26 Apr 2026
De-Googling my life — local-first philosophy
I spent months de-Googling my life. Switched to local storage, self-hosted tools, open-source everything.
I'm back on some of those platforms now — but the philosophy stuck.
Local-first. Cloud is a last resort.
Not because cloud is evil. But because I realised how much of my data, my workflow, and my thinking I had outsourced to systems I don't control.
When the internet drops, I want to keep working. When a service shuts down, I want my files. When a company changes its pricing, I want options. Cloud should be for sync, collaboration, and backup — not for being the single point of failure in your life.
The experiment changed how I build. Every tool I make now asks: does this work offline first?
You don't have to go full hermit. But know where your data lives.