
De-Googled Android Experience - swalladge
https://www.swalladge.net/archives/2019/06/10/degoogled-android/
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_Donny
I de-Googled my Android 3 months ago, and the article reads as if I wrote it.
I can totally relate to everything!

Without the Play store, I had to take long hard look at what apps are really
essential to me, for which I cannot find a FOSS alternative. Turns out, except
Spotify and banking, there was none! Without Google Play, I did not really
feel the need to fill my phone with various apps... My primary email and SMS
was all the communication I needed.

In the beginning, I missed my notifications. I felt almost uneasy if I did not
check my phone every 30 minutes because I felt like I could be missing some
urgent notification. However, after only a week, I noticed that nothing of
importance was lost, but more importantly, how much focus I reclaimed!

I know this sounds cheesy, but de-cluttering my phone made me realize how much
all the apps strived for my attention all the time.

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jwgarber
I made a similar switch to Lineage about a year ago, and it's also been
absolutely great. No regrets whatsoever. Also, AFAIK you can root your phone
to fool play store checks, using something like Magisk if that's important
enough.

------
listic
There's also LineageOS for MicroG [1] which bakes in MicroG for you. Then
there's the unfortunately named /e/ [2] which is based on the former and
trying to build a usable privacy-focused mobile OS on top of that.

[1] [https://lineage.microg.org/](https://lineage.microg.org/)

[2] [https://e.foundation/](https://e.foundation/)

------
sixplusone
I've been wondering for a while: why _does_ google play require a sign-in to
install apps?

Mozilla lets anyone download addons from anywhere, likewise I should be able
to download an apk to my desktop and install on my phone.

~~~
juliangoldsmith
The point is to tie you into the Google ecosystem. That's the entire purpose
of Android, really.

------
_Ender
Another that I had trouble with was location, since I occasionally need maps.
microG's NLP thing really seemed to dislike my phone.

------
panpanna
How far can you get by using a vanilla Google Android but enabling all privacy
settings and not using any Google services?

~~~
swalladge
You can't. On all stock roms the google play services is installed, which
gives google full administrator access to the device with no way to disable
it. Google has been known to abuse that privilege for things like location
tracking without your permission [1].

[1]: [https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/235594-yes-google-play-
is...](https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/235594-yes-google-play-is-tracking-
you-and-thats-just-the-tip-of-a-very-large-iceberg)

~~~
wideasleep1
Actually, I was able to effectovely disable Play Services and others using
Marcel Bokhorst's 'NetGuard Pro', a clever firewall that allows detailed, as
well as wholesale blocking. This allowed me to test the DeGoogled waters
before finally flashing my phone (Essential PH1). NetGuard opened my eyes to
what apps were requesting upon launch and it was quite disturbing. I
ultimately ended up AOSP without any G services, and couldn't be happier.
Signal has their websockets version on their site, and it indeed chews through
battery faster, but a fair tradeoff for breaking away from incessant tracking
and logging.

