Privacy Guard built into LineageOS, which aims to make each and every request for sensitive permissions explicit. A big benefit of free software is that we can also use useful proprietary apps without giving up control of our hardware.

amelius 7y ago
> There's two Google apps I just can't live without: YouTube and Google Maps. There's simply no alternative to the amount of value these bring me. Regarding YouTube, try using only their video widget, and not their recommendation engine.
oil25 7y ago
Check out NewPipe (https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe) to replace the proprietary YouTube client on Android. For Maps, thankfully it still works in Firefox, which entirely relieves me of Google Play Services and their proprietary apps on my phone.
xref 7y ago
Strong disagree on gmaps, especially with Apple Maps available for iOS users. Gmaps is strictly better, but not enough to balance their incentive to truly abuse that data against me.
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  Apple is strictly worse on location data collection than Google, so you are not solving GP's problem. The OSM apps on Android are viable options for preserving privacy. Apple Maps is not.
  - xref 7y ago
    Huh? Android is the epitome of the surveillance panopticon. Google has every incentive to monetize that data for their ad sales targeting. Apple doesn’t. Beside that I’m a big fan/contributor/user of OSM (maps.me is my app of choice there). But if you want to go with one of the big, polished players, I chose the one that has little to gain and much to lose from abusing my personal data.

lozf 7y ago

[META] This site becomes much easier to read with e.g. sakura css bookmarklet [0] [0]: https://oxal.org/projects/sakura/bookmark https://oxal.org/projects/sakura/bookmark

JoshMnem 7y ago
Or Firefox reader mode. Just click the icon in the address bar.
- neogodless 7y ago
  I switched to Firefox early this year, but I still haven't cemented reading mode into my muscle memory yet. I'm a little better about it on mobile. But on desktop I did what I often do on sites like these; inspect, turn off color: #777 on body/p tags. Oh, there is text on this page after all!

flaxton 7y ago

Speaking of phones, did you try to read this on a phone? Tiny font, not responsive design and faint color (no contrast) makes it very hard to read. Ugh.

dredmorbius 7y ago
That is horrible. Fails both FF Reader Mode and Outline.org w3m (via Termux) and unv.is both win: https://unv.is/hexaquo.at/posts/2019/06/29/Freeing+my+phone+from+Google https://unv.is/hexaquo.at/posts/2019/06/29/Freeing+my+phone+...
kbit 7y ago
Sorry! I just set up my blog and only tested it on my phone, where it worked well. I can see why fonts could be small, the default stylesheet is using absolute values. Should've checked that before... Will fix as soon as possible! Edit: It should be somewhat better now, with relative font size values. Still not ideal, I gotta refresh my CSS skills and work more on the stylesheet sometime soon. Thanks again for letting me know.
StavrosK 7y ago
Use Firefox's Reader mode.
- ivanstegic 7y ago
  It keeps failing for me trying that. So weird.
  - commoner 7y ago
    It works for me. What happens when you turn on reader mode?

ekianjo 7y ago

I really dislike people recommending Signal in a post about free software since Signal has a pretty bad track record when it comes to allowing non official clients to connect to its network. So much for user freedom.

Barrin92 7y ago
can anybody here comment on the state of Wire? The last time I heard about them a while ago but they also seemed reasonably serious about security.
webmobdev 7y ago
Most people haven't even heard of https://jami.net/discover/ https://jami.net/discover/ ... and that's the problem with messengers - you have to educate your social network and coax them to use the same product or you will be forever stuck with Facebook Messenger / WhatApp, iMessage et al.
- akvadrako 7y ago
  Indeed, I had never heard of it until this comment. If you want more people to notice it, someone just submitted it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20311324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20311324
- meruru 7y ago
  Riot.im and the broader Matrix ecosystem are doing pretty well. Matrix was even adopted by the French government for internal communications. I tried Jami when it was called Ring and I couldn't figure it out after some fumbling with the app and skimming of the website. If I can't figure it out how can I expect nontechnical people to? That was one of the reasons why I ended up adopting Riot/Matrix back then and have been pushing it since, but I'm still interested in alternative communication systems if they can bring any benefits to the table. Does Jami bring any?
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    My problem with Riot specifically and Matrix generally is that the adoption process isn't very gentle. Yes they have bridges, but my experience has been that they're way more pain than they're worth, especially if you're the odd one out. The thing I like about Signal is that I can use it for regular texts as well as encrypted communications. Instead of converting all of my friends at once (or even just a significant subset), I can just replace my texting app with Signal and get my friends to move over one as a time. I tried that with Riot, but it just didn't work out. I tried the Slack bridge, but it required admin access on the Slack server (fortunately I had that at the time) and only one channel could be created at a time, which was tedious. That's not Riot's fault, but it's not particularly important who is at fault. I want to replace some app with Riot and slowly phase everything else in, but nothing really gave me the confidence to do so. I heard rumors that they were planning to support VoIP, but this doesn't seem to extend to making/receiving regular calls or texts, but merely providing audio and video chat along with their regular text service. Maybe that has changed (I check back periodically), but unless it solves a problem that doesn't require me to convince everyone else to switch, I'm probably not going to make the effort. And that's why I like Signal. It's not the best secure messaging system out there, but it's a drop in replacement for something I use today and doesn't require me to get everyone to switch at once.

butz 7y ago

Any suggestions for Google Keep replacement? I really hate that all reminders end up in Google Calendar. I've already tried almost all Tasks apps from F-Droid, but each has some or other annoyance that prevents me from using it.

