this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
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You Should Know

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[–] Fierro@piefed.social 1 points 5 minutes ago

Anyone knows of a google lens translation alternative? I use it to share memes with a friend who doesn't know English without having too manually replace text (these days it's pretty good with context).

Ideally I would love to self host a thing that would do that, I don't think it would be too complicated to vibe-code some self hosted translator plugged into a image to text reader/replacer or however you'd call that... But the fact that it sounds simple to vibecode makes me think it either already exists or is way more complicated than it sounds.

[–] FukOui@lemmy.zip 1 points 33 minutes ago (1 children)

What about for google maps?

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 6 points 1 hour ago

Are we doing ads now here? And are we, like, OK with it now?

[–] goodboyjojo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

this is a helpful image. thanks for sharing

[–] Abundance114@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

This is like switching from Walmart to 15 other stores just to buy the same stuff. It's going to be extremely difficult to convince anyone to make this jump.

It's a actually harder because whoops, three years later you try to log into a service and it asks for a verification code sent to your Gmail address that you no longer have access to, oh well.

[–] clawd@lemmings.world -4 points 2 hours ago

Appreciate the post. Good perspective on this.

[–] fireweed@lemmy.world 11 points 6 hours ago (4 children)

Literally the first I'm hearing of Tuta.

Are they legit?

[–] randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 1 points 2 hours ago

They're legit and I've been on their paid plan for a few months now. I don't like the UX of their app. Often feels slow and laggy and outdated. Probably will switch to Proton or something else when my 1 year plan ends.

[–] xistera@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 hours ago

It’s not perfect, but I chose them over proton because I was able to get my first.last name. I haven’t had any issues so far over the last few years.

One of the biggest things is you have to use their client, no 3rd party clients like thunderbird.

[–] jnod4@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 hours ago

Don't move accounts straight away. They ban people with no appeal in the first couple of days if account is sniffed as suspicious. Also 6 months inactivity gets you deleted

[–] Dozzi92@lemmy.world 8 points 6 hours ago

They made this pretty sweet advertisement!

[–] Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 104 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

This is an ad. At least tuta marked it but that doesn't make it way better.

All YouTube "options" are YouTube frontends. All android "alternatives" are android - which isn't the guides fault as there are none in my opinion. Still unserious from my point of view.

It's once more a catch all "guide" that doesn't guide but simply mentions enough popular alternatives to get popularity.

[–] mybuttnolie@sopuli.xyz 8 points 8 hours ago

they even listed calyx which is currently taking a long nap and is not secure

[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 14 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

And as mentioned elsewhere, many cited alternatives are not degoogled at all.

And once you go that way you should go one step further and look for open source alternatives. I'm pretty sure some listed aren't that either.

There are better curated, less biased lists out there.

[–] SpicyTaint@lemmy.world 22 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

"Oh hey, an alternative to Google Translate!"

Oh...

[–] lastweakness@lemmy.world 9 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

What's being recommended is LibreTranslate, which isn't the same. LibreTranslate is server software. On Android, you can use "Translate You". I co-maintain Dialect, which is an app for Linux. We host a server at https://lt.dialectapp.org/ , so feel free to make use of it.

[–] SpatchyIsOnline@lemmy.world 5 points 6 hours ago

This is a single unofficial client for the mentioned software. LibreTranslate itself is fantastic.

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 24 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (4 children)

Aurora isn't really anti-google as it's merely a different front end for Play (that you can use anonymously).

Need more calendar options such as mailbox.org.

Good start though!

[–] turbowafflz@lemmy.world 9 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, plus all the android alternatives are just different android distributions.

[–] who@feddit.org 13 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

It's important to recognize that Android distributions without Google's (spyware) Play Services are vastly better for privacy than the commercial Android distributions that ship on most phones. To overlook/minimize that difference by calling them "just" different Android distributions is misleading.

[–] turbowafflz@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I mean yeah I know they're better, I run lineage os, but it still is just another android distribution, not a real android alternative. I feel like the people who just want safer android are going to be confused by them being called "alternatives" and the people who want an alternative know that they aren't really alternatives.

[–] who@feddit.org 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

The need being served here is for an alternative to Google's spyware, not for an alternative to Android.

The Android operating system itself is not a significant privacy problem. (It might seem like one because most Android distributions include Google Play Services, but without that, Android is pretty tame and very useful.)

[–] comradegodzilla@lemmy.ml 6 points 10 hours ago

Mailbox is pretty good. The UI is a bit clunky, but so far I like it.

[–] baronvonj@piefed.social 5 points 11 hours ago

Agree on the calendar. In particular would like to find one with map integration.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago

Aurora isn’t really anti-google as it’s merely a different front end for Play (that you can use anonymously).

You could say the same about Piped, which is just an alt front end for YouTube.

None of these alternatives seem to tackle the networking effect of the root Google services. None of them address durability, either. Proton VPN launched in 2017, Google's been around since 1998. Microsoft's been around since 1975. IBM's been around since 1911.

If you don't mind rebasing your entire digital profile every five or ten years, these alternatives are fine. But most people don't want to ditch a 20 year old email address or fiddle with a brand new OS, when enshitification can be right around the corner for any of these services in another few years.

Ffs, I'd just finished putting the shine on my PLEX server before they shit the bed.

