what are the best Google alternative apps ?
Google Voice - Cheogram
Search - Duck Duck Go or Start Page
Contacts - NextCloud
Calendar - NextCloud
Tasks - Task.Org
Keep - Joplin
Maps - Magic Earth
Passwords & Sign In - Bitwarden or Keepass
Docs & Sheets - Open Office
Gmail - Proton or Tutanota
Dialer - Simple Dialer
Files - Material Files
Chrome - Firefox
YouTube - Peertube
Photos - NextCloud
Bookmarks - NextCloud, Floccus, or XBrowsersync
I use all of these but I still have to use Google Voice and Maps because they are just superior to everything else that I have tried imo. And I sometimes use gmail too because certain website logins are locked to my old Gmail’s.
Not open office, use libre office.
Not Libra Office, Only Office. After all we are replacing Google, so we need integrated collab (without an RDP hack).
OnlyOffice is run by Russians.
Is everyone in Russia responsible for the actions of their government?
No, but totalitarian governments tend to get into everything, and a popular piece of software is something they will be interested in.
I always find it amusing how everyone makes these statements for Russian/Chinese software but never look at the government interest in Facebook, Google etc
… no shit bud, we’re litterally discussing alternatives to these platforms here. We know my dude. That’s why we’re finding alternatives.
Russia has one hell of alot more ability to do this to random pieces of tech in their control than the US by the way, same with china. That’s public and written into their laws. Not as much in the US.
Though, yes, finding a company outside of the 5 eyes is a good idea, we are not the “everyone” you’re talking about. Fuck man, we’re on lemmy for gods sake
Nope. I have met the team from OnlyOffice. Really good people. Always helpful and always friendly. And nothing is beneath them when it gets to support.
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I think the Latvians would like a word with you for calling them Russian.
Run and owned by Russians, hq in Latvia. Just like so many companies have hq in Ireland.
Actually I use only office (not open office) with collabora apps on my android and iphone. I always get the two names mixed up.
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Good list but let me respond to a few of those.
Calendar -NextCloud is needed to sync. On my Android I use simple calendar and the dav5x app connects it to my NextCloud to sync to it. The stock Calendar syncs to NextCloud on my iPhone.
Contacts - same exact setup as how I do Calendar. NextCloud is needed to sync. On my Android I use simple contacts and the dav5x app connects it to my NextCloud to sync to it. The stock contacts app syncs to NextCloud on my iPhone.
Maps - I absolutely loath organic maps. It never worked for me. I would put in a street name and address and it would never find it. I need stuff that works. So it’s Magic Earth most of the time and Google Maps if I’m really serious about getting somewhere and scared to get lost. Like if I’m in a sun down town or some shit like that.
Weather - I also use Geometric weather. Fantastic app!!!
Google Play store - When I first started degoogling, I tried to completely cut out the play store but then some apps that I paid for would never work. And they refused to accept any other form of payments. So I use the play store to download certain apps and then I block it with afwall+. I mostly use Obsidian and F-Droid
Google authenticator - I use 2fas. I like the browser extension and it just works seemlessly between my android, iphone, and desktop. It’s also now recently been open sourced.
Google messages - I also use simple sms. I really like the simple suite and how simple it is. I even use their dialer and gallery.
Gboard - is probably the very last Google app that I’ll get rid of. I’ve tried all the open sourced keyboards and none are as good. But I do have afwall+ blocking all outgoing connections on my Gboard. Gifs don’t even work.
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onlyoffice is much more polished than openoffice or libreoffice but a bit less open
thank you so much for introducing me to cheogram. for maps try Magic Earth app based on openstreetmap.org
You’re welcome. And yes Magic Earth is what I use. Maybe you skipped by it in my list. But sometimes I go back to Maps when I’m somewhere unknown and don’t want to get lost in the sauce lol
gotcha, I did skip to the bottom and see the bit about still using g00gly maps. been on graphene os for about 18-19 months now and Magic Earth keeps getting better and better.
Yes it’s tasks.org. I misspelled it. Also, I use only office in conjunction with collabora. I self host the only office server straight from a docker container on my PC. I always get open office and only office mixed up.
