- cross-posted to:
- degoogle@europe.pub
- cross-posted to:
- degoogle@europe.pub
Google’s Gemini team is apparently sending out emails about an upcoming change to how Gemini interacts with apps on Android devices. The email informs users that, come July 7, 2025, Gemini will be able to “help you use Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, and Utilities on your phone, whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.” Naturally, this has raised some privacy concerns among those who’ve received the email and those using the AI assistant on their Android devices.
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I swear all of this was predicted to happen by open source advocates of the 80s and they’d be called alarmists/whatever and then 30 years later you had Snowden leaks and all the surveillance bills and now Microsoft, Google, and Apple are all advertisement companies mining data through the software and devices they sell
The best people can do is just keep using and advocating for Linux adoption. Try out degoogled Android or a more traditional Linux phone device. Need more users and funding to get the software kinks worked out. They’re not as good as the high end Android and Apple stuff, but it’s a process
I’ve been struggling with figuring out how to get google off my phone. I don’t know if I’m doing a bad job of searching or if I’m just dumb, but are there any good communities in Lemmy you can recommend on the topic?
Just searched degoogle in Lemmy
https://lemmy.world/c/degoogle@lemmy.ml
There are levels to it. The advanced level is using a custom Android ROM for your phone that has no Google play services/apps on it and that’ll depend on what’s available for your phone from community ROM makers. You can see if any of these support your phone or plan any future phone of yours around these
https://itsfoss.com/android-distributions-roms/
An easier first step is just starting with non-Google apps. You can start with replacing Google apps like replace Maps with Organic Maps or something similar. Replace Gmail with something like Proton Mail. Same with calendar and cloud storage. Proton has alternatives. They even have an okay Google docs feature. Use a different search engine like duckduckgo rather than Google.
F-droid as an app store. Instead of Google authenticator use Aegis. Instead of Chrome use Firefox or a fork of it.
It’s difficult so a process over time of lessening dependency on Google applications
But what about banking apps and surch?
banking apps partially work
I’d imagine you can do everything on the website, which can likely be made into an ‘app’ on Firefox via the “Add to Home screen” option.
That is an issue that I imagine only being solved with a larger user base that banks don’t feel like they can ignore anymore
As the other guy mentioned, the website. All these apps are usually web wrappers anyways or some sort of cross platform software dev framework that does web/mobile so the website is usually pretty much the same as the apps
Do you have any good material to degoogle Android??
Just saw there’s a sort of large Lemmy degoogle community
https://lemmy.world/c/degoogle@lemmy.ml
Personally I think it’s a good start to just replace Google applications. Organic Maps over Google Maps. Proton Mail/Drive/VPN/Calendar over Google stuff. Firefox and forks over Chrome. Duckduckgo over Google search. After that you can maybe find an old old Google Pixel phone and then start flashing ROMs off XDA forums as practice before you try a newer more expensive phone
Ok!!! Thanks. I’ve done all that, so I Think I’m degoogling. It’s Hard to avoid Android in my country, you risk to be out of communication Networks
Dear tech bros,
We, the people, don’t want to use your AI shit. Please stop shoving it down our throats. Thank you.
Sincerely,
-The people
The problem is there’s a fair amount of tech CEOs that insist this is the future and everyone needs to hop on which between the hype train, the amount of software peeps out of a job because of layoffs and the amount of snake oils salesmen out of a job because this eats google’s lunch this bubble is just ballooning. You have a lot of people hitching on this bandwagon hoping to sell shovels to the next gold rush.
And for awhile everything is just gonna get shittier.
But the AI people that the tech bros can now create outnumber real people by ♾️:1. The opinions of real people have ceased to matter even the tiny amount that they once did. So open wide and try not to gag.
You don’t want to use it.
The companies keep preloading it on new tech, updating old tech so its there, preventing the option from disabling it from even being there, and disabling tech that can’t use it.
This. Shit. Can. Fuck. All. The. Way. Off!
“oh didn we make it not just an automatic update, but you can’t even opt out? Oops! Hee hee don’t worry, you’ll love it in no time. Which is why we’re forcing it on you. You’re welcome.”
