what are the best Google alternative apps ?

  • techgearwhips@lemmy.worldEnglish
    61·
    11 months ago

    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.

      • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
        81·
        11 months ago

        Not Libra Office, Only Office. After all we are replacing Google, so we need integrated collab (without an RDP hack).

          • kenbw2@lemmy.worldEnglish
            62·
            11 months ago

            Is everyone in Russia responsible for the actions of their government?

            • danielo515@lemmy.worldEnglish
              7·
              11 months ago

              No, but totalitarian governments tend to get into everything, and a popular piece of software is something they will be interested in.

                • sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  6·
                  11 months ago

                  … 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

            • Luckyfriend222@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              11 months ago

              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.

            • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.caEnglish
              61·
              11 months ago

              Run and owned by Russians, hq in Latvia. Just like so many companies have hq in Ireland.

      • techgearwhips@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        11 months ago

        Actually I use only office (not open office) with collabora apps on my android and iphone. I always get the two names mixed up.

      • techgearwhips@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        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.

      • techgearwhips@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        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

        • enbee@compuverse.ukEnglish
          2·
          11 months ago

          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.

      • techgearwhips@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        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

    • chandz05@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      Nextcloud has a notes feature now that is pretty much comparable to keep. Has its own app too

      • cyberpunk007@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        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.

      • techgearwhips@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        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.

        1. 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.

        2. 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.

    • ScaredDuck@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      task.org seems to be an oldschool under-construction page, do you mean tasks.org? Also is there a reason you specifically recommend OpenOffice instead of LibreOffice or Collabora Office?

      • techgearwhips@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        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.

    • Hal-5700X@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      11 months ago

      Duck Duck Go censors searches.

      EDIT You can manually backup your bookmarks.

      • WhiteRice@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        11 months ago

        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?

        • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafeEnglish
          6·
          11 months ago

          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.

      • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafeEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        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.

      • El Barto@lzrprt.sbsEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        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.

  • nbafantest@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    11 months ago

    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

    • sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      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

  • Veedem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    132·
    11 months ago

    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.

      • spiderman@ani.socialEnglish
        3·
        11 months ago

        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.

    • Caminsky@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      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.

  • YⓄ乙 @aussie.zoneEnglish
    8·
    11 months ago

    Google search - Start page

    Gmail - Proton Mail

    Google Drive - MEGA

    Youtube- Newpipe

    YouTube music - Black hole or Musify

    Pixel Phones - Pine64 (Linux phone)

    • pjhenry1216@kbin.social
      51·
      11 months ago

      Isn’t Newpipe just a frontend to YouTube? It’s better for privacy, sure, but it still technically supports YouTube.

    • kostel_thecreed@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • Caboose12000@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        11 months ago

        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

        • 520@kbin.social
          7·
          11 months ago

          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)

      • YⓄ乙 @aussie.zoneEnglish
        3·
        11 months ago

        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.

      • Mubelotix@jlai.luEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        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

  • Myrbolg@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • nehal3m@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      6·
      11 months ago

      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.

  • pacoboyd@lemm.eeEnglish
    6·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • linkinkampf19@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    10 months ago

    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.

      • linkinkampf19@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        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.

  • PaperTowel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    52·
    11 months ago

    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.