I have been running a de-Googled Android phone (a phone that has been set up without Google’s apps and services, or with Google’s apps stripped out) for about a year. The de-Googling happened by accident: my old Pixel stopped getting updates, I bought a used Pixel 7a, and I decided to install GrapheneOS (a privacy-focused Android replacement that removes Google’s default apps and services) instead of the stock Google firmware. After about a month of using the new phone, I realized the official Android apps I had been running for a decade are not the only options, and in most cases they are not the strongest options. I have replaced six of them with open-source alternatives over the last twelve months, and the open-source versions are uniformly stronger.
This is not a roundup of the most popular F-Droid (an app store that hosts only free and open-source Android apps) apps of the year. It is a list of the six replacements I actually use every day, why I switched, and where the official Google version is still the right call.
The setup
GrapheneOS is the base. It is a hardened Android fork that strips out the Google Play Services layer and replaces it with sandboxed microG (an open-source reimplementation of the Google services that lets apps that need Google APIs keep working, in a privacy-respecting way) or nothing. Apps run inside a per-app sandbox like normal Android, but the phone does not phone home to Google in the background. The trade is that some apps assume Google services exist and refuse to run without them. Most open-source apps do not care.
I also run Obtainium (an app installer that pulls APKs, the installable binaries for an Android app, directly from GitHub release pages) for installing and updating the open-source apps. Every app on this list is in the F-Droid catalog or has a public GitHub release page. No Play Store needed.
The six swaps
Photos: Aves Libre instead of Google Photos. Aves Libre is a gallery app with on-device tagging, a clean timeline view, and zero upload of your library. Google Photos is the opposite: it uploads every photo you take, runs on-device machine learning on it, and stores the results in your Google account forever. The catch is that Aves does not back up to the cloud on its own. I back up to a Synology NAS at home over Tailscale (a mesh VPN, a virtual private network that connects devices directly to each other without going through a central server) using Syncthing (a continuous file synchronization tool that keeps folders in sync between devices). The setup took about an hour. The result is a photo library that is on my phone, on my NAS, and nowhere else.
Keyboard: AnySoftKeyboard instead of Gboard. Gboard is the default on every Android phone and it sends every keystroke to Google for autocomplete and voice recognition. AnySoftKeyboard is a FOSS (free and open-source software) keyboard with the same layout, the same swipe-typing, and no network calls. The autocorrect is worse than Gboard’s. That is the only real downside. After about three weeks I stopped noticing.
Browser: Cromite instead of Chrome. Cromite is a Chromium fork (a browser built on the same open-source base code as Chrome, but with the tracking removed) with built-in ad blocking and a strict cookie isolation model. It is the closest thing to a Chrome replacement that does not call home. The extension support is the same as Chrome because the underlying code is the same. I lost three extensions that depended on Google’s sync, gained an ad blocker that actually works, and the page load times on heavy sites dropped by about 20 percent.
Maps: Organic Maps instead of Google Maps. Organic Maps is an offline-first maps app built on OpenStreetMap (a community-maintained open map of the world that anyone can edit, similar to Wikipedia for maps). It does not need a network connection to route you. It does not track your location. It does not show you ads. The routing is a bit worse than Google Maps in dense cities because OpenStreetMap data is not as complete as Google’s, but for highway driving and small towns it is just as good. I used it for a 2,000-mile road trip last summer and never reached for Google Maps once.
Email: K-9 Mail instead of Gmail. K-9 is an open-source email client that talks to any IMAP server (IMAP is the standard protocol email clients use to fetch and sync mail from a mail server). I run Fastmail as my provider, but K-9 would work fine with Gmail, Outlook, or a self-hosted mail server. The unified inbox is the killer feature for me. I have three email accounts and K-9 shows them in one stream. The Gmail app does this too, but only for Google accounts. K-9 does it for anything.
Notes: Standard Notes instead of Google Keep. Standard Notes is end-to-end encrypted (meaning the data is scrambled on your device before it is sent to the server, and only your devices hold the key to decrypt it) and cross-platform. I use it on Android, on Linux, and in a browser tab at work. The free tier is fine. The paid tier ($4.50 per month) adds longer edit history and file attachments. Google Keep is faster and has better handwriting support, but every note you write in Keep is readable by Google’s advertising systems, and there is no way to export the full library in a useful format.
The numbers
A typical day on the de-Googled phone pulls about 1.2 GB of background data with the official Google apps installed. The same phone with the six replacements and a hardened network pulls about 80 MB. The battery lasts about 30 percent longer over a full day. The phone is also noticeably faster because there is no Play Services daemon (a background process that runs constantly and uses CPU and memory) eating CPU cycles in the background.
Trade-offs
These swaps are not free. Some of them cost time, some of them cost features, and one of them cost me a relationship with a real person.
Time is the first cost. The full migration took about a weekend. The hardest part was convincing the banking apps to run without Play Services. Most modern banking apps in the US assume Google services exist and refuse to install. The fix is to enable microG in GrapheneOS and add the banking app’s signature to a list of apps that get sandboxed Play Services access. The setup is per-app and took me about an hour per app.
Features are the second cost. Aves does not have Google’s “Memories” auto-generated video reels. Organic Maps does not have live traffic. AnySoftKeyboard’s autocorrect is genuinely worse than Gboard’s. These are real losses, not aesthetic ones. I notice them about once a week.
Compatibility is the third cost. A small number of apps will simply not run on a de-Googled phone. The Uber app crashes on launch. The Snapchat app refuses to authenticate. The Starbucks app works but its QR code scanner is slower than on a stock phone. For most people, this is the deal-breaker. For me, the Web versions of those services work fine.
The relationship I mentioned is a friend who is a heavy Google Photos user. We used to share albums. When I moved to Aves, those albums stopped syncing for me. She has not brought it up, but I can tell it bothers her. That is the only social cost I have hit, and it is real.
A handful of small things have made the day-to-day experience noticeably better, and they are easy to miss when you first set up the phone.
- Set Obtainium to auto-update on a schedule. Once a week is fine. You stop thinking about updates and the apps stay current.
- Pin Organic Maps to the home screen with a direct tile. The “navigate home” tile cuts about three taps out of every trip.
- Disable Google Photos sync before you delete the app. Otherwise it tries to upload your entire library on the way out.
- Keep a note with the bank app’s microG instructions. You will forget by the next time you set up a new phone.
What I would tell past me
If I could send a message back to the version of me that first installed GrapheneOS, I would say three things.
- Start with Obtainium, not F-Droid. F-Droid is fine for browsing, but Obtainium pulls directly from the upstream GitHub release. You get faster updates and you can pin to a specific version, which matters when an app regresses.
- Do not try to de-Google everything in one weekend. I did and I burned out. The pattern that worked was: replace one app, live with it for two weeks, replace the next one. Six months of steady replacements is better than a weekend of thrashing.
- Keep a Chromebook or a Windows machine around for the apps that will not work. Some things still assume Google services. Trying to force them into a de-Googled phone is a waste of time. Use the right tool for the job.
Bottom line
If you are on the fence about de-Googling, the answer is yes, with the caveat that you should not try to do it on a phone you depend on for work. Get a cheap Pixel, install GrapheneOS, and live with it for a month. The six swaps above are where to start. The battery life alone is worth the weekend.