Is it really the people or just a subset of people that use Lemmy, the vast majority of people seemingly don’t care as is evidenced by the sheer number of people using things like social media.
What might be important to use in this echo chamber isn’t reflective of society on the whole.
It’s mainly tech savy people who don’t use it. Tons of people in companies use this shit. The number of people who use “ai” to take auto notes in meetings is insane. It’s a massive security risk but they do it anyways thinking it won’t be stored.
It’s mostly lemmy. In real life people go from amused to indifferent. I have never met anyone as hostile as the lemmy consensus seems to be. If a feature is useful people will use it, be it AI or not AI. Some AI features are gimmicks and they largely get ignored, unless very intrusive (in which case the intrusivity, not the AI, is the problem).
If a feature is useful people will use it, be it AI or not AI.
People will also use it if it’s not useful, if it’s the default.
A friend of mine did a search the other day to find the hour of something, and google’s AI lied to her. Top of the page, just completely wrong.
Luckily I said, “That doesn’t sound right” and checked the official site, where we found the truth.
Google is definitely forcing this out, even when it’s inferior to other products. Hell, it’s inferior to their own, existing product.
But people will keep using AI, because it’s there, and it’s right most of the time.
Google sucks. They should be broken up, and their leadership barred from working in tech. We could have had a better future. Instead we have this hallucinatory hellhole.
How are you evaluating inferior? I like the AI search. It’s my opinion. You have yours.
Well, in this example, the information provided by the AI was simply wrong. If it had done the traditional search method of pointing to the organization’s website where they had the hours listed, it would have worked fine.
This idea that “we’re all entitled to our opinion” is nonsense. That’s for when you’re a child and the topic is what flavor Jelly Bean you like. It’s not for like policy or things that matter. You can’t just “it’s my opinion” your way through “this algorithm is O(n^2) but I like it better than O(n) so I’m going to use it for my big website”. Or more on topic, you can’t use it for “these results are wrong but I like them better”
Traditional search often is also wrong, showing some 3rd party website or a link farm.
With AI search I get a summary AND the result list, so I have more info to make a decision.
Well, yes, Google has been becoming shittier for years as they prioritize ads and fail to deal with SEO slop. You have to know what’s a good source, but that was true even when we were doing research in libraries.
The AI summary is making the problem worse. The information it provides is not trustworthy. It also deprives site owners from traffic. It’s really bad on like every metric.
They need a tech ethics board, and people need a license to operate or work in decision-making capacities. Also, anyone above the person’s head making an unethical decision loses their license, too. License should be cheap to prevent monopoly, but you have to have one to handle data. Don’t have a license. Don’t have a company. Plant shitty surveillance without separate, noticeable, succinctly presented agreements that are clear and understandable, with warnings about currently misunderstood uses, then you lose license. First offense.
Edit: Also mandatory audits with preformulated and separate, and succint notifications are applied. “This company sells your info to the government and police forces. Any private information, even sexual in nature, can be used against you. Your information will be used by several companies to build your complete psychological profile to sell you things you wouldn’t normally purchase and predict crimes you might commit.”
I imagine even the fk_ai crowd appreciate the non-gimmick stuff as long as it is nothing like a chatbot
Tiny example from Gmail:
This is all over, and it can be super useful from time to time.
They say “f AI!” but I mean sure they don’t want better searches than were possible five years ago? If it’s not sycophantic and confabulatory etc. etc.
Good point on intrusivity
PS
PS: I translated news from Iran this week using AI tools and using traditional translators. Who would advocate for the garbage traditional translation—soon as I went the “AI” route, it was suddenly possible to understand what the journalists were trying to say. That doesn’t mean I want translators to lose their jobs, it just means I know what the best available technology is and how to use it to get a job done. (And does not mean just because it translates well that I will also trust it to summarize the article for me.)
It’s one of the reasons I use Lemmy a little less these days as it’s evident to me that it’s an echo chamber for a tiny subset of humanity and at times it just feels like a circle jerk where real change isn’t an option.
Obligatory Lemmy is social media response
Yes, with the key difference being that it’s anonymous. Publicly viewable but the users can be as anonymous as they like.
