I switched to indie apps for privacy, and now my workflow is a mess

I just wanted to send a file from my Android phone to my Windows 11 PC. It should have been easy, but I had de-Googled my life, and suddenly, I was stuck. Quick Share was gone. Google Drive wasn’t an option. Docs and Keep were also out of the picture. My new setup relied on a handful of indie tools, and they weren’t cooperating. Microsoft’s Phone Link wasn’t working (again), and my Canadian cloud service was as slow as molasses.

It was at that moment I realized escaping Big Tech only sounds good in theory. The practice turned out to be much more difficult than it should have been. Here’s what I learned trying to live a Big Tech-free life, and why I’m still picking up the pieces.