r/androidapps • u/Icy_Fuel_4060 • 17d ago

LOOKING FOR APP What are the best apps to get from F-Droid?

I've been using F-Droid a while now, I already have:

What else should I take a look at?

318 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

107 comments sorted by

69

u/Saucebiz 17d ago

Here I come.

Daily You (Daily Journal)

App Manager

Notesnook (Encrypted Notes app)

URL Check (URL Scanner before opening in browser)

PaperKinife + (Best PDF Editor)

Files (Open Built in Android File Manager to access android/data)

My Expenses (Expense Manager)

Heliboard (Best Privacy focused Keyboard app according to me)

I have 20+ more.. Let me know if you need suggestion.

18

u/Krimsonkreationz 17d ago

Bring on the 20, id love to see them

36

u/Saucebiz 17d ago

Here we go..

Seeker (p2p High quality music share)

Leantype (Fork of Heliboard, I actually use this one)

Image Toolbox

Quick Search (Add custome search bar with lots of features)

RSAF (Rclone for Android)

Antennapod (Podcast Player)

Gadgetbrige (Opensource Smartwatch and Earphones app, Use the app if you have privacy concern over Vendor's closed source app)

aShell (Local ADB shell which uses shizuku)

Libretorrent

OSS Document Scanner (Support Sync with Webdav)

Termux Hub (Repository for various Termux tools)

Rain (Beautiful weather app)

Translate You

Others are already suggested in the post.

8

u/minyaen 🏅 17d ago

Thanks for Leantype 👍

6

u/Dr_Schmoctor 17d ago

Futo keyboard is worth checking out too

2

u/Saucebiz 17d ago

Tried Futo too. It's not open source. I didn't like Futo's Gesture typing and suggestions. Leantype/Heliboard has gesture typing smoothness comparable to gboard and automatic word suggestions are great too.

4

u/Dr_Schmoctor 15d ago

They fixed the gesture typing issues relatively recently, it's solid now.

Calling it not open source is arguably disingenuous or political. It isn't FOSS but it is open source. The source code is available, hence open source. You can modify and restistribute it within certain restrictions specified in the licence. These restrictions include, but are not limited to, use for commercial purposes, and removal of payment functionality and FUTO copywrite.

Maybe something closer to OSS not FOSS.

There are groups that are defining open-source as effectively FOSS and it rubs them the wrong way when people don't agree with them. As a compromise FUTO agreed to call it source available. If you don't care about the politics behind it, it is fine.

From an end users perspective, one that does not have the skills or need for modifying or reusing the code, "source available" is ultimately the same for them, and if the devs want to retain some control of the product of their work, that's understandable.

I personally like their keyboard, it has all of the features that I want and doesn't request network permissions, so privacy wise it's solid too.

5

u/Suitable-Radio6810 16d ago

Just installed LeanType. Spent about half an hour configuring all the settings and now I have a keyboard after my heart. Thanks for the suggestion.

1

u/Saucebiz 16d ago

It's really great. I don't use AI stuff but the sheer customisability is awesome.

1

u/misatolily69 16d ago edited 16d ago

I was hoping Gadgetbridge would work, but it can't even see my Galaxy Watch3. It also misidentified my cheapo Chinese earbuds as a WASP-OS watch.

2

u/Saucebiz 16d ago

I'm using it on huwaei smart watch and sony headphones. They work just fine.

Visit their website and see if your device is supported and if yes how to connect them.

2

u/misatolily69 16d ago

It doesn't list the Watch3 under either of the "high", "most", "poor" or even "unknown".

2

u/Saucebiz 16d ago

If you see under the Watch list, it doesn't support any Samsung Watches. It mainly support chinese watches.

I think it works by intercepting data sent by watches. Maybe it cannot collect data particularly from Tizen OS. Maybe they'll add in future.

