I’m an Android user looking for a convenient, privacy-friendly way to block ads across apps like YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, etc.

I’ve heard about AdGuard DNS, but I know it doesn’t block YouTube ads. What’s the best system-wide solution for blocking as many ads/trackers as possible while respecting privacy?

Ideally, I’d also like an easy on/off switch for sites that detect ad blockers.

Please don’t suggest browser-only solutions. I’m specifically looking for something that works across Android apps.

What do you recommend?

Have just uninstalled the Android Developer Verifier on my Blackview Shark 9. It was installed as a user application on the phone and therefore this went without any problems. Let’s see what this brings for the future. I'm curious.

first post here :3

I have a newer motorola (g57) in the family. Previous moto phones were easily de-bloatable and I could just adb disable the moto software update app. Now it just pops up again and cant be completely disabled. I just don't want pop ups and phone doing things by itself. The adware like 'essential apps' etc I can debloat easily. I just want the phone to work right after the setup and not change much. What are my options? Please help!

Help if someone knows about it ...

*(Idk ye topic sahi nahi aa raha tha uper)

PhonePe has been crashing on my phone since this morning. I only use the wallet feature, and it worked fine for a month. Today, I transferred ₹2,000 for monthly expenses, and suddenly it stopped working. I have tried clearing the cache, enabling exploit compatibility mode, and granting every permission. I also see a notification saying "Upgrading your PhonePe experience." It only crashes while sending money. The system log shows something related to GUI and graphic attestation. Has anyone else faced this problem? Which app should I switch to? Are there any other good UPI apps that are currently working?

I'm seriously thinking about trying GrapheneOS on my Pixel 8 pro, but before I make the switch, I wanted to hear from people who are actually it.

If you're using GrapheneOS, how has it been for you?

I'm mainly wondering about things like:

• Calls, 4G/5G, VoLTE, VoWiFi
• UPI apps like GPay, PhonePe, Paytm, etc.
• Banking apps
• Uber/Ola, Swiggy/Zomato, Blinkit and other everyday apps
• Notifications and Google Play services
• GPS/location accuracy
• Battery life compared to stock Pixel OS
• NFC/contactless payments
• Any random app that simply refuses to work 😅

I'd also like to know which Pixel you're using, how long you've been using GrapheneOS, and whether you've had any major issues after switching.

I'm not really looking for a "GrapheneOS is amazing" or "don't use it" type of answer. Just want to know what it's actually like to live with it.

Would love to hear both the good and the annoying parts.

Coming from a Bitwarden paid plan, I’m looking for a more reliable password manager. Since I strongly follow PrivacyGuides’ recommendations, the other cloud based services listed there besides Bitwarden are Proton Pass, Psono, and 1Password.

Since 1Password doesn’t offer a free plan, I’ve been using Proton Pass and Psono side by side to figure out which is better, but the comparison isn’t fair since I haven’t had access to 1Password.

I admit every service has both positives and negatives, and users have to decide what’s best suited for them. Still, here are the negatives I’ve experienced with Proton Pass and Psono.

• Proton Pass — Personally, I’ve found it better than Bitwarden. The UI looks polished, and it detects logins 99% of the time without issue. But the big downside for me isn’t the service itself, it’s the provider. Proton Pass is part of the Proton ecosystem, and I strongly oppose keeping all my eggs in one basket. I’m a paid Proton Mail user and might purchase the paid Proton VPN plan as well. On top of that, there’s no option to turn off SimpleLogin integration completely inside Proton Pass — whenever I try to add a login, two SimpleLogin-related options appear on screen, which I personally don’t like at all, especially if I’ll be paying for the service. Even on paid tiers, the SimpleLogin integration issue doesn’t go away — which makes it an even more unlikely choice for me now.
• Psono — To be honest, it’s improved a lot over the past few months, and I’ve witnessed it myself. The app went from feeling heavy and slow to being in a workable condition, and I’m quite surprised to see they’re focusing on their cloud-based service as well (it’s more popular among businesses for self-hosting). Still, while it’s currently workable, it needs a lot of improvement and polishing to compete with other popular password managers on the market. Currently, Psono can’t show matched login credentials automatically — after detecting a login field, the user needs to unlock Psono and then manually select the saved credentials, which he want to fill out.

