━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ GREAT FOSS ANDROID APPS I USE AND RECOMMEND anya ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Table of Contents ───────────────── Intro .. Quick tip Apps .. Aurora Store .. Aves Libre .. Chess Clock .. Conversations .. Imagepipe .. K9 Mail .. Libretube .. Lichess (Mobile Client) .. Molly (Molly-FOSS) .. Mull .. NetGuard .. Notally .. OpenBoard .. Organic Maps .. RedReader .. Scrambled Exif .. Syncthing .. Vinyl Music Player Questions, Comments and etc. Intro ═════ Let’s face it Android is a pretty shitty operating system by default, but we can make it better by replacing the default apps with some great FOSS alternatives. Quick tip ───────── I recommend before installing these apps you use [UAD] to debloat your android phone, however UAD does not work on Freebsd due to ADB not working either. But you can just boot up a live usb of any Linux distro to solve this issue. [UAD] Apps ════ Aurora Store ──────────── • Available on: Fdroid (Main Repo) Let’s you access the Google Play Store, anonymously ie. without a Google Account, this very useful if need to use a couple of proprieatary apps and games. Aves Libre ────────── • Available on: Fdroid (Main Repo), [Github Releases] A simple and beautiful gallery app, so simple that you can’t edit your media with it. Screenshots: [Github Releases] Chess Clock ─────────── • Available on: Fdroid (Main Repo), Google Play Store Yes I know it is made by Chess.c*m and yes I also know that the Lichess app has built-in clock, but this one has the best UI and is the most intuitive to use. I would’ve considered to use the Lichess clock if this one wasn’t FOSS, but somehow it is, so yeah its my main chess clock app. All the features you need in a chess clock are there ie. Different types of Increment, Stages, Custom time, Ability to make Handicap time presets etc. The only *very* minor complaints I have about the app is that is the app *name* (Cmon its super generic and is a bit tedious to search up) and not having the ability to have custom UI colors. Conversations ───────────── • Available on: Fdroid (Main Repo), Google Play Store (Paid) I don’t really use Xmpp on mobile anymore ,but when I used to this is what I used. OMEMO and PGP are Supported (No OTR :C), MAM works, Avatars, Muc, Bookmarks and a whole bunch of other XEP’s are supported. Imagepipe ───────── • Available on: Fdroid (Main Repo), [Other install methods] An Simple Image editor and Exif remover. I use Imagepipe to edit, crop, add effects, change resolution and etc, since my gallery is very minimal. Imagepipe also has the /pipe/ / /share/ feature that Scrambled Exif has (it was a recent addition iirc). So I have been using Imagepipe as my main Image editor and Metadata removal app [Other install methods] K9 Mail ─────── • Available on: Fdroid (Main repo), [Github Releases], Google Play Store There are 2 *good* FOSS email clients on android K9 Mail and FairEmail. I chose to use K9-Mail because all the features are free, unlike FairEmail, however I understand why the developer chose to monetize this way, due FairEmail being a one man project unlike K9-Mail which is supported by Mozilla, which is a whole another [controversial topic] that I am not wishing to discuss in this blog post c: . ignoring everything about Mozilla K9-Mail is a still a good piece of software, it supports the standards `POP3', `IMAP' and `SMTP' like most Email clients, PGP is supported aswell with OpenKeyChain, there is also support for multiple accounts and OAUTH 2.0 works so support for Gmail is there. [Github Releases] [controversial topic] Libretube ───────── • Available on: Fdroid (Main repo), IzzyDroid Repo, [Github Releases] I am sorry Newpipe, but a new King has been crowned! Libretube does everything thing that Newpipe does and a lot more. The UI of Libretube is just a lot more modern and more aesthetically pleasing than Newpipe, Shorts are viewable in Libretube unlike Newpipe so are comment replies and channel tabs (finally!!), [Sponsorblock] is available in the official app unlike Newpipe where you have to rely on a third party app that recieves updates slower than the main, Scraping of YouTube is done remotely via a [Piped] instances’ api (which can be slow if you use a bad instance) so you aren’t even interacting with the Google spyware yourself and therefore if the extractor/scraper breaks you just need to wait for the instance owner to update the instances’ extractor instead of updating your own extractor locally. One thing I do recommend you do is use a different Piped [instance] if the default