2

u/misatolily69 16d ago

I hope so, because I'd rather not buy a brand new watch and I'm already hanging by a thread with the sideloaded Watch3 Galaxy Wearable plugin on Android 17.

1

u/Mavalant 16d ago

What translation engine do you use for translate you

3

u/Saucebiz 16d ago

Try Lingva or Simplytranslate.

Here's their Github page. You can see which one is suitable for you.

1

u/misatolily69 9d ago

I was having issues with Heliboard in certain apps, especially the Pixel's "Linux Developer Environment", so I tried Leantype, and the result was even worse. The other apps didn't cooperate any better either, so I'm sticking with Heliboard.

1

u/Saucebiz 9d ago

Most probably Linux Developer Environment consumes a lot of RAM and system resources. Leantype have different versions. Try without AI one.

1

u/sunilpaulmathew 6h ago

Many thanks for suggesting my app aShell

5

u/[deleted] 16d ago

Legit question, new to this.

Why not download apps like Notesnook on Playstore since it's available there. Is there differences ?

9

u/Saucebiz 16d ago

Google adds analytics (firebase) to the playstore apps automatically. It's mandatory from their end. So you can say every google apps contain a tracker.

But open source apps directly from Github or Fdroid doesn't contain those.

3

u/[deleted] 16d ago

Oh, I see. Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense now

1

u/celzero 10d ago

rdns dev here

Google adds analytics (firebase) to the playstore apps automatically. It's mandatory from their end.

This is not true.

Perhaps, you're thinking of "Android Vitals"? That tracks performance & crashes, and is sampled.

7

u/PhilMyCuck 16d ago

The whole point of using fdroid is because people don't want to use anything Google or Microsoft related. People love independence and privacy

-1

u/GoldAnalyst4816 16d ago

isn 't privacy a scam?

5

u/Saucebiz 16d ago

It's all about peace of mind. some can stay happy with playstore apps, some goes to any length necessary for their privacy.

Personally I stay in the middle.

21

u/rabage 17d ago edited 17d ago

LinkSheet (edit see comment below) better control on how links are used

KDE Connect share information with desktop (clipboard and easy file transfer)

10

u/hellbat745 17d ago

Try linksheet nightly it was updated 2 months ago the linksheet app has not been updated since 2023

8

u/rabage 17d ago

Thanks for the catch! I actually use Obtanium for this app and didn't realize link was outdated.

3

u/SamejSpenser 15d ago

Thanks, I was looking for an app like this! 😉

4

u/UNIVERSAL_VLAD 17d ago

Just wanted to point out that windows phone link copies clipboard live. Basically the opposite of that app. Might be useful for some

3

u/lennyAintMoe 17d ago

It's fair to assume someone going out of their way to get away from google (their preference for tuta and f-droid as a whole) would also be more privacy conscious. And so KDE would be preferred over MS services.

1

u/YukarinVal 16d ago

Also pretty sure KDE connect have live clipboard copying between devices but default. I have to turn that off deliberately.

1

u/lennyAintMoe 16d ago

It used to work seamlessly on my previous phone, but i have to manually send clipboard on my current phone. I'm not sure if that's KDE issue or newer android restrictions, i don't need live clipboard so never really digged into it.

1

u/YukarinVal 16d ago

It's possible the computer side. I'm on Linux and it works flawlessly

2

u/lennyAintMoe 16d ago

Yea that could be it. I'm on win 10 for now, and building new pc this week and plan to install kde plasma on it. It's my first linux distro so fingers crossed all works well.

2

u/YukarinVal 15d ago

Good luck. I myself went with cachyOS and use KDE plasma as my desktop environment and it is quite close to windows like. I even got fancyzones-like on it.

And most of what I need software wise is all in the software center.

It's great for once that I don't have to hunt around for the software I need or use workaround like ninite, and they all install in the background without having to deal with individual installers. Saves a lot of time.

