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?
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.