This programme is Phase 2 of the Walkout series. It will enable you to complete your move away from big tech's creepy spyware products and use ethical alternatives. If you have already completed all the steps in the 2025 programme, then you've made a very good start. If not then we suggest you start there - it's a very easy intro, and lays the groundwork for this Phase.

The 2026 programme is designed to take place over one year and is split into four parts.

In general the ethos is to begin running alternatives in parallel, and then gradually phase out the spyware. You can complete this programme way quicker than a year, but we want people to be able to follow it at a leisurely pace. After all, leaving big tech is important but we've all got busy lives.

And a quick note on the scope of this programme: it is not possible to be 100% 'out' in terms of evading the eye of big tech, but we do not let perfect be the enemy of good. It is very possible to be 80%+ out, and that is good enough to starve their creepy system of data, which protects you and, as we explain on our website, democracy itself.

The 2026 programme

During this process remember two principles: 'run in parallel' and 'ditch the ecosystem thinking'.

Most of the 2026 programme is parallel switches, not hard switches - you'll be running the old and the new alongside each other for quite a while. A password manager really helps with the extra passwords you'll need to manage.

If you're used to getting all your tech from one vendor e.g. Google or Apple then you'd do well to realise that you don't need all your eggs in one basket. App ecosystems can have benefits but they are not necessary. Often it is better to have apps from several different specialists.

Part 1

Step 1: Email & Calendar (Gmail, Outlook, iCloud Mail alts)

Start by choosing which alternative you want from our list here. Signing up is quick and most have a free tier to get you going.

Next: import your contacts. With Tuta this is best done on your phone. We assume you have your contacts available in your phone's contacts app - probably reading them from your big tech email account. Tuta can connect to this and import the lot. You can then point your phone's contacts app to get them from Tuta now. Proton and Tuta have options for you to export all contacts to a file on the desktop, then import to their desktop app.

Next: email your closest friends and family to ask them to save your new email address to their contacts and delete the old one.

Next: make a list of products/services that use your old email address as a login. Start with the most important, log in to the service and change to your new email address. You can take your time with the rest - it might take the rest of the year to move them all over, but that's ok! The main thing is that you stop using the old email address to send new emails.

Step 2: Social Media - X/Twitter alts

We’ve rounded up all the best alternatives to X here. We suggest making accounts with Mastodon (on the main '.social' instance) and Bluesky. Even though Mastodon does have some big names, I think of Mastodon as 'normal people sharing news and talking to each other' and Bluesky as more about 'famous people posting news'.

If you have any followers on X tweet that you’ve had enough of a weird billionaire (Elon Musk) controlling what you see – he meddles with the X algorithm to suit his politics - and you’re going to start using an alternative in parallel for a while. Make it clear that eventually you will stop using X, but will cross-post for now.

You will find some of your favourite content creators are now also posting on Bluesky and Mastodon, so you can follow them there and unfollow them on X. For those that haven't moved you can tweet them to ask them to move too.

These apps are part of what is referred to as 'Federated Social Media', 'the Fediverse' or 'the Social Web'. A great way to get into the social web is the Mo-Me app. This was developed by Media Revolution to give people a social media app feel, where you start with some pre-populated news sources. They carefully select these initial news sources to not be billionaire-controlled. When you sign up what's happening in the background is you're setting up a Mastodon account on their instance.

Find out about the two main options, Mastodon and Bluesky:

Step 3: File & photo storage/backup/sync/share (Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud alts)

Find out about the alternatives and choose from our lists for file storage and file sync.

Most likely you've got gigabytes of photos, videos and files stored in big tech's cloud services. You'll need to download them to a computer, and then reupload them to your chosen ethical tech service.

Some big tech cloud storage apps make it easy to download everything from the web interface, some (looking at you Microsoft OneDrive) do not. The most efficient way to get everything from OneDrive turned out to be to 'sync' it all down to the desktop of a computer, set it to 'store all on device' (otherwise you just get thumbnail placeholders and not the actual file) and wait until that has sync'd.

This is a great opportunity to review all your files and photos and delete any you don't want any more. Then you need to upload to the new service provider. With photos you could do this all in one go (I uploaded 24,000 photos to Ente 🫣), or be more deliberate by uploading folders to make albums in the new service.

