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Alternative Mobile 4

Bonoky Blog

Unfortunatly my quest to escape the clutches of either Apple or Google is not going very well.

One of my current tasks is to examine my mobile use to discover exactly what I need to replace, particularly in the context of apps and services.

  • iCloud – that’s quite easy, there are many cloud based alternatives with better security (I understand that iCloud backups are not encrypted). I have experimented with the free versions of a few; pCloud, Tresorit and Icedrive. However, I would prefer a self-hosted solution so am also looking at Nextcloud and some hybrid NAS/cloud systems

  • Mail – I have never seriously used Apple Mail, and weaned myself of Yahoo! and Google some time ago. I mainly use Tuta Mail to host my own domain which works well, and also provides a calendar – both are fully end-to-end encrypted. I regularly download the archive to local storage which I can access with Thunderbird if necessary. Running my own self-hosted mail server seems quite daunting at the moment - might consider it at a later date.

  • Calander – see Mail (above)

  • Maps – as an amateur cartographer, I contribute to Open Street Map, I already have several better alternatives to Google or Apple Maps, such as OsmAnd and OrganicMaps .

  • Messaging – again, I already have an alternative in Signal or straight text messages if necessary. If neither of those will do the job there are many alternatives that offer similar facilities.

  • Notes – Actually I rarely use Apple Notes because I find it rather quirky, it doesn’t work the way I want to make notes. Also, it won’t work with y Linux devices. I am experimenting with some alternatives such as SilverBullet, memos and Notesnook.

I’ve been going through all the propriety Apple apps looking for self hosted alternative but have been unable to find anything to replace “Reminders”.

Do you any suggestions or recommendations?