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?
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
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.