Asklemmy

Out of curiosity can KDE Connect act as a Find My alternative?

I'm assuming it doesn't work with Jellyfin or Subsonic, does it?

Organic Maps

Looks like it has supper detailed maps, has OpenStreetMap really gotten that good!?

100% with you on Joplin, I use it all the time. I love it. I haven't yet found anything I like more.

I tried Obsidian recently and was turned off because the notes aren't encrypted in place like with Joplin. To me that's just a really nice privacy feature that I don't like the idea of sacrificing, especially not to a not open source project.

Oh shoot! I forgot about Bitwarden, I feel like I use it so much that it just fades into the background now!

I've started filling my neighborhood in openstreetmaps because I want to use Organic Maps

SyncThing - to sync my files between devices and avoid the big corporations cloud (use it for notes, Keepass database, photos, etc)

Amen, sibling.

Logseq - super advanced note taking with tagging and relationships between notes (all store locally)

Quite nice, although I'm still struggling to integrate it with my workflow. I just haven't taken the time to learn how to best use it.

Authpass - opening my Keepass password database on my phone

Do you trust it? Why?

I'm really cautious (nervous) about the program(s) I give access to my kbdx. On the desktop, I've actually code audited the tool I use; I can't as easily do that on Android.

GrapheneOS Camera - just to avoid the Google camera app as I have Google Photos disabled on my phone and needrd a good app that doesn't break when going to view the gallery (since it tries to open Google Photos)

I've been using OpenCamera for this, but recently started using PhotonCamera - it has a great UI.

Simple Gallery - to view my photos on my phone

That's a good one. I ended up with Aves because it allows fairly complex filtering, and the UI is nice.

Signal - I have it but I have very few friends that use it unfortunately

A few years ago, I talked my wider family into using Wire, and now we're all stuck on it. It keeps getting progressively worse with each release, and sooner or later I'm going to have to pick something to replace it. I don't know what that will be, but it will be federated, and it won't mandate IDs tied to a phone number.

Vinyl Music Player - to play my local mp3 files and playlists (I use MusicBee to manage what I sync to the phone as my mp3 library is quite large, and SyncThing to actually copy stuff over)

God, I seem to change music players every couple of months. I guess I've been using Metro for a while and haven't found the thing that irritates me and sends me on a search for a new player, so maybe it'll stick. That's interesting about MusicBee, though - I've been looking for something like that, so thank you!

I'll add to your list:

• PhotoBackup, which is a reliable and fantastic replacement for Photos syncing. This is then tied into PhotoPrism on the server, for web access and sharing. I had to cobble it together, mostly b/c of limitations in PhotoPrism, but it does replace the whole Goog Photos workflow.
• NewPipe, which is superior to the YT app in all ways, and is one of the best OSS all-around mobile apps.
• QKSMS, which I keep coming back to. I haven't found anything better yet, in any case.
• DAVx⁵. Unseen, but does some heavy lifting. One of the apps I make sure to support; replaces 1/3 of the critical "core" Google Android services
• Wireguard, which Just Works, and is always on.
• M.A.L.P., for when I'm playing music on the house system
• openScale, a quite nice OSS weight tracker that supports a lot of off-brand smart scales, without phoning home
• KDE Connect, what for sending stuff to/from other computers amd phones. Works great, even without KDE (mconnect is an alternative desktop service)
• Etar, as my calendar app. Been using it so long, I've forgotten it's not stock.
• ntfy replaces so much notification on my phone, and it does so reliably and well. Worth a shout out.
• SimpleTask, the best to todo.txt Android app. Another app that I've been using so long it seems almost stock.
• I've been using FlorisBoard for several months now. It has no text prediction, but has a ton of features I use. I try other keyboards every once in a while, but end up back on Floris. The only thing I miss is prediction, and with it better (any?) correction. Still, aside from DAVx⁵, it's probably the most used app on my phone, so...
• Geometric Weather! Such a great weather app.
• Material Files replaces the stock file manager. Great program, and while remote FSes are limited to ftp, it does the job.
• Wormhole William is a good between-devices file transfer tool.
• Termux, of course. Are there any real competitors?

Thing is, I'm running OEM Android, b/c I have a flip phone and don't want to lose the outside screen support by flashing. So I uninstall or disable nearly every built in app, and replace them with F-Droid apps (via Droid-ify). It's not much, but it's an honest living.

Edit MusicBee... oh, Windows. Oh, well. The search continues.

Links: NewPipe, GitHub, F-Droid. The vibe I'm getting is that it's a more lightweight, Google-less frontend for services like YouTube and Bandcamp, correct me if I'm wrong though, never used it -- but I've seen it a few times.

Kagi

Prices seem high... Features, seem nice (but not crazy):

• "Boosting" and blocking domains: basically permanent filters.
• "Lenses" - Similar to SearXNG's different tabs, but more like a profile style system.
• Bangs are the same as in SearXNG, and I think you can do the same, or similar, thing in Firefox.
• Custom CSS is cool and all but you can get that with a browser add-on (like Stylus).
• Their "Comprehensive result filtering" seems that same as every other browser
• They have Vim-ish keybinds, which SearXNG and DDG have.
• "Widgets" - Seems like Google's quick answers, user created ones are cool I guess.
• The "crystal orb" - Allows you to determine the "quality" of sites, and also open them in the Wayback Machine or adjust that boosting/blocking level.

(Source)

Additionally, it seems that they don't have seem to have any external audits or releasing of code (correct me if I'm wrong). Additional they have a web browser, that's only for Apple's ecosystem. Overall, you pay for no-ads, I feel like for this feature set you could just use DuckDuckGo with advertisements off, or the HTML version (which doesn't include JavaScript either). I'm kinda skeptical about it, but if it ends up taking off I'll be happy there will be another alternative to Google.

Kopia

This actually looks very cool, so many new backup solutions to try after this thread. 🥲

I did the trial for kagi and completely stopped using Google within 3 days. Kagi is so much better it’s easily worth it. And it has actually useful features unlike Google. It’s insane how long google sat on their haunches and waited to let others surpass them.

Threema

Yeah, but how many people use it (half-joking, I'm a Matrix user myself and understand the pain)?

I hear such mixed messages about this and would love for somebody to educate me. Do we:

• Avoid using tor to free it up for those who actually need it

• Use tor whenever, and normalise it so that somebody using tor isn't immediately considered to be a journalist/dissident/person with something to hide.