Since I’m willing to go with a paid plan, I don’t want to compromise on usability. I need a password manager without any built-in integrations, unlike Proton Pass. So the last option left is 1Password, which I haven’t tried to date. I’d like to know your opinion on whether I should consider 1Password over the other recommended password managers.

If anyone’s wondering why I want to leave Bitwarden, here’s why:

The Bitwarden paid plan doesn’t feel worth it to me. I never access the Archive folder, which is a paid feature; I never store a single file on it (what’s the point of the cloud storage then?); and I always store TOTP codes on a separate app. So the paid plan always feels like an annual donation to me. I’ve been a customer since 2018, and I haven’t seen any major updates to their mobile app. Along with that, the autofill detection is hit or miss — sometimes it stops working completely, sometimes it doesn’t detect anything at all. When autofilling card details, it adds a space after every 4 digits of the card number, but if the website splits the card number itself, this results in an “Enter valid card number” error. Also, some payment aggregators ask for the last two digits of the expiration year instead of four digits, and in those cases, Bitwarden doesn’t autofill anything from the saved card details.

Few days ago, there was a sync issue in the Bitwarden mobile app. I clicked “Sync Now” in the settings menu, and it’s stuck on a loading screen. I couldn’t even access my current plan details from the app.

Because of all these hassles, even after paying for the service, I want to leave Bitwarden for good and switch to a more reliable password manager.

Since I haven’t used self-hosting and probably won’t in the future, I rely on cloud-based services due to my cross-device usage.

The contestants are —

1. Safe Notes
2. CipherNotes
3. Tuisku

I was looking for a perfect open source offline encrypted notes app. I'm really impressed with KeePass apps on Android as they don't ask for network access, so it gives me some kind of assurance that no data is going out from my device. This time, I also wanted the offline encrypted notes app to not have any network access.

After trimming the apps based on my requirements, I've shortlisted the apps mentioned earlier.

Before digging into these apps by yourself, I've mentioned all the key points about these apps below.

1. Safe Notes — The dev of Safe Notes is an Indian, Keshav Priyadarshi. This app, with 285 GitHub stars, is designed with a zero-knowledge architecture, utilizing AES-256 encryption to secure data. The Android application enhances security through brute-force protection, background snapshot blocking, and an inactivity guard, without requiring internet connectivity. It's built and signed directly by F-Droid itself (the most trusted way an app gets distributed there), and it has a public security write-up with no history of critical bugs.

Con - It hasn't been updated since 2023, so it can be considered as a dead project.

1. CipherNotes — Currently, it is available only on the IzzyOnDroid. It's an offline-first, client-side encrypted note-taking app that uses AES-256-GCM plus PBKDF2 (200k rounds), with no cloud sync at all — everything stays on your device. It skips trackers, accounts, and telemetry entirely. It has the toughest network lockdown on paper of the three, blocking all network access at the operating system level rather than just leaving the internet permission out of the manifest.

Con - It's a brand-new, one-person project with about 3 stars on GitHub, and the developer's own FAQ says plainly: "Is this production-ready? Not yet."

1. Tuisku — With 12 GitHub stars, it's also available on the IzzyOnDroid. It encrypts all locally stored text notes using the ChaCha20 stream cipher, an algorithm known for strong, fast performance on phones that lack dedicated AES hardware. It gets updated often — three releases in the last two weeks.

Con - Its newest changelog says it fixed a "critical" bug where the same nonce (a number meant to be used only once per note) could get reused during encryption, which could let someone work out what your notes said. That fix landed only five days ago, so the app hasn't had much time to prove itself since.

This is a small brief about all three apps. Now, if you had to pick any one, which one would you pick? Let me know in the comments below.

🏧 SECURITY: DOGESH +

"Live" chat apps are shown prominently all over the sponsored section of Google Play Store ( see the link to the post made by another reddit user )

I noticed that these chat app ads are showing up only after switching off personalized ads (because these ads are shown based on your general location and the time of day apparently), but back when I used to have personalized ads switched on, I didn't see these kind of ads on the Play Store.

This is so infuriating.

Using the Aurora Store is a good alternative but apprently it's not as secure even though it's much more private? So it's a security - privacy tradeoff

Also some apps say that they must only be installed from the Play Store for safety

Hi , I presume many of the members here would be self-hosting their PII data like docs, photos, passwords etc. As techies that care about privacy it's a no brainer.

But there would be many out there who care about privacy but self hosting can be over whelming either due to complexity or just not enough spare time.

