One app you are missing is shelter, Google won't allow it on the play store since it's a privacy app, but it allows you to install the school apps and stuff inside a work container so that they can't access the personal information on your other devices.

Firefox or Waterfox instead of Brave. Vivaldi's a good compromise if it has to be Chromium.

co maps over organic maps

I would recommend moving off of Duolingo if you can. What you move to depends on the language you're learning. They fired a bunch of their language developers and went hard on AI.

I help run a community for Welsh learners and we're finding more and more people coming in with questions about a Duolingo lesson where things are wrong and weird. Plus their business practices aren't great. They realized that they make money from you staying on the app, not learning a language, so your progress is artificial stunted. Plus the complete lack of grammar explanation at all we're finding hurts people more than helps

As a general recommendation, textbooks are so much better.

I also see Gmail. I don't have a recommendation for a replacement as I'm doing my research on it now, but getting away from Google is a good idea

Try Anki instead of Duolingo. You'll learn fucking nothing from it.

Also move all the proprietary software into a work profile with Shelter (available on F-Droid) just like I did.

Remove Netflix, proprietary software.

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy

I can't install anything that isn't from playstore.

Why?

You could try https://delta.chat/ instead of WhatsApp

A great step that will solve most of the junk problems that I see, is to move to a custom rom.

Pretty sure Wireguard is better in most regards than openvpn. But I also have no idea what you use the VPN for, or why not just use Mullvad.

I'd replace the default text-messaging app with QUIK or something (also allows you to block people who you otherwise cant block).

And replace Ace Attorney with Wrath Of The Gods ;)

I would see if you’re able to actually uninstall or disable the Google apps. They’re likely to still grab info otherwise

It would be nice to use something like RethinkDNS to block internet connection of these apps you can't disable. You can also config it to block some trackers by DNS filtering.

I see Maps.