De-Googling Any Android Phone! (Google Apps Alternatives)

i d googled my pixel 5 meaning it has almost no google services running or google apps installed and honestly the experience hasn't been all that dreadful it's still running under 12 so there are probably some google services running in the background still it's impossible to go completely google less unless you switch to an iphone but still we're back to a vanilla interface now why would anyone want to do this it's mainly for privacy purposes even though i do love google as a company and i think they have vastly improved the security on android especially on under 12 there are still some things that they've done in the past that have made people lose their trust for example back in 2018 it was discovered that google services still tracked their users even if they toggled off the location history setting with an android or an iphone even till this day there are still lawsuits against google claiming that it's nearly impossible to stop their constant surveillance in 2019 google also admitted that their employees can listen in on private audio recordings from people's smart home speakers only so that they can improve the voice recognition technology pretty creepy later that year google was even accused of secretly sharing its users personal data with advertisers and not providing sufficient control over the data being sent that's just the tip of the iceberg there's so much more where that came from if you're honestly really interested this article from cupwire does a fantastic job of opening your eyes to every privacy breach that the tech giant has done for the past decade and some of these will make your jaw drop or even make you want to toss your phone out now i don't really want to put the spotlight on google since they aren't the only tech company out there that have mishandled their users data in the past other tech giants like facebook amazon apple samsung have all done the same thing and it's gotten people worried about their privacy so if you're paranoid let's go over some methods to stop your oem or carrier from tracking you the first method is just toggling off every anti-privacy setting that's enabled by default without you even knowing it the first one will stop google from tracking your every move on the internet just so they can show you personalized ads so jump into the system settings scroll down until you see google then tap on ads and delete your advertising id then go back and tap on personalize using shared data and in this menu every google app on here is allowed to use your on device data for who the hell knows what the fine print down below just says it'll provide you with better recommendations and suggestions um i just turned off everything in this menu as well next we're going to stop google from sending your app usage data device details and diagnostics within the google menu just tap on the three dots select usage and diagnostics and turn that off there's also a feature called find my device which is really useful for ringing your phone if you can't find any in your house and you left it on silence or if someone stole it and you want to track it down but if you rather just turn it off you can just do so within the google section you just have to select find my device and toggle off the big switch your phone could also be constantly scanning for nearby devices to make it easier to seamlessly connect to a bluetooth device like your wireless earbuds or your tv but if you don't want your phone to constantly communicate just go into the google menu select devices and sharing tap on devices and toggle off scan for nearby devices then go back select nearby connections and also flip off the switch go back one last time and make sure that nearby share is toggled off it's a lot of work but it's worth it and it can even save you a bit of battery life google also has a bad habit of keeping a history of everything you've done including logging every site you visited videos you watched and where you've physically gone it's pretty scary let's stop this again in the google menu select manage your google account go to the data and privacy section and there there should be something called history settings here you can stop google from saving your web and app activity location history and even youtube history however let's say you don't mind that google keeps a small history of where you've been just in case you want to remember what you did on a specific date or what video you just watched earlier so that way you can find out the name in that case you can instead enable the auto delete feature which instead of going cold turkey it deletes activities that are only older than 3 18 or even 36 months and while we're in the data and privacy tab there's a way to see what apps or sites are allowed to access your google account because you most likely even access in the past and you never revoke them so to see what these apps are just scroll down until you come across a title called third party apps with account access and then within that menu you'll get that entire list from there you can revoke access to any app you don't use anymore definitely make sure you do this because you don't want an old app to accidentally obtain a data breach and it has access to your google account you can also find this menu within the system settings under google then settings for google apps and then connected apps it even lets you switch between your google accounts which is much more convenient thumbs up for that also within the data and privacy tab right above the third party app section you can get a summary of the google services you use and the data that's been saved if you don't use a specific service anymore like stadia you can delete it so that it doesn't have your data saved oh and while you're in this menu you'll even find the option to delete your entire google account permanently if you'd like just in case you despise google that much or if you just want to delete an old account that you don't use anymore finally if you go back to the main menu of the data and privacy tab and hop over to the security tab here you'll find ways to better protect your google account including removing old phones from your account seeing what devices are currently signed into your account which apps have access to your passwords and even see which of your passwords were found in a data breach an extremely useful menu google is also backing up everything