Share your favorite open-source F-Droid apps so more users can find and enjoy them.
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Let’s build a useful collection of must-have F-Droid apps!
NetGuard - allows you to block network traffic on a per-app basis. Basically NetGuard is a fake VPN that connects to nothing. If you switch it on for an app, the app and Android behave as if you’re using a VPN and push all the network traffic for that app into NetGuard, where it goes nowhere.
HeliBoard - an open source, configurable, private, 100% offline keyboard.
Insular - an open-source fork of Island. Insular is a sandbox environment that can be used to run apps isolated from the main user profile, preventing them from accessing user files, call logs, contacts, etc.
Aegis Authenticator - an open source 2FA token manager.
Breezy Weather - a very nice weather app.
This is my most used app on my phone. It does comes with a little extensive setup, because you need to have your own Matrix server, but thanks to the amazing Matrix Ansible Project, which is one of those rare docker/ansible projects that actually work and are very robustly set-up, deploying a server took me like an hour max, incuding bridge setup and getting hosting (for around 8$ a month on Hetzner).
I replaced Messenger, Discord, WhatsApp and Telegram apps with this, by setting up bridges in Matrix. The setup was relatively simple, the ansible is well documented and I mostly had to just add lile two config lines into the ansible. So far I haven’t had much issues and I’ve been using it for the past few years.
There might be better clients than Element, haven’t really looked into it. It’s not frictionless and it took some getting used to, but not having a ton of spyware appson my phone is worth it.
I don’t really use YT that often on my phone, so I can’t vouch for how often it breaks, but I use FreeTube on Desktop and having a YT client that can subscribe creators without an account, can turn off all the recommended distractions, has an adblock, can play with screen off and the like is amazing.
Judging by my experience with Freetube, you do have to update it regularly since YT is actively fighting it, but so far every time I needed to watch a video on my phone, I could just update NewPipe and it worked.
Allows connecting to other devices with KDE connect and sharing files, controlling media players, sending text messages, controlling the mouse and keyboard (if the device has that), and much more.
I install it by default on every device I have and even setup a computer as a media player in my living room that I control with my phone. Just connect an old laptop or desktop with Wake On Land or with autosleep and autologin and you won’t need a firestick or whatever.
My favorite feature is media auto pausing when I get a call and resuming when it’s done. I listen to music through my workday and it’s nice to not have to scramble to turn it down or pause when a call comes in.
Kde connect is genuinely amazing.
I’ve tried a few step counters (Paseo, Pedometer PFA) but they kept crashing (a couple of times a week) so I’d often go to check my steps only to find they hadn’t been counting.
In the two months I’ve been using Stepsy, it hasn’t crashed once.
Fancy? No. Reliable? Yes.
Same problem with pedometer. Realy sucks when you do a long hike only to see the app only tracked the car ride and the crashed …
