this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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Technology

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

All of my web interaction at this point happens through my Android phone, Google has me by the balls anyway.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (4 children)

There is Firefox for Android. You're still on Android, but you can have some control left.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Unfortunately Firefox doesn't have a replacement for the "Android System WebView" component, so any app that embeds a browser component (and oh boy is that a lot of them) will still be using Chrome.

There's a relevant ticket here: https://github.com/mozilla/geckoview/issues/167

It should be possible to have a shim that allows Mozilla's "GeckoView" component to implement the API, but - per that ticket, at least - most Android ROMs won't allow alternatives to the Google one.

The Firefox browser is genuinely great, but it's so far from possible to replace Chrome with it everywhere a browser is used.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

A lot of those apps allow you to open links in an external browser instead, but yes, that is a problem

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe I'm dumb but I have had no issues using Firefox on android.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Other poster was saying apps that are built around web content use Chrome's webviewer component, and that tons of apps these days are react native, or whatever that Apache foundation tool is for deploying web apps as native apps.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can't uninstall Chrome most likely, but maybe your stock/rom will allow you to "disable" it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Good idea. Let me disable it and see what breaks! ( i have firefox and inbrowser installed on lineageos )

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Also Firefox Focus, which forgets your browsing history when you close it or hit the trashcan button.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Fennec is the Android version of Firefox.

In the future it will be Fenix

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Privacy and digital rights are not a binary "use strange hard to use tools or give everything to google." There are things you can do to improve your ability to own your own data. Giving up immediately is letting perfect be the enemy of good. Running Firefox on your google phone will still win you back something

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Google has me by the balls anyway.

GrapheneOS? Are you on a Pixel?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Lineageos+microg is a useable de-googled android. I'm using it now without any google services.