A process that started roughly a year ago with just changing browser and search engine, now feeling that I got somewhere. The journey ended up being more than just degoogle, but also demetaing and taking more control over my data and privacy.
Before and after picture with notes:
Chrome -> Zen browser (Firefox on iOS)
Google -> Qwant
Gmail -> Proton Mail
NordVPN -> Proton VPN (I don’t use VPN very often, but have NordVPN through another subscription, now replaced with Proton across my devices)
Google Drive / Photos -> Proton Drive
Google Password Manager -> Proton Pass
Google Authenticator -> Proton Pass / Ente (Ente Auth is only used to store my 2FA keys for the Proton account, other keys are stored in Proton Pass)
Google Translator -> DeepL
YouTube -> FreeTube (Unwatched on iOS)
Google Maps -> Magic Earth (OSM on desktop)
WhatsApp -> Signal
Notion -> Anytype
Keep / Notes -> Notesnook
X -> Mastodon / Bluesky
Reddit -> Lemmy (Voyager on iOS, dreaming of an eventual complete migration)
Instagram -> Pixelfed
Facebook -> stopped using
Windows 11 -> Ubuntu (Only personal laptop, work laptop still windows)
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Try Impressia for PixelFed
Isnt iPhone already degoogled?
Yes, but iOS is even more closed than Android which makes all iPhones a small prison for open-minded and privacy oriented people.
Google is Big Tech, logs everything. Apple is Big Tech too, but only logs tiny less than Google. All Big Tech is a big no-no if you’re privacy oriented. This applies to all services that uses Big Tech, too.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket (dont use proton for everything)
I usually tell people the same, this is a decision I will have to live with. I am happy with Proton and also happy to support their growth, hopefully it will go well for a long time.
From the other services I tried, Filen and Ente deserve an honorable mention. I was close to just go Mail Plus + Filen + Ente. But as soon as you do Proton Mail + VPN, you then go with Proton Unlimited and that is what makes the most sense financially.
I recommed Tuta for mails. May be not good as Proton but not American, not from Google and most important, private as Proton.
I love Tuta as well, they are great. But not being able to use Tuta with thunderbird was a deal breaker for me. Proton is Swiss btw.
Yeah I know Proton isnt American. Just wanted to remind Tuta’s situation. Yes, lack of another client is really bad but I enjoy the official app, we may differ at that point.
But as soon as you do Proton Mail + VPN, you then go with Proton Unlimited and that is what makes the most sense financially.
That’s how they get you! ;)
Mail and VPN are something I would never want to cross associate, though. After all, any mail provider can see the full contents of any unencrypted email at some point (including Proton), and any VPN provider can see as much as your ISP used to see about your internet activity.
I don’t understand your point, if data will be exposed at some point, why would you want that exposure with 2 separate companies instead of one?
esp now that the owner is a known fascist
How you liking Voyager? I’m bouncing between Arctic and Thunder atm, one day I’ll find the perfect lemmy client.
Mlem is competent, but isn’t especially good at anything, and lacks some features the others offer
I have not tried other clients. I am quite happy with Voyager, but maybe I will give the others a shot :)
(Not OP)
At the moment I use both mlem and voyager. Personally I find that everyday browsing is a nicer experience using mlem, especially since their recent-ish 2.0 update. Though it’s missing many of the fancier features that voyager has (eg drafting posts). The user tagging voyager has is super useful too.
After coming from Apollo and Reddit, at first I was just unhappy that the clients were not great. Once I moved past my grief state I realized Voyager was good enough. I’ve stopped re-evaluating (though I’m sure I will again at some point) and just appreciate what I have.
fuck yeah mate
De-Google but using an Apple. Yeah, Apple is soooo much better than Google 😂
As I mentioned in other comments, I didn’t buy a new phone to degoogle. I’m sure there are more people on the same boat. And this is a degoogle group.
