DeGoogle Yourself

8620 readers
2 users here now

A community for those that would like to get away from Google.

Here you may post anything related to DeGoogling, why we should do it or good software alternatives!

Rules

  1. Be respectful even in disagreement

  2. No advertising unless it is very relevent and justified. Do not do this excessively.

  3. No low value posts / memes. We or you need to learn, or discuss something.

Related communities

!privacyguides@lemmy.one !privacy@lemmy.ml !privatelife@lemmy.ml !linuxphones@lemmy.ml !fossdroid@social.fossware.space !fdroid@lemmy.ml

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
26
 
 

https://beta.maps.apple.com/

It doesn’t seem to support Firefox or mobile browsers, at least not.

Maps on the web is compatible with these web browsers

On your Mac or iPad

  • Safari
  • Edge
  • Chrome

On your Windows PC

  • Edge
  • Chrome
27
 
 

fuck these guys

28
 
 

As if you need any more reason to degoogle, consider what would happen if Google removed you from their platform tomorrow. This article some of the problems with putting all your eggs in one basket.

29
 
 

Thoughts?

30
11
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by azerial@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml
 
 

I, switched from Google FI because of lack of customer support and services that were getting less and less, but more costly and costly. I went to T-Mobile. Good service, much the same as Google fi is a first party mvno. Anyway I use a private dns. NextDns. T-Mobile had no clue what a dns was and the super had to Google it. They SEVERELY THROTTLE if you use next dns.

I HATE THAT. What do you use as privacy conscious individuals?

edit: not that! What

31
50
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by Blu@sopuli.xyz to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml
 
 

I'm pretty far into the degoogling process, and I'm thinking about purchasing a domain and using it for email. I realized I don't want to be stuck with any one email service, so this is pretty much a necessity for me.

I wouldn't self host though, because I understand that's very hard to do.

For people who have already done this: are there any pitfalls or things I should take into consideration before I purchase a domain?

Also, does the tld matter? Are my emails more likely to be sent to spam with a custom domain vs an email provider's?

32
 
 

publication croisée depuis : https://lemmy.world/post/17613422

PeerTube is a decentralized and federated alternative to YouTube. The goal of PeerTube is not to replace YouTube but to offer a viable alternative using the strength of ActivityPub and P2P protocols.

Being built on ActivityPub means PeerTube is able to be part of a bigger social network, the Fediverse (the Federated Universe). On the other hand, P2P technologies help PeerTube to solve the issue of money, inbound with all streaming platform : With PeerTube, you don't need to have a lot of bandwidth available on your server to host a PeerTube platform because all users (which didn't disable the feature) watching a video on PeerTube will be able to share this same video to other viewers.

If you are curious about PeerTube, I can't recommend you enough to check the official website to learn more about the project. If after that you want to try to use PeerTube as a content creator, you can try to find a platform available there to register or host yourself your own PeerTube platform on your own server.

The development of PeerTube is actually sponsored by Framasoft, a french non-for-profit popular educational organization, a group of friends convinced that an emancipating digital world is possible, convinced that it will arise through actual actions on real world and online with and for you!

Framasoft is also involved in the development of Mobilizon, a decentralized and federated alternative to Facebook Events and Meetup.

If you want to contribute to PeerTube, feel free to:

33
 
 

cross-posted from: https://leminal.space/post/8396158

I've used LineageOS with microG on my Oneplus 6 for years — so happily, in fact, that I haven't bothered with major updates since version 17 (Android 10). Oops!

Now I've been flashing updates to an older phone, and I might as well continue getting my daily driver up to date. I'm going to dirty flash my way up to the current version (21). But I'm rusty as all heck, and the upgrade instructions seem to have changed since last:

  1. Back in '21 I recall being recommended to disable screenlock (fingerprint/PIN/pattern, etc) before upgrading. Is that still a thing?
  2. With a/b slot devices it used to be necessary to flash ROMs twice or use a copy-partitions or simiilar zip file. The instructions make no mention of it, is that rolled into the upgrade package now?
  3. Finally, is it safe to just upgrade directly from LOS/mG v18 to v21? Because neither LOS main or the mG branch seem to archive older versions but I'd hate to miss some system update or other.

