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

I simply needed 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 all of the sudden, I used to be caught. Fast Share was gone. Google Drive wasn’t an possibility. Docs and Preserve had been additionally out of the image. My new setup relied on a handful of indie instruments, they usually weren’t cooperating. Microsoft’s Telephone Hyperlink wasn’t working (once more), and my Canadian cloud service was as sluggish as molasses.

It was at that second I noticed 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 discovered making an attempt to reside a Large Tech-free life, and why I’m nonetheless choosing up the items.

I’ve grown uninterested in 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 needed to help impartial 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 must be a nonprofit, like Firefox. If it was Canadian, my house turf, it jumped to the highest of the checklist, however Australian and European apps had been positive. Large Tech was an prompt no.

Right here’s what I ended up utilizing:

• Sync as an alternative of Google Drive
• Obsidian as an alternative of Preserve
• ToDoist as an alternative of Duties
• Elemental as an alternative of chats
• Kobo as an alternative of Kindle
• VLC as an alternative of YouTube Music
• Firefox as an alternative of Chrome
• Ecosia as an alternative of Google Search
• Fastmail as an alternative of Gmail

I didn’t count on perfection, however I hoped I may 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 priceless time.

I went with Fastmail to switch Gmail. It is a quick and clear e-mail service from Australia. It’s non-public, it handles e-mail in addition to Gmail, and it comes with a set of instruments included within the annual $50 price. I ended up falling in love with Fastmail, and it has fully changed all different emails in my life. I want I may say the identical for Sync. It is 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 ceaselessly to seem on my PC, and the cell app appears dated.

I swapped out YouTube Music for my very own MP3 and FLAC recordsdata, saved regionally on my cellphone. It felt good to return to the previous 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 previous 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 largest bookstore, as an alternative of Amazon.

Obsidian grew to become my alternative for Preserve and Docs, and it was not enjoyable. Obsidian is highly effective on desktop, however sluggish on cell. I by no means appreciated the way it appeared or felt. Whereas it obtained the job performed, there was all the time one thing lacking. I attempted the plugins, learn the boards, and watched the movies, however ultimately, 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 arms.

I ended up falling in love with Firefox. Then, its homeowners determined to alter the phrases and declared possession over all the things I did within the app. I shopped round for a alternative and settled on Vivaldi, albeit reluctantly. Chromium nonetheless has Google’s arms throughout it, in spite of everything.

The most important failure was messaging. I experimented with Aspect, a decentralized, encrypted platform constructed with the Matrix protocol. It appeared like a fantastic thought, however setting it up is a ache. Finally, getting anybody else to make use of it’s unimaginable. Good luck explaining decentralized protocols to my mother. She’s positive with Messenger.

All the pieces felt disjointed with no unified ecosystem. Notifications had been delayed, or didn’t arrive in any respect. I’d create a job 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 must be.

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

That stated, I did achieve some privateness and was capable of 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, all the things simply works. You don’t typically discover how easily recordsdata sync throughout units, emails hyperlink on to calendars, and messages move 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 form of cognitive aid that comes from utilizing an ecosystem designed to carry your whole digital life. You don’t must juggle instruments or rewire your mind each time you turn duties. Google, Apple, and Microsoft have spent years constructing methods that anticipate what you’ll want subsequent. It’s an expertise most indie apps simply can’t match.

I’m not strolling away from all the things. 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 preserve Kobo, for now. I ditched all the things else and went crawling again to Google. Preserve is great, and Google Drive has no equal.

What I’ve discovered 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 price. I’ll strive it subsequent. Within the meantime, it’s laborious to beat how good the large tech ecosystems makes all the things really feel.