on your phone into their cloud including your photos videos call history contacts etc so that when you switch to a new phone it'll be easier to retrieve that data instead of just starting from scratch i leave it on but if you want to stop that just go into the google menu select backup and toggle off backup by google one last but not least if you're concerned about your phone listening to your conversation or knowing your location you can disable the camera location and microphone from the quick settings though the location and camera tile are only available if you have android 12. if you're running anything lower there's still a hidden tile that you can enable called sensors off which instantly turns off all the sensors on your phone including the camera microphone location etc to enable it just go into the settings system developer options if you don't know how to enable that menu just look it up and then scroll down until you see quick settings developer tiles on that page enable the sensors off option and then look in your quick settings panel to find that new sensors off tile wow those were a lot of settings really makes you realize how much of your data is actually being moved around and now that we turned off all those anti-privacy trackers um the next step in googling your phone is replacing all your google apps which is something tough because some of them like google maps or gmail are very reliable but also provide some good alternatives that are open source and free but before i do i want to thank 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you can also join the other 400 000 members who are already investing with masterworks so don't wait and don't miss out on this offer anyways back to the d googling if you have a tough time uninstalling any google system apps or other bloatware try using this program called universal android bloater it should allow you to disable most of your system apps and it supports a ton of manufacturers now let's start with the play store this is extremely hard to replace since if you don't use any third-party store you won't be able to install paid apps unless you use a piracy store which i don't recommend because for one you could obtain a malicious malware or two it's just a slap in the face to the app developer instead what i would do is install all of your paid apps from the play store first and then disable the play store manually with universal android loader after that i recommend installing aurora store it works just like the play store allowing you to install and update any of the latest free apps the interface is really well done and doesn't throw a bunch of advertising on the screen plus you can bet that none of these apps have malware since they come directly from google servers you also don't need to sign into anything to start using this store and you can even spoof your device model language and location another great alternative to the play store is f droid it doesn't provide every same app but it does come with a ton of free open source apps a lot of them you can't even find on the play store or lastly you can use apk mirror which is just like aurora store but instead of being an app it's a website so it can't really notify you when one of your apps gets updated unless you use push bullet so it's not as convenient as i said gmail is also a tough one to replace especially since androids don't even let you use the phone without connecting to a google account first the only workaround would be to flash a custom rom still you can just keep the email alive and not use it and instead turn to something like k9ml which can't be more secure and it's also open source the interface looks like an older version of gmail but it still works extremely similarly and amazingly it also supports pgp which lets you encrypt your emails with someone else who also uses k9 mail you just need to install an add-on app called open keychain and overall solid gmail alternative that's very privacy driven now if you'd rather switch email providers to stay away from google entirely protomel or tutanota are two very great choices they're both way more secure than gmail by providing end-to-end encryption having a no log policy in our open source they're also hosted in countries with some of the strongest privacy laws and they each have all the basic email features so that you don't feel left out i honestly prefer to tanatamore because it has a better looking interface and even includes an encrypted calendar the only downside with both of these apps is that they're not as feature packed as gmail and with the free version they don't provide as much storage space out the gate for messages i'm just going to keep it short because most of you are probably well informed on which are the best privacy driven messaging apps out there the top two are whatsapp and facebook messenger nah i'm just kidding they're actually signal and telegram signal is the more secure one since it doesn't collect any data except for your phone number while telegram collects your phone number contacts an ip address still both are really secure with end-to-end encryption and telegram is a lot more customizable than signal if you want to replace gboard there are also plenty of options out there but if we're sticking to privacy driven apps floris board from f droid is by far my favorite choice it's open source and respect your privacy plus it's incredibly customizable it has an action toolbar up top just like gboard to let you quickly bring up the clipboard one-handed mode and the undo redo buttons i also enjoy that it comes with glide typing which surprisingly not a lot of fast keyboard apps support plus there's so much more that you can do with it my second favorite alternative is open board since it looks extremely similar to g board without all the fancy bells and whistles it's not as feature packed as florist and doesn't support glide typing but it's also 100 free and open source chrome is one of the easier google apps to replace since there are so many great options out there if you don't want to steer too far away from the chrome look but still want to stop all the google tracking ungoogled chromium android is your best bet it's a lightweight browser based on google chromium but it still removes all of google's web services dependencies basically only keeping the backbone and ui it doesn't even have a landing page or a way to google anything through the address bar instead the