Howdy everyone! I’m happy to say I’ve finally gotten off the iOS ecosystem and loaded into grapheneos! Does anyone have any recommendations for apps to get? I’ve been away for a long time and saw tachiyomi was killed so I’ve lost my edge on apps for this side of the mobile space. Currently I’ve got: F-droid (god I’m happy this has never died) Aurora store Obtanium Mihon (I think this might be a successor to tachiyomi) And the fossify communication apps (phone, messages, contacts) But let this also be a good thread for others like me having privacy back in their lives, even if a slow transition like mine.

• Accrescent of the GrapheneOS appstore, its another appstore
• Ironfox(accrescent) as my main browser, hardened firefox
• Aurora Store for the very rare case i need something from the playstore
• Comaps for navigation
• Etar, calender
• Quillpad, note taking
• Breezy Weather, weather…
• Material Files, file manager
• KDE Connect, connecting with pc, file transfer, virtual trackpad, etc
• Tubular, YT with background playback, only audio, downloads, sponsorblock, adfree
• VLC, for local video and music playback
• Google Cam and Photos from the aurora store. I just dont give them internet access.
• Image Toolbox, i dont really need/use it. But it has cool tools for image manipulation
• Silicone Calculator, …
• Duckstation, PS1 emulator
• PPSSPP, PSP emulator

GrapheneOS came with Google Play Store (mirror). Consider me dum, I am on this stuff, but is Aurora Store better than that, privacy-wise?

Depends. My threat model is practically: I want to avoid Google, i dont want to see ads, i avoid tracking as much as comfortably possible, i liek open source. Thats it. Theoratically it would be safer to have a burner google account(created on a public wifi) and get those apps via the playstore integration of graphene and only use the phone via a vpn you trust. Or smth like that. Dont trust me because i consider myself dum too. Personally(!) i like the Gcam and G Photo Gallery app so much that i dont want live without them. And they live happily sandboxed by Graphene on my phone without internet access. But i once used the playstore integration and all the google apps started happily sharing my information between them. Like beeing logged into my google account magically in the photos app. Which is exactly what i dont want. So i rather just use Aurora Store once or twice in a year if i need some stupid app for one reason or another. Heres a youtube channel which i consider good for Graphene stuff: https://www.youtube.com/@sideofburritos Also dont forget to read the great resources on graphenes website like: https://grapheneos.org/faq and https://grapheneos.org/usage

So do you need a google store account to use the android based apps? I want to be free of google. I am currently on Iphone and it will be going in the next month or so. My music/email etc i can live with alternatives. So say i want a few specific apps, say signal and the NYT games app, my bank...Can i get these without having a google account?