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R. L. Dane :debian: :openbsd:

As of a few days ago, I've been on de-googled for two years.

It's been pretty good!

@RL_Dane That's cool. If you have used it to two years, I assume it works reasonably well. What do you miss from Google Android?

@railmeat

Honestly, it's working so well now that the only thing I miss is in-app purchases. I could get those back with a different alternate Android OS (), but fits my use case better, and I don't *need* in-app purchases right now.

Otherwise, I've got things humming along pretty well.

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@railmeat

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Oh, and the stock AOSP camera app (and therefore the camera that all other apps use internally) is pretty bleh, so I usually end up taking photos with the Google Camera app (no network access allowed), and sharing with apps instead.

There isn't a *wonderful* FOSS calendar app, but Etar and Simple Calendar Pro are decent.

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@railmeat

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Oh, and there's no good way to access google drive without giving google lots of info about you, so I have to use the FOSS app RCX which is very slow, using the public Google Drive API.

(It's best to avoid all google apps, unless you use them with network permissions disabled. They tend to talk to each other, methink)

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@railmeat

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Keyboard options aren't great. I used to use gboard without network access, but gboard won't use actual google dictation services, but only uses online dictation. I installed the google dictation services, let it go online long enough just to download the English offline dictation module/dictionary, and then revoked network access....

@railmeat
...So right now I'm using OpenBoard which is decent and lets me switch to dictation with the press of the microphone button, but it doesn't have glide typing or a T9 number pad mode.

If you take the wrong attitude, de-googled is either death-by-papercuts or nearly as bad as regular android (if you just go ahead and install all the google apps anyway).

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@railmeat
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But if you're willing to have a *little* bit of inconvenience, it's pretty awesome.
Also, I use an app called "Gmaps WV" to be able to use google maps (mobile web) without giving Google much info about me.