Alternatives to apps pre-installed on most Android phones

March 11th 2025

Version française

Introduction

As I explained here and there, I want to stop using all US Big Tech services. Fortunately for me, I’ve never been tied to too many of them.

This being said, I’m using an Android phone, not a Fairphone, or a Murena, or any other smartphone that comes with a non-propriatery system already installed (i.e. based on the Android Open Source Project, but without stuff from Google and friends).

Such OS (operating systems) are desirable, since:

On the other hand, the “usual” smartphone will come with a version of Android full of Google features spywares, most likely supplemented with more features spywares from the phone manufacturer (and redundant or useless ones in 90% cases). And these smartphones will almost force you to create a Google account or connect to their Play Store during the setup phase.

Why don’t I install an alternate Android OS then?

Because I couldn’t. You can read the details below, or skip to the next part if you’re not interested ;-)

First attempts (LineageOS)

I’ve installed LineageOS on a previous phone, and was really happy with it.

Unfortunately, when I had to buy a new phone, 6 years ago, I didn’t pay enough attention to it and bought one for which no LineageOS build existed. Even today, there’s no official build for my model, and - unsurprisingly - no /e/OS build either.

At one point, I even had a try at adding support for my phone to LineageOS by myself, but I quickly learned that unless you work for the manufacturer, or someone already published the detailed specification files of the phone, that are required to add such support, you just can’t do it.

A new hope, quickly dashed (crDroid)

But lately, a colleague pointed me to crDroid which unbelievably provides a build for this phone! And that would allow me to upgrade from Android 10 to 15.

And so, 2 weeks ago, I installed it, but only to discover that the wifi didn’t work for me (but did for others). ollowing a tip on the crDroid forums, I was about to try the installation again when my phone just shut down for good, just as I was about to restart it.
You read it well: I was able to install the system without immediately bricking the phone, but it is now bricked after a reboot. And nothing works, it’s hard bricked: I can’t get into fastboot or any other mode using the buttons, and so far I haven’t been able to short the 2 connectors that normally allow the phone to boot into EDL mode.

Back to square one

Fortunately for me, a few months ago I repaired a relative’s phone that had a completely broken screen. That 20€ (for the screen) and 1 hour of my time well spent! So now I’m using this other phone (an Oppo) running Android 13. At least I got an upgrade compared to my previous Android 10. And it still gets upgrades!

But again, I can’t find an alternate OS build for it.

Time for plan B!

The plan: replacing ALL pre-installed applications, and more

Phase 1: app stores

The first application you will want to get rid of is Google’s Play Store. The main reasons for this are that:

At the time of writing, I use 2 different app stores: F-Droid and Aurora.

F-Droid

The primary store I use is F-Droid, which I use to find free open source software (FOSS) for just about anything. You may find software that’s available on Google’s Play Store, but you’ll find mostly other software.

Note that F-Droid will also indicate if the app, while still FOSS, uses features you might not like, such as tracking your activity or using a non-free network. This is the case of Infomaniak’s applications, for example.

Don’t be put off by its… let’s say brutal appearance!

Update: meanwhile, the Fediverse suggested I use Neo Store, a “feature-rich” F-Droid client. I’ve started using it, and it’s indeed much nicer :-)

Aurora Store

I use Aurora Store for software that I could otherwise only find on Google’s Play Store, like my bank’s application.

Aurora allows you to search and download apps from Google’s Play Store, without having a Google account, by logging anonymously (you can also use your Google account if you want to).

You can install Aurora Store from F-Droid.

Notes:

Phase 2: alternatives for common applications

No time to search? Start with the Fossify suite

If you want a drop-in replacement for most apps that usually come pre-installed on smartphones - either from Google or the phone manufacturer - you should take a look at the Fossify suite.
Its qualities: it’s FOSS of course (hence the name), zero clutter, and privacy.

At the time of writing, there are 15 Fossify applications:

You can find the above list on F-Droid.

I’m currently using the ones with an asterisk (*). I briefly tested Calendar, but then preferred another app. I didn’t test the other apps.

My advice is to start with them and then look for other apps if you don’t like them. The ones I tested are very similar, if not identical, to the ones pre-installed on my phone.

Keyboard

Not everyone knows that we can choose the keyboard we use on our phone. Many Android phones will use Google’s keyboard, Gboard, by default.
Unless you change its settings (assuming you can find them, deeply buried as they are), Gboard will happily send what you type to Google’s servers, to provide you with better suggestions, but also with ads, and to train its models.

I am currently using HeliBoard, on the advice of a friend.
Out of the box, it appears as a very classic keyboard that does everything you would expect: support for different layouts, local autocorrect, for multiple languages at once, smileys, clipboard, etc. But it is also very configurable!

I’m also testing Thumb-Key, “a privacy-conscious keyboard made for your thumbs” :-)

Launcher

This is the first thing we see on our phone: the application in charge of listing the other ones so that we can launch them! It’s also in charge of displaying widgets.

