yt-dlp is your friend !!!

Nice work.

Feels good XD

Depends who's asking XD

Google is the most challenging! Congratulations! You are emulating goals of mine! If you ever have time I'd love to hear more details on how you did it.

What's your maps alternative?

I swap between HERE WeGo, OSMAnd, and printing directions from mapquest or wherever. Both of those apps are equally bad in different ways, so I've been wanting to look into portable GPS devices again but I've been too lazy.

Yeah it's been a lot of work, but at least I have an explanation for when people ask why I'm so negative when speaking about google. Where do you want to start? :) A good portion ive been able to do because my server rack has grown so large, but it's still possible with a spare PC and a big hard drive. Like voip phones, email, and data storage and images and whatnot. Email is probably the hardest option to self host, and it's not actually possible to fully self host it in the US without a commercial internet connection and permission from the federal government, but there are semi-easy options or alternatives. Maps is also hard and I've been trying to see whats possible in self hosting land.

What google map alternative do you use?

Congratulations! How did you replace YouTube?

Mostly stopped watching it, but there are tools I've used like yt-dlp, and pinchflat for automated downloads. Newpipe on mobile android works well. I used public invidious servers for a while, but thats basically been rekt by google.

YouTube in 2023?! Decent.

My sincere congratulations! Achieving what you have achieved is one of my dreams.

Have you tried Organic Maps?

Organic Maps・Offline Map & GPS | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

Get reliable offline maps with GPS navigation for hiking, cycling, and travel.

Yeah, it's my favorite navigation, but only when on trails.

Aslo been thinking about picking up a newer garmin for the road. Nearly every alternative navigation app sucks bad in some way.

I complete this goal last year when I moved all my photos from there and switched my emails. This was good to filter what worth to keep and what was a completely shit kyc and a stupidy of myself from the past. It’s good show everyone that it’s possible.

Congrats on this amazing achievement 💜🧡

Gonna be honest, actual navigation isn't really necessary for me. I use it for search, reviews and checking menu/phone/hours. Basically the Google profiles are more important than the actual navigation for me and that's why I haven't switched yet.

Absolutely!

Oh well then HERE WeGo is a very good alternative then. OsmAnd is terrible at search and doesn't have those features whatsoever. I got into the habit of web searching things like that, personally found it more accurate than maps for my area.

I admire you! what is the alternative to Google maps? I love travelling 😟

Can you tell us what do you use instead?

have you experienced being shadow banned from the internet since?

In what ways? I mean with the use of VPNs many/most websites, CDNs, and such block my Ip addresses so it can make it difficult to do basic things like web searches. Anything protected by cloudflare is off the table. So most tradfi banking and online shopping are difficult or impossible.

I think here wego has the best maps alternative. you are relying on another SaaS company, but it has the best response, search, map features, turn-by-turn etc. I think it's a far more user friendly app. But it relies heavily on cellular networking. So if you're traveling to rural areas in the US like I do often, the navigation just drops out. There is no option for offline maps that I've seen. So it's great for local/short trips where you have an idea where youre going or will be near major towns with good cell servie. OSM And honestly just sucks for basic navigation. Search is terrible, it swallows battery, menus disappear and won't come back without an app restart. The worst is that you can't choose routes, you get a single shortest path route, but you can't choose alternatives. You can draw your own route, but I've had bad experience with that as well. I think OSM and is power user app, it has tremendous offline maps tools and stays stable without good cell service. But I only use it when I know I need offline navigation and I have time to plan the route out. Both apps crap out often enough that for areas I don't know or have a map in the car for, I usually print out backup directions, or a map of the area.

Sure Google Voice - voip.ms, freepbx, cisco ATA and a desktop handset from 2004. Gmail - self hosted (stalwart mail) + protonmail for backup Chrome - librewolf/firefox Drive - vpn + file browsers Maps - Here WeGo + OSMAnd~ Youtube - invidious, yt-dlp, pinchflat Android is tricky because I don't really use a smartphone. I have one, but does navigation, has firefox installed, and a file browser. I just re-flashed the stock rom, then used ADB to strip all unnecessary packages including google services. Obtainium is used for managing APK packages, otherwise manually managing them using ADB to install/update them.

Nice, thanks 🤙 For Android GrapheneOS are doing good work.

Only six short years. This gives me so much hope. 🫠

I got stuck with Gmail. In my opinion it is really the best. What can you recommend instead?

Id wish everyone could self host, but it's a lot of work anymore, nearly impossible according to ISPs and government regulation. I personally use proton mail as my backup/cloud-based provider. I think i can recommend them over other popular options today, but they still manage your encryption keys with reversible encryption. The gold standard is controlling your server imo.

well really anything is better, tuta or proton in what way does gmail give you a good experience?

well since im trying to get rid of big tech stuff and tracking its more and more frequent that im blocked or smt

The more tools privacy-focused you get, the more difficult accessing online resources will get in my experience.

Yes but they only support Google Pixel devices. The maintainers can't stop bickering with people on social media. There is a good chance this note will summon one of them to come here just to tell me I'm brain dead.

same problem here im creating lists of places by different autistic categories but organic maps and osmand fucks up that feature in different ways osmand almost got it right tho but it has this bug that it creates another point on the map and you are losing the information related to that place so it is unusable at the end

What you do when someone email you from Gmail?

I can still receive emails from gmail accounts, I just can't resolve google domains for my outgoing emails.

Google has the "best" spam filtering for most people, organization, and integrations etc. I think proton is the best fit for gmail power users as they also support calendars, organization, and have fantastic spam filtering. I pay for their mail experience, and their Drive-like ecosystem is a little pricier, but I think it's worth it to be off google's panopticon.

well tbh you wont get spam if you dont register to spam sites lol since i used gmail for years and i was dumb just like most of us back then i registered to a shit ton of sites so obviously i was getting a lot of spam, on my new emails with aliases its not really a problem anymore, google created a problem and also gave you the solution, but if you do a fresh start suddenly you will only get emails that is related to your stuff, and you can still set rules to separate them into labels and folders and then boom you wont need the algorythmic filtering anymore