Thanks everyone for the responses. I'm thinking I'll go ahead and move to graphene soon. I'll leave my google account alone for now so I can access from a browser. I'll sign up and use Ente for new photos going forward until I can build a nextcloud server. My contacts and calendar are already moved to my proton account.
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2026
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DeGoogle Yourself
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I connect the phone with my computer (with USB cable) and copy the files (textfiles, PDFs, photos) to my computer and then to my backup drive.
Photos auto upload to Ente Photos. I periodically manually back it up locally to my desktop and an external hard drive. I cut and paste directly from my phone to free storage and so I don't have to scroll through Ente to see where I left off last backup.
General file storage like documents I use Tresorit. Mostly because it has a Linux app, otherwise I'd probably go Proton Drive. Proton Drive I use solely for game saves and whatever other random stuff I use on my Windows partition, which is not much. Similar to photos, I have a local backup on my external hard drive for important files.
I don't back up my actual phone. I did make an app list in Notesnook, but by the time I get a new phone I tend to use the opportunity to downsize anyway. And to throw surveillance capitalism off my trail in case I made a few mistakes in not being careful over the period of owning the phone.
syncthing, simple and easy
That does look nice and simple but where does it go? Do you use cloud storage or did you build something?
You can run syncthing on Fedora/Debian/Arch (or even MacOS) and any device can be your "where does it go". You don't need cloud services or a local server.
I have two external hdd drives for backup
Are they mirrored? On or offline?
offline, and yeah mostly redundant stuff... sorry, I thought you wanted a backup just to make the OS change but I think I read you wrong.
If you're not ready to go full self-hosted Immich then Ente Photos seems like a good replacement for Google Photos
Hadn't heard of that. Looks cool thanks
I self-host Immich for photo storage on my own server. All photos from my phone are automatically backed up there.
The immich server is backed up daily using restic, and those backups are stored in a Hetzner storage box. This way I have a local photo server plus an encrypted off-site backup in case something happens to the server.
I'm sure I could figure all that out but looking for something quick and easy to start. Don't want learning all that delay me leaving Google.
What do you mean by "phone backups"?
- Contacts? Synced to my Nextcloud instance via CardDAV.
- Calendar? As above, CalDAV.
- Browser bookmarks? Floccus > to Sync to Nextcloud.
- Apps? My custom ROM has Seedvault baked in. If I didn't have that, I wouldn't care much though, and just reinstall.
- Photos? Immich.
- Other Files? Nextcloud, Syncthing, or good, old-fashioned USB transfer.
Also use seedvault but Im unsure if graphene still includes it. They kept bitching about how it sucked and they'll make something better but not sure they ever did.
If Graphene stops bitching about things, it's a sure signs the project's dead. ;D
My thoughts as well. It never really crossed my mind to just store all my photos in Google photos or similar service at any time. As long as I remember a backup to me has meant connecting the device to a computer with USB and backing up what I want to backup, including the devices photos. I have a friend who was telling me awhile ago how great Google Photos is and how he has like a decade of photos in there. For these kinds of people I suppose "backup" means a backup provided by google. I don't know but I imagine people who were born into a world with phones and google have never really considered doing things with a simple USB cord and are more comfortable to go all-in with googles ecosystem. A few years ago I backed up a phone and then factory reset it as it was running like shit and full of junk and needed a fresh start. I then had issues with google which is another story but when chatting with them about it they asked "why did you reset your phone" as if it was some kind of unusual thing that I should not have done. I'm glad I am out of their whole bullshit system now. Also for OP original question if you don't want to self host then I would suggest syncthing. Also if you want to start running services like syncthing or nextcloud / self hosting related apps, keep in mind they will likely run much better on graphene than standard OS. For example Xiaomi (and many other brands) constantly kills nextcloud, tailscale, davx5, syncthing and similar whereas graphene never does. You have full control. Personally I self host and backup with RSYNC. I use syncthing for Obsidian. 2 different immich logins: 1 for note type screenshots and 1 for regular travel, food etc pics. Syncing off.
I have a friend who was telling me awhile ago how great Google Photos is and how he has like a decade of photos in there.
It's useful to remind those folks that a backup also needs to be accessible when you need it, and it isn't really if your account can, at any time, be banned because Google's AI flagged one of your kids' nude baby pics as CSAM. (Also... what business does Google have with your kids' nude pics in the first place?)
A NAS in my house and backed up to a NAS at a family member's house
This was my plan until the storage prices went nuts
Yeah sadly the drives have gotten out of control... But you can always expand the NAS over time.
Proton Drive does automatic photo backup.
As far as phone backup. I just always start fresh with each new phone anyway.
It's nice to hit the reset button every few years.
rsync to my laptop, which is periodically imaged to a couple of external disks, one of which sits under a fake plant at work when not actively used.
On Debian, I install android-file-transfer, mount my phone manually with aft-mtp-mount ~/androidmount, then run rsync -a --progress '/mnt/android/Internal Shared Storage' '/path/to/backup'
If the Android folder is too much trouble, you can also run rsync -a --progress --exclude 'Android/' '/mnt/android/Internal Shared Storage' '/path/to/backup'