All help is appreciated!

Edited for clarity: Please don't offer suggestions on "better" phones or OSes — my question regards the above only. Thanks in advance 👍

34
35
47
GBoard replacement? (pawb.social)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by VinesNFluff@pawb.social to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml
 
 

Title.

I'm not sure I'm ready to go all "lineageOS full degoogle" on my phone because some rather necessary day-to-day apps for me will freak out if I have root, let alone a modified OS. Buuuut GBoard has gotten right in my tit, and now they're offering nightmarish AI generated emoji and I'm like "NO". So.

I don't really care about predictive text or swipe-typing or any of that stuff, I mostly just type normally.

The only nice-to-haves that might entice me would be support for one-handed mode and a configurable keyboard layout.

36
36
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by el_abuelo@lemmy.ml to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml
 
 

I am currently attempting to degoogle and at the same time move to an entirely self hosted ecosystem.

I've set up a NAS and have syncthing to deal with the dropbox/gdrive type things and have backup on a raid disk. What I am looking for now is a backup solution that can backup to my nas and in the future a remote device - probably to another nas at a family member's hous

Can anyone recommend a backup solution for this?

Technically I am not looking to degoogle as I don't gave a Google solution for this- but I guess I'm looking for a self hosted alternative to GCP backup.

37
17
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by MadBob@feddit.nl to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml
 
 

I've almost completely removed Google products from my life now, having recently decided to change the OS on my phone, delete Gmail, etc. etc. but only two things remain:

I've looked at Invidious and at Piped and I just can't seem to get the same experience as on Youtube. It's fine if Google knows nothing about me except what I watch on Youtube and what dates I'd put the bins out in 2013, no? (Can't seem to delete that from the calendar) Or if anyone's managed to emulate the same kind of experience Youtube gives on one of the two, please share. I quite like the recommendations but I think it's only possible on the abovementioned by watching a video then looking at the side of the page?

I've got a tablet (Samsung SM-T335) from ten years ago running on Android 5.1.1. I've decided to root it to delete all the bollocks that came installed with it (I've recently factory reset it and only use it for ebooks and Firefox Focus), including the Google stuff. I have to wait a week or something apparently before it'll let me check the OEM-unlocking box but I was wondering if anyone's had any success with this (I've seen people saying you can change the date, you can fiddle with it in xyz manner, but I'm looking to hear people's experiences).

The plan then is to root it, delete the shovelware, and sideload the two apps I want to use. Also curious to hear people's experiences with sideloading, because most of the articles I find on the internet were written by a robot or in the year dot. I've also read that it's impossible to install a custom OS on such an old tablet but I'd like to hear whether it's worth trying at the risk of bricking the thing.

Edit: After waiting a week, the OEM-unlocking never became available, so after searching and searching and having no joy, I decided to just log out of Google on the tablet and it just let me without deleting the apps I'd downloaded. It turns out, too, that this particular version of Android 5 lets you just hide the apps in the list, so I've just hidden all the shovelware and that's good enough for me. I've ended up subscribing to those I was subscribed to on Youtube on Invidious and in doing so I've discovered that a load of videos just have never been recommended to me by Youtube, so I'll see how I go and if the subscriptions thing works, I just have to delete my Youtube account then I'm free of Google!

