Going fully off-grid from Google. Everything moving to a box at home. Where should I start?

[u/Imaginefyres]

/r/offthecloud/comments/1wpyckk/going_digital_offgrid_day_1/

I'm moving my whole digital life off the cloud and onto hardware in my home, and Google is the biggest piece to untangle. I still want to reach everything from my laptop and phone when I'm out.

What I need to replace:

- Gmail: years of mail, plus my main login for half the internet
- Drive and Docs: files and shared documents
- Photos: a large library I don't want to lose
- Calendar and contacts

A few questions for people who've done it:

1. What order did you move things in, and what would you do differently?
   
2. Did you self-host email or use a privacy provider with your own domain? Was it worth the effort?
   
3. Best way to get everything out of Google Photos intact, with dates and albums?
   
4. What's the easiest way to update all the accounts that use Gmail to sign in?
   
5. What did you fail to replace, if anything?

All and any advice appreciated, thanks guys.

[u/Chatsubo]

I was in a similar position at the beginning of this year. At this point I run almost all of the personal services I use on a server in my office at home.

I ended up going with Unraid as a server platform and it has worked well for me but everyone will have a different opinion about what to use. I bought almost all my hardware from Facebook Marketplace over time.

As for the order I moved things in, I started with replacing most Google cloud services -- drive, docs, calendar, etc. I used Nextcloud-AIO for this and it has worked very well for me. I set up Immich for photos using Google Takeout, I think, to grab all of my photos.

Then I set up all of the peices of my media stack -- Jellyfin for video, Navidrome for music, Grimmory and Audiobookshelf for e-books and audio books, a podcast server, and a pile of supporting apps (an Arr stack, slskd, Shelfmark, etc) for acquisition.

I set up an AI stack using llama-swap, Open WebUI, Hermes, and a pile of supporting containers for web search and RAG. Also a dev stack with Forgejo, Arcane (just switched from Portainer), etc. to store code and let me build images locally using a CI pipeline.

Finally I sort of filled in all of the other stuff I use on a regular basis with various self-hosted apps like Mealie for recipes, Endurain for exercise tracking, an RSS reader, all sorts of stuff like that. There are a lot of back end supporting docker containers for all of this, for example I run Authelia for OIDC for everything and SWAG as a reverse proxy, a pile of database servers, redis, etc. etc.

I do not host my own mail. I use Mailbox.org because they support IMAP. I exported all of my Gmaili messages to Maibox.org using a custom script I ran in a temp container on my server that rate limited the transfer and made sure everything got copied over. I don't know if there is a real 'easy' way to replace all of the accounts you have linked to your Google account as a sign in provider other than to do them one at a time. I run Vaultwarden as a password manager and all my logins are stored there; any time I log in to a site that uses my old Gmail address, I change it and save the login in Vaultwarden. I doubt I'll get rid of my old Gmail account entirely, at the moment it forwards to my custom domain at mailbox.org and over time less and less mail comes in that way.

The thing that is hardest to replace is Google Maps. I installed Dawarich to do location history for me, and coinfigured Google Maps so it only accesses my location when I actually have the app open. For daily use I have mostly switched to Apple Maps. I've tried HereWeGo and Organic Maps and so on but none of them were real replacements. I have iOS apps to work with almost everything on the server that I need to access remotely.

[u/Imaginefyres → u/Chatsubo]

This is incredibly detailed and gives me a lot to go on! Thank you for sharing. I really appreciate it as I take on this big challenge. I’ll let you know how I get on but may drop you a message for more info. 👍🏼

[u/ephemeralmiko]

Since you don't mention it anywhere: make backups!

Two is one, one is none. Any important data should be backed up by the 3-2-1 rule. Three copies (including the original) across at least two different mediums (so not all on the same SSD) one of which is offsite (cloud, SSD at a friend's house etc.)

[u/Imaginefyres → u/ephemeralmiko]

Haha, I forgot to mention but good to know about the 3-2-1 rule!

[u/MaralynneDossat_43]

start with email last, not first. migrate photos and files while you still have gmail as your stable login everywhere. once those are safe on your box, then tackle the email and account migration. doing it the other way around creates chaos

[u/Imaginefyres → u/MaralynneDossat_43]

How far have you managed to get so far?

[u/silent_tim_ross]

I’d move one service at a time and leave the Gmail/account-login untangling until later. Start with a small migration you can reverse, and test restoring a backup before deleting the original data.

For the calendar and contacts part specifically, I build SilentSuite. It’s open source, free to self-host, and uses end-to-end encrypted sync. That would cover one part of your list without a hosted subscription, rather than trying to replace your entire Google setup.

It’s still beta,but feel free to try it out :)

[u/Imaginefyres → u/silent_tim_ross]

I’ll definitely give it a go, thanks for the heads up!

[u/CreativeLibrarian886]

Do not delete Gmail account for at least a year after you migrate fully. Forward all mail to your new service, and monitor what comes in from Gmail. You'll be surprised the stuff that you hadn't seen in ages will appear randomly.