🩵 Bwee the Fluffdragon 🩵May 16, 2024

So... I've read some things lately about the big evil G that have put me into unease. The problem is, I use Google for absolutely everything right now, and have for as long as Google has existed. It's tied into everything and I need to break free.

These are the Google things I use regularly:

* Email - Gmail (I have many years of email that I've saved in my account)
* Browser - Chrome (including saving my passwords)
* Writing - Docs (I need collaborative capabilities and a place to safely save my work)
* Spreadsheets - Sheets (used for organizing various things, collaborative options are very needed and used often)

My phone is even a Google Pixel phone, of course running Android and integrated into everything I do.

I am not very tech savvy. I need user-friendly, reliable, relatively easy to learn options for everything I use, and I have zero idea where to begin.

I've done searches online for alternatives, but nothing is really standing out to me as being a good replacement. If you have any ideas for me (and dear god let them please be free or have reasonable pricing) please let me know.

Thank you for any advice!

#help #google #degoogle

Edited to add: Thank you all so much for your thoughts and responses, I got more than I bargained for, haha! I have this post bookmarked and will take in the information at my own pace.

I will be muting this post as I have been a little overwhelmed with the responses, but I really appreciate all the input for when I have time to process it. :3

💙💙💙

Show threadvappster (moved!)May 16, 2024

@Bwee As others here have suggested very valid alternatives for everything else, I'm going to focus on the phone:

If you want to keep your current Pixel phone, there is a way to get rid of all its Google services, and that is by installing a degoogled Android ROM.

The process itself is honestly not as hard as you may think, however, because, as you can imagine, Google doesn't want you to do that, there are some caveats to keep in mind

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Show threadvappster (moved!)

@Bwee Generally speaking, the steps you'll have to take can be summed up like this:

- Unlock your phone's bootloader
- Install a custom recovery
- Use the custom recovery to install your Android ROM of choice

For the ROM, I suggest LineageOS, as it's very close to what you're already used to in terms of UX/UI and one of its main goals is to provide a fully functional degoogled daily driver experience out of the box

https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/

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May 16, 2024 at 8:55amWeb