[–] whitecollarcry@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

woke up at 4am to piss.. ended up switching over to graphene while I was up, so was going to be seeking just such a thing today. thank you!

[–] RedSeries@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

I use Tuta for email but damn if the Tuta calendar app isn't god awful. I don't know if they improved it (this was like 6 months ago) but I couldn't duplicate events and I would both get phantom notifications for old deleted events and I wouldn't get notifications for updated events.

[–] Robert7301201@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 hours ago

I'm somewhat glad I'm not the only one getting phantom notifications. I got one last week for a deleted event. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on.

I've been debating leaving Tuta and switching to mailbox.org. I'm annoyed by the lack of support for standard protocols like S/MIME and SMTP. As far as I understand with encryption, I can only send encrypted emails to other Tuta users in practice. Yes, I can send emails encrypted with a password. But it kind of defeats the point if the password has to be sent unprotected where an attacker could just use the password to unencrypt the email themselves. The lack of SMTP support also means none of my self-hosted services can send emails.

[–] 6nk06@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 hours ago

The good: I have never seen ghost notifications or wrong notifications. The bad: it's still ugly but I don't mind.

[–] theherk@lemmy.world 6 points 10 hours ago

Proton also has mail and password management.

[–] Cattail@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

Aurora app is pretty cool

[–] expatriado@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (2 children)

newpipe? do they have non-youtube videos?

i think the actual recommendation would be peertube

[–] DaMummy@hilariouschaos.com 2 points 5 hours ago

Not sure about NewPipe, but PipePipe also has Billibilli, peer tube, band camp. Think there was another.

[–] carrylex@lemmy.world -4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (3 children)

https://newpipe.net/

Look at "Supported Services"


I probably found the answer faster than the time required for you to write the question.

Maybe do a basic search before asking questions.

[–] jnod4@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

I always thought newpipe is just a YouTube front end and never thought there are supported services to even ask in the first place.

[–] expatriado@lemmy.world 6 points 8 hours ago

asking questions in forums is useful so users can read the answers, thank you for your service

[–] huppakee@piefed.social 2 points 8 hours ago

Not responding would have required even less time and would have provided this community with equal value :)

[–] ok_effect@feddit.dk 5 points 11 hours ago

DeepL translate is pretty good too.

[–] NarrativeBear@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Anyone have experience with Kagi translate or LibreTranslate. How privacy respecting are they?

Are there any alternatives such as a self-hosted local translator?

[–] rem26_art@fedia.io 3 points 10 hours ago

You can run LibreTranslate locally in a Docker/Podman container. iirc it does need a few GB of space to download the model.

I only played with it for a little bit maybe like a year ago and wasn't super impressed by its Japanese to English translations, but that could have been me just not setting it up right, or maybe its improved since then. I didn't try any other languages

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

What non-google chromium based browsers would you guys recommend?

Firefox (and derivatives) are slow as shit on my laptop, but ungoogled chromium is fast enough.

[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 hours ago

Non Google chromium browsers?

My friend, Google develops chromium.

[–] SpatchyIsOnline@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

It's hard to recommend any Chromium-based browser in 2026 as Chromium no longer supports Manifest v2 extensions, breaking support for essential content blockers like uBlock Origin.

Even Brave, which has a built-in adblocker not based on extensions, is loaded with AI and Crypto bs, and as far as I'm aware, the adblocker portion of its code is closed source. This isn't even mentioning the horrific political opinions expressed by the CEO of that company.

I keep a copy of raw ungoogled Chromium around for webUSB firmware flashing, but that's it.

If I were you, I would try and figure out what is causing firefox-based browsers to run slowly - i.e. toggling on/off hardware acceleration in browser settings and see if that makes a difference.

[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 hours ago

sure wish mozilla would get their head out of their ass and implement webusb already

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 hours ago

Also: ublock origin lite works excellently.

[–] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Very good list, this is recommendable.

Edit: Needs a few additions, though. DeepL as the one below said, and also PeerTube, and Protonmail.

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[–] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 8 hours ago

Would add PeerTube for youtube replacements

[–] kadu@scribe.disroot.org 2 points 10 hours ago

If you're already going through the trouble of leaving Google... leave subscription services altogether.

Think about the reasons and headaches involved in your Google migration: you don't control their policies and what they do with your data, they can keep raising prices or killing features you want, migrating platforms is a mess, you are at the mercy of their abstractions and APIs, a board of directors change could turn the company into the opposite of what you trusted it for... Guess what, exactly all of the same points apply to Tuta, or Proton, or whoever else.

Don't repeat the same mistake, don't find yourself looking for a "de-Proton your life" guide 8 years from now. Have your pictures in your computer, there are many easy ways to organize, browse, and sync them. Keep copies of your music. Keep backups, they're automatic, encrypted and compressed nowadays. Have your own calendar and notes, you can pick from a multitude of choices with any UI imaginable. Sync your files with SyncThing, it's faster and more powerful than whatever "cloud" you could get.

[–] vogi@piefed.social 2 points 11 hours ago

Youtube’s alternatives looking really sad :( Love me some Invidious but an actual alternative would be so cool. Peertube is that on paper but missing content aside i think the UI is really holding them back it’s just not inviting at all.

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