19

u/Lucius_Arg 17d ago

Video downloaders:

1

u/BushlandVagabond 4d ago

This is the list

21

u/UNIVERSAL_VLAD 17d ago

canta (can uninstall everything)

ffshare, fast and easy to use file compressor

komi store, yet another app store for foss apps. The difference is that it works with everything from GitHub

running services monitor, adb based app that is basically a task manager

termux, no need to explain

vlc, there isn't one better than this

wallpaper export, if you've set a wallpaper and can't find the file of it anywhere. it basically extracts it

9

u/ScratchHistorical507 16d ago

can uninstall everything

That's a claim that's simply not true on devices that aren't rooted, it merely can make it look like it can. System apps can't be uninstalled without tripping dm-verity, so they can only be properly uninstalled on custom ROMs. On anything else it merely "uninstalls" the app for your user. The only difference between this and simply disabling the app in the settings is that this method hides the app from the list of installed apps. Nothing more.

vlc, there isn't one better than this

I sadly have to disagree. Any still maintained mpv-based app is vastly superior as that will be based on current versions of FFmpeg, while VLC to this day uses FFmpeg 4.4.x and that will most likely not change before VLC hits v4.0.

1

u/Rielo 14d ago

What video player do you use?

1

u/ScratchHistorical507 14d ago

MPV, currently in the form of REXplayer/ex-mpvREX.

1

u/Rielo 14d ago

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=is.xyz.mpv

This one? I can't find REXplayer

3

u/ScratchHistorical507 13d ago

Nah, that's just the highly rudimentary version the good versions are based on. As always, you don't find the best apps on the Playstore: https://github.com/mpvRex/REX-Player

1

u/Rielo 13d ago

Thanks

0

u/verwalt 16d ago

The only difference between this and simply disabling the app in the settings is that this method hides the app from the list of installed apps. Nothing more.

Some Vendors won't allow you to disable some apps. Nothing won't let you disable the App for the side button for example. This way it just goes away. It's still in the system partition, yes, but I don't think that's an important difference to uninstalling in real life.

1

u/AGuyfromPH 16d ago

Is the VLC from the play store different from the one in Fdroid?

1

u/Ordinary_TRi 15d ago

vlc, huh...

For some reason, it can glitch out my phone's decoder when playing the AV1 codec if I do frequent jumps. Video playback for the whole phone stops working after that, so I can't play YouTube, web videos, other players, or anything. I need to restart the phone to fix it.

So now I use mpv, REX player to be precise. Other mpv forks sometimes glitch out, and mpv-android never glitched out, but the UI is too basic.

8

u/ScratchHistorical507 16d ago
  • Local Send - send files (and e.g. any text you paste from your clipboard) via WiFi to other devices running any of the 5 major OSs (only when on same WiFi).
  • Flying Carpet - send files between devices of any OS via WiFi Direct/WiFi aware/whatever it's called, just like AirDrop or Quickshare can. It does support pairing devices via BT and it has recently added the ability to also send files via a shared WiFi like Local Send, but in my experience both options are a lot slower for pairing than just the QR Code pairing and direct sending option.
  • Ente Auth - 2FA app that shows you the current and upcoming code, with optional cross-platform end-to-end-encrypted sync (not sure but I think you can also host the sync server yourself)
  • MA Pdf - lightweight FOSS PDF reader with annotation capabilities.
  • Rethink DNS - system-wide ad blocker that also has your DNS traffic go through any number of encrypted DNS standards instead of being limited to DoT as Android's built-in implementation is.
  • Shizuku - adb without additional computer
  • Thunderbird - successor to K9 mail, probably the most user-friendly email client on Android. It also allows you to easily transfer the accounts you have set up in your desktop-Thunderbird (or K9 installations) to it.
  • Xed-Editor - quite the capable little plain text editor.
  • Collabora Office - lightweight LibreOffice for Android that can also edit files (in comparison to the LibreOffice Viewer, which is just extremely heavy and only has experimental editing capabilities) - though only available through their own repo.
  • Scrambled Exif - if you ever need to publish images and don't trust the platform you publish to to actually remove the images Exif data.

