Freeing My Phone from Google
hexaquo.at
hexaquo.at
I'd suggest to anyone worried about Google tracking to use Privacy Guard built into LineageOS, which aims to make each and every request for sensitive permissions explicit.
A big benefit of free software is that we can also use useful proprietary apps without giving up control of our hardware.
At the moment, I recommend the previous version of MicroG (0.2.6.13280) since the latest version (0.2.7.17455) may have compatibility issues. If you're using LineageOS for MicroG, builds on or before June 2 use the previous version.
NewPipe is like YouTube, but also with a background music player, a video/audio downloader, and no ads. It also supports SoundCloud.
You can use NewPipe regardless of whether you are using LineageOS or MicroG. It's not available in the Google Play Store (or the iOS App Store) for obvious reasons, but you can download it for any Android device from F-Droid.
The possibility to just download and listen offline and also to create playlists without an account are awesome.
I'm afraid atm it doesn't work for me (iPhone SE - iOS 12.3.1 - Firefox & Safari).
Nevertheless their work is awesome and the idea to aggregate all the things and let user's enjoy them without having to promise their first-born to providers is just amazing ^_^
It also seems to be in a loop, reloading the page on and on with this result.
The result is the same with mobile internet as with my home connection.
[0]. https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/wiki/Invidious-Instanc...
Same goes with NewPipe - you're using YouTube without actually paying for bandwidth, storage costs or the video author.
So you're not actually getting yourself rid of Google or tracking, you're just using their resources without paying the asking price.
Use other alternatives instead.
> So you're not actually getting yourself rid of Google or tracking, you're just using their resources without paying the asking price.
I love newpipe. I block ads on my desktop, I'm not going to feel bad blocking them on my phone. Google has taken far too much from us, from me, for me to worry about their bandwidth or storage costs. Somehow I think the multinational billionaires will manage.
As for video creators (who themselves are regularly screwed over by Google) they should be supported using other channels.
NewPipe actually saves bandwidth when you listen to audio only. As I recall, it parses the HTML and doesn't download the wasteful video stream, if you want just the audio.
Google should thank NewPipe users for their responsible use of their free resource.
From a privacy perspective, MicroG and NewPipe are much less intrusive than Google Play Service and YouTube, because the open source apps send less user data to Google.
I'd feel similarly about having someone advertise a way to crack Slack enterprise features instead of using something like Matternmost.
A nitpick, but somewhat important: they're not services, they're products. Pieces of software. Alternative user agents. Very opinionated web browsers, if you like.
It accesses YouTube via "the video playback pages of the Website" so it satisfies 5.1 article C. I don't see any limitation to using browsers there.
Indeed, article H strongly implies that it is allowed to use non-browser software to access these pages - otherwise spiders and robots would be banned and there would be no point to the request limit in that article.
> If you use the Embeddable Player on your website, you may not modify, build upon, or block any portion or functionality of the Embeddable Player, including but not limited to links back to the YouTube website.
Depending the country where you are based it might not matter, it might fall into interoperability legal exceptions.
Google's asking price includes performing invasive surveillance. So when dodging Google's surveillance, it is impossible to access any content hosted at Google while living up to your standard. Which makes your argument a bit dishonest.
Now sure, there is a straightforward argument that the best way to push back against Google is to completely avoid content hosted there, which discourages others from hosting there in the first place. But you did not make this argument, I suspect because it's overly optimistic in an environment of heavy network effects.
Google Maps can get its location from MicroG but in my experience it isn't even close to fully functional. Basic things like searching for a location or asking for directions just result in endless spinning.
Can you try the previous version (0.2.6.13280)? If you're using LineageOS for MicroG, the latest build on or before June 2 contains the previous version.
Check their stats: https://stats.lineageos.org/
Pick your country on the right, then lookup the models listed at the left from most popular to least popular.
The phones that are the most popular stand the chance of being the most stable, and best supported. I finally arrived @ "nash", which is more commonly known as the "Moto Z Force" (https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/nash). You'll have to copy/paste the code names to their devices wiki to get the specs.
I got one second hand with some wear for about US$100 on ebay. It was easy to unlock, and I'm fairly impressed with how it works with Lineage thus far (About 2-3 months as my only phone). It's 6" tall, I'm not sure the diagonal, but it fits comfortably in my pockets. I added a case since it's super thin otherwise.
#3 in the US is https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/klte @ 5.59" tall ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_(smartphone)
With MicroG, Google Camera works as it does on stock Android. Most phones on LineageOS aren't able to use their stock camera app, which results in reduced camera quality compared to stock Android. The Pixel/Nexus line, ironically, is the main exception.
Google Camera isn't available on F-Droid or Yalp/Aurora Store, but you can download it from APKMirror:
https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/camera
(APKMirror is operated by Android Police, so it's a trusted site.)
