During Covid, I did some digital cleaning. It took me around a month (from couple of minutes, up to few hours each day) to clean up my gmail inbox. I had a gmail label where I placed all the emails received from any site where I created an account. I went one by one to each of them and either changed the login (to a non gmail address), or deleted an account (if I wasn’t using it anymore).

Now I use another email provider, and i pay for it. I use gmail for situations/accounts where i suspect that my email address could be spammed. Right now, my whole google space usage is around 50 mb. I stopped using google drive, I don’t use google search, I still use YouTube and pay to have no ads - because I just like YouTube.

It’s possible to disconnect oneself from Google services as much as one wants. Still, I continue to use an android phone (I like iOS, but it’s still too limited in comparison to Android).

ADB is your friend. Uninstall any app you don’t need/want.

I think that Gboard would still find a way to connect to the mothership.

I love it. It is the best purchase decision I made in years. I am lazy - I prefer to play on Steam Deck than on my gaming laptop.

However, yesterday I tried to play Remnant 2 on Steam Deck. I was not expecting fireworks, but at least decent 30fps. IMO Game is unplayable on SD. Barely reaches 30fps. Fan spins like crazy. It works great on my laptop.

I can’t wait for a Steam Deck hardware refresh.

Religion

I watched them for characters and their stories, and with time I became bored with marvel action scenes. If you think about it, these characters resolve almost all their problems with punching others. That “one shot” scene is excellent, badass, and for the first time in a long while - I enjoyed a Marvel action scene. Nevertheless, it’s a great farewell for James Gunn. I enjoy immensely, and I’m not planning to watch MCU for a while. Maybe Loki season 2 will be an exception.

This provides story progression - by talking to all the residents. You can just run through three room and be in the action again.

Google is chasing the “ease of use aspect”. A mobile OS has to have a notes app, a mail app, a chat app (in Google’s case abundance of chat apps) and a podcast app. Google can track your personal podcast preferences, listening habits, etc.

Personally, I would not choose to use any default Google app. There are lots of better alternatives.

You can remove them. Tap the sticker icon on the right side of the text entry field (bottom of the screen). Scroll the bottom stickers’ bar to the right until you see the “+”. Tap it, et voila - you can remove them.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that would be exactly what they do.

I’ve read somewhere that once Gmail address is created, it is not reused - even when account is deleted.

2560x1440

I think the reason is lemmy.world’s security problems that happened lately. I had the same behavior from both Liftoff and Jerboa.

One of the first things I do on a new phone is I uninstall the Google app (ADB) but I do it only for my user (me). So it is unavailable to me, and it doesn’t run in the background. I think I could uninstall it completely and nothing would break. Some things rely on it - the podcast app did (a while ago), google translate (when I try to translate a photo).

However, I am actively eliminating google from my life. No Drive, no Photos, Gmail is what I use when I want to subscribe to some crappy service (I moved to Tutanota, and I’m a paid user). I don’t use Google search (I do a mix of DuckSuckGo and Brave search - which both use Bing ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ; I’m thinking of moving to one of paid search providers).