For a while now I’ve made an attempt to eliminate the use of Google from my daily life. Around 18 months ago I picked up a Pixel 3A and installed Ubuntu Touch on it. While it was fully functional technically speaking it was an abysmal experience overall. I may detail that experience later, but the Tl;dr is that I flashed CalyxOS on the phone and that was the biggest catalyst to this change.
Since then I’ve upgraded to a Pixel 5 which appears to be as close to a perfect phone as I can find. The Pixel 5 with CalyxOS works better than any iphone I’ve previously had and Calyx runs faster and has better battery life than the native AndroidOS the phone came with.
With Google Play services replaced with MicroG and the Google Play store replaced with F-Droid and Aurora the only experience lacking on CalyxOS is Android Auto.
The last services of Google I’ve been using were Youtube, Youtube Music, and Google Maps.
This week I’m making a push to replace Youtube with LibreTube and Youtube Music with RiMusic. I tested NewPipe and while very close to LibreTube in functionality I just liked the overall design of LibreTube a bit more.
There were several YT Music alternatives that were good: viMusic, Harmony, and several others. I liked that viMusic let me import playlists and had a backup function. The interface is leagues ahead of the official YT Music UI to boot.
Google Maps is the last sticking point. I have Organic Maps, which works fine for navigation. However I’ve never found anything close to as reliable as Google Maps is for store hours, reviews, and photos of businesses.
If anyone knows of a solution to this, even if it is a seperate app, please let me know. If there was even a way to use Apple Maps on my phone I’d rather do that.
Wish me luck!