You don't need Play service to use Nova launcher, just download the prime app via aurora store if you paid for it.

I don't use public transportation at all, but for everything else the Organic Earth/ Osmand combo is fantastic.
Organic Earth for quick driving directions, Osmand for hiking and map geeking.. I'm amazed by those two apps.

If you need radar alerts, CamsSam works alright without Play services. Using the paid version, I guess free works just as good.

I always come back to Fx file explorer, so much so that I never used any other explorer for more that an hour or two since I have a smartphone. Sleek desktop look (should you be into such thing), strong privacy policy.

Tried many keyboards.. Alas, nothing ever came close to Gboard usability. I think I red a Graphene admin saying such app without network access should be ok from a privacy standpoint so I bit the bullet. I don't use it on the profiles where I installed Play services out of barely informed paranoia though. Same for Gcam.

Breezy weather is indeed awesome.

Mullvad is the only VPN I have ever used and I got no complaint whatsoever, almost as fast as no VPN where I live. They disabled port forwarding a while ago but I never found torrent DL really handicapped by that. I don't download much though.

Brave is probably the most advanced/easy android browser.. Tried to stick to firefox + modules but it's not even close.

Tubular is the fastest New pipe fork I tried.

Vimusic (YouTube music frontend) is awesome.

No strong opinion other than that.

    Canardo_Sanchez

    I also use Organic Maps and OsmAnd for my navigation needs. works really really well :-)

    A couple years ago before switching to GrapheneOS I even bought OsmAnd+ for 6 bucks instead of 20 when they had a sale :-D

        Aeon Organic Earth Maps lol, got that mixed up.

        Same here for Osmand, I find 6€ rather obscene considering the marvel this app is and how often I use it :)

        With GrapheneOS I'm Using the FDroid version though, so no legacy account without Play service.
        It's basically the pro version without cloud functionality.

          First I want to thank everyone for helping me out. I really appreciate it!

          Canardo_Sanchez You don't need Play service to use Nova launcher, just download the prime app via aurora store if you paid for it.

          That's good news.

          Canardo_Sanchez I don't use public transportation at all, but for everything else the Organic Earth/ Osmand combo is fantastic.
          Organic Earth for quick driving directions, Osmand for hiking and map geeking.. I'm amazed by those two apps.

          What I'm missing are live traffic updates based on how much the roads are frequented. Thats probably where the big userbase of apps like Google Maps comes into play.

          But I will invest more time in those two the next days.

          Canardo_Sanchez I always come back to Fx file explorer, so much so that I never used any other explorer for more that an hour or two since I have a smartphone. Sleek desktop look (should you be into such thing), strong privacy policy.

          Thats good news that there are alternatives which have a strong privacy policy.

          Canardo_Sanchez Vimusic (YouTube music frontend) is awesome.

          I took a look at the project. It hasn't been updated since two years. I have experienced some issues when using the app: Searching for a song, selecting it and then when trying to open the album it's from doesn't show anything. It keeps loading forever. But overall it's nice and clean. Fast etc.

                    AcidDemon you may try Magic Earth, I think it have some sort of online traffic functionality. Personnaly I didn't like the UI that much and thought it wouldn't compete anyway with casual Maps/Waze navigation, so I have a secondary profile for this.

                    Fx file explorer is just great if you dig the desktop aesthetic, I don't understand why it has a rather low score on play store.

                    I encountered the same bug on Vimusic when I installed it on a dinosaur smartphone with bad internet.. No issue on my pixel 8. Maybe clear cache etc. It's old and probably won't get any update, but still the best YouTube music frontend I tried by a long shot.

                        Canardo_Sanchez It's old and probably won't get any update, but still the best YouTube music frontend I tried by a long shot.

                        Give InnerTune (which has been mentioned here) a try. It's really worth checking out.

                            AcidDemon

                            Did you mean Shorts as in the page that lets you scroll random shorts? If so, then I misunderstood.

