Something worth noting is that F-Droid is both an app to download other apps but they also maintains a repository of apps. You can use alternative store apps (like Droid-ify) with the F-Droid repository OR you could use the F-Droid app with a different repository (like IzzyOnDroid). You can mix and match to meet your needs.
I use the Droid-ify app with the F-Droid, IzzyOnDroid, microG, NewPipe, and Collabora repositories.
Once you start down this rabbit hole, give Obtanium a look.
Neostore is also a good alternative to the normal f-droid client
Yes, I much prefer Neostore.
I wanted to like this one.
Neostore got stuck trying to sync repos or something and drained my battery from 80% to 20% within like an hour.
Uninstalled it immediately. No app should be able to malfunction in such a way to cause such battery drain.
I would avoid adding other repositories because you are risking malware and anti features.
F-droid is slow to get updates but it also verifies each app
There is safety there, but you’re just as safe using the the developer’s own repository for their apps, like NewPipe, Collabora, or the Guardian Project.
Oh THAT’S what repos are for? I assumed they were all independently structured and incompatible with each other for different reasons lmao.
I just have the basic f droid app, the layout is awful and confusing. Is there one you suggest?
I’m a big fan of Droid-ify.
Then check out droid-ify. It has a really clean looking UI that won’t get in your way.
Thanks
I think he did suggest droid-ify with fdroid repo: https://github.com/Droid-ify/client
Looks good, I will try it out. You have it in F-droid :)
Apologies, I didn’t follow what was a storefront and such.
I second Izzy, add:
Droid-ify is the best way to use f-droid imo
Removed by mod
More built-in repositories and a nicer UI.
Removed by mod
Does it have an update all button? That’s what prevented me to keep using it some months ago.
It does now yes.
Why would you ever want to do that? Sometimes the older version is better for about a third of the apps on my device.
Running outdated versions of software, whether on your phone or the desktop, will generally expose you to more vulnerabilities and is not best practice from a security perspective.
People that don’t have a solid grasp on computing tend to think any and all updates are inherently good.
Huh, most of the time. I mean, people like you don’t have to use it at all, but I prefer to just press “Update all” once if I have >2 updates in a row.
Droidify has an ignore all new versions button. And you can of course downgrade whenever you want.
People that don’t have a solid grasp on computing tend to think any and all updates are inherently good.
I know this thread is already a little old, but here is the list of my favorite apps from F-Droid/Izzy. I use a lot of these almost daily and just thought I would share these in case someone might find a new app they find useful
- Eternity (Infinity for Lemmy)
- Buckwheat (Budgeting)
- Aegis (Authentication)
- Lawnchair (Pixel-like launcher)
- Quillnotes (Markdown notes app)
- Forkyz (Crosswords)
- Geometric Weather
- Imagepipe (Removes exif data and reduces pics)
- AntennaPod (Podcast app)
- Olauncher (Beautiful and minimal text based launcher)
Geometric Weather has a more active fork called Breezy Weather.
Quillnote has a more active fork called QuillpadSexy weather app. Thanks for the follow up comment. No more ads when I want to check the weather.
Thank you
Breezy however is not and (according to author of that fork) will not be in F-Droid repo. You can download it form IzzyOnDroid or wait for their own F-Droid repository.
Fdroid basic allows automatic updates!
The guadian project repos are also preset, albeit not enabled by default.
So does Neostore and Droid-ify. Those are worth looking into.
What kinda good stuff is on F Droid they the average User might want?
This list obviously isn’t everything, but there’s a lot available. I kept it pretty broad although there’s a ton of niche and specialized software available too.
OpenTracks - Keep track of how many steps you take throughout the day without a smart watch.
K9Mail - A privacy oriented mail client alternative to the Gmail app.
Diaguard - A diabetes diary app to track your blood sugar.
Drinkable - List a few ingredients and what liquor you have at home and it gives you a list of drinks you can make.
Newpipe - A YouTube client without ads.
Libretube - Another YouTube client without ads.
Blood Pressure Monitor - Same thing as the diabetes, but great if you have high blood pressure you need to track.
ChordReader 2 - Get guitar chords to learn how to play songs.
Fennic - A web browser based on Firefox that’s privacy oriented.
Red Moon - Makes looking at your phone easier on your eyes at night.