The same friend as above told me about KISS Launcher, and I like it very much so far! It doesn’t lie: it’s simple, and light on resources.

You can define a few bookmarked apps, but otherwise the general idea is to either use the history to find the ones you use frequently, or to search for them by keyword. Of course, you can still just list them all, which is fine if you don’t use many apps, like me. It’s not much different from most launchers, but I can understand that not everyone likes its style :-)

In any case, remember that Fossify also offers a very classic Launcher!

Web browser

I’ve been using Firefox for Android for so many years, that I don’t remember when I started. Likely around 2017.
And I’m still using it, although I was very annoyed by the redesign they did in 2020, as they killed a feature I used a lot (I could navigate to, say, Twitter, and click on links of interest to have Firefox open them in the background for when I was ready to consult them. No constant switching between apps!).

A few reasons why I still love it:

I used to install it from Google’s Play Store, and I still can with Aurora. On F-Droid, it’s called Fennec F-Droid, which “has proprietary bits and telemetry removed, but still connects to various Mozilla services that can track users”.

Email

Any email client will do, unless you’re using an email service that doesn’t support IMAP (e.g. Proton Mail).

I personally use Infomaniak Mail for now. I installed it out of curiosity when I migrated to Infomaniak, and I stuck with it.
Of course, if you don’t use Infomaniak’s services, you should find another email client.

What about testing Thunderbird for Android?

Calendar

Again, any calendar application will do.

I’ve been using Etar for a more than a month now, when I migrated to Infomaniak, and I’m happy with it.

As I wrote above, I’ve quickly tested Fossify Calendar (maybe too quickly). I didn’t quite like the tabs at the bottom, which is why I moved away. But you may like it.

Online drive

This will mostly depend on what solution you use as a drive. As you can imagine, I installed Infomaniak kDrive, although I don’t really use it.

Authenticator

Aegis does a perfect job of managing one-time passwords, storing them securely, and importing/exporting them.

Communication

Whatsapp has always been out of the question for me. I installed it once in the past to communicate with a specific group of people for 1 month, in a very specific situation. But otherwise, if any group asks me to join Whatsapp, I say no (unfortunately, associations use it a lot).

I use Signal with some relatives and groups. Otherwise emails, SMS and phone calls will do.

Audio & Video files

I use VLC, as I do on the desktop.

Audio & Video streaming (what about Youtube?)

NewPipe is the way to watch Youtube videos and more without ads and tracking. It can also stream media for a variety of other platforms.

I’ve set it as the default app to open all supported links.

Maps and navigation

I find Organic Maps very nice, and super accurate so far. As you can imagine, it’s based on OpenStreetMap.

Note that it does require a bit of preparation at first, as it will ask you to download the maps you need before it can find small towns or calculate an itinerary. (For French readers: there’s about 1 map per French department).

Weather

Breezy Weather tells me if I need to prepare for rain or high winds, at the time I will ride my bike to the office, and that’s all I ask of it!

Let’s stop here

I could go on and list my Mastodon client (Tusky), my RSS reader (FeedFlow) and so on, but these do not fall under the category of “usually pre-installed applications” :-)

But read on, we’re not done yet!

Phase 3: uninstalling or deactivating pre-installed apps

At this point, we have a lot of useless applications installed on the phone that will keep running no matter what, possibly sending data to the outside, and requiring frequent updates.

Open the “Applications” settings (they’re pretty much the same for all Android systems) and review all the applications. For each one you don’t want anymore, see if you can uninstall it. If you can’t, disable it. It will stop running and won’t be updated. You might also want to give Universal Android Debloater a try.

While you’re at it, delete its data and cache to reclaim some space (this may be hidden in a “storage” subsection of the app’s settings, or something).

Worst case, if you can’t deactivate an app, you can at least hide it in some launchers (but that’s little consolation). For example, KISS Launcher, which I introduced earlier, can do this.

Tip: don’t forget to review all the settings of your OS too! Some may still involve sending data behind your back.

Phase 4: disconnecting your Google account(s)

If you’re not using Google Workspace (Gmail and friends) and only used an account to access the Play Store, you might be able to just disconnect it!

Just make sure you don’t rely on it to back up your phone’s configuration and contents. I don’t and never have, so that wasn’t a concern for me.
(I haven’t talked about backups. Maybe I will in a future article. But personally, I don’t keep any valuable data on my phone, so I don’t really care).

Conclusion

Even though I couldn’t change my OS, my phone is now almost completely independent of Google and doesn’t send them my data. In fact, it only depends on the phone manufacturer for OS upgrades.

And I don’t even need a Google account!

Also, I’m mostly running free open source software, much like I’ve done on my Linux desktop for 20 years.

Of course, I’m not naive and I know that using the operating system installed by my phone’s manufacturer is a major black mark. I wish I could do otherwise!

I hope that this return on my experience will help you make the same move ;-)