38
 
 

I'm trying searx, but like duckduckgo, qwant and ecosia doesn't give me direct answer (Firefox both PC/android). Just google and bing works, any idea (maybe some site that use ai directly without agree or choose the model every time like in DDG) My user scenario will be to use it with kiss launcher on android (will be great if someone know a way to use some ai search with it too) Thanks

39
 
 

I have OnePlus 7 Pro that I successfully flashed with LineageOS 21 with MicroG. Do you have some interesting apps or ideas to take advantage of it? I thought of some Magisk modules. Maybe someone is more experience than me! This is the spare smartphone, the main one is GrapheneOS, so I don't mind breaking stuff.

40
 
 

I'm considering buying a pixel 7(a/pro) or pixel 8(a/pro). I was wondering if the longer updates for the pixel 8 impacts grapheneOS, and if that means I should go for the pixel 8. And have any GrapheneOS users here had any issues that they wouldn't have had on Android.

Thanks alot in advance!

41
 
 

I have completely stopped using google services and software on my personal devices (even have lineageos + microg on my phone. The problem is that I can't just explain to the technically uneducated people that I changed mail providers. How should I go about doing this?

42
 
 

This might be a dumb question so apologies in advance. I'm looking into degoogled phones but haven't taken the plunge yet. If I logged in and used the aurora store to get apps I paid for in the past, will that ''regoogle" my device and allow google to track me again through signing in and using those apps?

43
 
 

I'm looking to replace gboard and I have spent about a decade using gesture based typing. Is there any alternative that is private that gesture based typing actually work on?

44
 
 

Has anybody else had problems using the Capital One mobile app? I have a Samsung S21 Ultra 5G that I thoroughly degoogled and de-Samsung'd over a year ago. No problems running any other apps including Key Bank, Charles Schwab, Tile, etc. but Capital One will not even load to the login screen. Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

45
 
 

Hi! What would be the best way to limit play serbices to only selected apps. I still need notifications to work from them, but would like to be sure that google can't access anything else

46
 
 

Recently I have bought a Cat S75. On their website they stated at the time that I will get at least Android Version 13. currently its still on 12, which is fine cause its end of life is not reached yet. With the current Version cycle I'd say the end of life vor 12 is expected in ca 9 months.

I have a Cat s41 as well, of which I had to switch away from cause there is some ancient android (~8) on it and it doesn't get any updates.

I am cautious with just trying out a new OS on my device, because I dont know how I would get back the old OS if nothing works, and Cat beeing a rather small smartphone producer makes finding experience-reports rather difficult.

Can I just expect a Linux/ degoogled Android to work on my devices? I'd guess not, therefore: Can I test that somehow? Is there a way to go back to the factory settings or smth like that if I am lost?

47
 
 

I'm in the process of de-googling, and for the most part I'm pretty okay with using separate services for things like email, photos, calendar, etc... but the few things that I really like having bundled are Google Docs and Sheets in my Google Drive.

There's plenty of good alternatives for cloud storage, but I haven't seen any that come with any sort of office-like products. I know that I can self host my own private cloud storage and something like OpenOffice, but I'm hoping to find an existing cloud solution so I don't have to bother with that maintenance.

Any recommendations?

48
49
68
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by darkham@lemmy.ml to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml
 
 

I've been using many apps and from few months, It's seems I'm quite stable so I think it's time to share a list of awesome Android Apps I'm using everyday as I've removed Google from my life!

50
 
 

I finally gave up on Nova Launcher after watching the various "calls home" its doing now after the acquisition by analytics company Branch. I held out for probably way too long considering the way things were inevitably going to go. I've tried Kvaesitso, KISS, and Neo Launcher so far. There are a couple of features I really miss from Nova that I thought I'd check to see if anyone knows of a workaround or a launcher that has these features:

App Drawer shortcut

Ability to remove browser badge from PWA and browser shortcuts added to homescreen

And lastly, while I don't have a photo example, pull to search in app drawer. This is the same gesture used in most mobile browsers to refresh the current page, if that makes sense.

I'm aware that the road to degoogle is paved with compromises, and I'm willing to make them if I need to. But if there are options out there, I haven't found them. Thoughts?

view more: ‹ prev next ›