For the past year or so, I have been trying to find open-source alternatives to the apps that I use on daily basis. Especially trying to replace the ones that need gazillions of permission even before installing, nowadays even a photo editor needs a microphone and GPS access (;¬_¬)

In fact, apps know too much about you, for instance, most of the keyboard apps that you use commonly are loaded with spyware to track words that you type. Unknowingly we often trade our personal data only for the mere sake of convenience.

A general privacy recommendation that I found is to get out from the group of apps that operates within an ecosystem (mainly Google and Apple). This is not entirely possible, so a better tactic is to remain as decentralized as possible, i.e shift your activities across apps that don’t exchange data in between.

My motive was to find minimal apps that can actually deliver rather than screaming out annoying pop-up ads. This led me to try a bunch of apps in the open-source category. To be honest, I found most of them quite boring at the beginning, they are not intuitive or elegant on the outside. The real catch is, they are not intended to look the best or manipulated to get you hooked. They perform only one job and does them pretty well.

I am not against making money through ads, but while using an open-source service you can also directly support the development if you wish to. It even helps the community to create even better versions of the mainstream apps if people are willing to pay for them.

Open source has very little to do with making money, and it was more about creating a culture that could be adopted where people cared more about their reputation to help others than they did about money. And the best part is you will never need to worry about your personal data. So try switching to apps that respect your privacy.

Here is a quote from ‘The Social Dilemma’ that perfectly summarizes what we talked about,

" If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product."

So here are some excellent alternatives that you must try out.

  • Notetaking

    • Notally
    • Joplin

  • Fitness tracking

    • Gadget bridge

  • Keyboard

    • Openboard

  • VPN

    • OpenVPN

  • Playstore

    • Fdroid

  • Web browser

    • Brave
    • Bromite

  • Search Engines

    • Duckduck go
    • Startpage

  • Calendar

    • Etar

  • Youtube

    • Newpipe (android)

I will try to update the post as I try out new apps. Feel free to send your recommendations. Peace