I’ve been using Google Pixels since they were Nexus phones and just activated my new 14 yesterday. It’s a little weird but I like it so far. I do miss twire instead of twitch, YouTube re-Vance’d, and Firefox with Adblock. What does a long term android user like me need to know/install/settings tweak/etc?
Some random tips:
Poke around the Accessibility settings. There’s lots of customization options hidden in there.
Learn the Shortcuts app. You can use it to create macros and save them on the Home Screen, in the share sheet, or as a voice command.
Customize the share sheet. Options are limited but there are some useful commands in there that are hidden by default. You may need to repeat customization with each files type (images get a different sheet from text, etc).
Set your AirDrop to “contacts only” or else you’ll get spam pushed to you when in public.
If you turn off wifi from the control centre it only disconnects. To turn off the radio completely you need to do it from Settings or switch to airplane mode.
You probably don’t need a calculator app, but if you do: pCalc.
Focus modes aren’t limited to “do not disturb”. You can have several with different home screens and different communication restrictions.
Apps that don’t have filesystem privileges can only access their own subfolder inside the “On My Phone” folder, so you sometimes need to move stuff into there manually. This is rare, but one common example is Minecraft worlds/texture packs.
If you dismissed the prompt to install Files, you can get it on the app store. Do it. Then install all the other cloud storage apps you use (Dropbox, etc), log in, then delete them from the Home Screen only and forget they exist. They’ll all be accessible in Files.
You can do a similar thing with the TV app, but personally I prefer separate apps on that front.
Oh and one more thing that trips people up: iCloud is not a backup. If you delete something from your phone it will immediately be deleted from iCloud too. The phone will even sometimes stealthy delete the local copy of music, photos, etc to save space and silently re-fetch them as-needed.
“iCloud Backup” is a thing. It backs up your configuration and some other things in case you need to factory reset or buy a new phone, but that’s separate from iCloud data storage.
Speaking of iCloud Backup, if you’re concerned about privacy don’t use it. Sync your phone with a pc instead and choose the encrypted backup option.
If you’re looking for a very similar experience to YouTube re-Vance’d you should try YouTubeRebornPlus. It’s a modification to the official YouTube app with all the features one would expect, No Ads, Skipping Sponsor Spots, proper PIP support. Similarly to side loading APKs on Android you can side load IPAs on iOS. It’s not as simple, but it’s not difficult either.
Anyway, here is a link to the GitHub for the IPA. https://github.com/arichorn/YouTubeRebornPlus/releases/tag/v18.29.1-4.2.0
Get Wipr for ad blocking on Safari
You’ll want to spend some time learning how notifications work as they’re quite different.
Also - seriously consider buying an Apple Watch - doesn’t have to be the most expensive model. iPhone and Apple Watch are good products on their own, but combined they are amazing.
Ever since I switched to iOS I always have like two weeks worth of notifications at any given time. My wife thinks I’m nuts but like… if you don’t jump on any given notification it’s just tucked away under a second swipe and I never remember to look there lol.
Though I am SO happy that with ios17 IOS is FINALLY adding active notifications.
Wdym “active notifications”? Do you mean live activities? Those have been a thing since iOS 16
Getting used to the notifications has been probably the biggest learning curve. I also miss having my app drawer exactly how I wanted it. I did get an Apple Watch, I had a Samsung galaxy 4 and couldn’t get it to pair with the iPhone. I gotta say I’m impressed l, I LOVE the watch. Got the SE 2nd gen, I think.
The best advice I can give is: don’t immediately abandon the stock apps. I see tons of people who get an iPhone, immediately install Chrome and Gmail and all I can think is, what’s the point?
AdGuard or a similar adblocker for Safari will give you the results you got from Firefox. Safari on iOS also supports full desktop extensions if the developer chooses to make them available. So things like 1Password work great on it.
Same with the Mail app, Calendars, etc. Try setting up your accounts and services in the stock apps and see if you like them. Besides that, there isn’t much to tweak, that’s kind of the point.
