Since simple mobile tools will soon become a spyware and I use 3 of their apps regularly, yesterday I installed F-Droid after reading many Lemmy recommendations.
Wow, I’m pleasantly surprised.
A new app I’ve tested is Spotube (Spotify open source alternative; edit: apparently it uses Spotify metadata but it streams from YouTube. My bad.).
Any other underrated app y’all recommend?
Some of them are not underrated, but I’d just share my favorites…
- AntennaPod for podcasts.
- Aurora Store if you need some Google apps to be updated.
- Binary Eye is a nice and slim qr code scanner and generator.
- CriticalMaps is a good tool if you’re into critical mass events.
- GadgetBridge can be a companion app for your smartwatch (if you have the right one).
- GPS logger just logs your position in an interval you can set. I use it to track my movement in 30min bits.
- GymRoutines is a privacy friendly gym exercise app with a database of your progress.
- K9 mail (soon to be rebranded as Thunderbird mobile) is a powerful mail app.
- KeePassDX is an android password manager compatible with keepass files.
- LibreTorrent is a nice way to torrent your favorite linux distros while on the go.
- Location Map Viewer I use with the gpx files I get from GPS logger to visualize my movements.
- mpv just plays a lot of media without being a bloated thing like vlc. I use mpv for videos, vlc for music.
- NewPipeSponsorblock is available in a custom repo only.
- Ning is a nice way to get an overview over a local network.
- OpenTracks can be used in combination with GadgetBridge to record your sports with gps.
- OSMand gives you a frontend for using openstreetmap with offline maps, navigation and more.
- PDF Doc Scan is my way to digitalize important letters as a pdf on the go.
- StreetComplete is a gamificated way to fill in missing things in openstreetmap. it’s fun.
- Syncthing-Fork (important to use the fork) is a file sync tool I use to backup a lot of my phones folders to a pc.
- Tusky is my favorite way to browse mastodon.
- VLC is a powerful media player (I then use only to shuffle through my mp3s).
This is such a great list, saving and installing a few!
Adding on (and likely seconding a few):
- 2048: game
- Aegis: for 2Fa stuff
- AntennaPod: second this one
- AnkiDroid: Flashcards, the Anki project is huge and extends way past android. Worth exploring if you want/need to memorize things
- Droid-ify: Fdroid client I use, but I keep the main app installed too
- Eat Poop You Cat: game to be played in a group
- Feeder: for RSS
- FFShare: for compressing photos/videos before sharing
- FlorisBoard: The keybaord I liked, although I don’t use it full time
- GPTAssist: Frontend for chatGPT
- Material Files: File manager
- Native Alpha: Have websites run like apps, while isolating each site
- OpenFoodFacts: A bit buggy, but it’s similar to OSM but for food
- RetroStack: Another game
- SDMaid SE: Same dev from the popular playstore one, is rebuilding a better one from scratch, AND it’s now FOSS
- SkyMap:
- Survival manual
- Termux
- Translate You
- UntrackMe: To redirect Tiktok/Twitter/Pinterest/etc. links to the frontends
- URLCheck: Highly recommend getting this one to clean trackers from links
- Unitto: Calculator of choice. I explored a bunch before settling on this one
For OSM specifically, I second the ones mentioned. Here are some other OSM related things: https://lemmy.ca/post/6586265
Thanks for the recommendations, especially URLCheck. I already had FDroid and have been trying to figure out an easy way to clean tracking URLs.
Glad to help! It works really nicely
Formatting, please 😅
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Why is it important to use the fork of syncthing?
The dev said a couple of weeks ago that they’re planning on closing their Google Play Developer account, so using the fork means you’ll be able to keep up with new releases from that point.
I use it because it moves a lot of settings into the sync jobs.
So now I can set individual sync jobs to only run on my home wifi and ac power, and other sync jobs (like my photos) to sync over any network and any power state.
Interesting list. Antennapod is an excellent podcast app - use it every day. I’ve never found VLC to be bloated though. And am curious about the SyncThing fork vs. regular SyncThing.
I do love OSMand, it is easily the app I have used and depended on the most in the past ten-ish years.
Thanks for this list.
I didn’t know about the SyncThing Fork.
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Yes. These are all android apps from the f-droid app store
Obtainium - update manager for FOSS
Droid-ify - a nice and simple F-Droid frontend
Seeker - SoulSeek downloads music
ViMusic/BlackHole/InnerTune - Youtube Music
Antennapod - for podcasts
Florisboard - a keyboard, great for basic use (no predictive text/autocorrect) and has swipe function
Acode - text editor
Bitwarden - password manager
Librera - pdf/ebook reader
Kvaesisto - Launcher thats similar to Niagara, but FOSS
Mull - a privacy centric browser
Read You - RSS reader
Simple Notes - not related to
Simple Mobile ToolsbtwNewpipe x sponsorblock - youtube but less annoying
Lemuroid - almost any emulator you would want (except GameCube and Wii, use Dolphin)
Tachiyomi - Read manga
AL-chan - keep track of watched anime/manga with AniList
Showly - keep track of movies and shows with Trakt
Do I need Droid-ify, Obtaniun, and F-Droid Basic? Feels like there’s a lot of overlap there, no?
If you want them, but you don’t need but one of them. I like Obtainium the most as it updates from Github and F-droid, but i find Droid-ify makes it easy to search for new apps so i like to have it. I never liked F-droid Basic, but i would pick between that and Droid-ify for the best looking front end
Is Florisboard still being developed? Hasn’t been updated in 18 months according to F-Droid. Some buttons generate a TODO pop-up when pressed and the predictive text still uses placeholder values.
