Hello,
I’m trying to convince my wife to buy a phone without google. And I found that murena with e/os would be ideal as she can install all apps using the store the same way as on her samsung right now.
There are actually still 2 hickups.
She doesn’t want to change her email(gmail) address and she still want to use google drive to automatically sync all images.
Is this possible or when she migrates should she use murena cloud?
because that would mean a deal breaker for her.
Give up. You are opening a can of snakes. Snakes which sooner or later will bite your body “where the sun never shine”.
I tried many times to convince my sweetheart and friends.
No one wants to leave the supposed “convenience”.
The move to nonG devices, nonW OS can be successful only by motivation.
Technically, this is possible. Just install the Google Drive app via the App Lounge and log under a google account. But the question is why? The whole point of using /e/os is to degoogle one’s life and possessions.
It’s pretty much better to just switch to Murena cloud or find some other ways to sync the pictures without any Google services.
She knows the downsides of google, at least a little bit.
for email it’s obvious why not to change, else no one would be able to reach here.
for Google drive there are other reasons.
she already has a subscription which according to her is ok and don’t want to change.
if she migrates to Murena, it’s for times more expensive. So that also holds her back.
And moving from one cloud to another to deGoogle and caught up in another ecosystem is a little bit weird. It might be better then google. But at that point I might be better of installing a home nas.
Given that /e/OS is deGoogled it will not be a good choice for this scenario. Nor any other except maybe Graphene with its GPlay sandbox(?).
If just wanting to get away from the OEM bloat then any compatible custom ROM flashed with a microG package or included (LineageOS for microG) might fare better.
Custom ROM with minimal GApps package is best bet.
Google Drive app works fine but as far as photo backups that may be a different issue. I know that general Drive syncing has not worked out for some. Maybe search the forum for any prior discussions.
We have heard the rational, the technical and the emotional …
… may I ask a “new poster” @BartK , welcome … btw,
are you running /e/OS yourself … ?
I will check those two out,
but the problem always is the app store, with app launch /e/os has this covered.
I do not know about the other two.
I will search for this later, this indeed would be a requirement.
No I’m not,
I do not use my private phones ever, I always use my business phone and there is no choice for that part.
However I’m thinking about acquiring some cheap model to test
Way to go 
– very short replies not allowed.
This is normally not a real problem. You must not close your old address, it can be alive for a while, just don’t use it yourself anymore.
This takes some weeks and no one sends her mails to the old Gmail address anymore. Nobody takes notice about that. Receiving mail on the old address can still remain configured in her mail client, this is not a problem, the main thing is: don’t propagate this old address anymore. After a while (half a year) you can delete the old account completely. I had about ten private mail addresses in my life, changing was never a problem.
I can ship if for free, if you like. I mean: I do not want money for it.
As for a extra benefit in changing email provider:
May be that proceding one step at time, those snakes I was talking about before, will become less dangerous
For Gmail
Just use the /e/OS mail application, or better yet, use K9 mail which is much better and looks more similar to the Gmail app. In this app you can connect to your gmail account via imap. Google will still have access to all your mails, and will know what IP address is being used to check your mail (and at what time), but this is better than using the gmail app (on /e/OS or a googled phone) because who knows what other data that app is sending to google.
For google drive
You can still install the app (I haven’t tried). It is better to use a google app on a degoogled phone than a googled phone. Everything you do in the app will be sent to google, but that is it. When you use a googled phone, you are logged into google continuously, and tons of metadata is sent to google about everything that you do on your phone.
There are a lot of privacy purists who will say “what is the point of using a google app on a degoogled phone”, but that fact of the matter is that it is still better than using a googled phone. If you are trying to get a spouse or non tech person to switch, the use of google apps will be a necessary evil. Over time, hopefully they will learn that they can replace google drive and with something like nextcloud.
edit: I have done this experiment with my spouse, and there were only two real problems. Android auto doesn’t work with /e/OS+microG, and the opensource camera apps are not user friendly and a bit laggy.
I have set a forward rule from Gmail to another address of mine. Since then, I never used Google anymore.
And I use the ‘Mail Collector’ functionality in my gmx.com email account to retrieve emails sent to my GMail address and store them in a specific folder in my gmx inbox.
I’m trying to do that for about 10 years now,
some companies still manage to only use my old email even when I specifically use my new one.
And I still use google for SSO, but that’s a different story.
thank you,
But I asked my wife where her samsung galaxy s8 is and she promised me a couple of times she is going to search. So I will wait for that one, but it can take a couple of weeks before she starts searching I think 
Hi, sorry for hijacking this older thread, but I suggest using rclone android app called RCX. You have to sync folder(s) manually, it is not that convenient, it cannot be done automatically (afaik), but it works fine as a backup. You can sync to google (microsoft and other cloud storages are supported too) and even encrypt the files on the fly, so the cloud provider does not see your data.
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