Degoogle Megathread
from lopar49@lemm.ee to degoogle@lemmy.ml on 21 Apr 2025 22:35
https://lemm.ee/post/62015191
from lopar49@lemm.ee to degoogle@lemmy.ml on 21 Apr 2025 22:35
https://lemm.ee/post/62015191
š Google Search
- Leta Ā
- 4get
- Searxng
- Kagi
š§ Gmail
- ProtonMail Ā
- Tutanota Ā
- Mailbox Ā
š Chrome
- Librewolf
- Brave Browser
- Mullvad Browser Ā
- Vivaldi - partially open source
- Floorp
š± Android Custrom ROMS
- GrapheneOS
- Calyx 3.Ā /e/OS
āļø Google Drive
- Nextcloud (self hosted)
- Filen
- Syncthing
- Proton Drive
šŗļø Google Maps
- OSMAnd
- Mapy
- OrganicĀ Maps
š Google Docs / Sheets / Slides
- CryptPad
- LibreOffice
- OnlyOffice
- Collabra
šŗ YouTube
- PeerTube
- Piped
- Indivious
šø GoogleĀ Photos
- Ente photos
- NextcloudĀ Photos
- Immich
š Google Translate
- DeepL
- LibreTranslate
š GoogleĀ Calendar
- Proton Calendar
- NextcloudĀ Calendar (self hosted)
- Tuta Calendar
š± GoogleĀ Play
- FāDroid
- AuroraĀ Store
š„ GoogleĀ Meet
- JitsiĀ Meet
- NextcloudĀ Talk
- Signal
š GoogleĀ Authenticator
- Ente auth
- andOTP
- Aegis Authenticator
- Bitwarden
note: do not use the same provider for password manager and authenticator
šļø GoogleĀ Keep
- Standard Notes
- Joplin
- Notesnook
š¬Google Messages
- Signal
- Theerma
- Session
āļøChromeOS
- Linux mint
- Debian
- PopOS
šļøGoogle Passwords (baked into chrome)
- Bitwarden
- KeePass
šGoogle books
- Libby
š¶YouTube Music
- Qobuz
- Tidal
- Deezer
š¤Gemini
- Duck.ai
- Le chat (opt out of data sending) - protected by eu privacy laws
- Ollama (self hosted)
šLens Wip š§
š³Google pay Wip š§
āļøGoogle tasks
- Tasks.org
š°Google news
- Host your own rss feed reader eg Readrops
š§āš«Google classroom Wip š§
šGoogle VPN
- Mullvad
- ProtonVPN - free plan
- IVPN
I am open to any suggestions or to add an services I missed! Suggestions are especially welcome on services with less than three current options
threaded - newest
Nice. Notesnook is great for sync between pc and phone, but I donāt know the others. Thanks!
Alternative to google search engine, Kagi
Just a PSA about Kagi: snoo.habedieeh.re/ā¦/psa_the_kagi_search_engine_diā¦
DuckDuckGo has suspended its partnership with Yandex in 2022. vox.com/ā¦/duckduckgo-free-speech-privacy-oops
Why is that a problem exactly?
Is it just because theyāre Russian?
Are there some dots Iām not connecting?
Yes Steve. Because they are Russian, pay their taxes in Russia and therefore finance the war. They can potentially introduce biases in their search results as well.
Please note that itās just a PSA. Do what you want with this information.
russia is the no-no country for doing bad things, like starting pointless wars and terrorizing a civilian population. so you canāt support them. youāll have to find other alternatives to your services that support bad countries doing bad things.
Iāve been looking at www.openphone.com as an alternative to Google Voice. Itās not free (but that may be a bonus), but it does let you port your GV number into their system.
$19/mo.
Itās the closest Iāve found to a replacement. Iād love to hear anyone else who uses something similar.
Looks good! Iāll add it to the list. Google voice and google pay are by far the hardest to replace
Can anyone vouch for this? Is it open source? What is itās privacy policy
www.openphone.com/privacy
Iād love opinions on it, too. Or alternatives.
The only thing I use Google Voice for is being able to reply to text messages on a browser. Is there something I can use for that?
I guess I should have said why Iām considering them.
ā¦openphone.com/introducing-the-openphone-web-app-ā¦
Looks like theyāve had web based messaging since 2020.
My main use for Google Voice is as a filter for places that need my number. Then itās not ringing my phone (unless I want to).
I did also make sure any alternatives Iām considering do messaging. Even better if itās both in browser and in phone app.
Futo keyboard has voice to text with the ability to download more language models
If you donāt need the business features, I use jmp.chat for $5 a month.
Can you transfer in your Google Voice number? I donāt want to lose it.Looks like a good alternative. Thanks for the suggestion.
