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      I’ve been running Android on various phones without GAPPS (no Play Store, no Google Maps, etc.) for more than five years. I get almost all of my apps from F-Droid. I do get funny looks when people offer me the advice of “Just install this app”. I usually respond with “I’m very particular about which apps I install on my phone”. It’s a lot easier than trying to explain what GAPPS is and why I don’t want it, and what F-Droid is, and so on.

      Adapting to using OsmAnd instead of Google Maps is the biggest hurdle in my opinion. Google Maps has a much bigger database of place names and street addresses than OpenStreetMaps does. Using OsmAnd to navigate to a restaurant sometimes requires looking up the restaurant’s address on their website, and then inputting that to OsmAnd, rather than just searching for the restaurant name in OsmAnd itself.

      I use my browser for a lot of things that other people would probably use an app for (banking, taxi, etc.).

      These compromises cost me some some convenience but to me it is worth it to be feeding a little less data to the surveillance capitalists.

      One great thing about running a de-googled phone is it pushes you towards apps and online services whose primary purpose is not to exploit you. For example, if you can’t easily install the Instagram app on your phone you might more likely to get an account at a Pixelfed instance and use that instead (the Fedilab app, which is available on F-Droid supports Pixelfed). Can’t easily sync with your Dropbox or Google Cloud? Maybe try Nextcloud.

      If you like tinkering with open-source/free-software stuff, and you are uncomfortable with surveillance-as-a-business-model, and your work and social lives don’t depend to heavily on proprietary apps/networks I’d recommend giving degoogled Android a try.