Hello I use GOS have for almost a year and finally removed sandboxed play services in my main profile and only use Aurora for my bank app and Apple Music in my main profile still have Google Voice in private space but seperated from my main profile all my apps are only FOSS other than the 2 apps from aurora and it feels so good to finally say that. I just wanted to share my big news with you and hope you can all ditch Google apps/services as I have its amazing how my spam calls/texts have stopped or become less the more I degoogled.

I hope everyone has a great Degoogle/privacy enchancing experience

Any better replacements for Google Voice welcome in the comments if there is any.

  • zerozaku@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    5 hours ago

    Recently I too have made a huge change in move towards degoogling and replaced Gboard with Heliboard. I never thought I’d be able to replace Gboard because I use gesture typing a lot. Heliboard doesn’t come inbuilt with gesture typing but you have to import from closed source(?) data which is just a one time import (would like to know more on this one from someone more knowledgeable). So far, it has been great!

    • bruhSoulz@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      3 hours ago

      Ty! ^^ been thinking about deleting my final remaining gmail account but unfortunately there may be unexpected consequences so I’m second guessing still.

  • sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.todayEnglish
    21·
    18 hours ago

    Good job. You can start off the new year with a breath of fresh air.

    I finished my house privacy finally this week with the FLIRC TV remote to get rid of the OEM remote that had a microphone built in. It’s programmable on Linux too which is awesome

  • Cris16228@lemmy.today
    83·
    17 hours ago

    hope you can all ditch Google apps/services

    Sadly, I can’t ditch WhatsApp since everyone I know uses it + work and without sandboxed play services, WhatsApp eats my battery like crazy

    • Der_Fossyler
      1·
      2 hours ago

      For the lng run there needs to be a solution for the WhatsApp Monopoly we all live on. I mean, this argument is several years old and what can we do to change that? You could start by trying to convince some og your contacts to switch zo signal. In terms of co convinience their app is the closest to WhatsApp.

    • asap@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      9 hours ago

      You could use Beeper, which connects with Whatsapp without needing the app installed.

    • countrypunk@slrpnk.net
      6·
      16 hours ago

      That’s weird. I use WhatsApp daily without Google play services and it doesn’t do that. I have a pixel 7a

      • Cris16228@lemmy.today
        3·
        15 hours ago

        I have installed WhatsApp without GServices and got delayed/no notifications and ~50% of my battery was WhatsApp in background. Brand new battery (?) on a refurbished Pixel 8. With minimum use, I used to get around 2PM with ~30% battery while now, I can get to 15% to 9PM with roughly more usage than before.

        No idea why

    • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
      3·
      15 hours ago

      I personally have no notifications (aside from SMS, calls and calendar). Not like I would be checking the phone when I suddenly hear a notification anyway, only when already deciding to check it.

      Simplex apparently does a similar thing in terms of draining battery for its notifications, I just didn’t allow it to run in the background in the settings. Maybe this could work for Whatsapp if you’re willing to ditch notifications?

      • Cris16228@lemmy.today
        3·
        12 hours ago

        Maybe this could work for Whatsapp if you’re willing to ditch notifications?

        I need it for work so no? I can’t