I’ve been trying to tell people for 15 years. It hasn’t worked a single bit. It’s frustrating that people think they have nothing to hide when their carelessness and lack of tech knowledge is ruining the future of the next generations. I just can’t try to explain it to everyone. They don’t link the relation at all. I thought maybe eventually, they would just get it, but here we still are…
it’s mostly just talk. people will hate it and use it at the same time
The majority of people eat at McDonalds. It doesn’t make it a good idea on your finances or health. Sheep gonna baa.
If you for some reason think that megacorporations and big tech aren’t monetizing the literal majority to the fullest extent of every single law they can break while getting away with it, you need to wake the fuck up. Big time. I don’t know if this is some psyop from leddit or what but my doors stay closed, my android plays tablet mode with no sim. Thanks tho.
Nauseating.
Very. I get sick just smelling it.
Hahahahhshahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahaha.
Sincerely,
Tech bros.
yes but what if a company has the ability to create billions of close friends who can recommend sponsored products to you? why would it care about whether you want that or not?
also bard was a way better name for google’s LLM. it has its origins in an isaac asimov story about a robot who is programmed to tell random stories.
this can be great for a disabled person i guess, i wonder if it works locally in a degoogled way
If there’s two things that have been consistent over time with the recent LLM and AI craze, is that it have some good, helpful applications for people with disabilities, and that none of the big players are looking into them. Some are actively working against them. Probably because it’s harder to monetize “living” from a PR perspective.
probably not, unless you add certain services back onto your phone. currently, gemini needs the google workspace to do anything, even something like setting a timer or reminder. i obviously dont know what change they make with that announcement, but i dont think they would offer such a feature without sucking the user deep into the google service world.
So is Gemini on there as an app? It isn’t listed as such on my phone
Yes, it’s on there. I have a phone, never downloaded or installed Gemini, but because it’s a motorola with a special extra button… I can push that button and up pops Gemini.
The only way I can stop it is by disabling the Google app, then the button becomes innert again (which is how I like it).
So yes, it’s embedded in the Google app. Disabling the Google app may aslo cause other issues (such as Google Home/Chromecast not working).
Thank you. I disabled the google app (which I tbh low key don’t know what it even does)
Doesn’t the motorola phone have a settings screen for defining what the button does? For Samsung they like to re-purpose the power button.
First of all, it brought up bixby. I turned it back to powering off the phone and disabled bixby.
Then, with the new update they re-assigned the power button to gemini. So, I turned it back to powering off the phone and disabled gemini too.
However, the problem these days is that I’m never completely sure I’ve turned off all of the AI nonsense on my phone.
Yeah, but the question was as to whether Gemini is listed as an app. The answer is no, Google have snuck it in whether you like it or not.
It’s in the app list for me. I set it to disabled.
Phone is Samsung s24 ultra.
Won’t be using any of those apps.
Pretty sure I disabled Gemini as one of the first things I did when I got my phone. But, yes when I read that, to me it did seem like a serious overreach for something that was going to be “on by default” for most users.
How, its baked in? Gemini isnt installed on my phone but its there. Like the circle to search.
Gemini is an app, I disabled that. I also shut off the key press and there’s some other places you can turn off some of the automatic AI features, and also there’s a setting to disable the “online” AI in general.
But that’s why in another comment I said, I am still not sure I turned it all off (or even if it is possible to).
You might be thinking of the normal Google Assistant
Didn’t Google replace the normal Google Assistant with Gemini on newer phones?
At least on my pixel 7, they rolled out Gemini replacement but you could revert it to the classic assistant. It was slow, none of my normal commands worked, and it wouldn’t find anything I was looking for just “answer my question”. I asked it how to disable itself and it couldn’t answer that though. You can probably find documentation online if you use an actual search engine
You can remove most apps using ADB. Universal Android Debloater is helpful for this, just make sure you read the comments for each app so you dont remove something you need.
Have you a link? This sounds like I would need root?
You just need developer mode enabled
https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-android-debloater-next-generation
My wife has been trying to get me to switch to Apple since Ive had a Droid X years ago. I’ve been on android since. It is time to switch. Probably a lateral move, but Google has gone to absolute shit.