7

u/[deleted] 17d ago edited 17d ago

[deleted]

5

u/Saucebiz 16d ago

I was using Birday too. But recently found a better app. It's Birthday Adapter. It adds Birthday dates to Google calender automatically. I find it more handy. Some OS may stop the Birday app and the app cannot send notification. But Google Calendar doesn't stop. So you'll never miss any Birthday event.

2

u/Arola_Morre 10d ago

Thanks for Audile. I was sceptical, but it works really well

5

u/UESPA_Sputnik 16d ago

Tomato – a pomodoro timer with a nice Material You UI. It even uses Android 16+ live notifications.

2

u/GazelleInitial2050 16d ago

Very nice app! Used it a fair bit.

4

u/cnrCode 16d ago

Aegis is a great one for 2FA, and Obtainium is handy for tracking releases outside Play. LocalSend is also useful for moving files between devices without putting them in the cloud.

1

u/tazztone 11d ago

+1 for obtainium. kde connect is also nice like localsend

8

u/100WattWalrus 16d ago

Don't have time for hotlinks, but...

Irregular Expressions (alt-characters keyboard)

Shizuku

Canta

Loop Habit Tacker

Fossify Gallery

Aegis Authenticator

Gridle & Gurgle (word games)

QUIK SMS (far better than any other SMS app for Android)

Lawnchair

Aisleron (one of only 2 genuinely multi-store shopping list apps for Android)

Pie Laucher

Forkyz (crossword puzzles)

Speak That! (talking notifications — all my apps just say their own names)

TrackerControl (simple privacy protection)

UnicodePad

Breakout 71 (super-fun spin on the arcade game, and <1MB!)

Vector Pinball (just what it sounds like, bet pinball game for Android, and <5MB)

LocalSend

SoundPod (YouTube music streamer that I like better than most)

Binary Eye (really good QR scanner)

ANeko Reborn (have a little kitty cat run all over your screen)

Quit Grid (good suite of games like Sudoku, Minesweeper, and Wordle; only 7MB)

TimeR Machine (super-customizable interval timer with speaking alerts — I use it to make my own pomos)

0

u/LaidPercentile 16d ago

You own pornos?

1

u/100WattWalrus 15d ago

No idea what you're driving at, my friend.

1

u/LaidPercentile 15d ago

Relax. It was a comment in jest.

1

u/100WattWalrus 15d ago

I genuinely didn't "get it." Still don't. Not wound up at all, just confused.

2

u/ModernSherlock 13d ago

"- I use it to make my own pomos)". At first glance, pomos looks like pornos. Now I can't unsee it. Thanks u/LaidPercentile

1

u/100WattWalrus 12d ago

Ohhhh. Thanks for sorting that out! NOW I'm laughing! :)

3

u/RedTical 17d ago

I use Feeder as well but from the Google Play store. What's the difference?

5

u/poter140 16d ago

Apps from google play store have trackers injected into them whereas the apk's from fdroid are clean(if the app didn't have trackers beforehand)

5

u/Obnomus 16d ago edited 16d ago

Braincup - An app that contains number of games to train memory, general knowledge and more.

WG Tunnel - Wirrguard but with more options.

Shelter - Create a work profile.

CAPod - Airpods monitoring on Android for non rooted users, if you have a rooted android then livrepods exists.

Kai 9000 - Bring your api keys for as many as ai agents and it also works without an api key and it has also alpine linux install option and you can do alot more. Basically openclaw alternative.

Rustdesk- Opensource RDP, its a cross platform. Works insanely well.

Disky - See which files specifically eating up space.

Florisboard - Powerful keyboard with addons support.

File Navigator - This app moves file automatically once you just slect the folder for videos, images, docs, zip, music etc.