@Zachariah @lopar49 I used Openphone a few years ago, and it was terrible. Lots of SMS never came through, didn't work for OTPs (even though they claimed it would), terrible customer service. Despite it being more complex technically, JMP.Chat is much, much better.
Thanks for the input. Iām saw it looked a bit more complex, but that shouldnāt be a problem for me. Iād much prefer something reliable.
Threema (not Therma)
Thanks. Itās updated now
closer
edit: Threema started as an abbreviation: āEEEMA,ā for āEnd-to-End Encrypted Messaging Application.ā The three āEās were a bit unwieldy, so it became āThreema.ā
Shouldāve gone for a name like 3ema instead in my opinion.
3nema
Floorp mentioned!
Everything you need and more if you have a bit of time and an old laptop or two.
github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
Some of these you can use through public hosted servers too.
Wow! These are great. Iām going to have to try out minusgames. Iāve just been using syncthing.
I run a lot of these on the background of my desktop too and you can flip them off if theyāre too intensive and you want to game or something. Self hosting is a little tedious to start but it saves so much money lol.
I like Firefox Sync. What are my options when moving to Librewolf?
You can continue using it.
librewolf.net/docs/faq/#can-i-use-firefox-sync-wiā¦
librewolf.net/docs/faq/#can-i-use-firefox-sync-wiā¦
If youāre degoogling to reduce googleās influence in the world, not just in your life, you should avoid chromium based browsers entirely. Googleās chromium web rendering engine dominates most web traffic, and is squeezing out all alternatives. This leaves defining web standards in the hands of google pretty much exclusively. Vivaldi and Brave should be avoided for this reason. Brave founder Brendan Eich donates to funds seeking to undo gay marriage protections in the US and other reactionary causes, if that matters to you (it should).
Cryptpad for a Drive/Online Office Suite replacement, itās fantastic
Just started using this. Itās free (for a small amount of storage) and super private. Like so private that if you forget your password, your data is lost forever.
Vivaldi and brave are just chrome.
While Vivaldi offers a unique browsing experience, I believe Brave provides even more features and enhancements compared to both Chrome and standard Firefox. It focuses on privacy and performance, which many users find beneficial.
Might also add Collabora, itās libreoffice, but allows online collaboration and has the nicest integration into nextcloud, imo.
It is paid and/or open source
It is free and open source. github.com/CollaboraOnline/online
Download via F-Droid needs additional repository: www.collaboraoffice.com/downloads/fdroid/repo/?fiā¦
āNOTE: main server is offline, youāll see the message that youāll add a mirror, thatās expected. To make it skip the main server, open repo details and toggle off firstĀ
collaboraonline.comĀ entry.ā (forum.f-droid.org/t/known-repositories/721)Iāll have to check this out
hiya, when i try and download it from windows, it is paid. When I try and use it online I have to request a demo. What am I doing wrong
Thatās weird. At least for Linux and Android it was free, last time I checked.
Oh maybe itās different? But when I go to windows I takes me to the Microsoft store and itās 13Ā£
Collabora makes a bunch of products, and tries to monetize them in various ways. The desktop apps are basically just a Libreoffice derivative and not really worth your time IMO, but either find a provider with both Nextcloud + Collabora Online installed, or self host them, and itās a fully free and open source alternative to the whole Google Drive and Google Docs platform.
Nextcloud paired with Collabora is awesome! (Might be just be called āNextcloud Officeā depending on how itās packaged up, but itās the same thing). With Google Docs, you have drive, but the āfilesā it syncs for your Google Docs documents are just links to open Google Docs in a web browser, you need to manually export them if you want real files. With Nextcloud/Collabora, you literally have .odt or .docx files synced to your computer, but you can open them online with Collabora and have a full āgoogle docsā or better collaborative online interface. Make a change, and the .odt file on your hard drive changes. You can work or collaborate in Word, Libreoffice, or in the web browser with Collabora on the same files (synchronously, only with the latter, but asynchronously with any of them - with the obvious caveat that slight formatting differences will always happen with different applications so keep your collaborative documents simple). Itās brilliant, and the interface is more feature-full than google docs too.
.
For those of you who want to dump music streaming entirely and go back to audio files Symphony is an open source music player on Android.
another option if you want a hybrid is host a jellyfin instance with your music youbcan even install a lrclib plugin and get pretty good lyrics
Oh? Self hosted music streaming? Thats neat as fucc
I would add
To the Google Drive and Google Passwords areas.
Proton Drive also has the ability to view pictures it has backed up, but because everything is encrypted, they canāt really sort them into buckets like you can with Google Photos.