Nextcloud has a notes feature now that is pretty much comparable to keep. Has its own app too
Maybe something changed recently, but it’s not like keep from what I remember. Keep has easy to use lists, embedded images, card layout. I do love the simplicity of markdown though.
I since converted to joplin, love it.
There’s many ways to do notes. Here’s the 3 ways that I tried. Keep in mind that I have iPhone, Android, and Windows Desktop and Windows Laptop… So I like options where it will sync seemlessly across all of those.
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Tried obsidian. There was a feature that it was missing that made me completely give up on it. I forgot what it was but I remember it being something that all note taking apps should have. Like a no-brainer.
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Then I tried NextCloud notes (desktop). Quillpad (android). Notebooks (iOS). Syncing between the 3 was terrible.
3a. Joplin. There’s an app for all 3 devices and so the user experience is the same everywhere. Used my NextCloud to sync and it worked amazing for a week. Then after that, I started getting sync errors every time.
3b. Made a free Dropbox account and switched my Joplin sync to that. Has been smooooooth sailing ever since. Also there’s a Backup add-on that exports all my notes to a folder on my desktop daily.
Interesting… Thanks for your insight! I’ll experiment with Joplin.
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Cheogram just isn’t there yet for me. Can’t seem to make group chat work.
If you don’t need that, it seems fine.
Yea not there for me yet as well. That’s why I went back to Google Voice. Plus I have like 4 GV numbers lol
What about Collabora Office?
Photos - Immich
Duck Duck Go censors searches.
EDIT You can manually backup your bookmarks.
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I like duckduckgo. Kagi exists, if you’re willing to pay for it.
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Can you expand on the Brave scandal?
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Oh, I don’t give a shit about any of that.
Can you elaborate more on why you like Kagi? Does it get very relevant results? Eliminate blog spam? Does it make the internet seem larger than a handful of apps?
I like how you can block individual sites from search results, prioritize search results from specific websites, etc. It’s quite steep, but I feel it is worth it if you can afford it and are able to justify such an expense. For disclaimer, I don’t currently use it because I can’t justify such an expense but I likely will in the future.
Thank you, it sounds pretty neat. I won’t have to keep typing “site:”
I’ve been using ecosia for the past week and so far it’s great, no complaints
I like it. I like that it’s planting trees with each search, too.
Yeah, that’s the icing on the cake for me (I’m mostly just in it for the privacy)
I’ve been using SearXNG for the past couple of weeks, it pulls from most the major search engines like google, Bing, duckduckgo and qwant, but you can easily set it up to not show google and Bing.
For most things it works great, the videos tab isn’t anywhere as good as Google’s(even when it pulls from Google) but for what I need its great.
It will also strip links of tracking and stuff like that.
Same, I like duckduckgo the most currently. I used Bing for a while for the AI (I know, terrible for privacy) but the AI novelty wore off fast.
searxng as you can use all the search engines with it?
I use duck duck go.
It’s pretty good, but it’s obviously not as good as google. And I’ll frequently have to actually google something.
Things that are almost comically bad on DDG:
-maps/restaurants/businesses -news/current events
DDG is a good bing proxy, but I do prefer Google’s results so I use startpage which is to Google what duckduckgo is to bing. Neither have their own web crawler they both are simple proxies to another engine
I use DuckDuckGo for search. Has worked well for me.
Other than that, I’m mostly on Apple devices so I use their alternatives. Gmail is the one I haven’t been able to get away from. I use it in too many places now.
I’m slowly migrating over to protonmail, but changing email is a long process.
I have already migrated to proton mail and it’s great. The only thing I still use gmail for is to attend google meets and use google drives.
I want to do the same. I want to start becoming less and less dependent on these large corporations. I don’t use social media but i still need to use the cloud. I am still stuck with gmail.
This is a bit off-topic but I have been working on a peer-to-peer search engine to index the decentralized web (ipfs). It’s only a MVP as of today
It works, but the top 100 results were from Wikipedia
Thanks for trying out! Very few websites are indexed yet because due its decentralized architecture, people need to run nodes and add the websites they care about themselves. There is no crawler
Google search - Start page
Gmail - Proton Mail
Google Drive - MEGA
Youtube- Newpipe
YouTube music - Black hole or Musify
Pixel Phones - Pine64 (Linux phone)
Isn’t Newpipe just a frontend to YouTube? It’s better for privacy, sure, but it still technically supports YouTube.
