Title
Guys.
Dont install FOSS apps from the Playstore. Use F-Droid (F-Droid Basic if you are on an updated OS)
Thanks.
A personal recommendation is to use Droidify, it’s just a great F-droid front-end.
You can download the APK here: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.looker.droidify/
Droidify is the best! Best performance and UI of all compatible clients, and even handles 3rd repos that wont load on others.
Hey thanks for this! I used f droid for a while but was always meh on the UI and how clunky it is. I used this for a bit and I already like it waaaay more. Cheers!
When I last used it it was somehow unstable. Maybe that has changed.
I have used it for maybe a year and I never had any problems. Then again, I’m hardly a power user, so it makes sense that other people might have different experiences. :)
I really like that they add more repos you just need to enable. Number 1 reason to use it, as F-Droid will never add those for obvious reasons.
Some that I cant live without
- Izzyondroid
- Guardian Project
- Collabora office
- signal foss twinhelix
- molly
- futo
- simplex chat
- Cryptomator
- Mobilsicher (proprietary German apps that are core infrastructure. They ask those developers if they can get the APKs)
- (Bitwarden) (dont use it)
- Julians Repo: nice to get GrapheneOS app updates, but you should install their appstore instead.
Ijusto use Obtanium.
Tried it, it was at least back then not scaleable. Not every Dev publishes precompiled APKs, that is actually not something regular because F-Droid and IzzyOnDroid exist.
So in the end I had 8 or more of my favourite Apps still F-Droid only, and when adding all those sources some barely worked and in the end Obtainium didnt load anymore.
Does it autoremove APK files? Otherwise its just a fancy Feed Reader, I use Feeder for the few Apps that are Git* releases only
Yes it autoremoves the apks.
My experience too, but I switched back and it’s far better now.
Yeah. I usually go to the Playstore to buy out all the In-App purchases and support development, but this is really discouraging.
True. But F-Droid has Donation links everywhere. I prefer that over buying, idk why.
Oh, found out at least F-Droid Basic doesnt display the links! Thats not nice
Less fees taken if you donate instead of buying most likely.
Droidify shows the donation links fine, which is nice!
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Droidify can do both: Session Installer and Shizuku: https://github.com/Droid-ify/client
F-Droid basic uses modern Android Libraries and modern Apps can be updated without interaction.
Thats because Android has a Package manager that uses APKSigner signatures to verify the app. That is Private/Public Key authentication, so its pretty sure the App comes from the developers.
Only if the Signature matches the App gets an Update. So there is no danger in using automatic updates.
Making F-Droid Basic “battery unrestricted” will help.
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Yes I hate the name. It makes no sense. I will do another post on multiple Platforms to advertise it.
Yes the unattended upgrades only work on a modern store and modern apps. The original client is extremely outdated.
I agree that F-Droid is great!
What I usually do is to buy the pro version on Google Play and install it later on F-Droid.
On the other hand I don’t see anything wrong for non tech people to install FOSS apps from the Play Store. The apps are still FOSS
Not exactly. When building for play store release - google injects their tracking into the binary.
I think this is a myth. Android Studio or something allows to build it in, but Google doesnt automatically do that. Afaik
Hmm, this app is also in the F-Droid repository with its old outfit.
Luckily it got forked : https://github.com/FossifyOrg/SMS-Messenger
There are a bunch of those “simple” apps on F-droid, such as Simple Contacts, Simple Calendar, and Simple Camera. I cannot find Simple Gallery in F-droid any more, it seems to have been replaced by its Fossify equivalent already.
In light of this, it could be an idea to check if you have any of those apps installed and consider replacing them with an alternative.
I remember testing some of the “Simple” apps when I was making the initial effort to stop using Google products, but none of them really felt right to me. I guess my intuition was right.
you try to install FossifyOrg gallery and dialer via obtainium who pulls releases directly off github.
I have several of the apps installed. I went through and checked the permissions, and they’re still pretty sparse. The play store didn’t mention anything about updates, but a few of them, like Notes, seemed to be disabled.
Am I just a version behind or something?
If they’re from F-Droid you’re good; if you’re on Google Play I doubt they’ll update anything to get more permissions without your consent.
However, if the developer has taken a turn for the worse (which this post seems to indicate), you might not receive any more updates for your F-Droid software, and you might get to a point where you don’t want to install updates from Google Play. Software that cannot be updated is generally not a good thing.
Furthermore, these apps deal with somewhat sensitive information by default, and I wouldn’t want to use apps developed by a company I don’t trust if I don’t absolutely have to. :)
Damn, how did I even manage to miss that Simple apps have been bought off? I’ve used them for years and am still subscribed to the reddit community…
Some people suggest the action could possibly be deemed illegal, by breaking the licence the project was made under.
https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/General-Discussion/issues/241#issuecomment-1837452672 - the dev’s explanation, and replies which discuss the legal issues
https://old.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/comments/1893j2p/simple_mobile_tools_is_about_to_be_acquired/
Fossify has many of them, Gallery, Files and Calendar (the main ones) are already on F-Droid!
