The first device I got was my Android device. That time I didn’t have a laptop, and all my personal data were stored on my phone. In the first exciting experience of getting a new Android phone, I didn’t even care about which apps I was installing and running on my personal device. I installed a lot of games and randomly created accounts on it; I even just created Facebook and multiple Google accounts using my phone number just for saving game progress.
Then eventually I lost interest in these habits and started questioning myself about what the purpose is/what I am trying to achieve by using this many apps. This led me to think about the current state of the internet, influenced by multi-billion-dollar companies, and the state of online privacy in such an era. So I started questioning my behavior and analyzing my patterns while using the internet.
As progress, I slowly tried to switch to free and open-source apps by deleting some creepy, data-hungry apps. The first time deleting even Facebook, Instagram, Clash of Clans, etc. felt so painful. But after about 3 weeks, I got OK with that. But still, a lack of a laptop/PC made me stay on the evil parent company OS of my phone for too long. But as soon as I got my friend’s laptop, I unlocked my bootloader and truly degoogled by switching to a more private custom operating system.
So today, I am going to suggest some popular free and open-source tools that I used and still use on a daily basis. All of these mentioned apps are safe to use and available on F-Droid or the official GitHub page.
Also, due to personal details, I need to use one or two popular proprietary apps for the purpose of online payments and work/education-related activities. Those apps are completely omitted from this list because they are not free and open source and recommended to use anyway. Thank you!