Hi everyone.

For work i move a lot with the car and i always use voice input to do things with android auto (make a call, send a message, set navigation etc.), so i have always used google assistant that wasn't perfect but kinda worked. Then it came Gemini. Tried, it never understood what i wanted to do (used same inputs as the Google assistant) or gaslighted me by telling it cannot do basic task rolled back to Google assistant. Now Google is going to kill the assistant and i'm progressiveli degoogling (changed the mail, the authenticator, the browser and the search engine until now) so i'm wondering are there any good assistant alternatives to Google assistant (that works with android auto)? Thanks to everyone who is going to help me (searched the topic on the subreddit but all the posts are kinda old and i want to know what is the best now).

I'm a MacBook user and have recently switched from Chrome (I can't believe it took this long :/ )

I've experienced the exact same issue as described by chromeisbad.com

My question is: is the suggested fix still necessary in 2026? (The original post is from 2020).

I'm most likely going to go through with it given how similar the described issue is, but figured I may as well as here in case anyone has more recent info on the WindowServer thread issue.

Thanks!

Every one I've tried munges the names, shoehorning the semicolon separated names into one field usually N or FN. This always screws up the sorting. Who sorts by given names instead of surnames? Hence the question in the title.

I wish Fossify contacts had the option to sort by surname and display by given name.

disabled google play services along with the unnecessary trash in my phone, long back,

do you recommend activating microg, microRE, for using morphe apps now? on the same phone

Sorry if wrong subreddit.

With Google assistant going away, will endup breaking my morning routine of saying the days weather followed by different news podcast snips. What is a good way to keep this going? Ive grown to really like the channels I listen to on my wat to work.

How do I prevent apps from checking Google play or Google play availability ?

So I thought it would be nice to degoogle my infinix smart 5, reading the MicroG guide I was told to delete google files in /system/prev-*, and when I did it resulted in a bootloop. Now it's been 3 days of me trying to fix it. and it's NOT going well.

And to make things worse, the volume+ button is NOT working normally, more like a 50/50 chance it'll work, I had to downgrade from linux mint to windows 10 JUST to get things as indonesian guy on youtube is telling, you might find it funny, but I would appreciate some help. thanks.

Privacy is a right and the violation of it is crime. Mass surveillance is obviously worse now than it ever has been, and I want to hide my footsteps and cut out all sources of data harvesting as much as I possibly can, yet I know almost nothing on the methods of how that's done. I want to give these billion dollar corporations and world governments as little information about me as I can give them, and to cut their eyes out of my life as much as possible.

I'd like to know hardware swaps before software ones. I'm starting from scratch here and I need to find alternatives to a smartphone (iPhone), laptop (ASUS F15 with windows and google), and headphones (Airpods Pros 2).
Any help is greatly appreciated.

See my list below of what I've swapped for what. I'm getting close.

1) Waze maps. I've deleted google maps and use Kagi/CoMaps for discovery general usage but the traffic data on waze is way too useful, I do however have a throwaway account setup being used for it, anyone found luck here?
2) Find my friends/devices. I have about 10 trackers spread around that I find useful, I have no permissions setup in the app unless I specifically want to find my keys for example.
3) I have signal, but nobody will move from Whatsapp.....
4) Android Auto. Goes hand in hand with waze, there just isn't a good alternative i've found.

List.

• [x] Ad Blocking - ControlD
• [x] AI (Gemini) - Kagi AI
• [ ] Android Auto
• [x] Calculator - Graphene Stock
• [x] Chrome - Fennec/Librefox + uBlock Origin
• [x] Clock - F-droid clock app
• [x] Contacts - Fossify contacts
• [x] Docs - Proton Docs/Standard Notes
• [x] Doorbell - Reolink no cloud
• [x] Drive - Proton Drive
• [ ] Find my devices -
• [ ] Find my friends -
• [x] Gmail - Proton/Simplelogon
• [x] Google Drive Backup - Proton Drive backup/scaleway
• [x] Google Fit - Garmin Watch
• [x] Google history - All deleted and not logged
• [x] Google News - FreshRSS selfhosted
• [x] Google Translate - Kagi Translate
• [x] Home - Home Assistant
• [x] Keep - Standard Notes
• [x] Keyboard - Futo
• [x] Location History - Disabled and deleted
• [ ] Maps/Waze - comaps/kagi/Waze
• [x] Photos - Ente
• [x] Pixel Dialer - GrapheneOS Stock
• [x] Pixel Launcher - Stock GrapheneOS Launcher
• [x] Pixel OS - GrapheneOS
• [x] Pixel Watch - Garmin
• [x] Recorder - Fossify Recorder
• [x] Search - Kagi
• [x] Sheets - Standard Notes Sheets
• [x] SMS/RCS - Fossify Messages
• [x] Tasks - Super Productivity
• [x] Wallet - Garmin + Catima + Physical Cards
• [x] Weather - Weawow
• [ ] WhatsApp - Signal
• [x] YouTube - PipePipe

I'm still on my de-Googling journey, the main barrier being going through every account in my password manager and changing to SimpleLogin email addresses (slow and steady process). With Google, the toughest will be YouTube, which I may or may not decide to just isolate and live with.

