I switched to indie apps for privateness, and now my workflow is a large number

I simply wished to ship a file from my Android cellphone to my Home windows 11 PC. It ought to have been simple, however I had de-Googled my life, and immediately, I used to be caught. Fast Share was gone. Google Drive wasn’t an choice. Docs and Hold have been additionally out of the image. My new setup relied on a handful of indie instruments, they usually weren’t cooperating. Microsoft’s Cellphone Hyperlink wasn’t working (once more), and my Canadian cloud service was as sluggish as molasses.

It was at that second I spotted escaping Large Tech solely sounds good in concept. The observe turned out to be rather more tough than it ought to have been. Right here’s what I realized attempting to stay a Large Tech-free life, and why I’m nonetheless choosing up the items.

I’ve grown bored with handing over my information to huge monopolies that deal with me like a product. Google reads my emails, Fb tracks me throughout the web, and Amazon is all the time spying on me.

I didn’t need that anymore. I wished to help unbiased builders constructing considerate, purposeful software program. I didn’t need to be a part of an algorithm or a data-scraping scheme for AI. So I set some floor guidelines for my new digital life.

I used to be searching for apps that weren’t US or Chinese language-owned. If there was an app within the US that I completely wanted, then it ought to be a nonprofit, like Firefox. If it was Canadian, my residence turf, it jumped to the highest of the record, however Australian and European apps have been fantastic. Large Tech was an instantaneous no.

Right here’s what I ended up utilizing:

• Sync as a substitute of Google Drive
• Obsidian as a substitute of Hold
• ToDoist as a substitute of Duties
• Elemental as a substitute of chats
• Kobo as a substitute of Kindle
• VLC as a substitute of YouTube Music
• Firefox as a substitute of Chrome
• Ecosia as a substitute of Google Search
• Fastmail as a substitute of Gmail

I didn’t count on perfection, however I hoped I might construct a contemporary, and personal, workflow that did 90% of what I used to do. What I ended up with was a fragmented, friction-filled expertise that price me some huge cash and worthwhile time.

I went with Fastmail to switch Gmail. This can be a quick and clear e mail service from Australia. It’s personal, it handles e mail in addition to Gmail, and it comes with a collection of instruments included within the annual $50 charge. I ended up falling in love with Fastmail, and it has fully changed all different emails in my life. I want I might say the identical for Sync. This can be a Canadian cloud storage service with robust encryption and no monitoring. It felt good ethically, however virtually, I discovered it sluggish and clunky. File uploads from my Android took perpetually to seem on my PC, and the cellular app appears to be like dated.

I swapped out YouTube Music for my very own MP3 and FLAC recordsdata, saved domestically on my cellphone. It felt good to return to the outdated iPod days, and VLC has a stable music participant that may deal with just about any music file. I personal hundreds of tracks from the outdated days, and it felt liberating to cease renting my music from Large Tech. My swap to Kobo was related, though now I used to be shopping for my ebooks from Indigo, Canada’s greatest bookstore, as a substitute of Amazon.

Obsidian grew to become my alternative for Hold and Docs, and it was not enjoyable. Obsidian is highly effective on desktop, however sluggish on cellular. I by no means preferred the way it seemed or felt. Whereas it acquired the job completed, there was all the time one thing lacking. I attempted the plugins, learn the boards, and watched the movies, however in the long run, I ended up by no means utilizing it. ToDoist, however, has all the time been a pleasure to make use of, and I’ll proceed utilizing it till the day they take my Android from my palms.

I ended up falling in love with Firefox. Then, its house owners determined to alter the phrases and declared possession over every part I did within the app. I shopped round for a alternative and settled on Vivaldi, albeit reluctantly. Chromium nonetheless has Google’s palms throughout it, in any case.

The most important failure was messaging. I experimented with Factor, a decentralized, encrypted platform constructed with the Matrix protocol. It gave the impression of an important thought, however setting it up is a ache. Finally, getting anybody else to make use of it’s not possible. Good luck explaining decentralized protocols to my mother. She’s fantastic with Messenger.

Every little thing felt disjointed with out a unified ecosystem. Notifications have been delayed, or didn’t arrive in any respect. I’d create a activity in ToDoist nevertheless it wouldn’t present up in my Fastmail calendar. Saving a file from Fastmail to Sync meant first manually downloading the file, then re-uploading it. No drag-and-drop, no auto-sync. Even copying a hyperlink from Obsidian into an e mail felt like extra work than it ought to be.

The monetary price alone proved to be complicated. I subbed to ToDoist, Fastmail, Obsidian sync, and Sync.com. None have been outrageous on their very own, however each added up. I used to be nonetheless paying loads, and for a messier expertise.

That mentioned, I did acquire some privateness and was in a position to help corporations I believed in. However that clean, invisible infrastructure that makes instruments really feel like extensions of my mind was lacking, and it wasn’t any cheaper.

Large tech will get one factor undeniably proper: integration. For all its flaws, every part simply works. You don’t typically discover how easily recordsdata sync throughout units, emails hyperlink on to calendars, and messages circulate to their recipient. Duties seem on calendars whereas attachments can save on to Google Drive or OneNote. This comfort is invisible till it’s gone.

There’s additionally a type of cognitive reduction that comes from utilizing an ecosystem designed to carry your total digital life. You don’t need to juggle instruments or rewire your mind each time you turn duties. Google, Apple, and Microsoft have spent years constructing techniques that anticipate what you’ll want subsequent. It’s an expertise most indie apps simply can’t match.

I’m not strolling away from every part. Fastmail is staying, as is ToDoist. These are two stable apps value each penny. I’m sticking with Vivaldi for now, utilizing Ecosia as my search engine. I’m additionally sticking with native music recordsdata, and even arrange a Plex server to stream movies and music from my PC to my Apple TV 4K. It simply works. I’ll hold Kobo, for now. I ditched every part else and went crawling again to Google. Hold is fantastic, and Google Drive has no equal.

What I’ve realized is there isn’t a such factor as a clear break when going indie. I do know Proton is constructing its personal ecosystem, with a easy single charge. I’ll attempt it subsequent. Within the meantime, it’s laborious to beat how good the massive tech ecosystems makes every part really feel.