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?
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.
One piece of advise I can give; do not try to replicate your android experience on iOS. More than likely it will leave you frustrated. Make the switch with an open mind to a new way of doing things and you will have a much better time.
I actually switched from a lifetime of Android to the IPhone 13 and found it pretty seamless. After many years, iOS has copied enough Android features that they’re basically the same at this point. Like the functional differences are few and far between.
To get that ad-free YouTube experience, I use Vinegar safari extension and have pinned the YouTube site to my home screen rather than using any apps.
I also use Banish to remove all those annoying "Open in our app" pop-ups in Safari.
Lastly, I use AdGuard to block ads on the phone locally and have also set up my own Wireguard VPN server at home with PiHole so that I'm always protected ad-wise when I'm out and about over 5G and on any public Wifi (I used to use my own Wireguard VPN with my old Pixels too).
When I was on Android I used to love the F-Droid open source repository. Both Newpipe (3rd party YouTube app) and DNS66 (local VPN on device that blocked ads throughout the phone).
I switched to iOS and really missed those applications and needed a solution for my new phone. Those 5 things above (Vinegar, Banish, AdGuard, WireGuard and PiHole) have worked wonders helping me when I switched.
Wouldn’t be without them now.
Edit:
If anyone happens be be on android or still uses Android devices with their Apple things, here are the apps I used to use:
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)
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.
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).
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.
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