Try lineage or graphene before jumping into the money pit maybe?
You can turn it off by going to Settings > apps > default apps > digital assistant > Google > none.
You should disable the Google app entirely while you’re at it.
so this has got me looking at alternative OSs, but it’s all a bit confusing. which one is most mature and would still let me run android apps (I want my bank apps and stuff like that) but is also somewhat de-googled? I appreciate any advice
You would have to test how strict your bank app is.
GrapheneOS, /e/ os, and LineageOS
Would be the first ones I’d reach for.
So it’s still Your device not Gemini device. I’ll wait couple of years.
Just… Disable it. You can switch to the old assistant.
I’ve got them both turned off lol
until google decides thats not allowed either
That’ll be the day I switch phones.
If I have to use a walled garden, then I’ll go the OG Apple daddy.
Look I like my apple stuff too, but it’s foolish to trust Apple not to do obnoxious things for money. We need a Linux phone.
Yup, but for now it’s a solution
The article says that they are changing their policy so that even if you turn it off it will still be feeding your actions to AI.
Read the article yo.
You have to have Gemini itself enabled as your assistant on your phone for that.
I wish I knew how. Did this several times already, it always magically turns back on after a couple of weeks.
Oh god, please don’t say that.
I’ve been Android and Windows user for pretty much all of my life. Vehemently anti Apple because of the company and I’ve thought the products are trash. I’ve been 100% Linux for over a year and a half, and if this Gemini stuff comes through, I will not have an android phone either. I have a Pixel and my old still functional Pixel. I need to try installing grapheneOS or something else and trial it to see if it will work for me.
If Linux isn’t an option for me in the future for whatever reason, I will be purchasing a Mac. I will never have a Windows machine for the rest of my life if I have any say in the matter, work being the obvious and uncontrollable exception. The fact that I’m even entertaining the idea of owning an iPhone or a Mac is really telling about how far Android and Windows and enshitified.
Same, I’ve always been android and windows and heavily anti-apple
It’s like people have completely forgotten what Apple was like before the iPhone
I don’t know if I’ve ever really been pro-Microsoft, they had just been what gave me the freedom to get the job done. I even had a Windows CE phone back in the day, because it worked.
When Microsoft started monetizing every little thing and became outright hostile with its users is when I made the switch to Linux, the learning curve was steep but it didn’t take very long to get a handle on it
Early on I think I made the mistake of trying to hurry to get a windows experience out of Linux when I should have started where I started with Microsoft, at the command prompt
I used DOS for a long time before Windows 3.1 was even on the scene. Thinking back, even when I was using Windows at first, I was always finding myself bringing up a command prompt to do things.
Linux brings back some of that nostalgia, but it is so incredibly more capable and customizable than windows
The user experience of GrapheneOS is basically the same as vanilla Android, except that you have more control (you can uninstall google apps, for example), but at the cost of a small minority of apps (banking ones, for example) not working (out of the box, sometimes at all). My banking app works, and a quick google search will tell you if yours does too. If your old pixel is not too old (4 is no longer supported, 8 definitely is, not sure abt in between), you should give it a go. I think you’ll see it’s not as big of a step as you maybe currently imagine.
My old one is a 6, so I think it should be supported. I really just need to bite the bullet and do it.
Web search would be a better term since a lot of people use other search engines than Google.
Gemini can be disabled. Uninstall/disable the Gemini app if your phone has it then go to Settings > Apps > Default apps > digital assistant > Google > none.
I do have it disabled, but this article suggests that it will ignore that and it will be integrated in apps that I really really don’t want it in. I could stomach it if it was search and other functionality like that only, or even if it 100% ran local with no ability to phone home and train on my data, but it doesn’t. Not that it can be listening to calls, reading messages, etc, I’m definitely hard out.
Re-read the article. All this feature does is give you the ability to say ‘set a timer for 10 minutes’ or ‘start a phone call to John’.
If you have ‘Gemini apps activity’ off then they won’t use anything you say to train their models.
There is a clarification from Google in he article that I don’t believe was there when I first posted. It still by default allows Gemini to have access to things I don’t want it to access, which is anything. It can be blocked through the Gemini apps activity, but I don’t think that was clear in the OG text.
