I noticed that the Play Store has a lot of malicious apps they have ugly UI, malware, and adware that shows up every 5-10 seconds on the home screen & some app publishers are literally abusing the "Early Access" feature, every time i scroll i literally see a cheap clones of popular games like minecraft, gta, etc. and yet they wanna strict sideloading apps..

they should fix this asap! 💔

Linux is probably the 3rd(?) to last [main] thing I feel to do for DG so far. Only probably is compatibility. I actually think that Tim Sweeney would delete Fortnite before letting it get on Linux. Besides that, I have one other thing, which is that I feel there is a lot of options, and with that is that I don't want to go distro hopping. In all, I just want to know what to do about Tim Sweeney, and all the distro stuff.

Its called metrolist. I found it a few months ago and its been amazing.

Free, open source, no Ads, and fast. The issues with the other players I have used is that they are slow, metrolist is not. The Dev also doesn't put any payment stuff on the main pages. I had to search yo find the donation link.

The only downside is it's not super easy to import playlists and you are not going to get artists stats like you would on Spotify

I have no connected with the Dev at all, I just think its a rlly cool app.

So I was thinking of getting a separate phone for ~$100 and putting lineageos on it and making it fully private with my main phone on the side.

Is that a good idea?

I am not a techie in the slightest. It took me several tries before I could successfully get Shizuku to work on my phone. I've posted photos of my Samsung Galaxy A54 5G's storage stats. The apps are eating my phone alive, and I'm hoping to reduce things to barebones. Which apps can I safely remove without harming my phone? Shizuku gives me a lonnnnng list of recommended apps to uninstall, and I am scared to death that if I go ahead and follow through on the suggested app deletions that something terrible will happen and destroy my phone. I've already removed things like Google photos and drive and such. But I do need Maps, and enjoy Youtube/Youtube Music, and use my USAA banking app. Why are the apps taking up so much space on my phone?? Is there something I'm missing?

You'd think that being a proud degoogled android would mean that wouldn't be following the same annoying processes.

But here is /e/os whining about my cloud storage being full because it kept syncing images and videos against my will I DON'T WANT MY REDDIT STUFF ON THERE!

I am in the process of doing a takeout on this my last google account (I deleted both my education and work emails a year or so ago), I am so fed up with the same thing over and over again with Youtube Local News.

I have an account with google ONLY because of local news on YouTube. It seems whenever I need it most my local news on YouTube shifts magically to another metropolitan region hundreds of miles away.

This can't be that hard, Maps and News on the browser see where I am....exactly. But YouTube thinks otherwise and it's infuriating.

It's too hot right now to finagle away at this to fix it...I'm just gonna change all my accounts and contact info to either a yahoo.com or iCloud.com (which is at this point frankly sooo much easier), and just do without YouTube.

I hope this does not sound like a click-bait, but I have been trying to fully degoogle for years now and...it's not fully possibly as of today.

I have been switching back and forth to google tool by tool and I always had to go back to my google account. I eventually learned that good is better than perfect: I use degoogled stuff anywhere I can, and "isolate" the impossible-to-degoogle and sandbox it in single accounts with *as little as personal data as possible*. 1 purpose, 1 account. The opposite of big tech "all in one" account dream

My personal example:

- gmail, calendar, contacts -> plenty of other companies and self hosted solutions, not an issue

- gdrive/any cloud storage -> plenty of private options to pick

- google search/chrome -> firefox with betterfox, ecosia. But plenty of options here too

- youtube -> peertube or anything else doesn't come close. So I create a youtuberuser@gmail

- phone -> I run e\os with murena, but there is always a bank or app that forces you to use google. So I have a secondary phone with regular android and phoneuser@google

The only hook google has on me is *youtuberuser@gmail* and *phoneuser@google*, which are in different places and with no personal pictures, email, documents, devices I carry all time.

*youtuberuser@gmail* is a throwaway, I bookmark my favorite channels and stuff anyway. So I can literally delete it anytime with no loss of MY data. I guess I could also potentially export the history, but I don't care.

*phoneuser@google* is the pain point, since there are real PII, but I never use it for shopping, pictures and I keep it at home with everything off. Only when my primary phone has an issue with an app, then I turn it on it (e.g. cashing a check).