                              I have been using Heliboard for my keyboard. There's no swipe or glide or whatever, but I never learned how to do that anyway. It has text prediction, clipboard history that auto-expires at a customizable time and they are pinnable to make them permanent. Also has an undo/redo button and nifty controls like swiping from the spacebar to move the cursor or swiping from the backspace button to select and autodelete backwards from the cursor's position. Has a one handed mode that can switch sides, and you can customize the height and put dead space underneath the spacebar to raise the whole thing up higher on the screen if you're like me and tend to grab the middle of the phone and can't comfortably reach the bottom with your thumbs. If you want to go deep, you can even make custom keyboard layouts.

                                GlytchMeister I have been using Heliboard for my keyboard.

                                The project looks promising. I will spend some time with it and see if it feeds my needs and pick either FlorisBoard or HeliBoard.

                                N1b Of the recommended apps the only one supporting shorts to my knowledge is https://github.com/libre-tube/LibreTube

                                LibreTube supports Shorts. The only problem I'm having is the authentification at the instance. I'm getting the error that I have to sign in to show that I'm no bot. If I select "Disable Piped proxy" everything is fine but the requests are loaded directly from YouTube servers in that case.

                                N1b Powerful alternative is https://github.com/tasks/tasks

                                Great alternative. It has everything I need (and much more).

                                        Heliboard is great.
                                        Getting swipe working is just two steps to configure.
                                        If you can live with the proprietary library

                                        AcidDemon

                                        Re: Libretube thing: if you use a good VPN, the Proxy is redundant.

                                        Its a dirty 'fix' that largely defeats the purpose of the main distinguishing factor between Libretube and Newpipe, and the Libretube dev(s) are copping a combative/defensive attitude to anyone who pointed out the issue in the first place, then to anyone who points out that this kills a big part of what makes libretube uniquely privacy-friendly... So make of that what you will. I haven't been back to their github page in a while after a couple interactions in their issues section went rather sour.

                                        Their subscribed channels feed page thingy is also not actually pulling like... 3/4ths of the videos because it apparently depends on libretube or maybe piped users manually visiting channels... probably piped, because I manually visited every channel I'm subscribed to and it didn't fix my feed. So there's that, too. At least with Newpipe, you can actually see at least the long format videos your channels post without having to manually check each one yourself.

                                          YouTube
                                          One of the Pipe ones or Grayjay. Right now I'm using PipePipe since it supports viewing Shorts on creator profiles whereas Grayjay doesn't support that yet. Grayjay is still in early development though so it will probably be where I end up. I like their anti-censorship goals such as enabling multiple plugins and polycentric comments. Though, I usually just use the browser for most random searches anyway and just use the apps to manage subscriptions. Grayjay also supports FCast, a new open-source protocol as a Chromecast alternative.

                                          Keyboard
                                          FUTO Keyboard. It has built-in swipe typing and it has open-source language model predictive text suggestions and auto-correct, which I don't think any other alternative keyboard has. It's like 90% as good as gboard. FUTO Keyboard also has a built-in speech-to-text that competes with Google's in terms of quality. You can also install the FUTO Voice Input App separately if you want to use it with another keyboard like Heliboard instead.

                                          Browser
                                          Brave + Vanadium as a main browser. If you need a browser that supports extensions, try Mull Browser (it's a hardened Firefox browser). You can login to a Firefox/Mozilla account using Mull. Just know that Firefox-based browsers on Android don't have the best security and lack site isolation, so I only use it as a secondary browser. Cromite (fork of Bromite) is also a project worth keeping an eye on for the future.

                                          Gallery
                                          If you're comfortable self-hosting, look into Immich. It looks and functions very similarly to Google Photos, but it's self-hosted and privacy respecting.

                                          Social Media
                                          I'm biased since i don't actively use social media. But i just do it in the browser if I need it on mobile. Unless your job requires it, you'll probably benefit mentally from not having social media on your phone anyway. I mostly just browse reddit, X (Twitter), and YouTube these days, but there are privacy web-based front ends like Redlib, Nitter, and Invidious. (Some nitter instances still work for light casual browsing).

                                          Note taking
                                          Standard Notes, Joplin

                                          Music streaming
                                          Also look at RiMusic (uses YouTube Music)

                                          Password manager
                                          Also can look into Proton Pass, it's part of the Proton Suite.

                                          RSS
                                          Feeder

                                          Weather
                                          Breezy weather or Weawow if you want more weather sources like Dark Sky (Apple Weather)