I’m quite a few years into this de-Googling thing. It’s also pretty much an extension of the de-Microsofting I started when I first tried Linux around 2005 or so. I was one of the original users of whatever Google Workspace was called back when they were still offering it free to Organizations and Families who wanted to use their own domain name with their Gmail accounts. I started de-googling in earnest around the time they first tried to take away this free-forever perk. Lately, I’ve been working hard to get ready for the era of identity verification and the pending Android lockdown. I consider large companies and surveillance-advertisers as my primary adversaries.

I’m down to my last few google dependencies and I’d appreciate your help in trying to overcome them as that lockdown date gets closer and the whole ecosystem will be thrown into chaos. I’d like to have essential services self-hosted and backups of essential APKs and such prior to that date. There are a few items not on this list that are occasional installs (and immediate uninstalls). These are usually hardware companion apps for stuff like my little wireless hotspot.

I wasn’t sure if it was safe to publicly post a spreadsheet from my machine, so please see the image for the bad stuff I have left (the red rows), mildly questionable stuff (yellow), and the good stuff I have installed (green), it’s not necessarily Google itself, but the red and sometimes yellow stuff chains me back to the Play ecosystem. I genericized any financial or health apps, except UHC because it’s super common and fuck them, I want to call out how shitty their app is and point out that their approach to attestation and verifying device integrity must be out of desperation because they themselves have no integrity.

Feel free to call anything out by name in the left column if you:

A. Have a better alternative that maintains good functionality.

B. Commiserate with my plight replacing a particular piece of software.

C. Think that I’ve mis-catagorized something as an undesirable when it’s actually good, or vice versa.

D. Anything else.

I would love to hear from you all.

  • BladeFederation@piefed.socialEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    What is your plan? Are you going to stop using Play Store on lockdown day? If so, why? Just trying to Degoogle in general? Why are you worried about lockdown day? You can still install apps outside the Play Store, even on stock Android, which you don’t appear to be using. If I am inferring correctly, you’re using GrapheneOS, which is entirely unaffected.

    Alternatives (from top of list towards the bottom)

    Dr app>website (I dont see why not)

    Play Store>Aurora Store (doesn’t auto update apps in GrapheneOS though)

    aCalendar>Proton Calendar (encrypted, cloud sync)

    Obsidian>Notesnook (encrypted, cloud sync, can link notes similar to Obsidian, albeit not as advanced)

    Xplore>Fossify File Manager or Material Files (not sure why you want X specifically though)

    Google Camera is not distributed by GrapheneOS actually. They have their own app. If you disable network and download from the Play Store it might be fine? I’m OK with the GrapheneOS Camera app though, I don’t like unattural Ai filtering anyway.

    What do you use Wireguard for that isn’t covered by Mullvad? Tailscale may be an option, depending.

    Tidal>Metrolist (YouTube Music client, FOSS and free with no ads.) OR SoundCrowd (FOSS client for multiple sources including Tidal. Pretty barebones though)

    Discord>Element X (if you can convince people to move…)

    YouTube>WizeStream (YouTube, PeerTube, SoundCloud, Material Design)

    WhatsApp>Signal (if you can convince people to move…)

    SMS backup: I would recommend against doing this at all, actually

    Personally, I need Play Store for Here We Go, as CoMaps is useless in my area. It doesn’t work through Aurora. And I think I prefer it this way, having auto updates is more convenient and secure enough of a tradeoff for me with sandboxes Play Services. Google just knows someone somewhere with a burner Google account downloaded a few Play Store apps. I don’t use any more of their stuff so who cares? I also still use Tidal. They’ve massively decreased the trackers in their app over the years, and I prefer paying artists over not. Tidal pays the most in the biz except maybe Qobuz. Plus the lossless audio of course…

    • njordomir@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      1 day ago

      I have to assume that the tightening will continue, so I’m trying to get ahead of it by voluntarily giving up anything Google, and any non-FOSS apps, even if I could technically keep using them until google gets even more strict. I’m also active in the self-hosted community, so I have alternatives in place for a lot of things already. I have so few dependencies left at this point, I feel like I’m finally within reach of being deGoogled. What I was trying to do with this spreadsheet was figure out what was blocking and what things would look like if Google went full-authoritarian lockdown mode tomorrow and I could only use F-Droid because they blocked 3rd party play clients. Also yes, you deduced correctly, Graphene.

      In regards to some of your suggestions:

      • Aurora Store, I’ve used it before, but I didn’t know about the auto-update thing. If there’s apps I cannot live without, I may have to go this route.
      • Proton Calendar, I’m sooooo picky about my calendar. I’ve tried 10-20 apps. I remember feeling like the views on Protoncal didn’t work for me especially the simplified month view. Essentially, I have a lot of ical subscriptions and I sometimes need to toggle them on and off and overlay them. In addition, I have calendars coming in from Nextcloud. I should look again to see if there are any apps I missed.
      • Obsidian/Notesnook, Xplore/MiX/Fossify, these are all functionality blockers. There are open source alternatives, but they’re not as good. I like Xplore and MiX because they handle network locations, archives, every view or sort you could imagine. I would assume Fossify is a lot more basic. That said, it would do in a pinch. Mix is distributed via apk and on Play, but in the end, I think X-Plore is the absolute best file manager available for android, hands down. I will give it up if I have to, but I don’t want to.
      • Discord/ElementX WhatsApp/Signal, I’ve had surprisingly good luck with getting people to accommodate my communication preferences. I’m seeing Signal users in the wild a lot more now though Matrix is still 100% nerd stuff. Europeans and South Americans love WhatsApp though, so I’m kind of obligated to use it sometimes.
      • Google Maps, they got me with street view. My brain is wired very geospacialy and I spend a lot of time just exploring on Google Earth or whatever. It may be the hardest Google product for me to give up. I feel your frustration with the maps thing. Since most of the alternatives rely on Open Street Map data, the limitation becomes the completeness of the OSM data in your area. That’s why Street Complete made the list for me. I wanted to contribute data about my city to make it more competitive with Google Maps.
      • Tidal, I was on Spotify (like seemingly everyone) and they pissed me off 1 too many times so I switched. Like you, I saw that Tidal paid the artists better and I also had some hardware that could utilize the various audio formats they provided. The apps were nearly clones of one another. Currently I’m working on sorting my old mp3s with MusicBrainz Picard and then adding them to my Jellyfin or something so I can stream them back to myself. Once I get that up, the drop in functionality from switching to a 3rd party youtube music frontend might be acceptable.

      I guess the moral of the story is that I’m like everyone else. I have an excuse for just about every piece of proprietary crapware I use. :-(

      hahahah

      • BladeFederation@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        19 hours ago

        Aurora auto update works on normal Android but not GrapheneOS which is odd. Same for Obtanium. Droid-ify, GrapheneOS App Store, and Play Store work just fine.

        Material Files supports integration with FTP, SFTP, SMB, and WebDAV servers.

        I’ve found Here We Go to be nearly as good as Google Maps. It is also proprietary & dependent on the Play Store (not even Aurora if you want to use Android Auto), but with a better privacy policy than Google.

        I haven’t gotten rid of all proprietary stuff either, but you know, it takes time sometimes. And right now, GrapheneOS is a pretty good solution. If the Play Store access does disappear, like you said you’ll have alternatives even if they’re not as good.