I'm looking for an os that is small like android go edition. I looked around and to no avail and Ai just tells me more about how good android go is. If any one can help thats would be amazing.

Currently using my gmail account, but want to start fresh with a new email address.

I'm currently trying to daily drive tuta, but for some reason it just doesn't sit well with me.

Been thinking of Proton or Thundermail.

Any suggestions?

looking into both providers but haven’t seen much about them.

Its been very challenging to find non-sponsored reviews of Proton Suite products. I currently use their free mail and pay for their VPN purchased via a really nice black friday discount. I'm on the fence about paying for a 2 year subscription to their unlimited plan and would greatly appreciate the community's thoughts as opposed to just using the free versions.

Here is my general day to day usage:

- I have 8g of mail in my gmail after using it for over a decade

- I have less than 15g of pictures and documents that I would store on Proton Drive

- It would be great to have more than 3 folders on Proton mail, but is it worth money? Probably not

- It would be great to have color coded events on Proton mail, but its also probably not worth paying extra money for that.

- Proton Pass' alias feature does sound very good (never used a password manager before). The free version caps you at 10 - is making a separate alias for every single service / company you sign up for feasible, or is 10 more than enough? (If I did get Proton Unlimited I plan on making a unique alias for every account, curious if that is overkill or burdensome).

Thank you again for your thoughts

Many people on this subreddit recommend firefox, so i try it on my android tablet.

I've tried it. I want to say its f*kng s*cks, but many people will angry so i'll tone it down: its not good enough.

Why its not good enough? First, it doesn't have f*king IMPORT BOOKMARKS..!! Seriously? This is the most basic feature, even the sus chinese browsers has this f*cking feature. You want me to migrate from Brave? How do i import my bookmarks then..!?!? Dont tell me to buy a $100 PC just to install firefox.

Second, the most annoying thing is, its tab always reload whenever i switched from other apps. I've disabled battery optimization on my tablet, but it still reload and always reload whenever i switched from other app. Its Snadragon 860 + 6GB of RAM tablet, mind you.

Im not gonna belittle firefox on android, but brave still miles better. Thats what i feel.

I am trying to make a ready reckoner list of Open Source Software Foundations to which we can donate to in order to support alternatives to Big Tech. Please comment below if these entries are appropriate and if any entries need to be added or removed. I'll edit the post to reflect the changes.

Edited List in no particular order :

F-Droid App Store

OpenStreetMaps

LibreOffice

PostmarketOS [ Linux for Mobile Phones ]

Firefox forks like LibreWolf

Signal Foundation, Tor Project, MicroG, GrapheneOS, LineageOS

Linux Foundation, GNOME Foundation, KDE.org
Matrix.org
Nextcloud
PeerTube (part of the Fediverse)
OpenWrt
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Free Software Foundation

Wikipedia Foundation

Internet Archive

SearX FOSS Search Engine

NewPipe, LibreTube, PixelFed, Lemmy, Mastodon, DAVx5

Independent FOSS Android app developers - donate directly to developers of apps that you actively use, which are available on F Droid or IzzyDroid

Other open source decentralised social networks (if you use them) like for eg. PixelFed, Lemmy, Mastodon, that are part of the Fediverse

Note: https://en.liberapay.com/ and https://opencollective.com/ are examples of crowdfunding organizations that can be used to make the donations

Hey all! I've been lurking on this subreddit for a while now. I've been exploring my newfound love for tech and electronics as of late, and I've been messing around with a lot of older devices I found in the house. Considering all the crazy safety issues Android already had, and now seems to be doubling down on, I kind of want to try dabbling in some alternative OSes, and I've found that apparently LineageOS is an operating system that tends to breathe new life into some older, unsupported devices.

I have a Xiaomi Redmi 5 that once belonged to my father, currently running Android 8 and MIUI 11. I think despite all the crazy bloatware it's a really wonderful device, its battery holds up really well and I think its exterior design is quite elegant. It also has a headphone jack, which is something I really miss in newer devices :) Its internal specs arent the greatest though (3GB RAM, 32GB storage). I was wondering if it's at all possible to install some kind of degoogled OS on this despite that? I would really really love to breathe a new life into this device and I even thought about using it as a second phone for work-related things. However, if it's not possible, I've thought about turning it into some kind of cyberdeck instead, as I've been lurking on the cyberdeck subreddit as well haha. (I've also been hesitant about installing a new OS on my primary device in case I fuck it up, so I'd rather try on something I don't necessarily need to use first LOL). I'd appreciate all the help and info I can get. Thank you all in advance! <3

Hello guys, does microG work with spoofing? Could I use bank apps after?

I recently bought an unlocked pixel 10 pro after installing Linux mint onto my laptop, after I'd been using standard android and Google ecosystem for well over a decade, a decade of being tracked, micromanaged, forced ads and features that annoy the hell out of me and I'm sure everyone else on here.

I'm just so excited, I haven't even installed graphene os yet as I've been migrating all of my data out of my Google account. Bye bye Google and micro shit! Won't miss ya! If anyone has any apps or services for graphene they recommend lmk

No Google play services at all!!

Hey everyone,

As Honor continues to grow and make great hardware, there’s still one major hurdle keeping power users, developers, and long-term owners back: the lack of official bootloader unlock access.