- sms: deku sms, way better
- phone: GrapheneOSses AOSP dialer, dont know if you get that seperately, or Welefon
- music: so many alternatives, Vanilla Music is nice
- keyboard: florisboard, openboard
- phone: lol Pixel with GrapheneOS
Its sad that the community did not donate enough. People dont care…
To add to this, Fossify just released their phone app. It hasn’t hit the repos yet, but it’s on their github.
deku sms
I haven’t used this, but it seems to do way more than the average person know how to use for an SMS app
Even in the readme, it says:
The technical functionalities of the app are currently not user friendly, which would be updated with the help of PRs and issues. The reason for the lack of user friendliness is solely based on the app aiming to be as customizable as possible. Users should be able to configure the app to their custom cloud servers without being tied into using specific providers.
It just works as an SMS app with possible AES encryption.
fcitx on Android is a pretty good keyboard experience now too.
Can you explain what that is and how it works? Is it a Keyboard with Plugins?
Provided that the developer can either remove contributed code or seek copyright licences from every contributor it can be done. Whether this did happen or not is unclear, the developer appears a little arrogant about having written the majority of the code, showing little appreciation towards minor contributors. We cannot tell whether the contributors gave permission for their code to be re-licenced or if their code was removed.
Personally, when contributing to GPL projects I would expect that this kind of thing wouldn’t be possible. Using the GPL is a very philosophical choice of licence and is a move to say that you really care about your users
Over the years there have been a few times I tried to communicate with the developer, and he was always arrogant.
yeah tibor was known for that
“have full network access” BIG YIKES
I mean it makes sense for error reporting. Lots of apps automatically report errors so that they can be detected easily, which would require internet access.
that kinda makes me think google should to a log retrieval and storage api which can retrieve and send logs to developers.
I’m really curious about the amount of money exchanged. It must have been an enormous amount in order to do a “I’d even sell my mom for that” and don’t feel dirty
the developer, and this isnt exaggeration, does not understand gpl v3. he literally got confused when people told him he had no right to sell contributed code. you can see for yourself in the github discussions
You can sell GPL code. Even if you aren’t the author. What you must do is share the code with those customers though.
you cant sell othwrs ans then close source which is what they did to my knowledge
Open source can be sold/commercialised. I think you’re confusing between FOSS and open source.
FOSS and open source is the same thing
There were multiple reports about sleazy companies reaching out to developers of popular apps and Chrome addons and offering them money for their accounts. The money is really good but there’s still a lot of devs that can say ‘no’. They will just use to track some people, it’s not a completely new business that will grow and earn them money like Instagram or something.
Throwback to when they announced releasing a simple phone. Fun times.
That was amazing. Someone linked to alibaba where you could buy the same 4? Year old phone for something like $120USD. Someone else dredged up a weird eastern European connection for the ‘FOSS’ OS. And they promised support, which ended when you bought the pos.
It has begun
(ps install the fork versions of the simple mobile tools suite, its called fossify)
So it begins
i hope these zippo fucks get sued by everyone who contributed. bastards are doing dropshipping but with malware pretty much
sigh. Most people will just accept the new default permissions without blinking an eye. They’re taking advantage of people’s ignorance.
You overestimate most peoples tech skills.They will never know because they have auto-updates activated.
Hopefully fossify will release fossify messenger soon. Fossify’s a project forking all the simple apps
Oof, those permissions alone scream proprietary spyware. There’s no more speculation here, it has officially become enshittified.
that’s because that’s what happened. Simple mobile tools got bought out by a company known for exactly that: putting ads and spyware in apps
thankfully since its open source, there’s already a fork in the works called Fossify
sounds like an uninstall
why would you want or need a separate SMS/MMS application on your phone in the first place?
- You don’t like the Google app
- You don’t want to use Google apps out of principle
- You’re using a version of Android where Google apps are not installed by default, so you need to install something
Well yeah, I didn’t consider those points, especially the last with android distros not all come with gapps.
Default app sucks.
I use OpenContacts, it has its own database so nothing else can access it.
You might want more control of how the app looks. Or maybe an app has some UI features you like.
I used Textra for years, but did eventually switch back to the default android messenger when I started encountering issues.
For Google photos/Contacts in particular, the gallery app was good because it would constantly ask to sync photos to the cloud.
Tibor betrayed us and sold the Simple Apps suite to a sleazy adtech company a while ago, there were multiple posts on this suggesting replacements, then one of the most active devs forked it into Fossify, removing all the branding and references to the original, work is still ongoing on this, already some of the apps have been rereleased, here’s a handy matrix of the progress on the rerelease from somebody on Github
Wow, I never heard of that before. Is there any replacement for simple gallery, before they screw with it?
Did you click on the link in the comment you replied to?