You might prefer Peertube then
Would recommend self hosting the drive aspect, cheaper and you retain your own information all the while.
Pixel phones are fine with a custom OS. Linux phones are horrible both with user interface and battery life.
Instead of black hole (which has horrible catalog of music) or Musify, just selfhost Deemix+Navidrome.
Instead of startpage use something more reputable like qwant or duckduckgo.
Proton can be debatable because of it’s past, though they have since fixed it. Alternatives include : tutanota, mailbox.org, etc. Alot of good email alternatives exist.
can you expand a little on protons past? I haven’t heard about it. I’m trying to decide what email service to go with currently since I just bought a domain and I wanted to use it with my new non-googled email
Protonmail doesn’t have a past of bad behaviour per se - they do comply with legal subpoenas from the Swiss authorities (they are based there) but as emails are user-key encrypted and they don’t keep a copy of the user key, the most they can provide is IP addresses and dates.
There was some stuff that went down with regards to a French activist but nothing that puts Protonmail at fault (again, legally binding court order, they literally had no choice)
Dont know how to host. If someone can make a guide, I would love to host all my stuff. I am not sure about using Duckduckgo as anything US based is a big red flag. As a EU citizen, I would prefer search engine hosted in EU.
https://yunohost.org/ This is by far the easiest way to get into self-hosting I’ve seen. I have more specific needs so I don’t personally use it, but it’s really cool.
I made a comment a little bit ago relating to creating a NAS, but the steps are generally the same.
https://lemmy.ca/comment/1524030
If you have questions do let me know, open to answering!
For Search I use Duckduckgo (free).
For Mail, Calendar and Contacts I use Fastmail (free or paid, I use the paid version).
For file storage there’s plenty of alternatives (Dropbox etc.)
For browser I use Edge, but it is also built on Chromium. I will make my choice once the recent Web Environment Integrity topic has become more clear.
Why do you use Edge over Firefox?
You’re free to do whatever you want, but I think it’s important to be informed and reading your comment about Edge I thought I might clarify: The reason WEI is a problem is because of Chrom(e)(ium)'s sheer market share. If it’s easy for websites to assume a non-attested browser is a bot or a small minority of privacy-minded people they will simply not serve those.
Basically I’m saying by staying with your current browser you’re helping Google push this through.
But again, you’re free to do whatever you think is right for you.
Search - SearXNG - Has the option to self-host but is an aggregated search engine. Respects privacy, lots of configurable search engines.
https://github.com/searxng/searxng
Browser - Firefox - Really enjoying the mobile version with addon support.
Maps - OsmAnd~ - Honestly not as good as maps, but fits the bill.
For maps check out Organic Maps: https://organicmaps.app/
Also check out GMaps VW when OSM is not enough. You can use for Google maps without a Google account.
Do you have a link? I can’t seem to find “GMaps VW”.
Autocorrect lol its WV not VW https://f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.maps/
I just switched from Chrome to Brave, and then shortly after from Brave to Vivaldi. Search engine is now Startpage.com, which while slower than Google, it’s been bringing up decent results. Unfortunately I still use quite a few Google-centric apps, so hopefully I’m able to discover more options as time goes on.
How do you find startpage results to duckduckgo?
So I never really dabbled in DDG. I did for a little while, but just like Brave (Eich being a POS, anti-LGBTQ, questionable crypto BS, etc.), some dirt came up for DDG that steered me away. Although, now doing more digging, and even Startpage has its issues. I really don’t like this hopping round thing.
I personally think Brave Search doesn’t get enough love. It’s surprisingly great, search results are fast and always get me relevant sites, and the AI summarizer is really good.
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For Google Photos, Immich
Honestly I’ll move hard drives by carrier pigeon before I use drmweb.
If I could go a day without seeing this exact post over and over, I would be soooo happy.
Brave 😬
FWIW they at least have their own indexer instead of relying on bing/yandex (looking at you ddg). Although I guess selling content you’ve crawled as your own is still a pretty shady thing to do.
Why’s that?
