Asklemmy

Email

• Proton Mail, (paid) I switched 7 years ago and it's great, I've never looked back. I don't use the attached services like calendar and contacts because it's a little bit too walled-off for the integrations I need, but I do use ProtonVPN and Drive.
• Thunderbird (free) on desktop, to access my IMAP or exchange email addresses (work etc) along with Proton Bridge so I never touch the Proton web app. On Android, I use Thunderbird for the IMAP addresses plus the Proton app, which isn't ideal but not sure what the alternative could be.

Calendar and contacts

• Nextcloud (free) installed on the basic shared hosting for my personal website manages all my contacts
• Etesync (free) is currently syncing my calendars, but I'm planning to swap this soon to the Nextcloud instance just to simplify things.

Notes / Resource management

• Anytype (free) is incredible and I now run my life off of it. Took months to really get the hang of it but it's worth the effort.

Cloud storage

• Proton Drive (paid) is great, I use it for all my work applications, sending to clients etc and sync my most important files, but only have 500gb storage so
• Synology Drive (free) installed on the NAS I use for backups covers all my personal uses, including photo backups.

Browser

• Firefox (of course), with uBlock Origin (of course)

Search

• DuckDuckGo (free), I ran Kagi for a while but the company seems shady and the price is extremely high for what you get

Passwords

• 1Password (paid), migrated after the LastPass incident and before ProtonPass existed. It would make sense to save the money and switch to Proton but tbh 1Password has been great and I wouldn't risk the faff.

Documents

• Honestly I don't have a lot of need for Google Docs replacements but when I do need to work on docs I'll use LibreOffice. If it needs to be shared I'd probably do a public share on Anytype, or use Proton Docs. More likely, someone else will have invited me to a Google doc and I'll have to sign in to use it.

Audio

• PocketCasts (paid) is a great service. I also use Spotify (sorry, all my friends use it)

RSS

• FreshRSS also set up on my web hosting so I get all my news/articles/substacks etc through ReadYou and Fluent Reader.

Google products I still use

• Maps
• YouTube (with uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock on both desktop and android), I just sadly can't let go of my carefully crafted algorithm oops

Desktop Environment

• Operating System: Fedora Workstation Linux

  • Great package manager updates
  • Excellent performance

• Productivity Tools:

  • Note-taking: Zim Wiki (preferred for GUI and plaintext storage)
  • Document Editing: Considering OnlyOffice if Collabora Office doesn't work out
  • Backup Solution: Filen cloud provider with desktop sync app

• Browsers:

  • Primary: Firefox with Arkenfox
  • Backup: Ungoogled Chromium (for sites incompatible with Firefox)

• Password Management:

  • Bitwarden (kept on phone)
  • KDE Connect for clipboard sharing between devices

Mobile Setup

• Device & OS: Pixel 8 Pro running GrapheneOS

  • More stable and polished than previous CalyxOS on Pixel 5
  • Better Google Play sandboxing compared to microG

• Mobile Apps:

  • Browsers: IronFox and Vanadium
  • App Sources: Primarily open-source from GitHub/F-Droid, updated via Obtainium
  • Non-FOSS Apps: Sandboxed Google Play for banking and other essential apps
  • Maps: HERE WeGo (previously used Magic Earth but it lacked public transport info)
  • Loyalty Cards: Catima

• Search Engine: Kagi

  • Quality results
  • Sound business model (subscription-based)
  • Fediverse integration for Lemmy search

• Self-Hosted Services:

  • Contacts and calendar via Radicale on NAS with Nginx

• Car Integration:

  • Still using Android Auto (found MagSafe holder alternatives more distracting)
  • Physical cards stored in MagSafe wallet on phone back

for me:

• google drive > pcloud (objectively better app tbh)
• chrome > librewolf > floorp (i like having the tab bar at the bottom, and librewolf is a bit annoying sometimes)
• photos > ente
• gmail > proton > tuta > "disroot" (proton and tuta aren't IMAP, and their first-party apps are slow. disroot probably isn't the best one, I just chose one that supports IMAP)
• google search > ddg > SearXNG
• google office > onlyoffice on windows, libreoffice on linux
• google maps > Organic Maps
• google passwords > bitwarden
• google auth > ente auth :)

Search: Kagi (paid)

Email and calendar: Tuta (paid)

Synced storage (like Dropbox): Synology Drive (free, used with my Synology NAS)

Photos: Synology Photos (free, used with NAS)

Passwords: Bitwarden (paid)

Music subscription: Tidal

Music purchases: Qobuz and Bandcamp

No complaints about any of these. Quite happy having de-googled and de-appled.

I had to change my name and hairstyle

Google office stuff > libreoffice

Chrome > firefox and librewolf

gmail > proton

Google > ddg

Iphone > grapheneos pixel

Youtube account > newpipe, libretube, grayjay with exported subscriptions

Google drive > synology

I think that covers about everything google specific.

Note: I included iphone because even iphones ping google SUPL servers whereas Grapheneos settings host their own servers to ping to avoid sending stuff out to google.

If I remember correctly I started deGoogling "seriously" in the last summer. At this point YouTube and Youtube Music are the only Google products/services I still use daily but only on PC. I never use them on phone. I also am quite forced to use Gmail sometimes but otherwise I avoid it like a plague.

I think my phone is as deGoogled as possible without rooting and/or changing the OS. I have uninstalled every Google app that I have been able to uninstall and also I have disabled every Google service that is possible to disable. I still have to deMicrosoft my PC. I want to move to Linux but I have understood that there's some compatibility issues with Reaper and virtual instruments. That's the only reason I haven't done it yet.