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There is development being done still on suggestions. Last i heard is there would be news once thats completed
Yeah - this is the feature we’re all waiting for.
A new app I’ve tested is Spotube (Spotify open source alternative).
This is super misleading. Spotube isn’t a Spotify alternative, it uses Spotify metadata and streams the audio from youtube.
Edited. Thanks for the correction.
Thank you! They advertise it pretty confusingly, I didn’t figure it out until I saw a reddit post explaining.
Really? How does it do that? Not everything on Spotify is on YT is it.
Edit: https://github.com/KRTirtho/spotube/issues/835
Hmm, I think this is a bit deceiving from the developer. I have premium but just want an Android client which doesn’t force podcasts on me :(
Can you elucidate more on «Simple mobile tools will soon become a spyware.» I use a few of their apps available on F-Droid.
For Spotify, you can try ViMusic.
Looks bad for privacy… 😞
Thanks. That appears to be quite an unfortunate turn of events. I just deleted and replaced the apps w/ alternatives I already have in my personal list.
Any recommendation on alternative for notes? Preferably something where I can import backup from Simple Notes?
There’s a new maintainer, search for FossifyX on GitHub. They plan to keep supporting the open-source versions of all the Simple Mobile Tools apps.
I am not sure if it supports importing from Simple Notes specifically but I use Notesnook. Needs an account however.
An Israeli firm bought them.
Aaand now uninstall it again and try F-Droid Basic. Its the version of F-Droid using modern libraries, which is way more secure. Featurewise that means modern apps have automatic updates
Annoying but thats why I always recommend to install that APK instead. You can just install it from F-Droid.
I tried all other F-Droid clients and they all have some bugs. G-Droid is discontinued but had an awesome rating system, Neostore has cool features but seemed buggy, Droid-ify is just fancy and has many repos preinstalled (but deactivated).
The lack of 3rd party repos being already in the menu with just a click away is the only problem with the official clients.
I switched to Obtainium some time back, and ended up uninstalling all F-droid clients altogether.
Yeah no way. I found it nearly unusable, and many great apps are only on F-Droid
Lol - I found it far from unusable, but no worries. Obtainium also supports F-droid apps, so I get the best of both worlds.
droidify iw the fdroid client I prefer
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Eternity as a Lemmy client
Mastodon official app
Official version of Telegram without Google bloat
NewPipe all the way
Canta
InviZible Pro
Organic Maps - FOSS Navigation!
OpenBoard (keyboards are underrated)
Rethink: DNS+Firewall
URLCheck as a useful way to check links before actually going there
Unciv - FOSS Civilization-like game
I’m still routinely amazed Unciv is allowed to continue to exist, and that it’s becoming so increasingly polished. It’s not a perfect recreation of Civ 5, it probably never truly can be in terms of hardware limitations, but it’s incredible just how damn close they’ve managed to get it.
It’s also exceedingly dangerous for me, as someone who struggles with ADHD, to have Civ 5 on my phone. It has caused more than a few >30 minute bathroom breaks.
That said, I kinda wish the dev wouldn’t push version updates for every single little thing. I can go weeks without most F-Droid apps needing to update, but I seem to get a notification to update Unciv like every 2 days.
If you get Fdroid basic or I think droidify you get auto updates without notifications. This is more of an app store issue than one with the unciv releases.
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I moved a lot of my foss apps over to f-droid. But i’m a little worried about security.
The odds of a bad actor being able to takeover f-droid and update my keepass app with a malicious version seems a lot higher than someone being able to do the same google play, right?
https://f-droid.org/docs/Reproducible_Builds/
Why not have both developer signed builds and repository verified source matches the binary?
This F-Droid-like model (also popularly implemented by Linux distributions) is usually considered an improvement in security.
The thing with FOSS is that ideally you don’t have to trust the developer at all.
In theory, you could read the entire source code and compile it yourself. Then you’d know for sure that no malware is included.Obviously, in practice, you can only hope that some nerds dig into the source code and notify journalists of malware-like behaviour.
It is no perfect protection. But it is the only tangible protection that FOSS actually delivers.What does not protect you, is to trust each individual developer. They could publish innocous source code and then build the release binaries from a version with the malware-like behaviour patched in.
But because you likely don’t want to compile each app yourself, you might still feel compelled to entrust that work to a third party. This is where the F-Droid team comes in. Rather than trusting each developer, you just have to trust a single team.
Well, and if an app is built in a reproducible build, then even the work from the F-Droid team can be verified.
I trust the debian repo because fortune 500 companies run debian and rely on it
F-droid repo doesnt have the same level of scrutiny
Yeah, that is a valid opinion to hold. I am saying that trust is garbage.
You could consider compiling the KeePass app yourself, if you’re worried about that one in particular.
A guy I used to study with, decided that he just wouldn’t have a password manager on his phone.
I’ve certainly considered switching to a Linux phone for that, among many other reasons…
You consider using Obtainium instead? It installs (and updates) directly from source release (Github repo, etc). That puts you directly in control of everything then.
Newpipe, OMaps, Jerboa, VLC, zxing/barcode reader.
Newpipe also acts as a client of peertube and soundcloud.
Droid-ify: Same functionality as F-Droid, same repos etc, but with a much nicer UI.
Xtra: Alternative client for Twitch with support for blocking ads.
LibreTube: Native Android client for the alternative YT frontend Piped.
Tachiyomi is a great manga and comic book reader Glider is a client for Hackernews ReadYou is my favorite RSS reader Xtra is a twitch viewer
Newpipe!
First app I installed with fdroid is Yet another Call Blocker and it’s the one app I haven’t swapped out for an alternative yet.
Agree with all suggestions. I didn’t see any image viewer so my recommendation for that is to use Aves.
