Try using Organic Maps for OSM. Much more beautiful than osmAnd imo. As for office, try using LibreOffice. Very beautiful and smooth software!
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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Privacy
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thank you so much for the suggestions; do you know if there is a way to use Organic Maps on iphone? similarly, I did use LibreOffice many years ago when I was using Ubuntu on my old laptop, but ever since i moved to macbook, i never thought about it, i should give it a try once again. thank you again for sharing!
also, you have no idea how happy you made me by giving me my first comment on my first lemmy post!!
There is an Organic Maps ios app which I use to mostly good effect. Occasionally have to fall back to Google maps and then I make a note to update OSM with the details missing where possible later.
thank you so much for the suggestions; do you know if there is a way to use Organic Maps on iphone?
No worries <3! Isn't it on the App store? On looking it up, it shows that it's available here. I don't know though, as I don't own any Apple devices.
I did use LibreOffice many years ago ... i should give it a try once again.
Definitely! I'm a sucker for the native gtk apps. So I may be a little biased when I say this, but it's WAY better than Microsoft office from a UI standpoint. All Microsoft products just feel cheap to me.
also, you have no idea how happy you made me by giving me my first comment on my first lemmy post!!
Awww I'm so glad haha. Guess what? I'm developing a Lemmy client app right now, and this is the first "real" comment I made which was outside the pure test oriented comments! Interesting firsts, eh?
<3 wow it is a big coincidence! i wish your lemmy client app becomes very famous :D is it an ios app? do you want to share the link if it is available for everyone to download?
agreed on cheap MS products. i feel the same too.
<3 wow it is a big coincidence! i wish your lemmy client app becomes very famous :D
Awww thanks!! <3
is it an ios app?
Yes, eventually. I'm developing in react native (one codebase, many platforms). I own an Android though, so all physical testing is on this phone. Therefore, all alphas and stuff like that are being built for Android for now. Unfortunately, building and testing for iOS is a massive pain in the ass. I think I would have to take the help of some iOS dev for this in the future/get an old iPhone or something.
do you want to share the link if it is available for everyone to download?
Aww thanks for the interest! It's not ready enough imo to share it publicly for now. However, it's getting there quickly! Can't wait for the day I can share the repo link on the Lemmy app development communities!
wow, this sounds really amazing, it sounds like you are putting a lot of work to create this app. i wish you the best!! and rooting for success >00<
Well done on deGoogling. Until the recent Apple ADP switch off in the UK I was as entrenched in Apple's walled garden as you were in Google's.
Now I'm 100% Apple free. I even swapped my one year old iPhone 15 Pro Max for a Pixel with CalyxOS installed.
Welcome to having an actual private life. It's great.
I'm right there alongside you, was pretty deep in Apple and decided to pick up an unlocked Pixel 8 and start working on de-Appleing and de-Googling as much as possible. I'm using Lineage for now, after trying Graphene for a bit.
I'm beyond pissed at how much money I've spent on apple products that are either almost entirely useless now (apple watch) or are severely nerfed (airpods, Apple TV, just even signing into a fucking Apple account with MFA) now that I don't use an iPhone.
hey, what made you move from grafene to lineage? i heard its best to use grafene on pixels.
I wrote up a whole thing on Discord but can't find it now, but the gist of it is that at the moment I'm not particularly worried about my phone being compromised via exploits and my safety isn't immediately at risk. My big motivator at the moment is trying to give Google duller claws to sink into me, and Lineage is fine for that at the moment.
Graphene due to its nature sacrifices a lot of quality of life features in the name of security. I found that a few apps would simply segfault on open, even with the security options disabled for the app. Multitasking was essentially non-existent, swiping between two apps trying to reference then type something? Good luck, both apps will do a complete reload on every swipe. Small things like that. Graphene is definitely a viable option if or when shit absolutely hits the fan and I am concerned about safety and exploits, but for now I'm much more happy on Lineage.
Understood, thanks for taking the time to explain!
I made the exact opposite move xD. I moved from Lineage to iphone since I felt it is a good middle ground for me.
Using Apple to DeGoogle is a tough one to swallow
:) haha, yes you are right and i do realize this. i guess i am doing what suits my preferences and life the best and choosing the lesser evil. as i mentioned in my post, flashing custom roms on my devices for the remaining years of my life is not convenient for me.
Flashing Graphene on Pixel or eOS on supported Nothing devices is quite easy TBH. I might even do that
what is your smartphone setup like currently?
I'm on an old Motorola with Lineage. I don't want to pay $500 for a phone so I was thinking of getting the Nothing CMF and installing eOS
Digital Privacy is an ever evolving endeavor. What I was okay with a year ago, isn't the same as where I am today.
I am still mid-journey of de-googling, de-microsofting, de-big-techifying my life.
The more and more the digital landscape changes, the more and more we have to be cautious of.
I went from using all the google services, all of the microsoft services, and more of big tech's services. But at what cost? What was free really only made me the product. My data was and still is to some degree being used, bought, sold by many different providers.
So I have been working towards self-hosting anything that matters to me. File storage, self hosted. Media consumption, self hosted (mostly.)
I have one as far as running a pihole, with my own upstream DNS. Mix that with the only way to access my self hosted things through VPN. And beyond that other security/privacy measures.
