on the search front, you might like to check out SearxNG. It can be self hosted, or you can use a pre-existing site. one such site is searx.space (don't know if this instance is euro or not). It's an aggregate engine, and it collates from so many different sites that are customisable
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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You could try Vivaldi as your browser, its Norwegian afaik. Ive been using it for some time on my phone and only problem is that i cant use qwant as default search engine, but ecosia is on the list so no problem
Vivalid is European. The downside is that it's engine is Blink, which is in near full control of Google, thus killing web standardization.
Depending on your priorities you may be better off using Firefox (FOSS with mother organization in USA), or a fork of Firefox (not USA, but smaller projects with associated risks and drawbacks).
There is a way to add custom search engines, if you have any that are not on the standard list. And at least on my phone Qwant is in the default list of search engines. Maybe they added it at some point
Yes, I did have qwant be my default search engine by setting it as a custom one (PC and mobile). I think it is now a build in default now (just checked on mobile) which makes things much easier
I'd second Vivaldi! When I first jumped to it ~5 years ago, it was a bit sluggish but they have done a lot of work to speed things up and now it's fantastic. Super customisable and has so many different features that being forced to use Edge on my work PC is ultra annoying.
The only issue is that it is chromium based. Whilst thats good for website compatibility and chromium is technically open source, Google does own it so they could potentially include things people don't like and generally fuck up things up.
mapy.com looks like a rather tourist-centered rendering of OpenStreetMap ? Hiking/bicycle trails seem to be featured very prominently. Pretty :)
They was and still are great tourist maps (also offline maps) but they added few years ago a car navigation app with live traffic notifications and reports (like Waze have). And it is really nice! I stopped using Waze and switched to maps.com.
Can anyone recommend an app for finding routes using public transport? I am currently using Google Maps, but I'd like to find an alternative, preferably not US/big tech. Tried mapy.com, it didn't work.
I like HERE WeGo lately, haven't really noticed differences for public transportation with Google Maps. I only have experience using it in my country, though.
It depends on where you are. Here in Germany Google Maps is kind of trash for public transport as it doesn't have every connection available. The Bahn and the local providers have better systems.
I love citymapper, however it only covers a limited number of urban areas, is UK based and most importantly got bought by Via Transportation in 2023 (US based).
It seems like many city/regional operators have their own apps, this might be an option for you ?
You might also want to have a look at the apps that use transitous.org (listed on their homepage). Amongst them is cartes.app, which is a really exciting open source gmaps alternative wannabe, hosted in France (see cartes.app/roadmap for more technical details). Although it's still a wip, they've made great strides recently and I've started using it to replace some of GMaps' use cases. The only issue is, errrr, there's no English interface for now :) It's still a small team, so they're keeping internationalisation for later.
From my experience public transport was super hard to find a good solution too. I ended up going with Citymapper which works amazingly well. It's a British company from London but unfortunately uses Google Maps API I believe, so not truly independent.
Haven't found anything even close to a replacement though.
Nice! If you have some webspace you could consider installing Matomo for analytics.
Love mapy.com! I use them for years for world tourist maps but now also for Waze like live traffic reports and notifications. Also switched to ecosia.com, Mastodon and Mistral! I am open for new tips!
Maybe because I'm in Japan, but mapy is unfortunately useless. Waited 30+ seconds and it wouldn't load any map here (or even when I zoomed and moved a bit from Germany initially). Is really like to replace Google maps but it's rough (it's also what I use for public transit routes and schedules)
Try with openstreetmap. Maybe it works better for Japan.
OSM is good for some things, but is missing a lot in Japan last time I checked. It also has no transit, sadly. It also has no English (edit: for map labels, I mean) which is a problem if one's Japanese isn't native level (and even my wife who is native doesn't know how to read place names in some areas, particularly in Hokkaido).
That does remind me that I should see if there's anything I can add again, though.
Nice :)
I am still using Brave Search (just the search engine). I actually opted for it over the European alternatives. As far as I know, it is the only search engine that offers personalized ranked results, which helps ensure the feed is not flooded with American sites, which typically dominate results in European search engines as well.
E.g., I've downranked Reddit so it is less likely to appear as a top result in search.
If anyone is interested in reading about it
Similar features could likely be implemented by operators in other search engines (-site:reddit or similar), but I haven't explored that.
Cool, I did not know that. I will git it a try.
Welcome to Piefed ! Feel free to join !buyeuropean@feddit.uk as well, it's a similar community to this one, people post to one or the other