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 Libra Office, Only Office. After all we are replacing Google, so we need integrated collab (without an RDP hack).
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.
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
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.
What about Collabora Office?
Nextcloud has a notes feature now that is pretty much comparable to keep. Has its own app too
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.
I like duckduckgo. Kagi exists, if you’re willing to pay for it.
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.
I’ve been using ecosia for the past week and so far it’s great, no complaints
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.
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
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.