Newpipe - A YouTube client without ads.
Literally can’t say enough good stuff about Newpipe.
Everything YouTube SHOULD be, this is. LISTEN TO A VIDEO IN THE BACKGROUND!!!11. Playback speed infinitely adjustable- good for lectures, interviews, etc. No ads. No bullshit.
Most of the apps of tibor kaputa. I really like the simple gallery. The simple dialer and simple contacts are also really good. Just clean default apps that do what they should.(adfree)
Endless Sky and Mindustry are some good, fun, deep games.
oh and shattered pixel dungeon also…
The UX for Mindustry sucks compared to something like Factorio, because it’s really tough to do those controls on touch screen, but it’s good enough. I’ve enjoyed it for the little I tried.
Osmand (offline GPS maps)
Same version as the android store but free.
Newpipe in particular is super important. It’s a better YouTube app with more features and no ads.
Sorry for not supporting Google, I know they need more money… /s
I prefer LibreTube because it doesn’t look outdated and it uses Piped, so you never actually connect to the YouTube servers and you can synchronize your subscriptions and playlists
Agreed. LibreTube is really good.
Just got it. Amazing! Thanks!
It’s a fantastic app. Remember to set your default YouTube links to open with it also, you can do that with android in app settings.
redreader, newpipe, session messenger(needs repo thing from website), aurora store, simple gallery pro
I use LibreSudoku. It’s a very nice Sudoku app.
Pretty much all the basics are covered, here are some examples:
- Newpipe for videos and music
- FairEmail for email
- Organic Maps for maps and routes
- Aves Libre for gallery
- lots of privacy-oriented instant messaging apps (I use DeltaChat)
- Jerboa for lemmy
- plethora of calendars, todo apps, calculators, keyboards…
- some games
And then of course all you power-ish user stuff (alternate launchers, clients for self-hosted clouds and stuff, terminal emulators…)
Worth noting while checking out Aves libre it seems the developer has renamed it to just Aves and continued updating.
New to f-droid so if I have this wrong let me know
Öffi, a non sucking public transportation app.
Thanks to US infrastructure I don’t need yet another map just for public transport! Thanks US government for looking out for us little people! (I really don’t think this is needed, but /s just in case.)
Everything
Are they planning on modernizing the app for Material You? It feels out of place in my phone in 2023.
edit: all the people who suggested Droid-ify know what’s up. Thanks, guys!
You can use neostore or droid-ify for material fdroid
Are they updated to use the new difference-based repository format?
EDIT: I was curious so I searched, they don’t.
Not sure about neostore, but droid-ify takes like a half a second to fetch repo updates, and fdroid takes me like 10 seconds.
The official F-droid client has material design. Material design 1, the only material design that has anything to do with the concept.
You’re not wrong there.
I have a lot of complaints about this too, but namely lack of seamless updates is baffling to me.
Luckily I found Droid-ify and solves both those problems. Also has the common repos frequently added, like IzzyOnDroid, easily pre-available to enabled in the settings.
This definitely replaced the archaeic fdroid client for me, they desperately need an overhaul as it’s a terrible first impression.
You can get Droidify and it provides a more pleasant visual experience.
I personally like it. However there are alternative apps
The ui seems ok, but the search is so ridiculously bad I’d don’t know how they did it.
God I hope not
I sure hope not. No no no. Material you is ugly, and in 99% of apps not an option, but a forced changed. No need for that. It looks good enough for an app store.
Try Neostore too…
^^^ This!
Even better obtanium installs direct from the Devs host. You could use fdroid to find the homepage/where they host and add it to obtanium
Installing through F-Droid is way easier tho and the IzzyOnDroid repo actually uses the binaries from the developer
Though, last I checked, IzzyOnDroid does warn that they usually only host things not found on F-droid. Once something they host gets included in F-droid it’s often removed from IzzyOnDroid without warning.
You could use Droid-ify and have the best of both worlds
I don’t know if you didn’t understand their comment or if Droidify has a feature I didn’t knew about.
Droid-ify offers apps from different repositories so you can have Izzyondroid and F-droid at the same time. It also scans for updates and does auto-updates if possible.