search engine can be set to something like duckduckgo it provides more privacy control and transparency but it can only be found on github if you prefer just to switch to a different browser altogether firefox is by far the best choice out there as a matter of fact i would even take it a step further and use a firefox client like fenik f droid to get even more protection don't get me wrong firefox is already pretty secure even providing enhanced tracking protection buffet includes all that and stops the collecting of telemetry data which firefox does it still even includes all those extra firefox goodies like dropping the address bar to the bottom and supporting add-ons like ad blockers https everywhere and more chrome still doesn't support extensions on android and still doesn't do that great of a job stopping trackers google maps is by far the toughest app to replace because it's the best in the game and depending on your area it could be the only option out there still if you'd like to get the ultimate privacy osmond is pretty much the only good option out there it's based on openstreetmap works offline and they don't collect any data for the most part navigation works just fine and it's able to show you the eta arrival time somewhat well based on traffic still it's really laggy slow to react missing some local businesses and when searching for a location it has trouble locking in a destination it'll instead provide you with search results for the nearest matches of the street name so yeah it's not the best convenient option out there but it's the best privacy driven option for maps i love google photos especially since they make it very convenient for backing up and syncing everything however if you're looking to also dump it for something open source and just as secure an app called stingle photos is a great choice it claims that it backs up your media with end-to-end encryption and unlike other companies they only store the bare minimum of metadata the only downside is that the free version only supports one gigabyte of storage space almost nothing especially if you have a ton of 4k video recordings if you don't trust backing up any of your media on a third-party server and prefer keeping everything local i recommend you use aves gallery it's open source and doesn't collect any personal data plus i love that when you tap on a photo you can see so much information about it much more than what even google photos provides you can even see where you took all your photos on a map since it supports open stream map if you don't have google maps installed finally to speed things up here i'll quickly say some of my top favorite replacements for other popular google apps and you guys can do your research on those just so you know that everyone that i mention is free to download open source and secure so let's get that out of the way a good replacement for google docs sheets and slides would be only office documents since they also allow you to co-edit different documents in real time for google keeps two great alternatives with a similar ui are notably and quill note to replace the pixel launcher my top choice is either launcher 12.1 or nova launcher 7. and for drive i would turn to mega of course there are other apps to consider like the weather video players music players calculators calendars etc so if you'd like to find other great privacy driven replacements there's this mega post on the subreddit page called r slash android apps where you can find so many more open source replacement apps oh and this developer called simple mobile tools also made a ton of great open source essentials for things like the messaging app calendar clock count calculator dialer etc make sure to check them out now after replacing everything with fost apps it's more than likely that a ton of your third-party apps are tracking you or even keeping a log of your user data activity it's a bit concerning so what i like to use is warden to detect every tracker and logger across all my apps trust me the results will shock you apps that you wouldn't even think have trackers like offline games or wallpaper apps actually have the most luckily if you have root you can also block all the trackers and loggers with a single button the last and best way to de-google your phone is by flashing a custom rom of course it's going to be a bit risky and there is a learning curve to getting it done but once you do it your phone is going to be completely free from big brother if you're not sure which rom to flash the best one for privacy is lineage os it even supports android 12 on its latest 19.1 build plus you don't even need to flash a gaps file because the rom already includes a set of its own open source apps unfortunately its latest version doesn't have that many devices mostly older phones but if you're one of the lucky few who owns a phone that they support definitely try them out another great rom is paranoid android they've also been around for a while and they're mostly known for making fantastic roms that have crazy unique features they're also open source and get really close to aosp as possible which is beautiful but they still include google services and its software unfortunately just like lineage os it doesn't support as many devices with their latest version but it's still an excellent rom to try out either way those are all the ways to de-google your android phone without switching to apple it does take determination and a bit of effort to get it out of the spotlight with those big corporations but once you do you'll be all set if you found this video to be helpful please be sure to drop a thumbs up and save it in your favorites to find it later and even share it with your friends who are privacy freaks i also highly recommend you get subscribed with the notification bell turned on because quality videos like this get released every week and you're not going to want to miss out either way thank you so much for watching and i'll catch you in the next one kapow you

Channel: HowToMen

Views: 427,649

Keywords: howtomen, de-google, degoogle phone, de-google phone, de-google android, de-google android phone, remove google android, remove google account android, remove google account from phone, remove google from samsung, delete google account, delete google android, delete google, google, android, de-google 2022, android 2022, degoogle

Id: RQUEgwgV99I

Length: 20min 23sec (1223 seconds)

Published: Wed May 25 2022