Not sure how many people were suffering from it, but Google Photos became adamant about pushing ads. I couldn’t find a replacement in Google Store which wasn’t doing the same. Downloaded F Droid, used alternative to website to find apps, downloaded and now the problem is solved. You can use Google Files to install the F Droid apk to start your journey of degoogling. I’m still using some proprietary apps which work with the Android UI such as Google’s Wallet but everything I could replace I did (unless I’d inconvenience myself like with Contacts). The open source apps have much better UIs and don’t bombard me with ads or other stuff the big corp wants to push like their accounts. I wish I had done it sooner and this post was made to encourage other people to do that. I tried Aurora Store, but Google doesn’t let me login. It tells me it would give me a popup to type a number into, but the popup never comes. Anyone knows what app pushes the popup? Is Aurora a full replacement for Play Store or do I need to have both installed?
Aurora is a full replacement for the play store. I’ve been using fdroid as my only source for apps for years now. It has everything I need.
I’m euro and our banks require mobile apps. Furthermore, there’s proprietary dating apps and I paid for a cute Android icon pack. I also use proprietary alarm app and wallet app for compatibility with the system, also the contacts app for sync. I’m stuck with Google Maps because I tried the open source alternatives and found them not suiting my needs. I’m happy you’re fully google free though. I’ve been lowering my YouTube usage to none because I replaced it with Netflix and I’m pandering buying Curiosity Stream or Nebula, but honestly I watch less and less, I just need occasional quick mind numbing so I’m not even sure if I’ll continue using any of the paid services. I tried the open source peer tube thingy but didn’t find anything of interest to me.I’m not ready for open source only personally, but I respect that. My desktop is mostly open source minus gaming.
banking apps
Works in the browser for me
dating apps
Works in the browser for me
YouTube
Newpipe or clipious
proprietary alarm
Why?
google maps
I’ve been using osmand for years across Canada, works fine for me
cute icon pack
😂
To each their own, and use whatever tool you prefer, but moving away from google and proprietary software is a lot easier than people think.
It’s not much easier than people think, as much as I’d like that to be true.
2 of my digital banks work only through apps, so browser is not an option. Same for some dating apps. I would also need to give up on a handful of proprietary apps or give in to inferior open source alternatives. And I don’t even play games, but I imagine the open source selection is really scarce in comparison. Replacing most apps might be easy, replacing all of them can be a headache.
You could make an argument that not using banking apps decreases your security, since most banks use either SMS or those apps as the second factor while confirming the operations. It is true that the apps are of varying quality, but SMS is not really a serious alternative. Some banks do have apps that are limited to confirming operations, and one bank where I live did recently start accepting U2F, which is amazing news.
I mean I wouldn’t put much trust into banking apps either honestly. I have found files suggesting the app is in debug mode in my bank’s app’s files. It also recommended me a true crime podcast once??
I’m from Europe as well, running GrapheneOS with Aurora (and also F-Droid). Had no problem with my banking apps. Also all my bought apps still are downloadable with Aurora.
The contacts apps don’t sync the contact’s (at least none of the ones I’ve tried), Android does it. You could try Simple Contacts as well as Simple Gallery. More important, use AsAway (or anything similar) that blocks ad everywhere! Beside of NewPipee (very recommend!) you could try piped.video (or any of the many other piped instances). Instead of F-Droid, try Neo Store. It can use F-Droid repository. On top of that you could abandon Gmail and use something like ProtonMail (and their drive, calendar and contacts). If you do, evaluate to buy your own domain, so you own your email address and you will be able to move it wherever you want without losing it.
You can just use the websites for any bank or credit card, etc. instead of the app. It’s less convenient and usually a way shittier experience, but, that’s the price of not using Google (or Apple, Microsoft, etc.)
None of the banks I’ve used allows not having a mobile app. It’s mandatory for all confirmations. Have some minimal respect and don’t assume someone else is dumb. Thank you.