Some people keep the downloaded batch as a static backup - perhaps on an external hard drive you bought just for this purpose. I did that, but also uploaded copies of everything to Filen. This follows the 3-2-1 backup strategy. You might be happy with just the clound version and one copy on a hard drive, or just the cloud version - it's up to you.

A more labour intensive way to have file storage is to use NextCloud. Normally this is self-hosted but there are some hosting providers who will spin up an instance for you. Then you've got your own 'cloud' to store stuff.

For just photos it's hard to beat Ente. E2EE, hosted, and easy to use. For those who can self-host then Immich is a great option. There are also some cloud hosting providers who will spin Immich up for you e.g. Pikapods.

Step 4: Office docs (MS Office, Google Docs alts)

Choose your alternatives from our list here.

I was a deep user of Microsoft Office products forever. Other than Google Docs, I was barely aware that there might be other options. The most obvious choice is LibreOffice. These use the open document format, so they can also be opened in Microsoft or Google office apps. But not the other way around, because big tech loves a lock-in.

So you can use open document formats and sync them around your devices using SyncThing, or you can go for an 'ecosystem' style approach like Proton Docs. The latter needs the other person to have an account, the former doesn't. An approach that seems to be somewhere in between is Murena Workspace. You don't need to have one of their phones to use it, though of course it is integrated to them, and it uses LibreOffice files to keep interoperability. Within it there is also the option to use CryptPad for collaboration on encrypted files.

You can also spin up an instance of NextCloud (self-hosted or via a cloud hosting provider) and manage your LibreOffice files that way. This would replace the SyncThing (sync-between-devices) method.

Step 5: Maps (Google maps alts)

Choose your alternative from our list here.

There's no getting past it: Google Maps is still the best for live data on traffic and businesses. However, you don't always need that live data, you just need to get to somewhere. For that our list of alts is perfectly good, and they don't leak your location to Google. So run one or two of them in parallel with Google Maps for a while, and maybe you can ditch Google later on.

I've found that CoMaps covers all my needs but your mileage may vary (pun intended). For live traffic a strong choice is Magic Earth.

Part 2

Step 6: Social media - Reddit, Discord, FB groups alts

Choose an alternative from this page and this page on our site.

The technical term for what Reddit does is 'link aggregator with threaded comments'. The only future proof alternative to Reddit, in our opinion, is a federated link aggregator. Federated as in 'it's hooked up to the fediverse protocol ActivityPub'. We list a couple of these on our site and you can access them on mobile using various mobile apps. The one I use is Voyager.

For community sites like Discord most people just stick to Signal group chats. But to get beyond their limitations try one from our list. We use Zulip for our internal chat about official RTA stuff. Note that it does not have E2EE, so if your chats are super sensitive then probably you shouldn't use it.

An interesting FB Groups alternative that is early in development is Bonfire. It's federated into the fediverse and they do intend to implement E2EE. We'll monitor how it works out and list it on our site if it's any good.

Step 7: Social Media - Instagram alts

Find the alternative option, Pixelfed, here.

Pixelfed is a straight up copy of Instagram, but without the creepy Meta data harvesting. It is federated, meaning you can follow people from other 'fediverse' apps like Mastodon and Lemmy.

As with all fediverse apps you have two choices: join an established (hosted) instance, or self-host your own instance. Either way you'll be hooked into the social web since they all speak the same protocol language.

The process to migrate your photos from Instagram is similar for moving other cloud services: download your data to a computer, then upload it to Pixelfed. This guide shows how.

The creators you follow on Instagram will mostly likely not move from there so you'll have to run Pixelfed in parallel with Instagram for a while. In the meantime you can delete the Instagram app from your phone and access it via a web app. This ditches quite a bit of Meta's tracking. You can also prompt your favourite content creators to move to Pixelfed.

Step 8: Social Media - Facebook alts

Facebook is an 'everything app' and as such, to move away from it you need to split up the functions and move to alternatives plural. We list out the most common alts here.

The main mind shift is to realise that you don't need one app that does everything - news, groups, photos, marketplace. And you certainly shouldn't be communicating with people in a commercial context - everything you share on Facebook is ruthlessly harvested and used to sell you stuff. That is not natural, and leaves you open to manipulation.