Yeah I know about that but what has that to do with IzziOnDroid apps which pulls the apps from GitHub being removed after they’ve been added to the official Fdroid repo
Apparently it seems that I don’t get it indeed.
I said Droid-ify is a 'best of both worlds because it offers the easy of use of F-droid but also pulls from IzzyOnDroid/GitHub.
I prefer F-droid as it adds a layer of checks to hopefully keep the devs from doing something malious
are you under the assumption that fdroid has security benefits?
Its not security I’m looking for. If I wanted security I would be running stock with all of the apps from large corporations.
What’s good about F-droid is the freedom you get when you use it. All of its apps are libre. You have the ability to tweak them anyway you want and the source code it yours to study, learn, modify and distribute.
not… after… security… hmm. 😶
That’s correct
Some people like to live dangerously.
Don’t forget to add the New pipe repo!
Can also recommend the SimpleX chat, Bitwarden, Cryptomator and Briar repos. There’s also IzzyOnDroid, though I think they have less strict guidelines.
I recommend the NewPipe-Sponserblock instead of default Newpipe
NewPipe Sponsorblock repo from Izzy:
https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/org.polymorphicshade.newpipe
Why is the Newpipe repo necessary when NewPipe is also in the F-Droid repo?
Faster release, sometimes it takes a while for the F-Droid to build the new version and Google has a tendency to break it.
thanks
Love F-Droid but be aware of the risks and always try to use a developer repo when possible…
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Doesn’t affect the end user… beyond diminished security. Are you implying I should trust Fdroid devs as much as I would trust Google devs?
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The diminished security resulting from the increased likelihood of a (single point of failure) supply chain attack.
Yes its possible for malicious devs to trojan apps, but due to apk signing it is much more difficult for a third party entity to induce a supply chain attack, which is my real concern when it comes to phone security.
If you have a lower threat model, this post isn’t for you…
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If you think Fdroid security is on par with Google security… then I got a bridge to sell you
How does a supply chain attack work?
An upstream compromise that affects downstream hosts. A good example is the NPM supply chain attack -> https://hackaday.com/2021/10/22/supply-chain-attack-npm-library-used-by-facebook-and-others-was-compromised/
I actually would go for the main repo as all the software in the main repo is reviewed by the main Dev team
Did you even read the article? F-Droid signs all the apps in the main repo…
The author of this article completely misses the point of F-droid. They clearly are used to a world of proprietary software that takes “security” over freedom
So yes I did read the article and no it doesn’t change anything. If your going to make an argument you shouldn’t just link to someone else’s work. Part of the problem with the internet is no one thinks for tuemselves
Sure, I’ll spell it out for you since apparently the point went right over your head. Fdroid devs are a single point of failure by signing every application themselves. This introduces a potential for supply chain attack, not to mention Fdroid running on EOL servers.
When you use an individual dev repo, you can avoid any trojanized apps from Fdroid because the developers maintain their own infrastructure and sign their own apks.
That’s called… D I S T R I B U T E D T R U S T
The reason F-Droid builds from source is to ensure that they can enforce their inclusion criteria. If you go outside F-Droid you lose that guarantee. For example, self-published apks in github or google play may contain anti-features or proprietary code that are forbidden by the F-Droid standards.
From another point of view, what you call a single point of failure is a third party that represents the interests of the user community, independent from individual developers. This is the same model used in GNU/Linux distributions, and Drew DeVault explains here the role that software distributions play in the free software community.
Of course, this represents a trade-off, in that you are placing trust in the software distribution instead of or in addition to the upstream developer. The question is, how can you solve the problem without foregoing F-Droid’s inclusion standards? The answer is reproducible builds, where F-Droid builds from source and compares to the developer’s apk, and publishes the developer’s apk with their signature if the build reproduces successfully.
Until Reproducible builds are the norm in the Android free software world, I accept the trade-off because I value having software freedom in my computing, and I know I can’t trust upstream developers to care about that as much as F-Droid or I do.
Sure, atleast you admit there’s a trade off (security) for (FOSS) and maybe some additional privacy.
People should be made aware of the risks and choose according to their threat models, which is why I’ve highlighted some of these issues to begin with.
Everything the F-droid team does is out in the open. Your welcome to audit it once in a while and suggest changes to make it better. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind the help.
