I haven’t used it much if at all in the past year, but I finally took the last step and deleted it! Sorry if this is low effort I just don’t have anyone I know to share it with.
Congrats dude! 😄 👍 I’m replacing all their service a bit at the time, is nice to see people able to completely switch off.
I have literally everything tied to gmail, no idea how to escape
if you switch to protonmail itll foward emails from your gmail to proton, then you can slowly move stuff over
You can probably (never used proton) set up a filter on the new address to mark or move stuff that was originally sent to gmail, too. Helps visualize the accounts you need to migrate/update.
It does that automatically
It’s a slow process. Took me 2 and a half year to completely move away from Gmail. Worth it.
Why was it worth it? What benefits did you gain from the change?
I’m a simple man. Just knowing some entity is not munching my mail data is an enough reason for me.
That is quite simple. You’re the only one to provide a coherent answer so far so thanks for that.
I’m looking for a bit more info though. Did you get any other benefits besides the equivalent of warm fuzzies? Sounds like an extremely outsized cost/benefit assessment you had to confirm.
Well, while that’s the main reason, there are indeed some side benefits as well. I guess the first one that came to my mind is, I got rid of a lot of spams. Mostly because my Gmail address was in lots of breached websites. I also deleted any unnecessary accounts at variety of websites, because of these I haven’t been in a breach scandal since 2019 (That’s the year I finalized my transition to Tutanota). I use it on my government accounts, banking accounts and any other formal accounts, or the ones I trust. For the rest, I use email alias services and if I get a spam or even an annoying mail through that, I can just stop it there and I forget about them.
Also it’s not just warm fuzzies. Privacy is a basic human right and it should stay that way on the internet as well. So it’s nice to know to be freed of personalized ads hell, at least from the voluntarily part. Can’t really do anything for the involuntarily part besides GDPR. Big corporations getting our personal data is not different from someone watching my house with a binoculars, same level of creepiness. I don’t think any sane mind would be comfortable knowing this.
Since I’ve stop using gmail et reduce the need for a gmail account, Google don’t force connexion btw my account and the ones of people I share a computer with. I’m done seeing someone else youtube history bc someone forget to log out of its drive account. By gone the times where my contacts would become mixed up with my friend’s who checked its emails on my phone. My children profil are not considered my secondary accounts. I am not receiving notification of one Google product telling my I haven’t give full permission to another Google profil anymore. I don’t feel like I’ve take time to configurate my account but thé software disant change its behavior.
I’m no longer forced to use a software or a option I don’t want because this other software anable it automatically and that it is almost impossible to turn it off once you’ve start to use it.
- not being tied to G🤮🤮gle
- some other stuff like email aliases (Protonmail)
Like others said, definitely a slow process. Sign up your new, necessary accounts to your new address and port your old existing accounts over a day at a time.
Once you have ported an account over you can mass delete emails relevant to that service. You could also keep a log of everything you have ported. Or both.
You can also straight up delete the accounts you don’t need anymore, if thats part of your goal, or something you would find satisfying. Same thing - deleting all of the emails relevant to it afterwards. Eventually you will be able to scroll through years of email without seeing anything you are worried about losing.
Doing this passively, with little time investment over the course of a few years… one day you’re done and ready to cut the cord.
What service did you move to?
Not op but I moved to proton mail, tutanota seems good too
Regardless of whether you decide on self-hosting, or ProtonMail/Tutanota as has been suggested, make sure your choice gives you good freedom to roam. If you’re picking a webmail provider, consider prioritizing arbitrary email clients (Thunderbird, etc). Being able to click-drag your entire email backlog to a hard disk folder might be something you want down the road. Similarly - do some research about data portability options they may offer like XML backups. If we decide ProtonMail and Tutanota suck in ten years, you would probably feel pretty defeated – like you ended up with Gmail 2.0.
I just keep telling people to basically “know their rights” and figure out what options they will have to the new service they are signing up to.
I went through my stored logins to migrate the vast majority of my accounts one by one (and deleted quite a few old and forgotten ones in the process). Took a couple of hours, but went mostly well.
For everything that I might have missed, I have gmail set up to forward everything to my new address. The new address (I went with posteo myself) has a filter that automatically moves stuff addressed to gmail to a separate folder. Whenever something ends up in there, I go and migrate or delete the account.
This is a great system too!
Congrats!
Congratulations! And thank you.
