128

What apps have you tried to "de-google" yourself? (reddthat.com)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by pleasestopasking@reddthat.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

111 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

(page 2) 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] somenonewho@feddit.org 6 points 15 hours ago

My selfhosted Nextcloud does:

Cloud storage (including photo storage)
Contact/Calendar/Task Sync (DAV Droid)
Notes
Podcast subscription and progress sync (gpodder)

While I use OSMAnd for offline navigation MAPS is still my go-to for navigation/discovering places.

My phone is currently running stock Android

[-] Niquarl@lemmy.ml 1 points 13 hours ago

What podcast apps do you use with gPodder?

load more comments (2 replies)

[-] SexDwarf@lemmy.world 5 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Replaced

Gmail -> Proton Mail
Keep -> Joplin
Docs -> LibreOffice + OpenDocument Reader
Drive 100 Gb -> Proton Drive (free 5 Gb)
Photos -> ente photos
Play Books -> ReadEra Premium + Kobo
Translate & Lens -> DeepL

Haven't been able to replace (just yet)

Wallet
Maps & Earth
Sheets
Home
Calendar

[-] lud@lemm.ee 2 points 11 hours ago

Since you already use proton you should check out proton calendar.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] iborrelli@lemm.ee 2 points 15 hours ago

Google sheets is simply... Really good. I haven't been able to find anything else close. I've tried libre and even excel but sheets is by far my favourite. And I really love spreadsheets so I feel I'm in a horrible position and so torn.

[-] SexDwarf@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

Tell me about it. Wallet is literally the only good option. The alternatives to Maps don't come even close, it's simply the best and most convenient app. Same with Earth (use it rarely but still).

load more comments (3 replies)

load more comments (2 replies)

[-] orcrist@lemm.ee 1 points 11 hours ago

Tried? That is boring. Stick with what we kept using.

[-] JustARegularNerd@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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

[-] Lyra_Lycan 6 points 17 hours ago

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

[-] JustARegularNerd@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

I've considered CalyxOS but prefer the hardening of GrapheneOS with no gapps - still means a phone decent on privacy. However I do try to keep an open mind, so if CalyxOS has additional privacy benefits to my existing setup I'd be interested.

I agree with the proprietary style of ProtonMail point, and my workaround for multiple accounts has been to use my own domain and have email rules for delivering messages to the respective folder. I don't have immediate plans to move from them, but I am watching the news cycle and have considered Tuta as an alternative.

I haven't used ReVanced, but I remember the original YouTube Vanced was a mod of the original YouTube apk - if that's still the case, I feel like ReVanced would offer even less privacy than Invidious or NewPipe. However I'm happy to be corrected.

I personally use Nextcloud notes but the Obsidian setup you have sounds interesting, especially if it's like OneNote - I'll keep it in mind!

Completely agree on your Nextcloud points - I uploaded my uncompressed Telegram archive to it, which took like 12 hours over my Gigabit lan. I suspect it hated the sheer amount of small files

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] Lyra_Lycan 2 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

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

[-] kamen@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

I've tried HeliBoard as already suggested elsewhere, but I find its autocorrect and suggestions absolutely abysmal in English and even worse in my native Bulgarian. With Gboard I can usually type a letter or two and it already knows what's up, and it often knows what's the next word based just on the previous one.

How's your experience with it?

load more comments (3 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] venotic@kbin.melroy.org 22 points 1 day ago

ProtonMail was the GMail alternative for awhile, until Proton CEO did a stupid move. Otherwise, ProtonMail had actually been a great service and it was nice having a data cap of 500MB. It told me that was all I ever needed for the few years I had with it.

Firefox Forks over Chrome.

load more comments (18 replies)

[-] kaerypheur@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago

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.

[-] AlexWarburton@lemmy.world 3 points 22 hours ago

Google Search -> Ecosia, Qwant Browser -> Vivaldi Mail, Calender -> Proton* Drive -> Proton* DNS -> Quad9 Notes -> Joplin VPN -> Proton LLM/AI -> Mistral Translate -> DeepL Maps -> Here We Go Dall-E etc -> Stability Matrix Kindle -> Pocketbook

*Planning to move everything to a NAS with Nextcloud and synch in with Jottacloud as a backup.

[-] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted 2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

I see from the "View source" option that your comment has everything in a neat, line-by-line fashion, though the final markup is decidedly not.

So, a pro-tip I've noticed from my own commenting experience: even if you have a line break, Lemmy (for some stupid reason) won't apply one when rendering; so if you want it to show, you have to use two line breaks, though then there will be an extra half-line or so that you probably never wanted.

For example, don't do

Line Item 1
Line Item 2

but rather do

Line Item 1

Line Item 2

Yes, I agree it's rather stupid.

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 points 17 hours ago

It's the way Markdown works, for reasons, which is what Lemmy uses for its comment syntax.

If you want a regular line
break, you can put two spaces
at the end of a line.

[-] pleasestopasking@reddthat.com 5 points 17 hours ago

Holy shit I've been using markdown message boards for years and
you just blew my mind

[-] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted 2 points 17 hours ago

Yeah I know, and I don't like that limitation. Lol. xD

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 2 points 16 hours ago

Yeah, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense here. Codeberg uses a Markdown flavor which honors single line breaks and it kind of surprised me how well that is working. Like, if you're used to Markdown, you can put those two spaces and they're just ignored. If you're not used to Markdown, it works like you'd expect.