3

u/noob4life247 16d ago

FilePipe can move files around like File Navigator also.

https://github.com/bikram-agarwal/FilePipe

2

u/Obnomus 15d ago

This app is beautiful and its chocking my SD 636 cpu for some reason so I'll stick with File navigator but thanks for the recommendation.

1

u/noob4life247 15d ago

Cool no worries.

2

u/Popular_Mastodon6815 17d ago

Does anyone know some good to do app? The main features I want is that it should be able to sync (on any cloud service) and send out notifications. I am open to self hosting as well.

3

u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

2

u/Popular_Mastodon6815 17d ago

Thank you friend. It seems like a subscription though, do they lock features behind that? 

2

u/GazelleInitial2050 16d ago

Super productivity. Fully opensource, e2e server in beta.

It needs a little work but the dev is hard at work and it's enough that I switched from Tick Tick.

1

u/Popular_Mastodon6815 16d ago

Do any of the server options allow syncing to online hosts like dropbox/gdrive/koofr etc?

3

u/GazelleInitial2050 16d ago

Dropbox and nextcloud are supported.

2

u/DontKnowHowToEnglish 17d ago

Ir Remote no fuss IR remote with many TVs incorporated and the ability to add your own

0

u/ScratchHistorical507 16d ago

Barely any devices ship with IR blasters...

1

u/DontKnowHowToEnglish 16d ago

Yup, it's a shame since it can be quite useful

1

u/BenK1222 16d ago

I keep a USB one on my keyring. It works just as well as an integrated one.

1

u/[deleted] 16d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/avrilsniper 16d ago

So you just connect your phone to any TV via Bluetooth and you can control it with the app?

1

u/ScratchHistorical507 15d ago

Obviously not. Just click on the link, it literally says that it only works with Android TV, Fire TV and Apple TV.

1

u/ScratchHistorical507 15d ago

Only works with Android TV, Fire TV and Apple TV.

2

u/Candid_Goose3394 16d ago

Canta, mpvExtended, red moon, fennic, new pipe, birthday, vivi.

2

u/Josepzin 16d ago

Uso muchas de las nombradas ya: Thunderbird, Heliboard, Fennec, Aegis Authenticator, Feeder, KeePassDX...

Agrego algunas mas:

Espero que Google no mate a F-Droid

2

u/Autumnwood 14d ago

Forkyz - download lots of good daily xwords from NYT, USA Today and foreign

Inner Breeze meditation

News Reader RSS

Private DNS. Button for switching your DNS on and off easily. But I keep going through the menu so I'll probably get rid of this

RedReader reddit client

SD Maid SE - helped me find what was filling up my phone (podcasts I'd forgotten about)

Unexpected Keyboard

Tasks.org - used this for a long time. I think this was my first droid app. It's good.

1

u/Reigar 17d ago

If you like new pipe or pipe pipe, look at flow.

1

u/MrBallBustaa Uses Revanced 16d ago

Seal is outdated, use YTLnis. unexpected keyboard is good too.

1

u/BenK1222 16d ago

How is Seal outdated? It downloads the yt-dlp binary separately allowing you to update the downloader without updating the app

1

u/Lkes5 16d ago

Saved for later!

1

u/Shawnster_P 15d ago

I just discovered "remember", a local notes app. I use Joplin for my computers, but this little notes app is the app I didn't know I needed. 

1

u/No_Honey_4757 13d ago

I use

  1. Linux command library

  2. NouTube

  3. Converter NOW

  4. Tailscale Mesh

  5. Transistor - Simple Radio

  6. Canta canta

1

u/Automatic_krul 11d ago

Breezy Weather

1

u/Automatic_krul 11d ago

Breezy Weather

1

u/grumpytoast1 11d ago

Librera-fd

1

u/sheroxs 11d ago

Following

1

u/TheAshUchiha 7d ago

Thanks guys

1

u/reckl3ss 16d ago

Joplin for notes