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posted by Fnord666 on Monday July 30 2018, @03:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the at-least-get-a-receipt dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

As soon as you start up a new Android phone, you get prompted to sign in with your Google account—but what if you don't want to do that? Maybe you want to take advantage of Android but limit what Google knows about you, or maybe you just prefer the alternative apps; whatever the case, here's how to live a Google-free Android life.

Right from the start we'll be honest and say it's not easy using Android without Google—but it is possible. If you want a more convenient life, then you need to sign right in when prompted. The big miss if you don't is the Google Play Store, but here we'll show you how to get around that and various other obstacles along the way.

We're assuming you're starting with a brand new Android phone fresh from the factory. You can de-Google-ify an existing Android handset, but you'll need to reset it first through the Settings app, to get back to the original setup screen. That means all your existing apps and data get wiped, so you'll need backups of all your important stuff somewhere.

Welcome to your new (or factory reset) Android phone! The prompt to sign in with Google arrives about five screens in, after you've chosen your language and connected up to wifi. When you're prompted to sign in, hit Skip instead, then hit Skip again to confirm that yes, you really do want to use Android without a Google account.

A couple of screens later, Google very kindly asks if you want to opt in to some extra Google services: Location tracking and system diagnostic reports. If you're not happy with either or both of these options, turn the relevant toggle switches off, then hit Agree to continue (you can't use a phone with regular Google-provided Android on it without agreeing to some basic terms and conditions).

And... you should then be in. Don't worry if you see a few Google apps, because they won't be connected to anything—Google Photos, for example, can work as a local image library manager without actually connecting to the cloud or a Google account. If there are any apps you want to get rid of, long-press on their icon and drag the icon up to the Uninstall link at the top.

[...] The big miss if you don't connect your Android phone to your Google account is the Google Play Store: Try and load up the Play Store app and you'll just be met with the sign in screen again. To get around this, you need to start sideloading apps through your Android phone's web browser.

In times gone by you would need to authorize "unknown" apps (not from the Play Store) in Settings, but modern versions of Android ask for authorization on an app-by-app basis. You've got two choices here: Either embrace the Amazon App Store, which isn't as comprehensive as Google's but has most of the big-name apps, or transfer apps over one by one as you need them from the excellent APKMirror repository.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @04:39PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @04:39PM (#714805)

    OsmAnd navigation is way better than other options offline, but it is inferior if you are dependent on real-time traffic updates. OSM map detail is better than Google in some regions (e.g. Puerto Rico and India), but probably worse in others.

    https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.osmand.plus/ [f-droid.org]

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @10:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @10:07AM (#715113)

    I found it to be far better than Google maps. There were a couple of weird routing choices. Overall I wound rather it. We had a cheap phone just to stick on the dashboard for navigation.