F-droid is the best tool we got. Its not a silver bullet but it is better than anything else I’ve seen
I have never found anything useful in it. And god I have tried. I end up uninstalling it every time.
Here’s mine:
- AnkiDroid - mobile version of popular desktop flashcards software Anki
- Bitwarden (don’t remember if this needed a repo) - favourite password manager
- Catima - holds loyalty cards
- Fennec F-Droid - Build of Firefox without ads and that supports more extensions
- DiskUsage - see what’s taking up your disk
- GadgetBridge - FOSS app for smart watches, Mi bands etc.
- Lawnchair - Home screen replacement that’s visually identical to the default one but allows me to double tap to lock
- Material Files - file manager
- Loop - Habit tracker
- p!n - Pin reminders to notifications
- muPDF Reader - fast PDF reader that doesn’t crap out when I zoom in and out unlike Google Drive
- Simple Gallery - lightweight gallery app
- NextCloud and NextCloud Notes - Access NextCloud
- Scrambled EXIF - Share pictures without giving away EXIF data
- Tusky - nice Mastodon client
- Shattered Pixel Dungeon - a game way too addictive to be safe to install
- NewPipe - FOSS frontend with AdBlock and downloader for YouTube, SoundCloud, Bandcamp and others
- Librera - read EPUBs
- Lemoroid - Nice libretro client to play video games
- Infinity - Reddit client that still works. I believe they did something hacky with the API key to get around the block.
- Migraine Log - Nice app for migraine sufferers to log their attacks
- Scarlet - Beautiful notes app
Thanks for the mentioning GadgetBridge. Just revived an Amazefit Smartwatch that I wasn’t using because of the default app!
Mull browser, termux, nextcloud, Jerboa, Infinity reddit, organic maps, and espeak just to name a few
Ok, yeah, I use termux on my android tablet, and it’s awesome. But other than that, I don’t find any other app interesting. Who knows, maybe with time.
And the stuff you do want to use is often best installed from the Dev’s repo because fdroid takes forever to update theirs.
And last time I checked they still hadn’t implemented the now years old APIs that would let them to silently update apps, so unless the phone is rooted you need to click for every update…
Try f-droid basic, it lets you update automatically
I’ve always had a niggling worry that downloading apps from 3rd party app stores came with a higher risk of getting apps with viruses and spyware.
any truth to this?
The benefit of open source apps is anyone can view the code to see if there is malware or other installed.
What I can tell you is that Google was extremely detailed in their monitoring of my apps - even looking up e.g. rate limits of the steam api to check if I properly deal with those. And I pick that example since I don’t want to talk about the ways I mishandled user data out of negligence or ignorance.
Back then I perceived it as harassment. Today I will certainly not install any apps that didn’t pass their testing.
And we’re not even talking about deliberate malware but simple incompetence. I would consider the average hobby app project to be borderline malware and a proper QA needs qualified personnel. I don’t see how F-Droid can ever reach those standards.
Play’s reputation for being full of malware stands directly at odds with your assessment.
Hobbyists are rarely incompetent. They actually take pride in their work, and aren’t just trying to quickly slap something together for a quick buck.
Not sure what gave you the impression that most phone apps have gone through professional QA, but I very seriously doubt that they have.
As for mishandling user data, it’s a lot easier to avoid doing that when user data never leaves the user’s device in the first place. Proprietary apps collect user data for profit; free and open source apps often don’t.
Yes but F-droid is an exception. Be careful of adding third party repos though
Even small companies have to deal with, “supply chain”, attacks, criminals putting code into open source repositories to steal data and get access to servers. App stores are major targets too.
There have been weather apps that need your location to show you weather and oops we also send your location history to our data center in China and sell that data.
There have been, “document scanner”, apps that help you take pictures of things like credit card statements and did we not mention we send those images to Russian servers?
Do use a major brand phone like Samsung, keep your OS up to date, and don’t expose private info to these apps or give them special privileges, especially, “accessibility”, or, “screen reader”, and you should be okay.
Neo store is a nice layout for f-Droid if you want a more modern look
I made a website to help finding well-maintained F-Droid apps through Github/Gitlab metrics here: https://dbeley.github.io/fdroid-insights/
I use iOS now though had f-droid installed on my old android phones :)
If you sell your IPhone now it may not be too late for you! :-)