None the less, they claim that it will be completely offline and that no information will be used to train their models. I believe that’s probably true in the short term, but I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them, and I’ve got fucked up shoulders. I’ve little doubt that they will change policy in 6 months to a year so that some data is sent anonymously.
I just want it so if I say don’t allow this thing at all, ever, that stays true and they don’t make me later opt out of that thing.
I’ve seen an article that describes opting out of the app integration as well (even though that by default it’ll be on. There should be a class action against Google doing that! That said, I can’t see Europe taking this as it is.)
I think the article is misunderstanding what is happening (though to be clear I think the email is at fault for that). Google is making it so that app developers can integrate Gemini better by allowing Gemini to interact with those apps. There is a menu inside Gemini where you can switch these interactions on and off (Inside Gemini, click your profile in the upper right corner and press apps in the menu).
I’m assuming from the email that this will be enabled by default which is a choice they’ve made and which absolutely could be argued as invasive. That being said you’d actively have to use Gemini and have it be active on your phone in order for it to interact with those apps.
Assuming Google records whatever you do on your phone whenever you do those things, which many privacy minded people of course legitimately worry about and feel uncomfortable with to various degrees, this is not really anything but another way for your assistant to do more things. If they want to read your stuff that’s not really dependent on a switch in the Gemini app.
So if you have Gemini entirely disabled I don’t think this is relevant. Only if you actively seek to use it and do not want it to be able to integrate with external applications will these settings be relevant to you.
…for now
Apple isn’t gonna have your back on this either you minds well run to foss forever if this is gonna be your Hill to die on
minds well
/c/boneappletea
People say this so commonly where I’m from. I was never aware that this is not the correct way to say it.
People say it everywhere, but it’s “might as well”.
For sure, as long as that’s a viable option for me, I’ll do it, but if I don’t have that option…
If you don’t then I’d probably still rock android just for the increase in options it gives me
Not liking Apple for ethical reasons is one thing, but thinking they don’t make good products surprises me. I think the current generation of MacBooks are some of the best computers ever sold.
I was never a “Mac” person. But I took the leap to escape windows with the Mac studio ultra. I use video and photo edit tools a lot. Used my existing peripheral devices. Expensive but the most silent and powerful machine I’ve ever owned. Software is my only complaint at times but I’ll live with it. I’ll definitely continue down M series for my main device.
In context of the larger thread, I need to figure out how to get graphene on my current phone. I nerfed the AI crap Samsung was forcing on me. But who knows if I got everything. I’ll assume I didn’t. Fdroid or graphene… That’s my summer project.
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MacBooks are some of the best computers ever sold.
Yeah, but that’s just one generation out of many. For me MacBooks have terrible keyboards (personal preference, I know, but I hate them), had very common issues with battery, terrible reparability and stupid features like the Touch Bar (which they finally removed proving right everyone who said it’s dumb). So yeah, new MacBooks have great performance but overall the line was not that great IMHO. Very nice design, good quality, not great usability.
I should rephrase. They don’t make cheap bad products. I think iOS, Mac OS, and their walled garden approach makes their hardware a bad product. Compound that with being exorbitantly expensive for what you get, and that’s always been too much to overcome for me to support. Now they are/have becoming the less bad option.
Yeah for sure. Every Apple device I’ve had has been well built. Every interaction I’ve had with Apple Incorporated as a company has been a dystopian nightmare, and with the walled garden it’s not possible to separate the product from the company. Therefore, it’s a bad product.
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That used to be true but no longer. For anything but gaming Apple’s M series chips are amazing.
I’m a 30+ year Windows and Linux user and developer that preferred machines I could build myself. A few years ago switched jobs and was given an M1 Pro for work… it’s incredible how good, fast and low power the M series are. I’ve used my laptop 8 hours straight without plugging it in. That’s simply not doable with any other machine.
I still dislike their walled garden, and for high end gaming Apple’s a no-go, but for most things it’s hard to argue with how good they are. The machines may come at a premium, but they are high quality, work great and for battery use they don’t have a rival.
