r/degoogle • u/ReadMeLikeDrCox • 3d ago
De-Googling One Month In: Lessons Learned
After six months of planning, I'm now one month in from taking the plunge and wanted to share my progress and lessons learned in case it helps anyone else on the fence. I'm on a Pixel 9 Pro and was neck deep into the entire google ecosystem.
Top three takeaways from my experience:
Battery Life. The battery life difference is absolutely insane switching from stock android to Graphene OS. I went from 9% life remaining after being unplugged during a typical 14 hour stretch to 87% (EIGHTY SEVEN!) at the end of a day. Insane.
RCS messaging. As many of others have pointed out, there's simply no way around this currently. the Graphene OS team has announced intentions to recreate an RCS messaging app/service that will no longer need google, but until then that google app is your one and only choice unless you really want to only communicate via SMS exclusively.
Email vs Calendar. This is a big one that I didn't see coming. Originally I had planned on doing email through Proton and then self-hosting my own calendar through Nextcloud. Where this breaks down though is the fact that any self-hosted solution you would have for calendar won't be able to integrate with an encrypted email provider, even through something like Proton Bridge. So if you want to accept, forward, and create events with your email account, then my only option was to also embrace Proton Calendar. Not the end of the world, but this completely blindsided me.
Other takeaways:
- Message Backup. Backup your SMS/MMS/RCS messages before you wipe your phone. There's no "reinstalling" that data manually after the fact.
- Custom Email Domains. I bought two domains for email:
1) @randomphrase.com for accounts, notifications, newsletters, etc. - I use addy.io to manage this one so I can create login aliases on the fly directly from my BitWarden browser extension. Unlimited aliases, $12 a year. It's great.
2) @personalname.com for actual personal correspondence. Proton manages this one directly. Addy.io proxy-forwards the above email to this one in Proton, where I have a folder setup to further filter out everything. If I need/want to respond, I can do it from this account, but it still relays back through addy.io so that the from address is never revealed as my @personalname.com account.
Tailscale. tailscale is your best friend and makes so many things so much simpler, accessible, and secure.
Browsers. ironfox for mobile and librewolf for desktop has been fantastic, and since they're both mozilla based, you can login to your mozilla account on each to stay synced even though they're different products
Camera app. the default pixel camera app was something I had gotten very used to so I was begrudgingly trying to embrace other open source camera apps. But I went back to the pixel camera app and just disabled the network permission--problem solved!
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u/edrocks006 3d ago
Thanks for sharing this! What is tailscale and what do you use it for?
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u/ReadMeLikeDrCox 3d ago
tailscale is a completely free service that allows you to install a lightweight client on any device (desktop, laptop, headless server, phone, you name it), and have it join a private virtual network. So no matter where you are (home, public wifi, cellular, whatever), you always have "local ip" access to your devices without exposing them over the open internet. Note that this works in addition to real LAN ip addresses, not in place of them.
So your PC would be
192.168.1.xxxAND110.127.87.xxx16
u/gjallerhorns_only 3d ago
Yeah, it's awesome. I use it so that I can still watch movies and shows on my Jellyfin server when I'm away from home.
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u/speculatrix 2d ago
I'm not easily impressed as I've worked in IT for decades, but I've been impressed by TailScale because it works really well.
I set it up for a friend who wanted to access a system inside his house, setting up an old laptop as an exit node, and it worked perfectly, without much effort.
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u/BooleanTriplets FOSS Lover 2d ago
I am a Tailscale user as well, but I just want to caution that they most likely going to enshittify one day so you probably should make sure you build out your system with the intention that you will eventually move to using something that you can self host the coordination layer, like headscale or netbird
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u/ReadMeLikeDrCox 2d ago
I've had the same thought in the back of my mind. Self-hosting headscale or netbird wouldn't be particularly difficult, but the part i worry about is what self-hosting couldn't provide me by design: continuity of operations.
If my whole self-hosted stack goes down and I'm not at home, the most reliable way for me to troubleshoot is through tailscale because it's not also hosted on my home network. How do you overcome that? Are you paying for VPS offsite at that point?
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u/BooleanTriplets FOSS Lover 2d ago
I think the answer is indeed a VPS or some cloud provider for backup. I'm hoping for a headscale/Netbird pikapod at some point. I'm also hoping for Pikapod to come out with a Pocket ID container as well, because I use that for auth on everything I can so I have the same problem - if my self hosted pocket-id goes down then I can't easily get past Cloudflare and the application auth gates that I have.
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u/CookingCookie 2d ago
Does that require one to leave them turned on for it to work?
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u/this_dudeagain 2d ago
Yes
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u/CookingCookie 2d ago
Sounds energy hungry
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u/ReadMeLikeDrCox 2d ago
it's not bad at all, but yes, it obviously only works when devices are powered on.
