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.
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.
I got grandfathered in from when it was a one time purchase.
I’m using the free version and it’s still great. The best feature for me is that you can see hourly timelines of temperature and precipitation for every day for the week ahead. I’ve found the free data source to be reliable enough, so I don’t currently have a reason to pay.
Default weather app can show the hourly temperature and precipitation for the next 10 days as well; simply tap the day you want more info for from the 10-Day Forecast section and you can see all the forecast details. I believe this was added after Apple bought Dark Sky.
You know, I just realised this yesterday. I thought to myself “oh, this is mostly the same as Carrot, then!”. Good to know :)
Agree to not write off the stock apps, but I personally hate Safari and the way it feels and controls. It’s genuinely harder to navigate and around webpages and it’s hard to put my finger on why. Its interface is also just super dated and not as intuitive as the other browsers. And there isn’t really any real reason to use it since every web browser on IOS is secretly Safari under the hood. It’s just the UX on top that’s different.
The Mail app has a similar issue where it’s just kinda dated and clearly hasn’t been given much love since its creation. The calendar app, Notes, weather, and others are pretty rock solid though.