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?! Have you seen a M4 chip in action? Low energy, high performance. Silent computers, long battery life. Good value on a simple benchmark basis. Not credibly last year tech.
Pre-ARM Macs, sure, but that was five years ago.
Lots of other hardware issues to complain about, however.
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It’s good to know that it’s easily reversible of necessary
I’ve been GrapheneOS on my pixel7pro since march and I have no complaints. Everything works, and I have control over what apps have access too. The only thing I will say is that if you need the camera to take gr3at photos, its not nearly so good with grapheneOS. I pretty much always have a mirroless camera with me anyway so it dosent bother me. I just use the phone camera for quick snap shots
Hey, what camera do you use? My phone is showing its age and I was thinking of getting a secondhand pixel, but I’ve also been looking at cameras to stand in for the phone camera.
I was thinking I should go for beginner friendly and small.
I use a Sony A6400. Its pretty nice, fairly small. Pick up a used body off eBay, and a Sigma 18-55mm lens and you are pretty set. Oh and get photo processing softwear for your computer. I use Darktable on Linux.
If you want to know anything about photography feel free to hit me up. I’m a huge photography nerd lol
If you want you can install Pixel Camera (official Google camera) from Aurora Store, and deny it Network permissions and any other permissions you want. It still works pretty well for point and shoot but I can’t speak for every single feature. Also you can install simulated services that the Gcam requires to function, without having to run Play Services.
Novice question: I think I am understanding that Aurora is a way of accessing the Google store without actually installing the Google Play Store, but is there a software package that it comes with? Is it MicroG? I am a little lost with how these relate to each other.
I installed Lineage and MindtheGapps on my Pixel 3a yesterday, but I’m interested in alternatives before I commit to this setup. It seemed like the easiest route given my lack of know-how, but my hope had been to de-Google gracefully and I don’t know if that’s possible with system-level Google still installed on my phone.
My understanding is that, in broad strokes…
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Aurora acts like a proxy or mirror that doesn’t require you to sign in to get Google Play Store apps. It doesn’t provide any other software besides what you specifically download from it, and it doesn’t include any telemetry/tracking like normal Google Play Store would.
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microG is a reimplementation of Google Play services (the suite of proprietary background services that Google runs on normal Android phones). MicroG doesn’t have the bloat and tracking and other closed source functionality, but rather acts as a stand-in that other apps can talk to (when they’d normally be talking to Google Play services). This has to be installed and configured and I would refer to the microG github or other documentation.
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GrapheneOS has its own sandboxed Google Play Services which is basically unmodified Google Play Services, crammed into its own sandbox with no special permissions, and a compatibility layer that retains some functionality while keeping it from being able to access app data with high level permissions like it would normally do on a vanilla Android phone.
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Good to know! Thanks!
I’ve been using GrapheneOS for a couple months after having tested it on an older phone for a while. I’m really loving the level of control I have over what I give apps access to. If you have a spare Pixel to test on I definitely recommend it! I’ve been getting away from all Google stuff and finding free open source and self-hosted alternatives. I’m running in the opposite direction of all the AI and data-farming.
Few years ago I got a Nest Secure to go with my other Google Nest gear. One day Google emailed me to tell me Assistant was now enabled on my security system. Oh, by the way, it has an undocumented microphone!
That’s when I realized what a privacy nightmare Google really is. I know Apple isn’t great but come on.
Maybe this gives me a false sense of security but I bought the adguard pro on social stack (I think…). I just turn all of the connections off on gemini, meta and Bixby. Like this
Why do you keep Gemini installed? Does it even work offline?
I assume it’s better to leave it and have it not work, then them sneak it on without me knowing or baking it into something else
Android users won’t have a choice after a while.
I didn’t want Google Now. Uninstalled it, and it’s back and updated. Been fighting for years.
I’ve not received any mails or notifications. Though I don’t use Gemini at all. Or Google Assistant. Or any assistant.
I don’t use them either, but still got the email.
Same. My only use is accidental.
Guess I’m should get around to disabling it.
I thought I had disabled it, and I don’t have the app, but I can’t see any way to remove it from any of the settings mentioned in the email 🤷🏻♂️
Can’t you just delete Gemini with Canta?