After experiencing the iPhone 3 and MacBook pro 2009 I knew I’d never want to give Apple my money anymore. Boy did they try to scam me. “Broken hard drive? (500gb non-SSD) Sure, well fix it! 600 euros!” I’ll never sell my soul to Apple anymore.
As predicted, here come all the purity tests.
I know there’s no way to definitively prove it, but in my mind Apple is the safer alternative vs. anything Google. I know you can do custom roms and all that, but let’s face it: It’s a huge pain in the ass. I know, I know, “It’s not really”… I beg to differ. I went through my purity phase with degoogled roms and all that. Due to driver inconsistencies, updates breaking things (even the phone part), and the inability to use a lot of “normal” apps, I gave up and went with an iPhone. Apple’s business model is to sell you the thing at a higher price, thus reducing the incentive to sell your data or enshittify. Yes, that will degrade over time and I’ll reach a threshold at which I’ll reevaluate my options. Given the two major choices, I choose the less terrible ecosystem of the two.
I refuse to have any Google or Meta products on my iPhone. I know that makes me lame here, but we should also understand that any normie would never go to all the trouble of OS tinkering. The are a lot more people who want to degoogle vs. the people who understand how to do rom flashing. Criticizing a person’s degoogle effort as “not good enough” does nothing but drive people directly into the arms of the very evil we wish to diminish. This is a community to banish Google, not everything backed by a for-profit corporation.
You know our lawmakers have failed when you have to be this concerned about privacy on your own behalf.
it’s really shouldn’t be this much effort in order to retain your data and I know the argument can be made that you just use services that respect it but withouy legislation it’s incentivized to monetize data which makes it extremely hard to find alternatives that don’t.
Agreed; unfortunately, this will always happen as long as money is allowed in politics.
My personal choices are slightly different than yours, but I appreciate your comment. You’re clearly an ally while not being a clone. I often tire of discussions about security and privacy—mainly because I am very pragmatic.
Unlike OP I don’t use Proton’s suite, but considered it. Most of what I want Apple provides (Advanced Data Protection, Private Relay, etc) in a form that meets my minimum requirements. Other things that I use (Signal especially) are well-supported on iPhone.
I’ll talk down Apple all day long in the correct context, but I still believe it is a good choice today. I may re-evaluate at some point in the future when the landscape or my needs change. For now I am very happy.
I’ll just leave this here.
Well pick it back up and take it with you, because this issue has nothing to do with privacy. All major vendors take advantage of evil shit to produce their goods.
All major vendors take advantage of evil shit to produce their goods.
Apple is by FAR the worst when it comes to this stuff
Apple is the safer alternative vs. anything Google
Not really. Research has demonstrated that iOS and Android send very similar types of data even when users explicitly request to opt out. Apple was even so arrogant as to not bother responding to this paper to explain why.
https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf
Their platform is also much more hostile towards 3rd party apps than Android, greatly limiting what they can do. This makes moving to FOSS options harder.
Due to driver inconsistencies, updates breaking things (even the phone part), and the inability to use a lot of “normal” apps
Sounds like you haven’t tried modern GrapheneOS with sandboxed GPS. Neither of these are issues for me and I’ve been using it for years after switching from iOS.
The are a lot more people who want to degoogle vs. the people who understand how to do rom flashing
Flashing GrapheneOS takes like 2 seconds and requires nothing but a desktop/laptop and a browser
I don’t know about the ROMs being a pain in the ass. I did a test run of putting LineageOS on my old Motorola and using adb sucked a little, but once I got it working, it had no issues. I did that so I would know what I was doing for the real purpose of putting GrapheneOS on my Pixel 8a, and they literally had a button on the website that worked like a dream (but only on chromium browser…) and did the process in about 20 mins top. Been using it for almost a year now.
