this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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Asklemmy

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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?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 14 minutes ago* (last edited 4 minutes ago) (1 children)

Replaced

  • Gmail -> Proton Mail
  • Keep -> Joplin
  • Docs -> LibreOffice + OpenDocument Reader
  • Drive -> Proton Drive
  • 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
[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 8 minutes ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 minute 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).

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour 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 โ‚ฌ10 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
[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 4 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

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
[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 19 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 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

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 10 hours ago

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 11 hours 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

What happened with Proton?

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Proton CEO endorsed Trump. Proton's stance has always been against Big Tech and how Big Tech is bad and that's all well and good. But, it's contradicting when you praise or endorse an administration that's more than likely going to let Big Tech roll over everyone.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

Proton CEO endorsed Trump

This is a blatant lie. That never happened.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Was out of the loop on that so I just did the most cursory search. What do you think of this take on it?

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 42 minutes ago)

I never saw anyone try to claim that he was MAGA. Even if he doesn't necessarily support Trump, the tweet is still beyond tone-deaf as it's still painting Trump in a positive light while Trump is trampling on our rights and the constitution.

Edit -
It should also be mentioned that Trump is also actively making things worse for privacy everywhere else, so why even bother cherry-picking that one nomination? It's obvious that the way Trump works is that if you don't follow his word he will just fire you. Even if this nomination may have a past that might show they would do some good things for privacy, if you're not a pawn under Trump's control then you will just be replaced. So the whole point is moot.

Additionally, look at the tweet in question "Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned." There is zero excuse for praising the Republican party and somehow not supporting Trump. They are directly connected and the two concepts cannot be divorced. Supporting the Republican party in any way literally means supporting Trump. Full stop.

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 4 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours 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?

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

Oh, and I go back and forth between Sear XNG and Startpage for search engine. I know Startpage is Bad, but there's no search engine in existence that really makes me happy.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 12 hours 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. ;)

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 12 hours 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Chrome โžก๏ธ Brave - Open source and privacy focused

Search โžก๏ธ Qwant - Good search results and privacy focusing

Photos โžก๏ธ Immich - Pretty much Google Photos but self hosted

Drive โžก๏ธ Nextcloud - Use it with Hetzner Storage Share, pretty cheap and easy to use

Gmail โžก๏ธ mailbox.org - European email hosting focusing on privacy

Meet โžก๏ธ Nextcloud

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago

It seems interesting

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 13 hours 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

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Other than Fediverse apps/websites, and F-droid for FOSS, I have switched to ProtonVPN and their encrypted emails.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

Yes, I switched to Proton as well and so far it's been really painless. Proton pass in particular is amazing.

It was a little hard to pay the real value for something I've gotten used to being so heavily subsidized, but I just am reminding myself that it's because they're not making money off of my data.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

I just wish Proton Mail had a "send as" feature for mailboxes where you don't own the domain.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

The problem with Google services is that they will be probably one of the last ones (from big tech companies) I will stop using. I wanted to switch to Proton this year, but there has been some controversy of its CEO supporting Trump...

Edit: Removed unrelated paragraph.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours ago

Was out of the loop on that so I just did the most cursory search. What do you think of this take on it?

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago

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.