Pictures on my S7 herolte (microG+LOS obviously) are grainy, and investigating why is quite far down on my todo list. This wasn't a problem on i9500, klte, or shamu. I had thought the issue must be some missing firmware, either from the OS image or it got wiped somehow. Compounded by being in Exynos rather than more popular Qualcomm land. But not knowing all that much about the Android photo stack, it's interesting to hear you say it depends on the app used itself.
Other Galaxy S7 (herolte) users seem to have the same problems as you on LineageOS, but it's hard to tell exactly what causes them:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LineageOS/comments/8awrcz/herolte_g...
Also, the Galaxy S7 is no longer officially supported by LineageOS, since there are currently no active device maintainers:
https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/herolte/
It's difficult to diagnose issues with unofficial builds of LineageOS, because they most likely don't meet the LineageOS device support requirements:
https://github.com/LineageOS/charter/blob/master/device-supp...
Google Camera's post-processing has been well-received, and the app has been ported to many non-Google devices, including the Galaxy S7. I'm not sure how well the S7 ports work (especially if your S7 has an Exynos SoC) but XDA Developers has a couple of active threads here:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s7/themes
Using one of the ports might improve your camera situation. No guarantees, but it doesn't hurt to try.
I recommended the first-generation Pixel and Pixel XL because they are the only phones that are currently supported by both LineageOS and the latest version of the official (non-ported) Google Camera app. For people who aren't particular about camera features and quality, the Camera app that comes with LineageOS or any third-party camera app would be adequate, and you can use these with any supported device.
https://developer.android.com/distribute/play-services/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
MicroG can replace the Google Play Services requirement for Google Maps. To download Google Maps without the official Google Play Store client, you can use the free and open source Aurora Store:
On the phones I have tested Google Maps works with Google Play Services turned off.
Irrespective of privacy, I am just not interested in the personalisation or, e.g., reading email on a phone.
https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291838
Instead of using this, I have Here WeGo installed as a backup app for offline navigation:
You mean it is still fully compatible with MicroG. Guess what will happen when the OS becomes popular.
Just for clarification, I don't have Facebook installed in my phone, neither have a Facebook account.
Did you give a recent try to Apple Maps? Just finishing a few months road trip across the US and to my surprise I vastly prefer Apple Maps for the navigation and I now default to it. While in France I can't live without Waze/Google Maps because it's so efficient to workaround congestions in real time, I found it no better than Apple Maps in the US.
Otherwise I agree there is no alternative for Youtube. The move from Gmail was the easiest, and Search to DDG not really hard (with the !g keyword still handy for tech or complexes searches).
It doesn't really fit the tone of the article.
Driving/walking directions? Reliability? Traffic? Street View?
I imagine it’s a combination but curious in general what would a competitor need to master to change the conversation, if OSM isn’t there yet.
OSM has a ton of features, but the most useful ones to people who use Google Maps just aren't dead simple to use. Maybe they should make a directions-specific app. I'm not sure how good the directions are since I've only managed to use it a couple times before getting frustrated and switching back to Google Maps.
I'd love to see a competitor who could make that experience a little smoother. Navigating in streetview is more like a slide show than a drive.
Regarding your point about driving being more of a slide show: Mapillary in OsmAnd can 'drive' you along streets quite smoothly. Of course, there are are some artifacts from deforming the images, but it doesn't 'move and load' like Google Street View, it continuously moves and keeps the images at a constant quality.
Regarding YouTube, try using only their video widget, and not their recommendation engine.
Check this sandbox app out, does it work?: https://island.oasisfeng.com/
OSMAnd gets lots of attention though.
Beside that I’m a big fan/contributor/user of OSM (maps.me is my app of choice there). But if you want to go with one of the big, polished players, I chose the one that has little to gain and much to lose from abusing my personal data.
These are strong unequivocal statements. We should all be very surprised if they're outright lying.
I get frustrated with the hoodwink that Apple seems to be playing, as they move to services based revenue I have no doubt these lines are going to get blurrier and blurrier.
You can't sign in to Apple Maps. Apple doesn't know who or where you are, except via a random frequently rotating identifier.
Google pushes you hard to sign in with your Google account, tracks your searches and location, and associates that data with everything else they know about you.
In Apple's ecosystem you cannot opt out of sending Maps queries from maps links to Apple at all. Additionally, if any app at all requests your location, iOS sends your location back to Apple, and you cannot opt out. On even Google-flavored Android devices, you can choose not to send any location information to Google at all.
Users are free to host their signal servers if they choose. The usage of their network is their prerogative. It's not a federated protocol and they never promised or set out to support arbitrary clients on their network. At the moment, the world is really better served by signal than most other messaging solutions.
Matrix/Riot is superior in about every way to Signal, and they welcome third party clients without any restriction.
> What sort of weird FOSS zealotry is this where you want to use someone else's network resources without their consent
Well, are they in the business of building something open, or building yet another walled garden? Because this is precisely what they seem to be doing by creating such restrictions.
>Well, are they in the business of building something open, or building yet another walled garden?
