Asklemmy

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

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.

• Desktop: Linux (Tuxedo)
• Browser: Vivaldi
• Search: Ecosia & DDG
• Mail / Groupware / Calendar / Contacts / Cloud Drive / Meet: Infomaniak kSuite Pro
• Backup: Syncthing
• Movies / Netflix / Amazon Prime: buying DVD / Bluray and ripping to my home media server with Jellyfin and Videoland.nl
• Mobile Phone: Fairphone with /e/OS or Calyx
• Whatsapp: Signal, Matrix / Element, Briar, Threema
• YouTube: Grayjay, Floatplane, Nebula, Curiosity Stream
• Maps: Magic Earth
• Photos: ente.io
• Authenticator: Ente Auth
• Twitter / X: Mastodon
• Cards: Catima
• Keep / Evernote: Notesnook / Anytype
• Backup comms: Meshtastic / UHF / VHF
• Translate: DeepL
• Podcasts: Antennapod
• Google Home: Home Assistant
• Google Assistant / Gemini: Mistral Le Chat / LLama
• Router: openWRT (GL.iNET Flint2)
• Firewall: opnSense (Deciso)
• Pushbullet: KDE Connect
• speedtest.net: LibreSpeed
• Fing: Ning
• Kobo / Kindle: Pocketbook
• Amazon: Local / European dealers
• Pocket: Wallabag
• Creality / Bambulab: Prusa
• VPN: Proton, Wireguard, Netbird

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.

for me:

• google drive > pcloud (objectively better app tbh)
• chrome > librewolf > floorp (i like having the tab bar at the bottom, and librewolf is a bit annoying sometimes)
• photos > ente
• gmail > proton > tuta > "disroot" (proton and tuta aren't IMAP, and their first-party apps are slow. disroot probably isn't the best one, I just chose one that supports IMAP)
• google search > ddg > SearXNG
• google office > onlyoffice on windows, libreoffice on linux
• google maps > Organic Maps
• google passwords > bitwarden
• google auth > ente auth :)

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.

Almost everything, finally!
OS: GrapheneOS
Calendar: Proton
Browser: Firefox
Storage: NAS
Youtube: NewPipe and SmartTube

I’m still stuck with Maps and Android in my car as it has Android Automotive, but I’m happy with my progress so far

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.

• Desktop OS: Linux (Arch)
• Phone OS: /e/OS
• mail, notes, calendar, online storager: mureno
• maps: cittymapper, magic earth

I'm pretty happy with all of those

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

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

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

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.

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. ;)

If I remember correctly I started deGoogling "seriously" in the last summer. At this point YouTube and Youtube Music are the only Google products/services I still use daily but only on PC. I never use them on phone. I also am quite forced to use Gmail sometimes but otherwise I avoid it like a plague.

I think my phone is as deGoogled as possible without rooting and/or changing the OS. I have uninstalled every Google app that I have been able to uninstall and also I have disabled every Google service that is possible to disable. I still have to deMicrosoft my PC. I want to move to Linux but I have understood that there's some compatibility issues with Reaper and virtual instruments. That's the only reason I haven't done it yet.

Anyway. Here is a list of apps/services I use instead of Google's sh*t:

• Browser: Waterfox on PC and Ironfox on phone (of course both with uBlock Origin)
• Cloud storage: Proton Drive
• Email: Proton Mail
• Calendar: Proton Calendar
• Authenticator: Aegis
• Map: OsmAnd
• Search engine: DuckDuckGo and Brave Search
• Play Store: Droid-ify and Aurora Store (not signed in)
• Speech Recognition & Synthesis: SherpaTTS
• Find My Device: FindMyDevice (FOSS)

I think that's all. There's some other FOSS apps and services that I use but they are not exactly replacements for Google's sh*t.

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

Google office stuff > libreoffice

Chrome > firefox and librewolf

gmail > proton

Google > ddg

Iphone > grapheneos pixel

Youtube account > newpipe, libretube, grayjay with exported subscriptions

Google drive > synology

I think that covers about everything google specific.

Note: I included iphone because even iphones ping google SUPL servers whereas Grapheneos settings host their own servers to ping to avoid sending stuff out to google.

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

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

I am absolutely dumb with this stuff so I have one question: how do I get all of my photos off Google cloud? That's the only thing stopping me from shitting it down.

I also have a google pixel phone but that will be destroyed once my contract is up and I can afford something not google related

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

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.

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.