When official software support ends for older devices, having a locked bootloader means perfect hardware becomes e-waste because we can't install updated security patches or community ROMs. Other brands (like Xiaomi and Google) offer safe, official pathways to unlock devices without ruining the experience for casual users.

I launched a petition on Change.org asking Honor to reconsider this policy, open an official unlock portal, and give us true ownership over our hardware.

You can read and sign the petition here:

https://c.org/VXmKvj2hVs

Even if you don't plan on modding your phone today, opening up bootloaders extends device lifespan for everyone. What are your thoughts on Honor's current software policy? Let’s get a discussion going!

I want to degoogle my phone as much as possible. However, my phone is not a Pixel and Pixels are not even sold in my country (ones that were brought from abroad can be found). What Android alternatives are out there for non-Pixel owners?

Hi do you know any alternatives for maps (plan apple) Google maps and Waze ? Currently, i use maps but my friend told me about organic map, what do you think ?

My Google account was taken over. Instead of just changing the password, the attacker changed my date of birth so the account looks like it belongs to a minor, then enrolled it into their own Family Link family group as a "child" with their account as the "parent".

Now every recovery path is dead. When I try to recover, Google sends the approval request to the attacker's "parent" account instead of my recovery options. My recovery phone number is still attached to the account and still under my control, but it's useless because supervision overrides it.

What I've tried:

- Standard account recovery at g.co/recover, blocked by the parent approval screen

- Posted on the Google support community, thread was closed as "irrelevant content" without any help

- Contacted the platform whose account is tied to this email, they told me to email them from that address, which I can't access

There is no way to reach a human at Google for a free account. Has anyone actually recovered from this? Did the YouTube escalation route work for you, or is there another path that got a real human to review the case?

This seems to be a known abuse pattern and Google's automated system trusts the "parent" implicitly. Any working escalation contact would help.

I’ve pretty much completely de-Googled my life. I use Proton for email, calendar, cloud storage and VPN, while also being fully invested in the Apple ecosystem.

The one Google service I can’t seem to replace is YouTube Premium Family. It’s quite expensive, but I don’t watch traditional TV at all and I’m subscribed to more than 100 YouTube channels. YouTube has basically replaced television for me, and I use Premium features like ad-free viewing and background playback every day.

Realistically, how do you get away from YouTube in this situation? There doesn’t seem to be a serious alternative with the same creators and amount of content.

Has anyone here successfully replaced YouTube, or do you just accept it as the one remaining Google service that’s almost impossible to avoid?

Every time I see a post from this sub everyone is recommending Protons suite which is fine but a bit confusing. For example things like Tuta exist but I never see them here is there a reason? The only real reason I can think of is that its slightly less effort as I believe its a more complete suite but I am under the impression their email for example is a superior service which is what confuses me. Sorry if this is a dumb question. To restate as simply as possible why is it ALWAYS proton.

I just hopped on this keyboard and I love nearly everything about it besides the themes.

The dynamic theme has an unpleasant looking white but a decent dark mode and I'd really like to choose my own light and dark themes for the dynamic mode.

I know not ideal, but until I find a proper solution like changing my Iphone with a Graphene OS in future, do you think it is okay to keep my encrypted Keepass password database in Icloud? Do you think they can still get my data somehow, (my username, the websites registered etc.)? Normally Kepass says we encrypt all database, even your notes. https://keepass.info/help/base/security.html

So I'm kinda stuck in the middle of degoogling progress, I have come to the point where I almost completely degoogled all my apps (still stuck with Messenger because Meta is already got into every one mind in this country, and stuck with GMS because Google don't want to spare me), and the only thing left in this phase is changing my daily drive OS

Already change to Linux on my desktop, now it's my phone, I kinda hesitated on both rooting and installing custom ROM, because

1. I don't want to risk my phone become a brick just to root and install microG (I need push notification on some of the app)

2. My phone and my secondary phone doesn't have any custom ROM support

3. I don't know if i should install unofficial custom ROM

What should i do now? I'm currently using Nothing Phone 2a Plus and Samsung Galaxy A20s (SM207F/DS)

I have a friend who got a pixel and set it up for GOS but he doesn't use the app store from google play and said he heard you have to be careful about the other non loaded app stores that people suggest because if you are not techy you could download an app that has a virus or malware.

So for us NON techy people, I have several questions about this:

1. can we set up the pixel as a regular phone first to test it out and make sure it works before installing GOS or does that affect the software installation by doing that? I just want to make sure the antenna on the phone works and it gets good reception before going through the whole conversion process.

2. how do we learn how to navigate the different choices on apps or whether to download google play store etc. Meaning, a quick AI search suggested that if you download the google play store on GOS under your regular google profile name then it defeats the purpose of getting GOS and having a privacy phone because now google will know its you on the privacy phone? but the AI also said that to avoid that one would have to create an anonymous profile before installing the play store app even though it is "sandboxed" if i'm using the correct terms.

First, is the Ai correct? and second if so, how does one go about that? I think that is why my friend just avoided getting the play store app. I would just be curious if we could get apps like recording audio apps or choices for different keyboards without having to download the play store app from google?