Thanks for the encouragement & advice. I’ll give the web installer a go once I’ve had some sleep.

I wanted to try it out today. The install looked intimidatingly-complex to me, is there an ‘easy mode’ installation method?

I found not being able to remove the app frustrating, and wanted to go further than disable it. My thinking was, it’s my phone, I want it setup my way, and I don’t want bloat… especially facebook bloat on the phone.

I used to have a Samsung Galaxy S6, I rooted it so I could remove the facebook app… turned out they built a custom circuit in a little chip that permanently breaks NFC if you rooted it. Ridiculous.

I got a pixel 7a about 6 months ago. It’s a brilliant phone, once you remove all the google shit / bloat and block all the trackers.