They are in the business of accessible secure communications for everyone. I think that's a reasonable goal with their reasonable tradeoffs. It's a free service with no money, no ads, and no obligations. Respecting their network usage policy is really just common courtesy.
I tried Jami when it was called Ring and I couldn't figure it out after some fumbling with the app and skimming of the website. If I can't figure it out how can I expect nontechnical people to? That was one of the reasons why I ended up adopting Riot/Matrix back then and have been pushing it since, but I'm still interested in alternative communication systems if they can bring any benefits to the table. Does Jami bring any?
The thing I like about Signal is that I can use it for regular texts as well as encrypted communications. Instead of converting all of my friends at once (or even just a significant subset), I can just replace my texting app with Signal and get my friends to move over one as a time.
I tried that with Riot, but it just didn't work out. I tried the Slack bridge, but it required admin access on the Slack server (fortunately I had that at the time) and only one channel could be created at a time, which was tedious. That's not Riot's fault, but it's not particularly important who is at fault.
I want to replace some app with Riot and slowly phase everything else in, but nothing really gave me the confidence to do so. I heard rumors that they were planning to support VoIP, but this doesn't seem to extend to making/receiving regular calls or texts, but merely providing audio and video chat along with their regular text service. Maybe that has changed (I check back periodically), but unless it solves a problem that doesn't require me to convince everyone else to switch, I'm probably not going to make the effort.
And that's why I like Signal. It's not the best secure messaging system out there, but it's a drop in replacement for something I use today and doesn't require me to get everyone to switch at once.
Can you expand on that? I'm afraid I don't quite understand the advantage here. Also, have you tried Silence for sending encrypted SMS?
Will fix as soon as possible!
Edit: It should be somewhat better now, with relative font size values. Still not ideal, I gotta refresh my CSS skills and work more on the stylesheet sometime soon.
Thanks again for letting me know.
w3m (via Termux) and unv.is both win:
https://unv.is/hexaquo.at/posts/2019/06/29/Freeing+my+phone+...
https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/
By the way PureOS seems a good shot.
I just can't understand people claming to run free of Google and stay on Android !!! ;) ;) ;) ;)
Good luck with your fight againsn't the Google devil. Me ? I am staying on Apple devil device, but I just take responsibility for that choice.
Because it's open source, Google can't put their objectionable code directly into Android - that's what their proprietary apps and services are for, and those are where you begin to lose your freedom and control.
Also, building independent operating systems that reach as many devices as android or android based distros like LineageOS do is next to impossible because of driver issues. In fact, it's only thanks to standardization pushes by Microsoft that you can build a single ISO and run it on different IBM PC's. There is no such standardization push by Google. They are okay with each vendor forking stuff, changing source code, and then providing their own version of Android instead of requiring one google-built binary for all devices. This has detrimental effects on anyone wanting to build an alternative to android because they need to maintain a large number of kernels sometimes with millions of lines of diff to torvalds mainline. There are some meek pushes by Google and other parties to mainline more stuff to Linux and implement ARM GPU drivers in Mesa, but I doubt that we'll get a situation that's equally nice to the IBM PC situation any time soon.
PureOS is not yet ready for prime time, but it will be very interesting to see how it performs compared to AOSP when it's released. And pmOS will most likely manage to support many PureOS components on existing hardware, although obviously at some cost in reliability and privacy compared to running PureOS on Librem's supported platform.
If you want to be completely private, you'll probably have to use TOR together with those alternative clients.
https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/carnet
https://github.com/PhieF/CarnetDocumentation
I've been on the lookout for such an app as well, and after trying a lot of different ones, this is my favorite so far.
You're right though, it's surprising how hard it is to find a note taking app that's just simple and intuitive.
I'm not an Android developer, but could it be that applications are just expecting that API? It would make sense for Google to want to route location requests through what's usually their service...
And then there's a more powerful version provided by Google Services, which automatically fuses all providers and talks to Google servers. Most apps these days opt for the Fused provider, since it's easier to use and automatically handles getting a reliable location in pretty much any environment. It's not available on "Google-free" phones though, since it depends on Google's infrastructure.
GPS is a standalone system but it doesn't have a lot of spare bandwidth for the metadata so the alamanac you need frequently updated to use it takes quite a long time to receive over GPS itself whereas you can download it very fast over even a mediocre GSM signal.
Taking a few minutes, especially the first time you use it in a day for example, sounds like the time needed to receive the almanac. But I could be wrong.
It does, but you'll have very poor reception unless you have a nice line of sight to the sky - large cities and forests are typically the most problematic.
Overall though, Linus' law ("given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow") is a huge factor when it comes to privacy and security in my opinion. If an open source app is bad in one of those aspects, it will be noticed and fixed (or forked). Additionally, community driven projects like OSM simply don't have any reason or motivation to spy. They're a collaborative effort owned and developed by their users, not a company driven by capital and short-term profit.
Ditch evil doers, be in positive side to support companies that actually have people's privacy in they priority.