There’s absolutely no way they force the usage of apps. How would people without smartphones use their websites? From a laptop, on the website? And if they use a non-standard browser like a fork of some weird shit? I know financial places are run by 70 year old boomers but there’s no way they’d try this as it just goes down a rabbit hole of constant IT work. Certainly not every bank anyway. The entire concept of a place even thinking to do this is hurting my brain because it’s some incompetent. You either hire a million CS people and try to fix problems all day or lose all your customers instantly. A large portion anyway. If this is true for the UK then that little island is gone in more ways than I previously knew. Pure incompetence.
Anyway I wasn’t assuming you were dumb, just maybe hadn’t tried it for some reason. It’s like asking if your computer is plugged in and the switch is on first.
Now do yourself a favor and replace fdroid with Droid-ify. You’ll realize how archaeic and outdated the fdroid client is. I have no idea why they have the awful design decisions they do. They don’t even support seamless updates! Droid-ify is another fdroid client if you didn’t know.
Alright, this is the comment that finally got me to download droid-ify.
No regerts, it’s so much better.
Or with Neo Store. It has a really nice material 3 design. I would recommend it, although it’s quite buggy for me.
Definitely going to give them a try.
So what did you replace Google photos with ?
Immich is very good and pretty much a complete replacement.
Should note that Immich doesn’t have content provider support on Android, so you still need another gallery app to act as a file picker to select images in other apps. Other than that, I love it
Aves Libre.
Aves is great!
Not OP but moved all my stuff onto hosted Nextcloud, so using Nextcloud photos app. Just as good and no ads.
ente photos
never seen ads on photos !
I’ve gotten ads for their photo books and their paid plans
I kept getting a popup of ad upsell of I think their cloud service? I don’t use cloud for anything but some of my documents. I also keep being harassed by Play Store to enable their notifications so they can send me ad upsells.
I see it in the “edit image” screen. Google wants money to unlock “features” that were free for years with a “Google One subscription”, starting at $2 a month.
HDR effects, blur, magic eraser, and dynamic color correction.
My NAS just arrived today. I’ll have ~42 TB of self hosted storage for 1k.
Google is charging me something ridiculous like, 300 a year for the same.
Do yo have anything for backup?
any thoughts on some other sort of remote data backup just in case of fire, water damage, etc? years ago I moved is off of our nas for this reason but at this point on I’m really not happy with Googles process and crappy photos software. I wouldn’t mind moving back to NAS with some cheaper no frills remote backup just in case
I don’t know how they are now, couple of years ago Backblaze was a nice deal. They are rather slow, but they have their backups.
Remember to encrypt before uploading, just in case, there are tools even checking if the backups are still valid and randomly download, decrypt and checks them. If you don’t check your backups, you might as well don’t do them.
I do my off-site backups of important data now with other people.
Raspberry pi zero with rsync and wireguard.
For remote backup, always keep your data in multiple ‘importance levels’. There’s replaceable, irreplaceable and very important.
Replaceable is non-niche movies and all kinds of other things that are commonly available, data not ‘exclusive to you’. Irreplaceable is data that is (probably) only owned by you - photos, videos, source code, documents and so on. Very important are the few documents you really can’t afford to lose. Security keys, banking info and so on.
I don’t bother backing up replaceable data - I keep one local and one off site backup for the irreplaceable data and very important data (1tb hetzner storage box is enough for me), and I keep a few encrypted physical usb sticks and sd cards strewn around at my parents and at work for the irreplaceable data that periodically get updated.
If you’re using the official F-Droid app, I recommend you check out Droid-ify. It’s more modern looking and faster, and along with the F-Droid repositories, it comes with the IzzyOnDroid repo preinstalled.
Check out Obtainium. Getting all my F-Droid apps straight from the source now.
+1 for Obtainium. Getting APKs direct from the dev’s repo is prefect. Only
two appsapp I can’t get working through Obtainium is VLCand Signal. VLC’s download mirrors always seem to be broken,and Signal’s hosted APK appears to be a version behind the Play Store, so Obtainium won’t touch it.Edit: Signal appear to have fixed their hosted APK - just updated to 6.28.6.
