De-Googlifying - my journey

redgek · April 22, 2019, 8:55pm

Shit, here we go again

So I installed Lineage OS 16 on my phone. No Gapps, microG instead. Tried to debloat as much as possible, without being too in the way.

BTW, the phone is Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017)

The ROM

Battery drain is like 2x/3x compared to stock ROM
max volume on the speaker seems to be lower. Not that I use it much, but sometimes I put someone I talk to on the speaker while doing other shit
weird screen brightness scaling, seems like the last 20% controls like 80% of the brightness
The ROM build is third party, as there is no Android 9 official LOS build (maybe build myself later)
seems snappy
no bloat (including Samsung and Google bloat) cept what I installed, more free space
ease of control of the device (as in what is turned on, what is installed)

All in all, wouldn’t recommend on my device.

The Apps

Magisk - for root
AdAway - now that I am rooted, I can ad block all I want
AFWall+ - firewall on my phone? yes please!
Simple Apps - File Manager, Gallery, Notes
F-Droid - duh
Yalp Store - to download proprietary shit from Play store (like bank and security app)
Firefox - web
Forecastie - weather (just trying out, based on OpenWeatherMap)
NewPipe - youtube that plays in the background (recommended by @SesameStreetThug)
Open Camera
OsmAnd+ - offline maps, instead of HERE WeGo that I used to use (free on F-Droid)
QKSMS - sms (recommended by @SesameStreetThug)
ProtonMail ( is actually proprietary )
Telegram ( is actually garbage coz needs ur phone#)
Gadgetbridge - fitness band/“smart” watch
https://masterpassword.app/ - password manager

And a few more propriety I had to have.

The apps generally seems to be good, or at least good enough. As most of them are open-source I don’t complain at all.

Thoughts

I’ll roll with this for some time, even though the battery life is horrendous. I’ll try and use the OsmAnd+ maps and compare them with HERE WeGo. AFAIK both use OpenStreetMap data.