For news/RSS feed Iāve been using Readrops that is available in Fdroid f-droid.org/packages/com.readrops.app
Iāve been using Feeder for RSS and am fairly happy.
I wish there was a way to group articles by topic. At the moment I have to scroll through pages of articles about the Popeās death.
Is there a graphene option for is broke folk? Iād love to move away from android but it only works on phones I canāt afford.
I guess pixel 9a would be the best choice or a supported older model
Pixel 7a is still supported for 3ish more years and can be had refurbished for like $200. Still a solid phone as well. My daily driver.
lineage os has a pretty extensive device support or in theroy you could compile base android with none of the spookieness or bloat.
Do alternatives like Invidious and Piped really work? Iām skeptical because it seems like YouTube doesnāt want users to have a privacy-focused viewing experience.
I think PeerTube is a great platform, but it lacks enough content to keep me engaged. Quitting YouTube is challenging, especially since Iāve become more aware of online privacy thanks to some privacy-focused YouTubers. However, many of these creators havenāt transitioned to platforms like PeerTube.
For example, while some creators like The Hated One and Mental Outlaw have switched to Linux, they still primarily use YouTube.
There are many FOSS services available, but most still rely on big tech. Iām not saying thatās inherently bad, but it does highlight how limited our options can be.
I initially had problems with Piped, but Iāve been using PipePipe for ages and have never had an issue.
Seafile as a Google Drive/Dropbox replacement. You can self host but they also offer paid accounts I think.
Some of those suggestions are not exactly degoogling, in the strictest sense. If youāre just going to keep using Google services but through a different frontend, you are not freeing yourself from Google.
Thatās not to say piped and invidious and Aurora and so on arenāt worth using if you absolutely cannot wean yourself away from Google entirely. Itās a step in the right direction, certainly.
Still, it might be nice to label those suggestions differently in a list like this, for clarity.
Bitwarden also makes an OTP authenticator app.
It has TOTP built-in for paid accounts.
Iām not paying them, and I have their authenticator app. Itās a free download from the app store.
Most KeePass clients have built-in OTP support too. That being said I still prefer Aegis.
As an email provider there is also posteo which is a nice email provider from germany that costs only 1 ā¬ a month. And with posteo and mailbox you can use 3rd party email clients which is not something you can do on proton or tuta.
Would it be better to replace Gemini with a local model run through ollama or something?
Yes, but unless you have god hardware it wonāt be a direct replacement ):
Someone please help me find a browser that has the Chromium gestures.
I want o be able to pull the URL bar down to go into the tab selection screen and pull the page down to refresh, and all the Firefox based browsers are so different it drives me crazy and I go back to chrome or brave.
Brave I think If not then ungoogled chromium
Arenāt Brave and Vivaldi supposed to have blue bullet instead of yellow?
Any iOS alternative to Google Tasks?
Maybe a Joplin? Sorry this is a kinda half arsed andwer Iāll be back with a better one in a mo
Maybe omni focus?
apps.apple.com/gb/app/ā¦/id993066159
apps.apple.com/gb/app/ā¦/id1460386981
After further inspection, I would recommend Joplin for most private
Thanks for your tips :-) I have been trying both Anytype and Joplin, and might use either, but they seem to be primarly note apps not task/todo/reminder/list/priority apps.
Your first links looked interesting, so I will do some research on them.
Would you be willing to pay? Some of the apps arenāt currently being developer unfortunately
Maybe anytype
Wouldnāt really recommend threema and would include SimpleX
Why not?
Based around a company
To be fair, Simplex is also a for-profit company. However, itās at least decentralized and more open, Iād take it over Threema any day.
Whatās wrong with threema?
Iām concerned about centralization the most.
Correct me if Iām wrong, but how is signal any less centralised?
Signal isnāt, and thatās one of mine (and a lot of other peopleās) main gripes with it.
Where did you found that SimpleX was for profit?
Their own FAQ: simplex.chat/faq/#funding-and-business-model
Oh sorry didnāt go very deep
Is Cryptpad really the best docs alternative? Iām looking for something to replace docs, itās one of the last things I need to degoogle.
I tried it and itās pretty good. I donāt know about storage limits or anything like that, but it gets the job done.
Saved! This is an excellent resource thanks so much
This really could use some clarification on what category these belong to. Most of these projects are open source projects where you can either self-host the tool, or choose from one of many free or paid instances online. If someone lacks the technical skill, hardware, or time to self-host, they should shop around. Often there is an āofficialā instance by the developers, but thatās not always the best option. Sometimes a paid option with more resources is going to be more stable and performant.
Other suggestions are individual companies services, and a couple of these are just applications you install on your device. It would be helpful to readers to clarify.
Feel free to do it yourself