Contact the people on there that you cannot afford to lose contact with and get their email and phone number. There's no harm in telling them why you'll be leaving FB, as they perhaps have not realised how toxic it is.

Then download all your photos and other data, as per the instructions we've put on our site.

Step 9: Notes (OneNote, Apple Notes, Evernote alts)

Our list of alternatives is here.

This is a simple 'switch and ditch'. The only time consuming aspect is copy/pasting your notes out of the big tech app. I was a heavy user of OneNote, and the fact that it's a proprietary format lock in become apparent the second you try to export your notes. You cannot do it to an open format like a .txt file. This is deliberate big tech lock-in, and a reminder of why we're leaving them. So, yes it's a pain to get your notes out, but once done you're free.

I favour Obsidian because whilst it is not open source, it saves the notes in the common .md markdown format as files (not 'stuck' inside the app). These files can be used in any app, and sync'd between devices easily, or converted to other formats. That said, any of the apps in our list are good.

Step 10: News (Google news, Apple news, MSN, Yahoo News alts)

Look through our list of News alternatives here.

Part of the journey away from big tech is realising that you've been 'fed' content via an algorithm that they control. This is quite handy at first but becomes problematic at scale, in terms of their ability to subtly manipulate what billions of people see.

So most of our news alternatives involve you having more of a say in what you see - you build your own feed. That is why RSS is such a good option: you build up your content from trusted sources, and there's no tracking.

Special mention should be given to Mo-Me. This is an app developed by Media Revolution to enable people to have an easy, and vetted, entry into Mastodon (and therefore all the news that gets posted there). They pre-populate it with news outlets that they have screened and can assure you are not billionaire controlled.

Part 3

Step 11: Media consumption - films, TV & video (Netflix, Youtube alts)

Try out the various options listed for films, tv and video here. They're all in one big table so look in the 'Focus' column.

Since the streaming platforms are always putting their prices up, increasing the number of ads, and generally designing themselves for 'lean back' viewing (mindless background stuff), you might want to consider ripping your collection from Blu-rays and DVDs, self-hosting them on a mini PC, and serving them up using Jellyfin.

Another popular option, but not open source, is Plex. They provide the same functionality as Jellyfin, though arguably more polished UX and apps. There is a free tier and then an annual paid option for additional features. Their other differentiating factor is their ad supported TV and Movie streaming service. However you can ignore those if you do not want to use them. Your own media files remain entirely separate on your self hosted device, under your control as it should be.

In general you need to get away from the biggest big tech first, so that means avoiding Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft. For YouTube there are some ways to watch it without being tracked, including FreeTube (laptop only), and NewPipe and GrayJay (mobile). However, a great trick is installing the DuckDuckGo browser on your phone or laptop and pasting in YouTube links to it. It will open them in its Duck Player, which strips away the link to you - so you are not profiled by Google!

We've also listed services you can get a more curated film selection from e.g. Mubi, and (in certain countries) films and TV free with your library card (Kanopy).

Step 12: Media consumption - music (Spotify, Apple Music alts)

The music options are in this list - where music is written in the Focus column.

In terms of privacy, and of better deals for musicians, there are not really any good streaming service options. Quobuz has better payouts per stream to musicians than Spotify and it allows you to buy/download music DRM-free. This puts it at the head of the pack for us, but you make your own choice.

The main mindset change you might want to consider is moving from streaming to owning. In this respect a combination of Bandcamp (limited streaming, mostly downloading/owning) and Quobuz (both) can be a healthy change back to more 'intentional' listening. And if you host your hi-res music collection on a cheap mini PC and serve it up using Jellyfin, you don't really need streaming any more.

Step 13: Media consumption - books, ebooks and audiobooks (Kindle, Audible, Amazon alts incl hardware eReaders)

Choose the eBook and AudioBook options from this list, and the eReader options from this list.

Most people have a Kindle if they have an eReader. And Kindles lock you in to their proprietary file format (and have DRM). Amazon have made it harder to get your eBook collection off your Kindle, but it's still possible if you install an older version of the Kindle desktop app (version 2.4). The link to that is in this article. After you have the files on your machnie, you can then strip the DRM from them using Calibre, having first installed this plugin to Calibre . You can then load them onto a better eReader (non-Amazon) or self host them using Calibre.

