I replaced all my Google widgets with privacy-focused alternatives — here’s what happened

My home screen has had the same Google widgets for as long as I can remember — Search, Weather, Calendar, Keep, and Discover. It’s easy to overlook, but every one of these widgets does two jobs — one for me, one for Google. The weather widget knows where I am. The search widget knows what I’m curious about. Discover knows what keeps me scrolling. You get the idea. None of this is accidental, of course.

So I decided to find out what would actually happen if I swapped all of them for privacy-focused alternatives. Spoiler: a few switches were painless, but a couple didn’t stick.

Brave Search over Google Search

Google Search is one of those widgets I’ve used ever since my first Android phone (HTC One M8, if you’re curious). Switching away, though, wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought. I went with Brave Search because I was already using Brave as my default browser, and the short version is that it turned out to be better than Google Search in almost every way.

The most obvious win here was in what was missing. Unlike Google, Brave doesn’t personalize results, so the results I was seeing had nothing to do with my past activity. That also meant I wasn’t seeing ads about a product after searching for it once out of curiosity. Most importantly, none of this came at the cost of search quality.

Another big bonus was AI overviews, or rather, the lack of them. Yes, Brave Search has its own version, but you can turn it off from settings. I also like how Brave’s search widget isn’t locked to a single search engine. So if you prefer DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, or something else, you can switch.

Breezy Weather over Google Weather

Google’s weather widget is something most people don’t even think about — it’s just there. But if you’d rather not hand your location data to Google, it’s absolutely worth replacing it. Breezy Weather is the one I landed on. It’s free, open source, and collects no data. Accuracy was the thing I was most nervous about, but it turned out to be a non-issue. Breezy Weather lets you pick from 50 different weather sources, so all I had to do was select one and add my location.

What I really liked about Breezy Weather was the sheer number of widget choices. It offers 13 options, all fully customizable. I could tweak the font style, size, and opacity, and even choose exactly what data the widget showed. I ended up adding not one but two weather widgets. A smaller 2×2 clock and weather widget is on my main home screen, and a larger 4×2 is on my secondary screen that shows the hourly forecast, air quality index, and the day’s high and low.

Breezy Weather follows Material You design, so it didn’t feel jarring on my home screen either. The only catch was that I had to grab the app from F-Droid, since it’s not available on the Play Store. But I feel it’s worth the extra step.

Fossify Calendar over Google Calendar

Google Calendar was probably the hardest to replace on this list because so much of my life runs through it. I tried Fossify Calendar as a replacement because it’s open-source, and unlike Google Calendar, it doesn’t ask for location or call log permissions. Fossify Calendar offers three clean widget options, and I even managed to sync my Google Calendar data via CalDAV. This meant I didn’t have to manually add existing events, and the app could also pull in flight bookings and event invites from Gmail.

But I’ll be honest — Fossify Calendar didn’t stick. The first turn off was the widget itself. The design felt dated compared to Google Calendar, though I half-expected that going in, since it’s pretty much the case with most Fossify apps. The bigger issue was sync. Since it was pulling data via CalDAV, there were times it simply didn’t sync properly, and I had to refresh manually. For a calendar widget, that’s kind of a dealbreaker.

Of course, for anyone planning to store everything locally, Fossify Calendar is still a great option. But if your calendar life is already tangled up with Google like mine, swapping the widget won’t really move the needle on privacy.

Dark Note over Google Keep

Google Keep is a rare Google app I love with all my heart, so finding something equally simple but private wasn’t exactly easy. I tried several apps for this one, and the closest thing I found to Keep was Dark Note. It’s a lightweight, no-nonsense notes app that covers everything essential — checklists, location tags, reminders, easy export — without asking for an account or collecting any data.

It offers two widgets: one for quickly jotting down notes and one for previewing them. The preview widget, though, only shows one note at a time, so I had to add three separate widgets just to keep my important notes visible. Google Keep handles this so much better — its widget previews all your notes in one scrollable view. And that’s a harder thing to give up than I expected.

Much like with Fossify Calendar, sync was ultimately the dealbreaker here. In fact, this was a problem with most privacy-focused note apps I tried — sync was either missing entirely or required self-hosting. I wasn’t comfortable with either, so I eventually went back to Google Keep.

Feeder over Google Discover

I know Google Discover isn’t a traditional home screen widget, but I think it counts. To replace it, I went with Feeder. Unlike Discover, which works as soon as you swipe right on your home screen, Feeder requires you to find RSS feeds and add them one by one. It took some effort to set up the app first, but the built-in search function helped. I even managed to add my favorite YouTube channels and Reddit feeds without issues.

I then disabled the Google Discover feed and replaced it with a full-page Feedly widget. The thing I ended up liking the most was Feedly loading articles in its simplified reader mode. This meant I didn’t have to deal with those annoying pop-ups or ads while reading.

What I did miss was the effortless discovery side of things. With no algorithm filtering and suggesting content, I was only seeing content from the feeds I added. The other issue was that I was seeing everything those sites and channels posted, not just the stuff I cared about. Still, I feel it’s fair trade for privacy, so I ended up sticking with Feeder.

That’s how it went for me. Have you ever thought about replacing your Google widgets, or are you happy with the defaults? Share your thoughts in the comments below.