this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2025
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Privacy
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What? I use a stock Pixel Pro and there's no fluff. It's very vanilla, but does everything I need it to do without fuss. I was using Nova Launcher Pro, but they sold it to an advertising company a while ago, so I went back to the stock launcher.
I am typing this on a pixel 8
Try disabling and removing the Google search bar. Can't be done. Since Google search has gone down hill I never use it.
How about removing the the news feeds? You have to disable the Google app to get rid of it. If I want to read the news, I do a quick search. It's not hard to do. I don't need a news feed on my phone.
What about the stupid at a glance at the top of the home screen? It just takes up space for no benefit over the notification bar. It can't be fully removed.
I also never us any voice assistant etc because it's faster to type it in than repeat myself.
I currently have 19 apps on this phone disabled that I can't uninstall.... No fluff huh...
All of my apps are organized into folders and I am never more than one swipe and two taps away from opening the app I want. I don't scroll, I don't search, I know where everything is and have it opening in under a second.
It's a pixel, you're in c/Privacy for whatever reason, have you considered just putting GrapheneOS on it? All those annoyances go bye bye, you can have a full fat google alternate user and an approximately private main user...
I honestly would love to. Unfortunately my banking and accounting apps for my business won't run on it.
Also the reason I have an iPad for two apps that are not on Android that I have to have for business.
M business laptop is W10 instead of Linux mint like my personal one for the same reason..
Fair cop. Keep a weather eye out for better alternatives for the blockers, but as noted the full fat gOS play store and google services are pretty good, and the bootloader gets re-locked, might be worth trying it for a weekend to see how close you get, many people have good experiences, but it's all down to cases.
That's true about the search bar. I do actually use that to find and open apps though, so I hadn't considered it fluff. I don't use Google to search the web though. I forgot about the news feed because I don't have it. I uninstalled the news app and a bunch of other crap I don't need. Idk what At A Glance feature you're talking about. I don't think I have that. Overall you are right. There's some initial fluff that I forgot about because I removed it years ago.