kbit 7y ago
Omni Notes is the best Google Keep replacement I've found yet. You're right though, it's surprising how hard it is to find a note taking app that's just simple and intuitive.
MayeulC 7y ago
Carnet is one I like, though it's quite early in its development cycle (started less than one year ago, I think). Author is supported trough donations. It also syncs with nextcloud (and is available as a webapp --nextcloud or standalone), and explicitly takes google Keep as an inspiration. The desktop version has a barebones google keep import feature. https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/carnet https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/carnet https://github.com/PhieF/CarnetDocumentation https://github.com/PhieF/CarnetDocumentation https://carnet.live https://carnet.live I've been on the lookout for such an app as well, and after trying a lot of different ones, this is my favorite so far.
theferalrobot 7y ago
Zoho notebook might fit your bill - its basically a keep clone

maitredusoi 7y ago

Wouldn't it be simpler to just use one of this 9 alternatives ??? https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/ https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/ By the way PureOS seems a good shot. I just can't understand people claming to run free of Google and stay on Android !!! ;) ;) ;) ;) Good luck with your fight againsn't the Google devil. Me ? I am staying on Apple devil device, but I just take responsibility for that choice.

kbit 7y ago
It's true that Google plays a big role in Android development, but that doesn't mean there's something inherently wrong with Android. It's a good operating system, it's free and open source, and its huge ecosystem and existing userbase (to whom something like LineageOS or Replicant will be immediately familiar) is the reason I stuck to it. Because it's open source, Google can't put their objectionable code directly into Android - that's what their proprietary apps and services are for, and those are where you begin to lose your freedom and control.
- OrgNet 7y ago
  the worst part about android apps is that they are android apps...
  - OrgNet 7y ago
    but the same is true for most proprietary formats... which is why I was hoping for web apps to catch ON more
- est31 7y ago
  This: Because android has a larger general ecosystem, the open source ecosystem is larger, too. Also, building independent operating systems that reach as many devices as android or android based distros like LineageOS do is next to impossible because of driver issues. In fact, it's only thanks to standardization pushes by Microsoft that you can build a single ISO and run it on different IBM PC's. There is no such standardization push by Google. They are okay with each vendor forking stuff, changing source code, and then providing their own version of Android instead of requiring one google-built binary for all devices. This has detrimental effects on anyone wanting to build an alternative to android because they need to maintain a large number of kernels sometimes with millions of lines of diff to torvalds mainline. There are some meek pushes by Google and other parties to mainline more stuff to Linux and implement ARM GPU drivers in Mesa, but I doubt that we'll get a situation that's equally nice to the IBM PC situation any time soon.

muhmas 7y ago

Google is evil by all means. I'm so happy that people start to use alternatives.. Ditch evil doers, be in positive side to support companies that actually have people's privacy in they priority.

RealStickman 7y ago

I find it sad that there is no recommendation for microg in this article, since some apps refuse to work without the Google APIs. I'd also add Aurora Store as an alternative Playstore apps downloader. You can even log in with an anonymous account, so Google can't link app downloads to your personal account.

kbit 7y ago
Absolutely, microG is a great project, especially when you need to use proprietary apps which rely on Google APIs. However, with the goal of also generally moving towards free software on my smartphone, I personally only needed the UnifiedNlp part (which is mentioned in the Map section) - in my experience, most free apps don't depend on other Google services.

IloveHN84 7y ago

I would immediately switch from Google if I get the same integration between services, all encrypted and for free.

toxicFork 7y ago
Which services are your top 3? I am working on integration between email and calendar in my spare time :)
nielsbot 7y ago
what about Apple?

charliebrownau 7y ago

Gday I would recommend all people shift to free speech platforms Facebook >> Minds + Mewe + pocketnet.app Twitter >> Gab + Parler Youtube >> Bitchute + invidio.us Twitch >> joshwhotv Pateron >> subscribestar Instagram >> Pixelfed Meetup >> @GetTogether Skype >> Wire or Jami/GNU Ring Firefox >> Waterfox browser Chrome >> Iridium browser Brave >> Gab Dissenter Browser MS Office >> Libreoffice suite Windows >> Linux Android >> LinageOS & F Droid Store (Waterfox browser is available for Android phones) Google Search >> Duckduckgo Google Mail >> Proton mail or Tutanota mail Google Maps >> OpenStreetMap Regards Charliebrownau

fithisux 7y ago

Any phones that can be used for FOSS experience?

kbit 7y ago
The Fairphone seems to offer the option to buy it with an open Android OS and no Google apps preinstalled. It also has the added benefit of trying not to kill people in its production process.

Jowsey 7y ago

The only thing preventing me fully leaving Google is YouTube, but a massive amount of my News, Entertainment, Music, basically everything, comes from YouTube.. Does anyone know a way I can watch YouTube videos without sending my stuff to Google? Some sort of custom client with telemetry disabled or something? Honestly I'm not even entirely sure what Google does with my video watching data but it'd be foolish to think they're doing nothing.

kbit 7y ago
The app NewPipe and its web version https://invidio.us/ https://invidio.us/ were recommended in the comments here. They allow you to use YouTube quite well without an account and without the official website/app. However, I imagine through loading videos, YouTube can still collect some data. (I might be wrong though, I don't know exactly how much they pipe through their servers.) If you want to be completely private, you'll probably have to use TOR together with those alternative clients.