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Freeing My Phone from Google

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Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#101

Post by ayoisaiah »

kbit wrote: post #68
commoner wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps is fully compatible with MicroG, a free and open source replacement for the Google Play Services client. MicroG includes UnifiedNlp, which was discussed in the blog post. https://microg.org/ https://lineage.microg.org/ At the moment, I recommend the previous version of MicroG (0.2.6.13280) since the latest version (0.2.7.17455) may have compatibility issues. If you're using LineageOS for MicroG, builds on…

SkyTube is another free YouTube client which works really well. One feature I am very fond of (not sure if NewPipe has that as well?) is 'subscribing' to channels through a local database, without a YouTube account.

Can confirm that NewPipe has this feature

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#102

Post by axaxs »

m0nty wrote: post #76
webmobdev wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps replacement: https://wego.here.com/ (It's pretty decent and was owned and used by Nokia before some German automobile companies bought it. Includes traffic data and voice based navigation. And they were offering offline maps long before Google).

I use this. Got fed up with Google Maps (in navigation mode) constantly trying to get my attention for things unrelated to driving. "We've found a faster route!" it would say, as if saving five minutes on a five hour journey is the least bit useful. Either I take my eyes off the road, fumble for the button to say "ignore that option", then try to re-focus on what I was doing, or it just switches me across to the othe…

Same. Is there a way to disable this? I just had a 14 hour drive, so you can imagine how many stupid things it kept alerting me to. If my wife weren't there to squelch them, I'd probably have tossed it out the window.

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#103

Post by paulddraper »

yyyk wrote: post #99
izacus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MicroG talks to Google servers and uses Google's infrastructure while breaking the terms of service (at least in case of FCM). Same goes with NewPipe - you're using YouTube without actually paying for bandwidth, storage costs or the video author. So you're not actually getting yourself rid of Google or tracking, you're just using their resources without paying the asking price. Use other alternatives instead.

NewPipe is technically no different than using a web browser which isn't Google's to browse YouTube, and that's still allowed. If Google wants to turn YouTube into a closed garden, they can go ahead - I can think of no better move to spur competition.

It's not though, according to the terms of service

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#104

Post by muhmas »

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.

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#105

Post by RealStickman »

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.

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#106

Post by maxerickson »

grumdan wrote: post #95
cameronbrown wrote: post #3

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…

Still not as good as Google Maps, but I find maps.me (also open-source and based on OSM data) significantly nicer than the default OSM client for Android (I think it's called OsmDroid or something similar).

There's no default or endorsed OSM app for any platform. The openstreetmap.org website is of course official, but it's not really an end user portal.

OSMAnd gets lots of attention though.

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#107

Post by yyyk »

paulddraper wrote: post #103
yyyk wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NewPipe is technically no different than using a web browser which isn't Google's to browse YouTube, and that's still allowed. If Google wants to turn YouTube into a closed garden, they can go ahead - I can think of no better move to spur competition.

It's not though, according to the terms of service

What ToS has NewPipe been violating? I've read the ToS[0] and it seems that NewPipe is perfectly complaint.

It accesses YouTube via "the video playback pages of the Website" so it satisfies 5.1 article C. I don't see any limitation to using browsers there.

Indeed, article H strongly implies that it is allowed to use non-browser software to access these pages - otherwise spiders and robots would be banned and there would be no point to the request limit in that article.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#108

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

meruru wrote: post #33
webmobdev wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps replacement: https://wego.here.com/ (It's pretty decent and was owned and used by Nokia before some German automobile companies bought it. Includes traffic data and voice based navigation. And they were offering offline maps long before Google).

Maps.me is available on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.axet.maps/

Maps.me is based on OpenStreetMap data, which the OP said was not satisfactory for him.

Re: Freeing My Phone from Google

#109

Post by dwighttk »

cameronbrown wrote: post #3

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…

what does YouTube app do that the website can't?
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