Anyway. Here is a list of apps/services I use instead of Google's sh*t:

• Browser: Waterfox on PC and Ironfox on phone (of course both with uBlock Origin)
• Cloud storage: Proton Drive
• Email: Proton Mail
• Calendar: Proton Calendar
• Authenticator: Aegis
• Map: OsmAnd
• Search engine: DuckDuckGo and Brave Search
• Play Store: Droid-ify and Aurora Store (not signed in)
• Speech Recognition & Synthesis: SherpaTTS
• Find My Device: FindMyDevice (FOSS)

I think that's all. There's some other FOSS apps and services that I use but they are not exactly replacements for Google's sh*t.

• Desktop: Linux (Tuxedo)
• Browser: Vivaldi
• Search: Ecosia & DDG
• Mail / Groupware / Calendar / Contacts / Cloud Drive / Meet: Infomaniak kSuite Pro
• Backup: Syncthing
• Movies / Netflix / Amazon Prime: buying DVD / Bluray and ripping to my home media server with Jellyfin and Videoland.nl
• Mobile Phone: Fairphone with /e/OS or Calyx
• Whatsapp: Signal, Matrix / Element, Briar, Threema
• YouTube: Grayjay, Floatplane, Nebula, Curiosity Stream
• Maps: Magic Earth
• Photos: ente.io
• Authenticator: Ente Auth
• Twitter / X: Mastodon
• Cards: Catima
• Keep / Evernote: Notesnook / Anytype
• Backup comms: Meshtastic / UHF / VHF
• Translate: DeepL
• Podcasts: Antennapod
• Google Home: Home Assistant
• Google Assistant / Gemini: Mistral Le Chat / LLama
• Router: openWRT (GL.iNET Flint2)
• Firewall: opnSense (Deciso)
• Pushbullet: KDE Connect
• speedtest.net: LibreSpeed
• Fing: Ning
• Kobo / Kindle: Pocketbook
• Amazon: Local / European dealers
• Pocket: Wallabag
• Creality / Bambulab: Prusa
• VPN: Proton, Wireguard, Tailscale

• Desktop OS: Linux (Arch)
• Phone OS: /e/OS
• mail, notes, calendar, online storager: mureno
• maps: cittymapper, magic earth

I'm pretty happy with all of those

I am absolutely dumb with this stuff so I have one question: how do I get all of my photos off Google cloud? That's the only thing stopping me from shitting it down.

I also have a google pixel phone but that will be destroyed once my contract is up and I can afford something not google related

Almost everything, finally!
OS: GrapheneOS
Calendar: Proton
Browser: Firefox
Storage: NAS
Youtube: NewPipe and SmartTube

I’m still stuck with Maps and Android in my car as it has Android Automotive, but I’m happy with my progress so far

Been degoogled for years at this point:

• Stock Android --> LineageOS or GrapheneOS (no gapps)
• YouTube --> Invidious*, NewPipe
• Google Search --> DuckDuckGo, Brave Search
• Google Play Store --> F-Droid, Aurora Store

I've also decoupled from other similar services:

• Outlook --> ProtonMail
• Calendar --> Nextcloud*
• OneDrive --> Nextcloud*
• Windows, macOS --> Linux (after years of distrohopping, I found LMDE is incredibly stable while still being a nice "out of box" distro)
• Google Maps, Apple Maps --> OSMAnd, Organic Maps

I never used any online password manager myself, I went from writing passwords in a literal book to KeePass, to now Vaultwarden* for that

* - self hosted

I've recently been thinking about this.

I've seen plenty of recommendations for the Proton suite, but seeing as the premium plan runs 10 bucks a month for:

• Mail (Need premium for IMAP compatibility with the Proton Bridge)
• Calendar
• Drive service --more on this one later
• VPN (this one looked nice, but IIRC VPNs are less necessary for home traffic if all my requests are HTTPS)
• Password Keeper
• And crypto wallet,

it was a mite expensive for my tastes who was only going to use the mail service and calendar and perhaps the VPN. I looked into Posteo.de and it had all that I wanted from an email provider (encryption on-server, IMAP compatibility and privacy-focused). It's much cheaper (1 EUR/mo.) and it has a fantastically retro and sleek website (the epitome of web design-- nice-looking without being obese or fiddly).

I'm also trying out a few search engines, namely Mojeek and Marginalia-search because I want to both move away from Big Tech and Google in particular as well as open my horizon to the more human side of the web.

I have yet to figure out what to do about Android. I'm trying out using a dumb-phone for a while, but that's more of a temporary thing.

With regards to Proton Drive, it seems nice but I've heard of poor Linux support. That's a big dealbreaker for me.

I'm afraid that I can't step away from Big G just yet; work runs off it. But one can dream. And every bit of data that Google doesn't have is one degree fewer of control they will have over me eventually, when the Big Tech overlords pull the trigger on whatever they have cooking up.

ProtonMail was the GMail alternative for awhile, until Proton CEO did a stupid move. Otherwise, ProtonMail had actually been a great service and it was nice having a data cap of 500MB. It told me that was all I ever needed for the few years I had with it.

Firefox Forks over Chrome.

My selfhosted Nextcloud does:

• Cloud storage (including photo storage)
• Contact/Calendar/Task Sync (DAV Droid)
• Notes
• Podcast subscription and progress sync (gpodder)

While I use OSMAnd for offline navigation MAPS is still my go-to for navigation/discovering places.

My phone is currently running stock Android