I guess, the downside is that either each client needs to configure their Markdown renderer to behave like that, or I guess, the server software has to pre-process the Markdown to add in the double-spaces.
That's more of a problem for Lemmy than it is for Codeberg, because there is a number of different clients available.

[-] toastal@lemmy.ml 2 points 12 hours ago

Jerboa vs. the website do different things since they render Markdown differently. Markdown itself is so spartan that it doesn’t have many things users want or need, so a bunch of incompatible forks get made & everyone just pretends it is all the same when in reality, it often lies on a single tool’s implementation.

Take AsciiDoc with its verse directive or reStructuredText with its line-block directive. Both get you poetry-style newlines on demand & are a part of the spec instead of left to the implementer.

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 hours ago

Yeah, that's kind of the advantage and disadvantage of Markdown. It's so simple that alternative implementations can be easily created, which helps with adoption. But because those alternative implementations exist and because there is a need to add more features, those alternative implementations will see custom changes for the format, ultimately making the format less standardized.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted 2 points 16 hours ago

Didn't know that Codeberg did that. I'll have to add that to my list of reasons why I love Codeberg. Lol.

[-] 0485919158191@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] LinkOpensChest_wav 8 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] Liljekonvalj@feddit.org 2 points 12 hours ago

Would you mind hitting us with a direct link to tubular? This is one of the biggest hindrances to getting completely off google

load more comments (4 replies)

[-] letsgo@lemm.ee 1 points 11 hours ago

I have no idea who all you deranged people are who actually like the POV navigation

I use both POV and up=north depending on my use case. For some routes where I don't care about the details of the route I find it useful to have the POV view with what I need now zoomed in and correctly oriented and what I'll need soon still visible and smaller but still distinguishable.

The problem with up=north is that when you've zoomed right in to see the detail, all the wider view stuff is missing, especially when out of built-up zones. It'd be better if the detail level would be replaced/augmented with a detail density setting, so that when you're out in the sticks with only you, a small single track road with grass down the middle and one sheep visible all the way up to the horizon in any direction that you don't have to zoom right in to the individual blades of grass before you see the road you're on.

Other times I do care about the route, and in those cases I'll use up=north and manual zoom as needed. I still get caught out though when travelling south and the arrow pointing left means I need to turn right.

When I first saw POV I thought it was a stupid gimmick. But then I tried it out and really liked it, but not always.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] The_Caretaker@lemm.ee 6 points 1 day ago

FreeTube is a good replacement for YouTube on PC and NewPipe is good on Android phones.

[-] LinkOpensChest_wav 4 points 1 day ago

Yeah Tubular is basically NewPipe with Sponsorblock. I'll give Freetube a try.

What I mean though is ... it's still YouTube, y'know?

load more comments (4 replies)

[-] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] Bhaelfur@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 2 points 20 hours ago

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.

[-] Naich@lemmings.world 5 points 1 day ago

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

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 6 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] Flubo@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago

Mail: Posteo Maps: osmand for walking, hiking, cycling, skiing and magic earth for car navigation (because of real live traffic) Drive: nextcloud Phone: second Hand Google pixel with graphene OS installed (degiogled Android)

There are like 10 communities called something like privacy and a couple with degoogle in their name specifically. If you need more alternatives check them out. ;)

[-] The_Caretaker@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago

I use F-Droid and Aurora Store on my phone and replaced the Google apps, that came preloaded on the phone, with FOSS apps. NewPipe on my phone and FreeTube on my PC to replace YouTube. I don't use Gmail. My Google account is on a Proton account. After I am sure I have all my desired apps switched over to email sign in, I will delete the Google account. I am also switching my Proton mail for Tuta mail. Proton is on the wrong side. I also dumped Microsoft over a year ago. I have been on Linux since then. I have avoided FaceBook for over a decade and never maintained a Twitter account.

[-] Lyra_Lycan 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

I recommend, as a bonus, to use Universal Android Debloater, it has an easy to understand GUI and it uses AndroidDebugBridge to connect to the phone via USB. It shows all the installed apps, recommends with various tiers the apps that are worth uninstalling - every app has a helpful description - and blitzes the fuckers. System or factory bloat isn't safe from it.

[-] tfm@europe.pub 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Chrome ➡️ Brave - Open source and privacy focused

Search ➡️ Qwant - Good search results and privacy focusing

Photos ➡️ Immich - Pretty much Google Photos but self hosted

Drive ➡️ Nextcloud - Use it with Hetzner Storage Share, pretty cheap and easy to use

Gmail ➡️ mailbox.org - European email hosting focusing on privacy

Meet ➡️ Nextcloud

load more comments (4 replies)

[-] POTOOOOOOOO@reddthat.com 4 points 1 day ago

I use Ad Nauseum. Why degoogle when you can actively cost them money?

[-] pleasestopasking@reddthat.com 4 points 1 day ago

What's Ad Nauseum? What does it do and why do you like it?

[-] JustARegularNerd@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

As per their website:

As online advertising becomes ever more ubiquitous and unsanctioned, AdNauseam works to complete the cycle by automating ad clicks universally and blindly on behalf of its users. Built atop uBlock Origin, AdNauseam quietly clicks on every blocked ad, registering a visit on ad networks' databases. As the collected data gathered shows an omnivorous click-stream, user tracking, targeting and surveillance become futile

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments

this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025

128 points (100.0% liked)

Asklemmy

46520 readers

903 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS