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
App Management: Work outside of the play store where possible. Use F-Droid, either the official client or a third party one like Droidify. If something is not available there but has its own repo, go for Obtainium. If all else fails fall back to play store or aurora store. Aurora store is more anonymous but sacrifices signature checking so it’s technically less secure than play store, be aware.
Core Apps: check out the Fossify apps on f droid (might also be on Google play store idk). They have really solid apps for your calendar, file manager, dialer, sms, gallery, music player, clock, etc which also look nice, I think. I also love DavX5 for my contact and calendar sync but that might not apply to your workflow.
Keyboard: Try Futo, it’s source available and feature rich with respect for your privacy. For fully open source, I recommend HeliBoard. You could also try FlorisBoard but I don’t have experience with it.
Navigation: Either OsmAnd+ or Organic Maps are great, both are open source.
VPN: Mullvad is the only well vetted option IMO. Others trust proton for this but Mullvad has an unbeatable track record.
E-mail: Proton is good and yes you can forward all your Gmail messages to a proton account, they have a whole guide for it. Tuta is another good provider. For accessing other email accounts I like K9 Mail and FairEmail.
Weather: I like Breezy weather from f droid.
Others: Using a FOSS launcher like LawnChair, Fossify Launcher, or Kvaesitso gives you an open source base to build on and removes another route for tracking and analytics. You can get fully FOSS browsers on F Droid, but if you’re looking for Firefox it’s not there; look for Fennec instead, it’s the FOSS build. Apps that don’t use Google play services might not have full push notification support, but a growing open source standard is UnifiedPush; look into their compatible apps and download ntfy to use them if you’re interested. Look into alternate front ends for media consumption types of services, e.g. using NewPipe or GrayJay for YouTube to avoid signing in or breaking anonymity.
Proton is cia
Hell yeah this is super detailed thank you!
how does one get a OnePlus in the mail?
I just ordered it directly from their website. I’m in the US, so not sure if they sell directly to many other countries
i could have sworn I tried to do that before but thanks for the info!
I would bet they were sold out at the time. I think BestBuy is selling them as well
Thank you for recommending Kvaesitso! I’d somehow not come across it yet. I’ve been using KISS and Kvaesitso is very similar, but more polished. ❤️
Unless you want to go as far as installing a custom ROM, which may not even possible because the phone is so new, the best thing to do is don’t sign into a Google account. Sideload the Aurora Store, an F-Droid frontend like Droid-ify, and Obtanium.
The first one lets you sign in anonymously to a random proxy account to download Google play apps without needing to sign into a personal Google account. You can also sign in if you really need to for things like apps you’ve paid for and it still fuzzes some of the analytics Google collects on you, but eliminates a lot of the benefit.
The 2nd one is going to be your primary place to find open source apps or open source versions of apps that have both a Google play and an F-Droid version. For example, the media streaming app Jellyfin has both, but only the Google Play version has the ability to Cast to Chromecast devices because it requires proprietary Google code.
The last one, Obtanium, lets you download apps directly from Github/lab/codeburg/etc repositories from developers that host their apks there directly instead of relying on the stores. This bypasses some security checks that stores like F-Droid use, so it’s a little more on you to trust apps this way, but you usually get updates faster. For example, I have things like Thunder (a Lemmy client) and IronFox Browser installed through Obtanium.
To answer some of your specific questions, a lot of the pre-installed apps aren’t going to let you remove them entirely. You can disable and remove their saved data though, which is still good to do so they at least don’t suck battery. And if you ever need the app, you can re-enable it. Actually removing them requires plugging your phone into your computer and using command line android tools to remove them manually.
You should easily be able to set up mail forwarding from a Gmail account to Proton or elsewhere, but know that this eliminates some benefit, as it means that Google is still getting a copy of the email before it gets forwarded to Proton and that means they can read and obtain whatever information they want from it if they ever felt the need.
I was curious about the ROM thing, what exactly would that do anyway?
I’ve never heard of the aurora store so that’s cool I’ll definitely check that out. I think I tried to use obtanium but had no idea what I was doing lol.
You mention deleting those stock apps manually, I imagine that could be something that someone (me) could screw up pretty easily if they don’t know what they are doing? It sounds tempting for some apps that I know I’d never touch in my life but also do not want to explode my phone.
Thank you for the info this was helpful
A ROM is the operating system on the phone. So you replace all the existing software from scratch.
In a prior comment I just suggested you installed CalyxOS which is a custom ROM. It is very easy and indented for use by non-nerds to provide them with the most private, secure phone which works as expected. You must still be brave to do things you aren’t used to perhaps. But it should proceed easily (as long as you get the right phone). Here is the instructions for installing on Pixel 7 from Windows computer as an example https://calyxos.org/install/devices/panther/windows. I was shocked the first time I did it that it worked properly on the first go. I had set the whole day aside assuming I would fuck it up again and again but it was done in like 20 minutes.
When you restart after install, it has everything you need set up: browser, email, chat, app stores, bluetooth works, etc. Just like a regular new phone except it has had as much as possible of the spy tech removed. And unlike some other ROMs it also keeps the device physically secure in case it gets stolen or something.
Oooo thanks for explaining. I read your other comment and fuck, I’m just gonna keep the oneplus lol. I have shit opsec and just want to improve a bit. That does sound tempting though, I’m not a luddite and can figure technological stuff pretty easily so.l that’s encouraging that it’s that quick to install
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
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?
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
I don’t know exactly what comes on the OnePlus to say what you should delete, so it’s probably a good idea to search that up.
As an alternative to the Play Store you have F-Droid (not really an alternative, more like a complementary open source store). I personally recommend the Neo Store client. which is pretty, easy to use and have a lot of repositories for apps built-in, you just need to activate the ones you want in the settings, with F-Droid and IzzyOnDroid repos active you’re basically covered. I also recommend you use Obtainium as it let’s you download apps directly from GitHub and other sources, including F-Droid itself. I consider it a must because one downside of F-Droid is that sometimes apps are not updated for a long time there, so you have a way to update an app if you need too, and it is also useful for apps that are not on F-Droid.
Now for other apps, I do have some alternatives I can recommend:
- Authenticator (2FA) > Aegis Authenticator
- Calculator > OpenCalc
- Clock/Alarm > Chrono
- Document Scanner > OSS Document Scanner
- Files > Material Files
- Gallery > Aves (IzzyOnDroid, Play Store)
- Keyboard > Heliboard (it’s ok, but could be better) or Florisboard/Florisboard Beta (usable but incomplete, it’s very promising)
- Launcher > Lawnchair (like Pixel Launcher and Nova Launcher) or Kvaesitso (its own thing, very search focused)
- Maps > Organic Maps (Open Source) and/or Magic Earth (THIS IS CLOSED SOURCE, I’m only recommending it in case you need traffic data in your map app since it’s the one I see talked about the most as an alternative to Google Maps and Waze)
- Password Manager - Bitwarden or KeePassDX (I personally use Bitwarden)
- Reddit 🤢 > Stealth (Have no login, it’s useful to keep track of the few stuff you might still want from there)
- Spotify > Spotube (Let’s you use your Spotify account to login and import playlists, but uses Youtube as a backend for the music, the only downside being that sometimes it doesn’t find the song if it has extremely low views, but you can usually correct that with a click on the change source button) - I linked the F-Droid version, but I recommend to set it up from Obtainium with GitHub as a source in case youtube fucks something up and it gets updated, which at best will take days to reach F-Droid.
- Weather > Breezy Weather
Also here’s some useful apps I have been using that maybe you’ll find useful:
- AniHyou - AniList client
- Birday - Birthday Manager
- Feeder - RSS client
- Goodtime - Pomodoro timer
- Hypatia - Real time malware scanner (might not be needed, but I rather be safe)
- KDE Connect - Connects your phone and PC, allowing to control music, share clipboard, share files and more on LAN
- MedTimer - Medicine reminder
- Openlib - Download eBooks from Anna’s Archive
- Book’s Story - eBook reader
- Openreads - Offline book tracker, also let’s you review the books you read
- Racoon for Lemmy - Lemmy client, I used to use Eternity, but it had too many issues, this one has issues too, but it’s actively developed. I also recommend this one to be installed with Obtainium instead of F-Droid.
- Scrambled Exif - Remove metadata from photos before sharing
- Seal - Video downloader
Lastly, apps I installed but didn’t start using yet that might be useful too:
- Buckwheat - Budget manager
- Grit - ToDo list and Habit Tracker
- Moshidon - Mastodon client, I haven’t used it because I haven’t created a Mastodon account yet lol, but looks to be the best one I could find when I was searching a few days ago
- Noto - Note taking app
- trale - Body-weight tracking
- Wuxia Learn - Chinese learning app
ImagePipe is another useful tool for exif stripping and image resizing etc. Pretty powerful bit of software. Should be on fdroid as well.
Cool, I’ll take a look, I need a software to edit images so I can stop relying on Google Photos
Yes this is a great list thank you! I love that you added a Metadata scrubber thingie too, I’ve been thinking about being more consistent in doing that.
I just created a new mastodon account on matapocos.dog and it seems that none of the apps will pull up that instance, have.you ever had that problem with particular instances?
Edit: Oops I glazed over the fact that you haven’t used mastodon yet, but if anyone has had.this issue pls chime in
Does Floris beta have swipe functionality? Its my only disappointment with Floris on my latest round of setting up a device.
Edit: disappoint only because it did have it at one point. I know they’re reimplementing.
The current beta doesn’t have it. I think it had swipe for English only at some point, but I’m not sure.
Send it back right away, or resell it. Then buy one of the phones listed on this page https://calyxos.org/. It must be FACTORY (aka bootloader) unlocked (not just vendor or SIM unlocked) and install CalyxOS. It installs like a dream with no bullshit and you get a functional, as private as possible phone.
You can spend hundreds of hours futzing around with sideloading and everything and get a mess of a device that is only marginally better than the default. Or 1 hour and get it done right from the beginning.
If you’re already buying a specific phone for it, might as well go for a used Pixel and install GrapheneOS
disable the “Google” app you dont need root
https://www.xda-developers.com/disable-system-app-bloatware-android/
for keyboard you can use whichever you like and disable internet access in the settings for the said app, i would suggest doing the same for all apps which dont need internet access
I mean basically add as little as possible. Adding Google Play services is something you should avoid if you’re serious about privacy. There is an alternative backend called MicroG.
But I wonder if you have any favorite Google alternative apps that you would use instead? Like for maps, weather, etc
Organic maps, yr.no . Scroll f-droid add some repos . Yr.no has an app, however you can just go to the website and add it as a browser app ( called add to home screen in my browser menu) no need for apps. This is the first thing i check for any service i need. Do the same for my cell provider, insurance company and so on
Xda forum and get a rom, find linage os for microG and follow instructions there. 99% Of googles stuff works. Oneplus at least used to be easy to work with. Regular linage wont work with microG. You will need twrp installed as well im order to flash your rom. Then you also can play around with magisk for root and modules later on.
Get a vpn, recomending mullvad.
You wont get the best GOS or the 2nd best calyx on your device, but something to look for on the next phone. Calyx might add support for oneplus as well if you are lucky