The goalpost for being more private, and more secure, is ever changing. The goal is to minimize my exposure.
thanks for your response. I completely agree with you; the goalpost is always changing. it is really wonderful that you are doing a lot of self-hosting! do you use nextcloud for serving your self hosted files on the cloud? i guess self-hosting won't work for me since i am usually always on the move :D
I don't Nextcloud currently, but I have considered it. Currently I have everything I want on a drive connected to my docker box, and if I need it I SCP it to or from that server. My need for files stored at home isn't exactly huge. But nextcloud or similar is in the pipeline.
I am on the move often too, but because I can VPN into my network, and use the pihole+unbound DNS on my GrapheneOS phone all the time, I always have access to my stuff.
a drive connected to my docker box, and if I need it I SCP it to or from that server
if you find time, can you please explain what this means and how do you do this? i am thinking it is something like an external hard drive connected to internet in some way (but i cannot imagine how :( ), and sorry i have no idea what scp is >00< thank you
My apologies; I have a computer running docker, who I hosts a plethora of services. I have an external drive connected to it (because i don't have a NAS) and have it mounted to my underlying OS on that Docker server computer. And each container than needs it, mounts directories from that drive.
All of this is internal network only. And another server manages VPN connectivity to my home network. So I have remote access to everything I need with minimal ports forwarded.
I can highly recommend Magic Earth as a Google Maps alternative (also available for Android). It uses OSM data and has some traffic info. It's not as good as Google, but it's the closest I've found so far.
thank you for the suggestion!
do you know how it compares to Organic Maps as somebody else commented below, in case you have used both. thanks!
I actually use both apps, I find Organic Maps a lot nicer for looking at a map and navigating by foot or bike, and Magic Earth seems to pick more sensible car routes some times. Also the live traffic data makes it more fitting for car navigation (Organic Maps doesn't have traffic data).
I have started this in the last year, I hadn’t considered it by breaking it down by media consumption/storage/browsing habits etc. I am so sick of feeling alike a sales target, and a tool that can be influenced. I do also like the idea of attacking it by provider. I have recently started to cut Amazon out, gotten rid of my Alexa’s, stopped buying and my fire sticks are going soon.
An area I struggle with is maps and travel. I am iPhone and I like to listen to tunes when I am driving and I rely on maps, for routes and to find local services coffee food etc. sometimes I feel like my own worst enemy in my quests.
I am so sick of feeling alike a sales target, and a tool that can be influenced
yes i had the same feelings, like i do not want to be manipulated and influenced, cutting google out will help a lot in that aspect.
dont be hard on yourself for listening to music, and using iphone for maps and travel, i think these are beneficial services for you that provide you value, so i feel it is ok to use them >00<.
i feel like it is not like we have privacy or we do not have it, it is not 0 or 1, there is a whole range of shades of privacy, and all of us can find a sweet spot. wish you the best in your journey <3
On iPhone/iOS you can download content blockers to have adblocking on it(Limited to Safari only); Personally I use Adguard Pro.
I think I've seen some people use a VPN/DNS to have systemwide blocking but I've not looked into that personally as my router supports it.
I use Collabora Office as my Office Suite, again on iOS; LibreOffice on my computers.
thanks, i will check adguard on safari; did you find it any good as ublock origin on firefox?
never heard about collabora office; i will check this out as well! thanks! are they open source?
collabora office; i will check this out as well! thanks! are they open source?
They're the commercial wing of LibreOffice from what I know for enterprise.
I've never noticed any ads so it does it job for me. As for Collabora Office, It is to my knowledge - https://github.com/CollaboraOnline/online (It's also used for the iOS/Android apps).
thank you, yes i found it now :D
Why iCloud for banking and proton for everything else?
Not OP, but using a similar setup: iCloud for government, banks, and a custom domain with Proton Mail for everything else. A few major banks here in my country have hardcoded domain names to include only Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, and a few local providers. The same is true for the Income Tax portal. Out of the given options, iCloud is relatively more private.
I've encountered a few other websites doing this kind of lazy implementation. Hide My Email by Apple works in such cases too, where I don't want to disclose my primary iCloud address, which is accepted globally especially since it ends with @icloud.com.
yes this is also one of my reasons, thank you for posting!
i am really glad you asked this question. my reasoning is as follows, please let me know if you have further thoughts/suggestions on this.
i am assuming that iCloud/Apple do not mine my emails for advertising/profiling purposes. i know that proton does not. most of my banking/financial dealings is with governmental entities. i do not want to be seen by banks etc. as the odd man out because they see my protonmail account in their database.
on the other hand, everything else is with companies, which i do not care about that much, hence i use the more private protonmail.
and to reiterate, my main purpose is to stop being profiled by big tech and google. so this icloud/proton combination works for me.
sorry for bad english. pls let me know if you have suggestions! >0_0<
Great job, keep your motivation!
But you shouldn't use any apple product, they are as bad for privacy as using Google's one. Do not use an iPhone (lineageos is pretty good to use), do not use Apple's services... And keep going
thank you <3
i know but i think apple is the lesser evil since they do not make advertisement their primary business but i dont know. overall i find apple hits a sweet spot for me >00< but maybe someday in the future i will again go back to lineage
Once I get a Linux phone, I'll be totally Google-free. That'll be a sweet day.
there was an ubunutu phone in the works some years ago, i do not know what happened to that :/