Not sure how many people were suffering from it, but Google Photos became adamant about pushing ads. I couldn’t find a replacement in Google Store which wasn’t doing the same. Downloaded F Droid, used alternative to website to find apps, downloaded and now the problem is solved. You can use Google Files to install the F Droid apk to start your journey of degoogling. I’m still using some proprietary apps which work with the Android UI such as Google’s Wallet but everything I could replace I did (unless I’d inconvenience myself like with Contacts). The open source apps have much better UIs and don’t bombard me with ads or other stuff the big corp wants to push like their accounts. I wish I had done it sooner and this post was made to encourage other people to do that. I tried Aurora Store, but Google doesn’t let me login. It tells me it would give me a popup to type a number into, but the popup never comes. Anyone knows what app pushes the popup? Is Aurora a full replacement for Play Store or do I need to have both installed?
Now do yourself a favor and replace fdroid with Droid-ify. You’ll realize how archaeic and outdated the fdroid client is. I have no idea why they have the awful design decisions they do. They don’t even support seamless updates! Droid-ify is another fdroid client if you didn’t know.
Alright, this is the comment that finally got me to download droid-ify.
No regerts, it’s so much better.
Or with Neo Store. It has a really nice material 3 design. I would recommend it, although it’s quite buggy for me.
Definitely going to give them a try.