I’m an iPhone and Mac user. I don’t plan to move on from using Apple stuff necessarily, but I do like to try to avoid being locked into anything, so i’d like to move my photos and messages and stuff out of iCloud drive. The problem is Apple have obviously designed the system to keep me in there and keep me paying for iCloud drive, which I also don’t love.
Anyway - i’d love to hear of any ways others have found to use iPhones without depending on iCloud drive. Or do I just have to switch to Android?
And for bonus points: if I switch to Android am I just forced to use Google for photos and messages and backup and stuff? Because that would be… worse from my perspective.
you can turn off icloud sync for photos + use cryptomator
messages in icloud is end-to-end encrypted with advanced data protection
and I personally prefer manual backups
I try to backup sensitive files to an E2EE cloud provider, such as proton, skiff or tresorit. I don’t use notes, keychain, or other services that I can replace with open source solutions.
But for photos, I continue to use apple photos with ADP.
Thanks - i’m curious to see if I can also reduce the iCloud storage I pay for. It’s difficult to stay under the 200GB plan given how quickly photos occupy storage.
iCloud backup → Tresorit. It integrates really well in iOS. The only limitation is photos only get backed up when you open the Tresorit app.
Messages → I am lucky that I was able to convert about 80% of my frequent contacts & group chats to Signal.
Keychain → BitWarden. It’s cheap and integrates really well in iOS.
All of these options are secure, easy to use, and multiplatform, so I have no problem switching between Android / iOS / macOS / Windows as needd.
For full phone backups, I would recommend plugging your phone into your computer every now and then and doing a manual encrypted backup.