Title   : De-Google-ing           ___________________
Date    : 20th April 2025         | _______________ |
Author  : Vela025                 | |Vela025s     | |
Catagory: Tech                    | |De-Googleing | |
                                 | |Adventures   | |
In light of, *erm*....recent      | |        -V025| |
events, I've decided to complete  | |_____________| |
a process (which in truth I       |_________________|
started quite some time ago,          _[_______]_
but didn't fully pull the plug)   ___[___________]___
and remove myself from the big   |         [_____] []|__
tech ecosystem.  For social      |         [_____] []|  \__
media this was pretty easy I     L___________________J     \
don't have faebook/Intagram/      ___________________      /\
Twitter, admittedly I do still   /###################\    (__)
have reddit; but it's not
something I use frequently (we're talking posts once a
month maximum and reading it only when it comes up in a tech type
web search). I, of course, did sign up to Bluesky, Mastodon and
Lemmy but haven't used them at all so I may end up leaving the
confederated space too.

The big one for me was Google, being an Android user I was fully
in their ecosystem search, contacts, drive, photos, mail, maps,
calendar, home and keep (notes). The first step was finding all
alternative I trialled NextCloud on a RPI  for a few months,
whilst it had its drawbacks (which I'll come on to later) I felt
it covered most of the PIM I was using google for (drive,
contacts, notes [kinda] and calendar). Arguably if I had a
conventional .co.uk domain it could also serve as a mail server,
however I instead opted for protonmail. Based in Switzerland
proton is a privacy based audited company with transparency as
a core value...is this swapping one big tech for another...
possibly, next year I may move to a self hosted .co.uk domain.

NextCloud was also able to provide an alternative to photos,
podcast sync and an RSS news reader.  To use these as I wanted
I really needs to start looking at my phone and the apps I needed.
The first step was relatively simple and something I had done many
times before (in fact it is usually the first think I do when I
get a new phone, which is rarely) unlock the bootloader and install
Lineage OS (the successor to Cyanogen). This gives a stock android
experience, at this point is where I would have usually installed
gapps (the google apps package) however I instead installed
F-droid an FOSS apk app store and hunted round for NextCloud
companion apps as well as alternative gapps.

FOSS Apps:
* Antenapod
* Barcode Scanner
* (Privacy) Browser
* DuckDuckGo Browser
* Clima                                              (Weather App)
* DAVx5                (Contacts and Calendar Sync with NextCloud)
* Editor                                       (Basic Text Editor)
* Gadgetbridge                        (Sync Companion with MiBand)
* Jellyfin        (Mediaplayer, streams remotely from home server)
* K-9 Mail
* KDE Connect                          (Computer <---> Phone Sync)
* Magic Earth          (Best alternative I've found to GoogleMaps)
* Memories                   (Nextcloud Google Photos replacement)
* MuPDF
* NewPipe                                         (Youtube client)
* Nextcloud
* Notes                        (Nextcloud Google Keep Alternative)
* Organic Maps              (Maps alternative, better for walking)
* OsmAnd~                                    (When all else fails)
* Passman                              (Nextcloud Password Locker)
* PDF Waller                                  (Store rail tickets)
* Pocket Gopher
* RedReader                                        (Reddit client)
* Voice                                         (Audiobook Player)

The following apps are proprietary and need to be downloaded from
the Google Play Store, however with the use of Aurora store this
allows you to use the play store anonymously and download the
apps you need.

Grey Area:
* Aurora Store
* Before Launcher
* ConnectBot
* File Manager +
* Proton Mail
* SurfShark
* WhatsApp

Armed with this I have a pretty robust open source eco-system to
use for my everyday. Out of all the Google offerings, the thing
that I miss the most is Google Keep. Nextcloud Notes doesn't
support tick lists, Nextcloud Deck does but it is too overly
complex (due to its intended use) for a simple shopping list. Of
the non-offical addons for nextcloud that do have a google keep
style interface, non of them support sharing a list with the
rest of the household. It's a small price to pay...all be it
an annoying one!

Ultimately as much as I dislike having WhatsApp I don't see there
being a viable alternative. I have looked in to running a
whatapp <--> IRC gateway on a server, but I don't think that's
going to be any more secure than running WhatsApp locally. And
finally I need to replace the Google Nest Mini with some sort
of open source alternative, probably using a RPi.

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