If you want app recommendations, it depends on what services you use. Some of my favourite apps are:
Weather - CARROT Mastodon - Ivory Lemmy - Bean or Voyager Package Tracking - Parcel RSS - Reeder Password Manager - 1Password Remote Management - Remotix Home Server Management (Sonarr/Radarr/SabNZBd) - LunaSea
carrot looks super cool but just don’t see the value in a subscription weather app
I’m using the free version and it’s still great. The best feature for me is that you can see hourly timelines of temperature and precipitation for every day for the week ahead. I’ve found the free data source to be reliable enough, so I don’t currently have a reason to pay.
Default weather app can show the hourly temperature and precipitation for the next 10 days as well; simply tap the day you want more info for from the 10-Day Forecast section and you can see all the forecast details. I believe this was added after Apple bought Dark Sky.
You know, I just realised this yesterday. I thought to myself “oh, this is mostly the same as Carrot, then!”. Good to know :)
Any free weather data is either being subsided by the cost of the device or harvesting your location data for ad surveillance purposes. Paying for carrot means the developer gets to put food on the table without telling ad networks wherever you are.
I got grandfathered in from when it was a one time purchase.
Technically most of the weather data is derived(within the United States) from the National Weather Service, all of this data is a matter of public domain under federal law(so it’s being subsidized by taxpayers). What companies like the weather channel or accuweather can do is increase the accuracy by adding more stations and providing more compute power to run more powerful simulations(something the NWS can’t do because of budgetary constraints) or what an app like Carrot can do is allow you to add your own weather station and interpret the data to give predictions.
Agree to not write off the stock apps, but I personally hate Safari and the way it feels and controls. It’s genuinely harder to navigate and around webpages and it’s hard to put my finger on why. Its interface is also just super dated and not as intuitive as the other browsers. And there isn’t really any real reason to use it since every web browser on IOS is secretly Safari under the hood. It’s just the UX on top that’s different.
The Mail app has a similar issue where it’s just kinda dated and clearly hasn’t been given much love since its creation. The calendar app, Notes, weather, and others are pretty rock solid though.
iPhones have Adblock, but it is not obvious how to install it.
Yeah, I’m trying to de-Google my life while not going all out, if that makes sense. Thanks for the suggestions. I gotta say I never realized just how much I used my Gmail address as the login. I’m never tying my logins/passwords to a behemoth again.
I’ll give it a go, thanks for the suggestion
Just install whatever apps you want to use. Maybe get an AdBlock for safari.
It doesn’t require much tweaking to work properly.
In addition to the adblockers, you can install Hush to get rid of the cookie notices.
If you’re willing to tinker a little, check out AltStore. It’s a way to install apps Apple doesn’t want on the App Store (so things similar to re-Vance’d, torrent downloaders or emulators).
Try AhaDNS Blitz as a dns adblocker. It installs as a vpn profile so it works anywhere you go.
How does it compare to NextDNS?
One more tip: this probably applies to Android as well, I’m not sure as I haven’t used it extensively. But iOS has very good, deep, system-wide autofill.
Make sure you have a contact card in your contacts marked as you (“My Card” at the top of your contacts list) and populate it with all the phone numbers, emails, and addresses you can think of. Tag them all properly (work, home, secondary, etc) and even add usernames and whatnot, go all out.
iOS will use those details to autofill signup flows in many apps and services, as well as autocompleting stuff like “my address is” and “my phone number is”. Saves a lot of time.
It also has deep password manager autofill integration. So you can enable your favourite 3rd party password manager as the system autofill and you can call it up even in apps to create new logins or retrieve saved ones.
Install adguard, i rarely see ads anywhere. I also like dark reader to make websites dark by default
As far as something like YouTube Revanced: the App Store rules make it harder, but you can still do it! Check out an app called Yattee, which is fairly barebones—until you connect it up to a third-party YouTube front end for wonderful effect. https://www.reddit.com/r/Yattee/comments/13d3lj7/how_to_set_up_and_use_yattee_to_watch_youtube/
Always remember that you can add any website as app to the Homescreen using the share menu in Safari while being on the website. PWAs (webApps) will look like installed apps if opened from Homescreen. (No browser UI)