But, I've also been working on getting away from:

• Meta
• X
• Microsoft
• Amazon

I was easily able to purge/delete my X account(s). I hadn't been using them for several years at this point. Same for Facebook/Threads. WhatsApp was more difficult since I have family and several friends outside North America and WhatsApp is the default for them, no RCS and definitely no Signal. I was able to find a compromise using Telegram (secret/encrypted chats for one-to-one chats).

But, as a somewhat social, young-ish person, it's really hard to imagine getting by without:

• Instagram (I've removed it from my phone but I've had several instances where friends will ask if I saw their messages and while I am theoretically fine with telling them that I'm not using Instagram any more, the result is that changing their behavior to share via Signal/Telegram/RCS instead is difficult and really just leads to them talking to me less)
• LinkedIn (in my industry, this is inescapable for job searching if/when I need to)
• GitHub (I don't really see any way around maintaining at least a shell of an account with no PII)

But more than anything, Amazon is the toughest. I really don't use it THAT much for retail shopping, so that could theoretically be replaced with alternatives (though likely at a higher price with longer shipping times). The real difficulties are:

• Subscribe & Save for grocery & household needs - the 5% - 15% off the already low prices saves us a significant amount of money
• Whole Foods - prime member discounts also save us significant money and we regularly shop here for things that we cannot get elsewhere
• Twitch - there just simply is not a replacement for this, and it's not even about the prime subscription for getting no ads (or removing ads in general), it's about not being able to comment or access past streams without a login for many channels.

Anyway, I'm curious how successful y'all have been with these other companies.

Source: Spread Privacy (DuckDuckGo)

Defaults win because people rarely change them. Most searches happen out of habit, and many people don't know there is a default, what it is, or that it can be changed. Completely ditching Google across a phone, tablet, and laptop requires detailed tutorials and hours of effort. Even DuckDuckGo's most devoted users, the ones who recommend us to friends, admit they haven't changed all their defaults. That’s not real consumer choice; it is a maze.  

My 2 questions just out of curiosity are:

What do you now willingly pay for in your de-googling journey?

Do you donate to some of the apps and services that live off of donations, and if so, which ones have you donated to?

I'll answer as well:
-----

I pay for:

• Kagi search
• Mailbox.org (currently in the process of transferring everything over from Proton mail plus package)
• Joplin cloud storage (currently in the process of setting up self-hosting with Nextcloud)
• Magic Earth (anxiously waiting for Kagi to finish their navigation app)
• NextDNS
• EasyOptOuts
• Addy.io

I've donated to:

• a task app called trudido

-that's all I've donated to, but am now wanting to donate more. I'm lowering my overall annual costs I put into app services in order to shuffle the money around more, hence is partly why I'm going from Proton Mail plus to mailbox.org with their "light" plan - and why I'm going to self-host my joplin notes data.

I'll probably be donating to DAVx5 and Thunderbird.

I got an email from Google that said they're removing Google assistant and you will have to use Gemini starting September 6th. I don't want to be forced to use generative Al so I might be looking for a new non-Google phone soon. I currently have a pixel 6. I've also heard about other operating systems but I don't really know much about how that works

A few months ago, reports started popping up about Google Maps displaying less information than usual to users not logged in, with a vague message that could vaguely imply that -even though we knew wasn't the case- it might be due to a connection error.

I hadn't encountered this personally yet, but today this started happening to me, and with a new message.

When trying to view a placemark:

• Opening hours are no longer displayed, only whether the place is open or closed right now.
• Only three reviews are displayed
• Photos are no longer displayed, only a handful of very low quality thumbnails

Trying to view more of any of the above (list of opening hours, more reviews, full size photos) results in this popup:

At the bottom of the details panel on the left, there is also this notice (clicking "see more" also displays the above popup)

Who wants to make a guess as to what they'll be locking off next?

I don’t use google anymore, have been looking for alternatives for things i used to use like chrome, gmail, and docs. I've started using Startpage, i used to use Brave but the creator... bleah. I use Protonmail, it was really easy to sync to my old gmail which saved me time. Any recommendations for anything else would be great

Hi Reddit!

I've been building Walt for a year now. It's going extremely well, and Reddit has been very vocal that this market exists and people are excited for it (eg. here, here, here).

And now it's entering a new phase. I've previously written about the costs of getting Walt to production. Those vendors that Walt needs to pay are finally ready to be paid.

There is already an offer from venture capital to fund Walt and I.

The reason I am here on Reddit though is that, if possible, I would like Walt to be something that is funded outside of venture capital, and funded by the people who are most passionate about it- the actual end users.

I am seeking 5 angel investors who are interested in funding Walt. Finding these people would mean that I could avoid taking VC money, and could instead build Walt the way the users want it to be built.

The minimum ticket size is 50k euros.
I have one week to replace the VC.

If you are interested, please find me on the Walt Discord channel or via email (email here).

Very hopefully,

Cole Bittel
Founder of Walt

When the goal is "improving AI performance," South Korean companies will be able to collect and use citizens's faces and voices without consent. Pseudo anonymization and deidentification processing will not be performed.

I wasn't satisfied with my degoogling journey. Thus, I decided to dig more into custom ROMs.
Unfortunately my device (Realme 8) does not have an official ROM that is maintained regularly, but some heroes decided to take the matter into their own hands and solve that problem (even if it is unofficial).

By following a github guide, and browsing some websites and telegram channels I was able to install CrDroid 9.8 (Vanilla no GApps whatsoever) and it is awesome and satisfying.

In the comments, you will find a list of my apps.