If the only thing you are missing is youtube download ability, why not use one of the many options to do that from a handset? Newpipe or Spottube are on fdroid. https://invidious.io/ allows you to do it from a browser.

Your ISP can see torrent packets unless you are using a VPN. The other alternative is to setup a VPS and a torrent client on it. Then you download the completed files.

Newpipe found on fdroid.org is also great.

I agree that Nextcloud is a great solution. Some other cardDAV and calDAV solutions exist, but Nextcloud provides much more. Here is a little demo of Nextcloud on a handset. https://videos.trom.tf/videos/watch/5fc16e0e-f95f-45a2-9843-37749bf9dada

As others have stated, you are mixing search engines with metasearch engines here. If you employ browser isolation and obscure your IP address, you can be anonymous with any engine.

Yacy has potential, and I run an instance. It relies on us operators to index sites. You will find results to be incomplete in many areas, but it can be great for researching controversial topics. When I want uncensored and not manipulated results, I also use Yandex.com and Brave.

Fairphone should provide you sufficient privacy and security and give you ethical points. I have played with many OS’s. GrapheneOS is hands down the best. I have used it for years. If only it would run on a fairly built device such as Fairphone, it would be stellar.

Yeah we all move on in life to other things. He provided a great information service to many of us. I am happy to see he is well.

I tried installing on graphene, but it got stuck in infinite loop for eternity asking me if I want to update. Perhaps this is a joke on the name? Good one.

I use moneybuster synchronized to my nextcloud, but it can synch to ihatemoney. Maybe it has more features than you want.

VLC is still my favorite all around player, and I would recommend supporting them with some funding to fix the bugs. You can try Auxio for local music and MPV for videos. There are many clients for streaming from your own server or others. It just depends on the protocol or platform you want to scrape.