Has anyone noticed that apps on F-Droid or that you just get from GitHub are just better than the ultra-popular apps on the play store? Most of them are open source and have no ads or trackers. But this isn’t true on the Play Store at all.
I see myself always getting apps from F-Droid now because there is always an alternative to the ad-infested bloated privacy infesting BS that I find on the play store. It’s unfortunate that it’s gotten this bad, where the only reason I even use the play store is to install updates or games.
Many are functionally better and of course don’t have any ads, but often look utterly terrible, unfortunately.
It’s true, any developer in any space knows that core functionality is often built quickly, while refinement and beautification can swallow up enormous amounts of time.
Combined with my experience being that the dev guy and the UI/design guy are rarely the same person, and the former is way more inclined to create things for fun and give them away.
If it was just looks. Usually the UX is simply not very good. We need more designers in the FOSS space.
Yup. This is the exact problem I have with them. Most apps look kind of outdated, finding one with nice UI/UX is like finding gold.
Getting your app published on Google Play is fairly easy. You basically just upload an APK and with how little Google reviews apps, you can get almost anything published. F-Droid on the other hand has very strict standards (which is a good thing). Since I published an app myself on F-Droid, I can tell you that fulfilling those standards does take a lot of effort, and thus a lot of love from the developer.
This creates a filter: If you care enough about your project to go the extra mile to fulfil the F-Droid requirements, you probably also care about making a good product. If you don’t, you also won’t be motivated enough to publish on F-Droid. There are countless open-source projects which sort-of work but are left behind, usually because it was someone’s side-project. This is ok as well, because it’s free time that most people are spending on Open-Source projects, but as a result, most open-source projects are actually not very mature. They just never make it onto F-Droid and don’t go viral.
One is designed to be a tool and actually used by a dev made out of passion. The other is a product that doesn’t trust you with their source and expects you to trust them back. Nor do you have a say in the development or any undesired features that may be added.
Agree with this totally. The near lack of trackers, disclosure of any that are in apps, no ads, and easy access to code for bug reporting or fixing makes fdroid apps tons better.
Nothing except FOSS apps will get installed on my phone. With Exodus Privacy you can check your Playstore apps for trackers. Sometimes sickening how much shit gets installed with an app. Do it then switch to FOSS.
F-droid is also my preferred source of apps. But the search function is quite bad. I often search the repository from the website on my PC, to find that is in there and then look for apps with exact names on the F-droid app.
For bonus points, you can use fdroidcl to reinstall your fdroid apps from a list when you reset your phone!
Ads and trackers add a level of complexity and with it all types of bugs.
As someone that is very new to FOSS, especially on mobile, it sounds like F-Droid is a Play Store replacement. Where can I download that safely?
I personally use Droidify. It’s an f-droid client.
Hi, can you share some examples of alternatives you grabbed so that I can get started
Here are some apps I’ve switched to
AntennaPod - For podcasts, pretty much the best app out there
Simple calender - For calender use
Feeder - RSS feed reader. Useful replacement for news apps
Simple Gallery Pro - As the name suggests, it’s a clean, simple offline photo and video viewer with some neat features
Lawnchair - My launcher of choice. A good balance of speed and customisability.
Just notes - Keep replacement
K9 mail - Gmail app replacement. FairEmail is a strong contender too.
Keepass2Android - Password manager
Neostore - F-droid alternative
Geometric Weather - My preferred weather app of choice (Edit - For a more updated fork of this, check comment below)
Wefwef - Kinda mimics apollo for lemmy. It’s pretty neat imo.
Honourary mention - Infinity for reddit (RIP)