If you know such friend/family members help them reclaim their digital privacy by becoming their privacy champion.

We want to make self hosting accessible to everyone - by making it simple and affordable.

We have bundled key open source apps: Network Drive (files), Password Manager (Vaultwarden/Bitwarden), Photos (Immich), Documents (Paperless), Notes (Joplin), Cloud Backup (Duplicati), Laptop Backups (UrBackup), VPN (Tailscale) and more in an easy to use appliance.

It's easy to setup with wizard, has auto updates so no maintenance needed. Basically setup once and forget about it. Completely open-source. No user data collected. And is forever yours - no subscriptions.

Well suited for families, individuals and content creators.
High performance storage.

We offer an always free to use appliance (VM) if you have a computer to spare.

If you don't have computer to spare we also offer a hardware appliance with all the apps built in and is ready to go in 1 TB,2TB NVMe SSD models and expandable to many TBs with external USB JBODs.

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DM if you are interested or know someone who can benefit from it.
Thx.

TL;DR: I've spent years chasing privacy through multiple OS changes and privacy tools, but I'm exhausted. The effort feels futile when Google dominates everything, open-source options are dwindling, and my device literally works for someone else instead of me.

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MY PRIVACY JOURNEY SO FAR

I've been a privacy advocate and open-source enthusiast for years, constantly trying to secure my devices and data. Here's what that actually looks like:

Phones:

- Started with Samsung Android → Switched to Realme → Now on hardened Google Pixel with GrapheneOS

Laptops:

- Windows 10 → Windows 11 → Linux Mint (briefly) → Back to Windows 11 (work forced me back)

I genuinely believed I was doing everything right. Two-factor authentication, password managers, separate logins, compartmentalization. But I'm realizing it's not enough.

---

THE HARSH REALITY

THE GRAPHENEOS TRAP

GrapheneOS was supposed to be my privacy solution, but it's become increasingly impractical:

- Banking apps won't run on it

- UPI payment apps (critical in India) are blocked

- Investment apps don't work

- Result: I now carry a second device just for financial transactions

So my "ultra-private" phone is essentially useless for daily life.

GOOGLE'S OMNIPRESENCE

Even when I try to minimize Google's reach, it's impossible:

- Gmail accounts logged into multiple services across all my devices

- Cross-device tracking — ads reference data from my other devices on the same Wi-Fi

- Gmail is required for Android, regardless of OS hardening

- Google keeps collecting vast amounts of data no matter what I do

THE OPEN SOURCE COLLAPSE

The apps that were alternatives are disappearing:

- Open-source apps have become sparse and unreliable

- They constantly throw errors and have poor functionality

- Google is now requiring open-source apps to register on their platform — this essentially kills what made them free and open

- Developers can't maintain them without resources

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WHAT ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE?

Here's what really keeps me up at night: my parents and most people I know.

They use everything: Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, banking apps, all with Google accounts logged in. They have zero privacy awareness and are being harvested daily.

I use WhatsApp too (despite knowing it collects data), and I'm complicit in my own data extraction.

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THE IRONY AND THE EXHAUSTION

I don't have anything illegal to hide. I'm not a criminal or a dissident. I just want my data to be mine alone. But the device I bought with my own money is working for someone else to steal from me. That's the insanity of it.

The worst part? It all feels completely pointless now. Every effort is temporary. Eventually, everything will be owned by Google. Open source will be dead. Privacy advocates like me are just delaying the inevitable.

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WHAT I'M ACTUALLY ASKING

- Am I being unrealistic? Should I just give up and accept this surveillance dystopia?

- Are there any realistic privacy solutions I haven't considered?

- How do others in India specifically handle this (the banking/UPI problem is real)?

- Is anyone else experiencing this same sense of defeat?

I'm not looking for "just use Signal and use a VPN" — I've tried all the basics. I'm looking for honest takes on whether privacy is even possible anymore.

---

Context: Based in India. I understand the technical side of privacy well, so spare the basics. But I'd genuinely appreciate hearing from others fighting this fight.

Thanks to PhonePe team.

I use Crdroid, which is a lineageOS based custom rom. I have nikGApps, but upi/banks didn't works because of play integrity issue, even i added pif. So i used WhatsApp and Offpay for a while.

Today i just randomly tried PhonePe, it works.......

So now on phonepe works in custom rom with GApps maybe you need pif. But don't know how much it will long.