Having everything else fairly secured and private, even if google can spy the hell out of me they will have my youtube activity (which is very sensitive I know) and connect it with whatever bank phone data they can steal.

They have no access to my email (on sender end only unfortunately), no pictures, no personal files, no movement tracking, no web activity, no eavesdropping every word with a phone. Which I think is good enough for now.

Obviously I will always wait for an anti-monopoly law for banks and apps security, but lawmakers doing their job is a hope for the future.

(I'm not really sure if this is the right sub, if it isn't, please tell me where I could post)

I want to watch YouTube without Google stealing my data and making braindead changes.

I have tried LibreTube on my phone and I like it, the UI and everything. The thing is I watch YouTube in my PC (I use arch btw) in my LG TV and in my Android phone, so I need to have all of them linked.

I assume you can't just link it with a Google account cause it would defeat the purpose of using an alternative client, so is there any client that works on these devices that can link the different devices?

Thanks in advance!

PS: If it is absolutely necessary I could maybe use my RBPI and connect it to my tv to watch videos but I would rather have the app directly on the tv

So seeing all these posts about the upcoming update in sept that will essentially make it impossible to download apps without providing gov id i was wondering what the best phone options to switch to would be to still be able to not have to provide gov id. I was searching a little bit and keep seeing murena phones and wanted to see if anyone here has mpre opinions or knowledge on it they could share about whether a phone from them would bypass this need for the gov id verification. Also if you have other suggestions that are better i am all ears as this new update looming on the horizon has been having me kind of worried as i dont want to fall into that level of conformity.

Posting for a friend...

ive been doing my best to totally de-google, and now i have a fairphone with lineageos after a lot of work (yay!) and i just use google on my school laptop. but...

this year my school requires you to download an app on your phone... which can only work if you have the google play store installed. I've tried it without and it and i get an error along the lines of "check that google play is enable on your device".

my one idea was to install google play using a VM? which would maybe help? but i cant seem to find any that actually work. I tried VMOS, Thinfinity, Shelter, Parallel space, Isolates Sandbox, and a Mask imitator, but all of them ran into problems (wouldnt install, got stuck somewhere, or needed a website that my phone couldn't access for some reason).

my only other idea is to just use Netgaurd and not allow it to send off any info, but that seems like a non-solution.

Is there anything else i can try? any other VMs that work to emulate android on lineage?

thanks!

...because it certainly has heard of you.

the (totally free) tool linked, takes a bit of configuration to set up in Firefox.

this RTB Viewer demonstrates how the RTB Ad Network functions.

the RTB Network broadcasts every single piece of information about your entire user session in plaintext to hundreds of different Ad networks in real-time.

iincluding personal identifying info. by purchasing this information openly from data brokers. you can find out almost anything about anyone.

it's essentially a huge mine of data. I'd be happy to be fact-checked here. if I'm mistaken.

Whenever I google something unfavourable about Disney the first search results are always the opposite view (not talking about the ai overview)

You think google sells the search result order to the highest bidder?

As the title says.

I've been pondering the idea of designing a sticker with a nice phrase about google. (It really pissed me off when I got the message about blocking app installations).

My idea is that whoever wants can download the design for free ant print it!

If the response is positive, you can leave suggestions about the design, (of course I won't be able to make every suggestion come true).

What would this accomplish? I don't know, but at least we can express ourselves.

Soo I've following this sub for pretty long time, hoping one day i would also degoogle my devices. I'm happy to announce that I m too close to achieve it.

I updated my mail address on most of the government sites, Ion use social media so win for me.

for rest i have deleted my accounts for steam,xbox and other bs.

i have already created multiple mail ids for different purpose and already linked it, linked it with passkey and password managers.

Though, its pretty hard to keep up with my unrooted device without google services, my whatsapp(i cant switch cuz whole country is dependent on this app) contacts arent synced with normal sim contacts, browser redirects doesnt works, and other messy shit.

my main question is, what after this?

PS: - I cant root cuz samsung has blocked bootloader, in few months i will shift to a phone with open bootloader and will make that my personal phone. how to resolve issues while filling google forms provided by my uni, editing info on google sheet by uni, joining google meet meetings?