That’s awesome 👏
Great step
Has anyone figured out how to transfer a Gmail account’s Android app purchases to a new Google account that uses a non Gmail email address? This is the only reason I still keep my Gmail, having moved to proton 4 years ago.
I’m sorry if I am confusing things, but is this tied to Gmail? I am currently a “deleted Gmail service off of Google account”-type user, and I can still browse and resubscribe to app store subscriptions.
(Could be I am not looking at the right set of purchases.)
Did you delete Gmail but keep your Google account? If so, I didn’t know this was possible
Yes! (I assume that it is an option regardless of country)
I thought I would still want to use my YouTube account because I didn’t know how to troubleshoot Piped Video yet, but in the end it has still been useful because I am still hosting some stuff on Google Drive for other people.
Dig around the data/privacy part of myaccount.google.com and you should find it. It asks you to enter a new email address, and once you have confirmed it, it will delete the Gmail.
edit: I guess YMMV - I did this a while back, so please pay attention to whatever warnings it gives you when you elect to delete the Gmail, because I feel like there might be some non-mail interactions that might be involved, or that it may have changed since I did it. also, obviously, I did this step after I was comfortable completely losing access to my email, and had stopped using the app store (what OP was inquiring about)
Is there a viable Photos alternative? I was thinking of setting up a NAS on my RPi but it would need to be for other family members too.
Ente it you’re looking for a paid service. (For me, photos are too important to self-host.) They’re end-to-end encrypted and both server and clients are open source.
too important to self-host
For me it’s the other way round. My photos are too important to trust any corporation - no matter how trustworthy they say they are.
Do you do any hosting on the cloud? Thinking of cases like a fire or flood or something
No I follow the 3-2-1 rule which states that you should have 3 copies in 2 locations where 1 of them is remote.
In my case, the remote part is two external SSDs where I leave one with my parents and the other one plugged into my NAS which does automatic daily backups. When my parents come I swap them around.
TIL, thanks!
I second Ente, absolutely awesome products and great Devs always listening to feedback from community. Unlike other services and products, absolutely everything is open source to 🙌
I use immich personally, super easy to use and very fast, even on the shitty old laptop I use.
Edit: the shitty old laptop is hosting the server
The Proton Drive app can automatically sync pictures from your phone. The Proton ecosystem as a whole is a good alternative to Google’s.
On that note tho, I kinda hate how this is only offered for photos. Why can’t I sync any folder I want?
Another vote for Immich. It’s a really nice experience on both the web and app.
Next cloud all the way. I run it in my garage and I grab the free Android app from fdroid
I am still uploading to Google Photos currently, but have setup a backup of my photos once a week using SMBSync2 on Android, to my Raspberry Pi NAS. I have two external hard drives connected to my pc, so when I login to my pc there are two automated backups that happen to copy anything newly added to the nas to the two hard drives.
I recommend Immich
@mjq07
https://stingle.org, https://piwigo.org, and https://immich.app might be worth a look.I used NextCloud, myself.
@Blisterexe @degoogle
Must do the same soon
BTW How do you keep on syncing your calendars and stuff?
A Linux Wizard does not require a calendar. They simply arrive exactly when they are supposed to.
lol . I’m just a baby tux apprentice …
I use my self-hosted Nextcloud instance for this. Then sync to mobile using DAVx5. Calendar and contacts.
i think is the best way possible. does it have any charge?
It is all free to use, but you will likely have some expenses with the self-hosting. If you do it yourself at home, you require hardware and power to run it on, and you would be well off having some additional backup solution off-site as well that would add to the cost. If you host on a VPS (like I do), you have the running costs of renting that server space.
I self host with Baikal. On android, you need Davx5 (on fdroid) to tie it into the OS but on your desktop (windows and Linux at least) calDAV will just be an option. Baikal supports CardDAV for contacts as well if you’re into that.
Idk I don’t have a calendar, but I hear nextcloud is great for that
I use nextcloud for all these google things.
Currently using murena.io as provider
Proton Calendar works great for me.
Nice. What services did you use to replace?
I now use Firefox, brave search, protonmail and immich
Nice I’m like 75% migrated away from gmail I still use Google maps. I don’t use Google photos. For search I use ddg. I’m trying to move away from play store using Droid instead but that’s a tough one.
you should try aurora store for google play and osmand for google maps
It’s a normal thing and there’s no need for you to brag. You are expected to delete every account you do not use.