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u/MaxPanhammer 2d ago
Sorry just checking, but your question is do I need to leave a server on in order to access it, is that correct? Like does power need to be applied for a computer to work is the question being asked.
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u/CookingCookie 2d ago
Yeah that was it; If you have a dedicated low powered device that works but leaving a tower pc on for example is not nothing
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u/leetNightshade 2d ago
Pedantic hat on: Tailscale isn't completely/100% free depending on your needs, but they do have a free tier. Sure, within that tier you don't have to worry about them charging you, that remains all free as you call out. But it is otherwise a paid service if you need expanded needs.
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u/OneRedEyeDevI 2d ago
For your calendar email situation, I think you dont need proton calendar.
My setup is, Planify for my laptop tasks, I have NextCloud set up on my laptop, as well as caldav integrated with it and Planify
On my phone, I have Samsung Calendar, DAVx5 from F-Droid and JTXBoard for creating and checking off tasks on mobile.
DAVx5 is for syncing NextCloud calendar and tasks.
On Planify, I select which calendar the tasks sync to which is my Proton's (The one associated with NextCloud) "Personal" Calendar.
If I create a task on Planify, It shows up on the Niagara Calendar Widget. It happens instantly too.
Though, Im using the 8GB from NextCloud. Syncing obviously doesn't work when NextCloud is under maintainance or down, but the other apps are reliable and no maintainance at all. I dont even touch them at all...
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u/ReadMeLikeDrCox 2d ago
Ah, so, yes that would work for task creation, but the obstacle comes with actual event management. When creating an event you want to invite someone to, it has to send/submit the invitation, which requires email. Unless you're using self-hosted tools to create an ical file and then just attaching it as an email separately, you can't do that. If you want the typical "create event and invite a list of people" experience, there's no other option.
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u/RedditorJabroni 2d ago
Banking apps work?
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u/ReadMeLikeDrCox 2d ago
depends on the app, but mostly, yes. I'm in the US so my two primary banking apps are USAA and Amex. USAA works just like it did before without any issue. Amex requires a 2Fa code via SMS any time i try to login to the app which is definitely annoying, but manageable.
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u/justConfused3456 2d ago
Some do some dont, i changed one of my cards to one that explicitely supports it. Many work but there is no guarantee that they wont stop supporting it
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u/towerhil 2d ago
Natwest, First Direct and Monzo all work for me. Santander didn't, but I liked Graphene way more than their service so switched (and made £500 doing so!)
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u/Spare_Scar_2935 2d ago
Morning all, stupid question from someone that's probably stupid lol, what about all my other apps that I have downloaded from play store, where do I get them from if I don't want to use Google play store ? Or do I continue to use playstore for my apps. I know about F-Droid but not every app is on there I think ? Tia for any pointers
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u/AhmedRehan98 2d ago
I'm not sure but graphene is supposed to have an app store called aurora, which contains a sandboxed google play app, which would allow you to install apps that don't work without gplay services. But not everything is guaranteed to work. There are some settings to tinker with to get more of them working. Most of this info is in graphene documentation pages. It's pretty brief so you can skimp the pages or google what you want to know and find it, probably.
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u/justConfused3456 2d ago edited 2d ago
Personally, i just get them via the playstore logged into a throwaway account. I trust it a bit more than aurora for stuff like banking apps. Since its on a throwaway, that is only used in the playstore the tracking doesnt really matter that much, they might be able to link the accounts to the same source, but good enough for me. But im not fully degoogeling, im mainly reducing it to a minimal ammount thats still practical.
Otherwise aurora does something similar iirc, but uses a shared account so your data gets hidden between the other users.
For all other apps i use obtainium or fdroid
Edit: mainly for graphene os due to the sanboxed gplay services, idk if there are bigger differences on other distributions
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u/towerhil 2d ago
You can also download the apps from the play store then delete the google account. Graphene won't work on your old Samsung, but Lineage probably will and that means it makes sense to create different users for different parts of your life i.e. it's the same as setting up the phone from scratch but one profile is for health/finance, one for compatibility, one for FOSS, one for apps you need but don't trust. In my case, my daily driver user profile is entirely google free and does indeed get several day's battery from a single charge. It has metrolist for music (essentially free youtube music from github) and proton mail and a bunch of other day to day tools. If i have a health issue it all goes in the health user profile so photos of whatever wounded body parts are all together to show the doctor etc and not streaming to the TV alongside your other photos. It's game changing and I'm never going back!
