Asklemmy

I guess I'll share my setup aha. Forewarning: I invested heavily into self hosting and being in full control of as much as possible, mainly to try to be 'Internet independent'.

• Google ads, APIs, telemetry and everything else that is not necessary: AdGuard Home (selfhosted)
• Android app store: Fdroid with IzzyOnDroid repo, failing that Aurora Store, if apps still whine about not being to use Play Services then I use the Play Store
• Gmail: Mailcow Dockerized (selfhosted) with K9 Android client
• SMS (not that I use it anyway): Fossify SMS
• Instant messaging: Matrix (selfhosted) for Discord/Telegram style with Element client, or Telegram FOSS
• File Manager (I goddamn hate that Google Files forces itself onto any phone after initial setup, even when there's a manufacturer installed one already): Material Files
• GBoard (It's also really fucking invasive): HeliBoard
• YouTube: via Revanced Manager, with Odysee as a hopeful replacement. Much lower userbase though, obviously.
• Google Photos (refuses to settle for less than 100% file access): Part of a self hosted Samba share that I keep synced to via FolderSync (from Play Store - they charge €10 for the app outside of Google)
• Chrome: Brave (I downloaded a script to debloat it of crypto and AI)
• Google Search: My partner uses Ecosia for environment reasons, and I use DuckDuckGo for privacy reasons
• Chromecast: I recommend a Roku
• AndroidOS: CalyxOS if Pixel, LineageOS if not
• Play Services: Gapps pico or nano because some things are still tied to Play Services
• Maps is superior, unfortunately, but OSMAnd is a good alt
• Google DNS, used by default by a lot of things like routers: Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1

Here's my list:

• Proton Mail: super painless to migrate over and a very similar user experience. Feels good knowing that Google can't read my emails and that they can't be subpoenaed by our insane government. Highly recommend. There's a free plan that offers 1GB of storage but I went straight to a paid account so I can't speak to that.
• Proton Pass: LOVE this. It was easy to import my passwords from LastPass and Google. The best feature is the "hide my email alias" which on my plan I can make unlimited ones. It's basically making an anonymous throwaway email that automatically forwards to your inbox. If you start getting junk mail you can see who sold your address, but also with one click you can delete it if it gets compromised. It's basically the equivalent of making a bunch of different Google accounts but way easier.
• Proton Drive: It came with my subscription but I haven't gotten that deep into it yet. It has a Docs alternative but not Sheets which I use a lot, so I'm hoping they develop something like that. Otherwise like a lot like drive. It's technically a photo backup too but the interface is trash (see next item). My goal is to get enough transferred that I can cancel my Google One subscription and maybe just use that for Sheets as needed.
• Ente Photos: Cloud-based photo backup. I'm slowly getting my photos transferred over but it seems to be pretty user friendly. It has some but not all of the features of Google Photos, like organizing by faces.
• Brave Search: They have a browser too but I'm just using the search in Firefox at the moment. I like that it's not based on Google's index but it sometimes means the results are not quite as good. Honestly for the payoff of not being algorithmed to death I'm fine with that.

https://cartes.app/ is a new kid on the block to replaces Gmaps, looks very cool bit is also very alpha atm. But I'll keep checking it, it has some very cool features already (French only atm which I don't speak at all but it's still super usable.)

I tried to minimize my dependency on Google by signing up for various email services like Petal Mail by Huawei, Proton Mail, and Yandex Mail. I also tried to find smartphones that don't have Google by default, such as Murena smartphones and Huawei smartphones. But it seems like it's too late to look for those gems without Google because I have so many apps that I bought on Google, amounting to around five digits in Malaysian Ringgit, which is not cheap. So I think I'll stay with Google for now, sadly.

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