This one’s a lot more lighthearted than most.
I curate my digital environment to be very utilitarian. In doing so, I wanted to know if there was better than mainstream apps. There was, so much better. You may find all of the following helpful, some mainstream and others less so. Most are open-source and free, anything not stated is open source.
-Airalo has been used when I’m outside of the country for ridiculously cheap mobile data. Not open source, but if you travel often outside of the country this is essential.
-Ankidroid is the phone component of the lovely anki application, excellent for learning. I still do cards every day.
-Instacart, while mainstream, is worth it. I have a membership and do most of my grocery shopping through this app, it saves a ton of time I can spend doing other things or even just working my online job and more than paying off the extra fees in the time it would have taken me to go to the grocery. Obviously, not open source.
-RiMusic is probably one of the best things on this list. Imagine spotify, but entirely free and entirely legal. It is essentially an adblocker on steroids, parsing youtube to extract every song, variation of song, or even podcast that you could imagine while removing every ad, sponsored or youtube ad. It has playlists, recommended songs, shuffle settings, song radio features, everything you could possibly want, and it functions fully offline via downloads. It requires no login and has no trackers.
-Newpipe is just a better youtube client. No ads, skip sponsors in videos, no trackers, login, etc. What’s not to love?
-Organic maps is better than google/apple maps. Much better raw navigation systems, the downloadable maps are leagues better. No real-time traffic reports, but those rarely if ever come in handy. Also, won’t sell your personal data to randoms, considering it doesn’t track any. No account required. Has the benefit of being significantly less creepy than google/apple. You really should go look into how much data they have on your location.
-VoIP.ms SMS allows you to get a second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. internet-based phone number in any country at any time. Combined with Airalo from the top of the list, allows you to send SMS messages from anywhere on the planet for comically cheap amounts. Invaluable while travelling, or when you don’t want to give a service your real phone number. This, Airalo, and organic maps function to make a traveling toolkit that is leagues more reliable than the google/apple suites, while respecting your privacy. Toss a VPN on top, and you’re untraceable if done right. Speaking of:
-ProtonVPN is unequivocally the best free VPN for identity masking, and if you pay them is even better. They also support some excellent social causes. Look into them.
-Protonmail is a mail client that actually respects your privacy. Just be careful; it’s so secure that if you lose your password and your backups, even they can’t help you get your email back.
In general, FOSS apps will be better both in features and privacy than the mainstream options, and a thousand times less annoying. If your phone is compatible, unlock the bootloader and install grapheneOS or another similar privacy-focused OS. Your battery will also last 5-7 times longer this way. When my phone is quite minimally used, my battery can last an entire week.
Keep an ear open,
Whisper