My issue with Droid-ify is that at least half the time updates or initial installations hang indefinitely, and even the Cancel button doesn’t do anything. I’ve gone back to F-Droid as this has never happened to me on that app.
Try Neo Store, I think it’s the best frontend to f-droid.
Thanks for the rec!
Be careful with Aurora store. I don’t use it, but my understanding is that’s an anonymity layer between you and the official Google Play Store. There’s been reports of people’s Google accounts being disabled when they use it.
I don’t think it’s possible for Google to link Aurora use to your account - especially if you don’t log in to play services. Aurora uses anonymous accounts.
Unfortunately, the Aurora accounts are rate limited. That’s a pain because Google has the shitty policy of geo-locking its apps for no good reason. Honestly, Google should be torn apart into a hundred tiny companies for its antitrust practices.
I just read up on it a bit more - seems you can use your Google account with Aurora store, but don’t have to. I’m guessing, then, people were using their Google accounts via Aurora store for in-app purchases or similar, and Google were able to bust them that way.
I’ve never heard of someone getting banned for it. There could be, but I don’t think there has been.
Was all over Reddit before I deleted my account and blocked it - this article has half a dozen links to Reddit posts that claimed this is what happened to them.
If you actually click the links, they all lead to literally just one post claiming they got banned for it. Just a single post. The aurora dev then said it was temporary for rate limiting. It’s nothing to worry about. Also that article reads like it’s AI generated lol, but I think that’s just the author writing really badly.
I have a couple apps i still need aurora for, but its like 3 total so not horrible. If i changed banks then i would only need it for 2 apps.
Thats just the 1st step and easiest. You are far from degoogling. Remember, you are still using android. If you are really up to go check custom ROMs for your phone (of course if it’s compatible) I would suggest you that you take your time with this and dyor. And what about your pc? Win or mac?
As for your question. When i was on android I only had F-droid (almost all apps that i used were from there) and I didn’t bother with Aurora because only apps that i had from Google store were banking app and steam.
Custom ROMs don’t work on all phones. I’m also not sure if my bank app would accept the custom environment, if you can even install it in a custom OS.
Wdym Win or Mac? I’m on Linux. Have some respect and don’t assume another person has no idea about anything.
Did you install your banking app manually? I had apps give me an error when downloaded via Play Store saying they were installed through illegitimate means and won’t work. I can assume banking apps are even heavier on security measures like this, especially on custom OSs they won’t recognize as what they were made for.
Do custom OSs support biometrical security and cross app integration? NFC? Quick searches show me people struggling with these. I’m happy to go open source when it doesn’t affect me or makes things better for me. I won’t continuously inconvenience myself to shake my fist on corpos.
My banking app (when I had a rooted phone, but even with an unlocked bootloader only this was a problem) even when hidden by magisk wouldn’t work. It told me to unroot it and lock the bootloader.
Thank you for the honesty.
I use a custom OS (iodéOS) and can use biometrical security (fingerprint reader) and my banking app works fine. It has MicroG and passes SafetyNet.
With this being said, not all banking apps will work on custom ROMs / OSs, and SafetyNet might fail any day, as the developer has said, being honest, that it’s a game of cat and mouse.
Depending on how far down the rabbit hole, or how deep your pockets are… I started off slowly degoogling. Now have replacements for everything… Run grapheneos on pixel6. Yes. Google phone with graphene is your most private and secure route…who would have thought… Banking apps all work, NFC, etc. Can even have a work profile or separate user and sandboxes play services if still need play services for any apps you reply need
can confirm. using grapheneos on a pixel 5. i dont have a banking app or google services though personally. everything else at least i can confirm works fine. not really much need to root grapheneos either usually, especially as it is less secure (at least for most users?)
every bit counts. dont be rude.
