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De-Googling my phone
11–20 of 192 posts
Re: De-Googling my phone
#12I think one of the things I'd really miss is Google Maps. The directions are really good, and the web app is unusably slow
I use Yalp to install google maps. It works without play store.
Re: De-Googling my phone
#13Your increased trust in these stores is motivated by .... what governance and audit structure? yes, its a devils-advocate position. You might (for instance) have high trust because you know them from hacker traeff you've been on, f2f. I can't have this a-priori knowledge. From here, this looks no better than "trust google" and in some dimensions looks significantly worse. Of course for the primary goal of "distrust g…
Consider the incentives.
Google: track every detail of your life and use it to serve up ads that support their bottom line. Implements changes that serve themselves at your expense.
F-Droid et al: build cool open-source software cause they like cool open-source software. Implements changes because they make the software better.
Re: De-Googling my phone
#14Great list! NewPipe is really good, far better than the proprietary YouTube app. K9 is also a superb app and holds up very well against the proprietary options. I have to recommend andOTP over FreeOTP, though, it's more featureful and does some important things like backups.
Re: De-Googling my phone
#15Very interesting. I've been looking for something like Syncthing for a while now, without luck. I ran into TLS/https issues (can't remember what exactly) while configuring OwnCloud/NextCkound, and realized it had some security flaws I wasn't ready to live with. I decided to stick with Google Drive. I'll give a try to Syncthing this summer. Thanks!
Re: De-Googling my phone
#16Your increased trust in these stores is motivated by .... what governance and audit structure? yes, its a devils-advocate position. You might (for instance) have high trust because you know them from hacker traeff you've been on, f2f. I can't have this a-priori knowledge. From here, this looks no better than "trust google" and in some dimensions looks significantly worse. Of course for the primary goal of "distrust g…
F-Droid is attempting to support reproducible builds--if you have a Debian system, you should be able to re-build the same .apk, or at least a similar enough .apk that the original package signature still passes.
That said, by my quick count, only about 18% of the F-Droid packages are reproducible right now.
nokogiri https://verification.f-droid.org/ -e '$_.css("a").each{|a|puts a.text}'|sed -n 's/\.txt$//p'|sed 's/.*\.//'|sort|uniq -cRe: De-Googling my phone
#17Interesting article. You can add Hound as a surprisingly powerful alternative voice AI to Google Assistant!
I'd be curious to know if anyone has had any positive experiences with any of the non google/apple OS phones or if there is a comparison out there as I'm so fed up with that duopoly. Apple has terrible battery life and intentionally obsoletes their expensive equipment every year. Not to mention they rip off third party devs (its why theres no amazon store app). Googles design on the other hand is so bad it takes forever to figure out how to do something stupidly simple like turn a text message pic into your background or it even tries to kill you with a full screen text wall pop up on google maps when driving over a bump. You find the tiny dismiss and then... bump again...
Re: De-Googling my phone
#18I factory reset my (old) Android phone a while ago and now use it without a connection to Google Play. The only app I installed is Firefox, from an APK file. Works for me, although I rarely use a phone anyway. It's also nice not getting the constant upgrades of apps that came with the phone but which I don't use.
Re: De-Googling my phone
#19For who ever is interested.... I live in China and have lived in a "google free" microcosm for some time forced on me by the government. Generally do not miss anything at all - at least I dont miss anything i dont know about.
FTR i dont game or media watch on my phone. For me a phone is a mobile device for getting things done when im not at my desk. I use a Blackberry DTEK60.
The apps I use: APKpure for getting apps - great selection and its fast. But you do need to know which ones need GPlay Services before downloading. work : Blackberry Hub - use this for work and service integration. Simply the BEST bar none - and yes I am huge fan of BB devices and yes i do/have owned and used everything else. email : MailDroid - for personal email. photos: Simple Gallery - photos txt: YAATA - sms/mms pCloud: cloud storage riot.im: messaging with a few friends and family + calls T-UI: a power saving and very efficient UI for android TurboClient: ftp client - fastest way to move files between pc/Mac and phone
Have loaded and will try some of the author's suggested apps as well. Im not anti-google, just need to have my apps work all the time whether im in Hongkong or China.
Re: De-Googling my phone
#20Great list! NewPipe is really good, far better than the proprietary YouTube app. K9 is also a superb app and holds up very well against the proprietary options. I have to recommend andOTP over FreeOTP, though, it's more featureful and does some important things like backups.
Thanks for the intro to NewPipe. K9 is superbe, used it as a reliable email client for several years.