I am not a nerd(respectful), but I would like to know how you’d set up your phone. I’d like to start leaning into more opensource/privacy minded apps and such to avoid having as much of my data harvested. I’m still going to use apps like Instagram which are obviously horrible but I figure trying to do better in other areas is better than nothing.

  • what to delete
  • what apps are a must (calendar, maps, app store etc)
  • vpns?
  • keyboards?
  • email besides proton? Is there a way to have my emails from Google forward to this address?
  • everything needs to connect to Google accounts is there a way around this?

And yes any other advice on making your phone functional/fast/anonymous/aesthetically pleasing is welcomed thankkkkks

  • buh [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    you can use an android without a google account, there are alternate app stores like f-droid (default repo only has open source apps) and aurora store (gives you access to google play apps without an account, can be downloaded from f-droid)

    I don’t use android much so I don’t know of many apps, but aside from the two above, two others I always install are firefox, which allows you to use ublock origin, and newpipe, an open source youtube frontend that gives you most of the youtube premium features for free

    • ratboy [they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      9 days ago

      Sweet I think it was suggested I use Firefox with ublock the other day and i will definitely check out newpipe. Do you have any particular email service you like?

      • buh [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        9 days ago

        I use protonmail but tbh I’m not as confident in it as their CEO recently seems to be a trump supporter. at this point I’d simply avoid using email to transmit sensitive information regardless of the provider