The only issue I’ve had was Google Messages RCS and banking apps. I can live without the wallet and banking apps, and even then, some banking apps work anyway lol (super long GitHub report list about them). RCS was frustrating, but I think it was caused by not deregistering my number from my old iPhone, as it hasn’t conked out again.
I really don’t get what wouldn’t work outside of that. Maybe it’s been a while since you tried android ROMS. Wish I had one as good and debated as GrapheneOS for my Galaxy Tab I just got, but it’s so new that there’s nothing but a GSI for it…
I think your whole post supported my point….
This sub is strangely pro Google
Apple already proved they’ll roll over for the EU on encryption backdoors.
If it comes down to them selling in the US or not selling in the US, they’re going to roll over and do whatever the government demands.
They’re all so holding all of your data, metrics, and browsing habits securely in their hands.
When the government demands baggacips data, they’re going to hand it over, the same as Google would.
And none of this is ever a problem until the government goes kind of fascist. When browsing privacy subs on Lemmy becomes an act of treason…
Even if I’m not doing anything wrong or illegal, I sure as hell I’m not going to send my data through a VPN that logs and is known to comply with foreign court requests.
You can in fact drive yourself insane trying to stay private and secure, But I do know that trusting a single gigantic monolithic company that operates in a questionable regime to protect you from government entities is a losing battle.
Apple already proved they’ll roll over for the EU on encryption backdoors.
Did they? They explicitly made a big deal about not doing that for the UK government’s request.
What’s unwatched?
YouTube -> FreeTube (Unwatched on iOS)
YouTube player app. Open source, no ads, no login, just import your subscriptions and playlists and you’re ready to go.
Reddit -> Lemmy (Voyager on iOS, dreaming of an eventual complete migration)
I too long for when communities (Indian and some niche ones) have more activity on Lemmy. They exist here, but have no activity after their creation. Until things pick up, I continue to access Reddit on iOS using SinkIt.
YouTube -> FreeTube (Unwatched on iOS)
Thank you for sharing about Unwatched. It fills the void in iOS that Tubular fills perfectly in Android.
P.S.
I am not entirely sure why, but I remember seeing Unwatched’s creator @fer0n@lemmy.world/@fer0n@lemm.ee quite often back when Lemmy iOS apps were starting off (Mlem, Memmy, WefWef, etc.) in the fall of 2023, perhaps he was a major contributor or creator of such apps.
I didn’t know about sink it, will have a look! I currently use hydra to access Reddit on iOS.
Next step is to de-Apple your Iphone.
Fuck that, next step is linux 🚀
Saving this post. I have been deGoogling as much as I can but havent done the research to find some of these options. Thanks
I feel like my story is a lot similar to yours almost a year ago now I saw a YouTube video about degoogling. It caused me to switch to Firefox with betterfox on the betterfox github pages there was a new oil link which I read and followed ultimately leading me to all of this and so much more.
Wow, thenewoil website is great. Thanks for sharing.
Saved! Good work and thank you.
I want to use Signal but can’t convince everyone to get on it
Matrix/element doesn’t make you give out a phone #
That’s not why most people aren’t on Signal.
Neither do signal anymore i think
Them dropping sms took away a big carrot for adoption though.
Nope, they still require a number.
From their site:
Requiring phone numbers in Signal lets people see which of their friends they can easily talk to on Signal while limiting the potential for spam within the app.
There are options to spoof a number in the States, and probably some areas of th EU, but many other places are SOL.
They absolutely do, but you can hide that behind a username after you’ve registered now. But you still have to come up with a number to register a new account.
Them dropping sms took away a big carrot for adoption though.
Still miss that feature everytime I get an SMS or have to send an sms if data isn’t working.
The US DoD uses it
And they hand out invitations to group chats
Is that a good or bad? Could go both ways 🤭
Check out kagi translate
Is it paid
It is not. It is probably the only thing aside from Orion browser, that Kagi offers for free.
I have used it in the past to test its accuracy, and it neither asked me to log in nor pay.