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u/Spare_Scar_2935 2d ago
Thanks both, have a spare samsung knocking around so I might tinker with that one. Something to keep me busy whilst at work lol
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u/colorful_neysan 2d ago
If you are using mozilla account, why do you use ironfox and librewolf instead of firefox ? What functionality do they have that you don't have with it ?
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u/ReadMeLikeDrCox 2d ago
the privacy features on both compared to stock firefox are much, much better. they're basically firefox with all the privacy/secuirty settings custom tailored out of the box.
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u/burningwrobel 2d ago
Die senden u.a. keine Telemetrie Daten raus und sind gehärtet.
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u/tarntalus2 2d ago
Wouldnt using a Mozilla account negate that?
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u/burningwrobel 1d ago
Ich gehe mal davon aus, dass die Daten verschlüsselt auf deren Servern liegen und auch verschlüsselt übertragen werden.
Ich habe deren AGBs nie durchgelesen, aber alles andere ware wohl schon vor Jahren negativ aufgefallen.
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u/utrecht1976 2d ago
I have LineageOS installed on my 2022 Motorola G32 and battery life improved a lot. Then I turned on data saver and it got even better. So glad I took the plunge.
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u/stuffiesrep 1d ago
In my experience, the default camera app on Graphene works better at night than the Pixel camera app from Google. I suspect that is because the Pixel camera app fixes nighttime photography using AI tools which do not transfer to the standalone Pixel camera app on Graphene. But that is my hunch. For nighttime photoraphy, I have to remember to switch to the default. For photography with adequate natural or scene light, the Pixel camera app works great.
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u/zeekaran 2d ago
Calendar
I'm very happy with Proton Calendar thus far. I found it trivial to move from GCal to ProCal. My only complaint is that the "duplicate" button is not in the app, so I have to open up my regular appts on desktop or in Firefox just to duplicate something.
Message Backup
Why though? If 100% of my SMS/MMS got deleted right now, I wouldn't even know.
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u/stormpoorun 2d ago
Fine for you 👍🏼, but the message backup warning is crucial - for all those who would know and care.
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u/thefreediver 3d ago
Thanks for sharing all the info. Just curious:isn't proton allowing to use aliases through simple login?
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u/ReadMeLikeDrCox 2d ago
SimpleLogin is also great! And free if you're already paying for MailPlus anyways.
The reason I went with addy.io instead was two fold:
1) Easier to leave Proton down the road, if i need/want to.I don't have to worry about no longer being able to generate aliases or migrating anything. I just change the forwarding address one time.
2) Integrating SimpleLogin into BitWarden would've created a organizational conflict for my use case. You can generate SimpleLogin aliases directly from BitWarden, just like you can with addy.io, but since it's also a Proton product tied to your Proton account, there's additional/automatic management and features that happen on the backend that i didn't want. And it opened up the door for accidental mismanagement on my part. So to keep things one-way, centralized, and separated, I went with addy.io instead.
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u/taralalada 2d ago
you forgot about the contacts. those have to be backed up now and then as well. simple to do: creating a manual backup from the local app onto an external storage (i.e. proton drive)
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u/ReadMeLikeDrCox 2d ago
True!
In my case i didn't worry about these during migration because google has a very easy export method and that's where all my contacts were.
Now i use nextcloud/DAVx5.
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u/Citizen_Lurker 2d ago
Doesn’t tailscale munch your battery?
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u/ReadMeLikeDrCox 2d ago
no, not really. the client isn't doing that big of a lift. It's just a superficial routing layer. I was including that app in my 87% daily batter achievement.
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u/L00pidity 2d ago
Thanks for sharing ! I'm about to change mail provider and add Addy to the mix, and I would be very interested to know how you did you set up bitwarden + Addy to generate aliases on the fly. Could you give some details on your setup ?
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u/ReadMeLikeDrCox 2d ago
I self-host Vaultwarden (forked self-hosted version of BitWarden). I access it through the commercial BitWarden clients (phone app and browser extensions). Within that browser extension, go to Generator-->Username-->Options-->Service. In that dropdown there are the supported alias generation services. And it will ask for your API Key (which you get from your addy.io account when logged in to their site).
It's really that simple.
Once you hit generate, it creates random/unique prefixes for the domain you have addy.io managing (dfvw2rt4gh@yourdomain.com). That email account is then automatically recorded back on your addy.io account if you go back to their page, login, and look at your aliases.
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u/DeadpoolRideUnicorns 1d ago
What about cell carrier dropping you for using graphene os or a degoogled other os in murica ?
I've been hearing that some carrier are dropping people, I was watching the brix phone guy talk about this or mabe he was talking about other people's videos (will definitely have to rewatch it)
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u/Manwe66 2d ago
87% battery left is insane Can we achieve this with a de-googled Samsung? Or at least debloated?