It's a bit of effort to break your eBook collection free from Amazon Kindle - but it's worth it. I can now read hundreds of eBooks on any device thanks to Calibre, whereas before they were trapped in my old Kindle.

To get your audiobook files from Audible, use the Libation app.

Step 14: Video Calling (Zoom, Google Chat, Microsoft Teams, Apple FaceTime alts)

Our list of alternative video calling software is here.

We understand if you're tied to Zoom or Teams etc for work, but there's no reason why you should have to use them for personal calls. We use Jitsi as this doesn't require an account, but the other options we list are good too. Try them out!

Step 15: Being organised - tasks (To Do, Trello, Google Tasks, Excel sheets alts)

Get organised with our ethical options here.

I was a heavy user of Microsoft's TO DO app. The closest I've found in functionality, that is open source, is Tasks.org. Our other options are good too - see what works best for you.

Part 4

Step 16: Mobile keyboard - (Google, Samsung, Apple, MS Swiftkey keyboard alts)

Big tech keyboards send what you type back to their servers. What you type should be private! We recommend FUTO keyboard in our list here. Another option is Heliboard. We recommend these because they are open source and privacy-focused.

FUTO has an amazing on-device voice-to-text functionality that puts it ahead in our opinion.

Step 17: Authenticator app (Google Authenticator alts)

We recommend AEGIS in our list here. Other solid options are Proton Authenticator and Ente Auth. Switching authenticator apps might take a while (one by one usually, unless you have an older version of Google Authenticator which supported export) but it's a pretty easy way to kick Google out of a small corner of your life.

Step 18: Store loyalty card wallet (instead of storing in Google/Apple/Samsung Wallet)

In general we would recommend avoiding loyalty cards altogether, since they are literally volunteering to be tracked. But in reality most people use them. Sadly the most popular wallets for loyalty cards contain loads of trackers. It's an easy switch to move the cards to an open source app with no tracking in it: Catima, listed in our Other Alts page.

Step 19: Photo editing (Canva alts)

A great alternative to Canva is Polotna Studio, listed in our Other Alts page near the bottom. You can use it without logging in, but to store your designs you can create an account. There's some basic AI functionality like background removal, but otherwise it's like Canva before they went AI-crazy.

Step 20: Delete your WhatsApp account

As part of the Big Tech Walkout 2025 programme you installed Signal to run alongside WhatsApp. Since that was almost a year ago, and you've been warning people that you're going to fully switch over, now is the time to be a person of your word. Do it! Delete the Beast! It's liberating and people respect you for it. Only when you actually do it will people see that you're serious, and that's often when they agree to install Signal too.

At this point in the programme you may also be ready to delete other big tech accounts such as Facebook, Instagram, Microsoft, Google or X. If you feel you've run the good stuff in parallel long enough then go for it. Or wait, there's no rush. The main thing is that you are no longer feeding the beast by regularly using those accounts. Full deletion, whilst being a sweet, sweet moment, can wait until you're ready.

[BONUS Step: move old laptops to Linux – Big Tech Walkout 2027 preview]

If you've moved to all the alts above and you've got time to spare, why not jump ahead to the subject of the Big Tech Walkout 2027: hardware.

For laptops and desktops the way out of the Windows/Mac/Chromebook monopoly is Linux. It's come a long way in recent years and is now just as good as the big tech OS options. You can find info on which 'distro' (version) of Linux to get started with at this page and instructions at this page on our site.

[BONUS Step: move old Android phones to a de-Googled OS - Big Tech Walkout 2027 preview]

This is ideal not just for yourself but for your children. You can 'flash' a de-Googled version of Android onto one of your old phones and give that to your child as their first phone. Save money AND protect their privacy!

We list the various options at this page on our site. As well as flashing these onto old phones you can also buy phones from these companies with the software preinstalled. A great choice is the Fairphone range with e/OS/ installed - privacy and sustainability!

Rebel Tech Alliance is a non-profit dedicated to getting as many people off big tech products as possible. Why? Because that reduces the surveillance economy, and reducing that is good for individuals and society.