instance isn’t geographically close to you. [Github Releases] [Sponsorblock] [Piped] [instance] Lichess (Mobile Client) ─────────────────────── • Avaliable on: Fdroid (Main Repo), Google Play Store, [Github Releases] Lichess deserves a entire blog post to itself because it is so fucking awesome <3, so for now I will just talk about the mobile app. Most of the Lichess features work (no puzzle streak, puzzle storm and puzzle racer :C). The UI is Good. The App also has OTB (Over The Board) support and a Chess Clock. Sidenote: Lichess just hired a full time mobile developer who will developing a new official Lichess mobile app with all the features of the web version which is exciting! Long Live Lichess <3 [Github Releases] Molly (Molly-FOSS) ────────────────── *Author’s Note*: I mainly use this because Signal refuses to remove Google play services from their app and release it on Fdroid • Available on: Molly-Foss [Fdroid Repo] ,[Github Releases] A Fully FOSS Signal fork, has all the features signal has (except location sharing) plus some additional features like Database encryption, Tor Support, Ram Wipe, Blocking Unknown Contacts and etc. and doesn’t rely on Google Play Services. The only downside to Molly is that it isn’t updated as frequently as Signal ie. Molly is usually updated once a month, sometimes twice, However you can try using the [Insider Builds] to circumvent this issue. Some more notable features unique to Molly: [Fdroid Repo] [Github Releases] [Insider Builds] Mull ──── • Available on: Fdroid (Main Repo) My favorite browser on Android due to it being pre-configured with arkenfox user.js and supporting Ublock Origin which makes mobile browsing soo much more pleasant. However I have noticed it is slower than chromium based browsers such as Bromite, but it has way better adblocking capabilities and extension support than the chromium browsers so its a good tradeoff imo. NetGuard ──────── • Available on: Google Play Store, Fdroid (Main repo) Netguard is great firewall that uses the VPN technology to restrict network access to apps which you do not trust. However if you use Netguard you are unable to run traditonal vpn’s simultaneously like Orbot or Mullvad without disabling Netguard first. Notally ─────── • Available on: Fdroid (Main Repo), [Github Releases], Google Play Store Simple note taking app with todo list support. [Github Releases] OpenBoard ───────── • Available on: Fdroid (Main Repo), [Github Releases], Google Play Store Just a solid virtual keyboard that works, nothing more, nothing less. [Github Releases] Organic Maps ──────────── • Available on: Fdroid (Main Repo), [Github Releases], Google Play Store A solid feature rich offline maps app based on Openstreetmap data. (Can’t say much more about it because I have only used it for basic navigation when I got lost 😅) ,but here is a feature list: [Github Releases] RedReader ───────── • Available on Fdroid (Main Repo), Google Play Store I stopped using Reddit recently, but this is the app that I used for it. It doesn’t do the personalised front page thing that most Reddit clients (even the unoffical ones) do, which means you have to go the subreddits you like manually (but there is a bookmark option to add a quick shortcut to the subreddit in the main screen of the app), which I prefer. Very Minimal, No-Bullshit UI, All features work smoothly. If you use Reddit this is my Best recommendation! Scrambled Exif ────────────── • Available on: Fdroid (Main Repo), Google Play Store A incredilbly simple app that just removes your EXIF/metadata from your media. All you do is press the share button and share the image to this app then it will bring up another share prompt where you actually share the media via other apps ,but without any EXIF Syncthing ───────── • Available on: Fdroid (Main repo), [Github Releases], Google Play Store Syncthing is a fucking godsend and in my opinion it’s the best way to sync files between Mobile and Desktop, it’s what I use to sync my files between my Laptop and my Phone, it was quite tedious to setup at first, but after the intitial setup everything is super smooth and is basically all automated. Luke Smith made a great tutorial vid on Syncthing: [Github Releases] Vinyl Music Player ────────────────── • Available on: Fdroid (Main repo), Google Play Store There are a lots of good FOSS music players on Android like Auxio, Vanilla, Simple Music Player etc. all of the ones I mentioned work great, It’s just that I *really* like the /card/ layout that Vinyl uses, Vinyl is the only FOSS android Music that I have used that has *Music Tag* editing capabilites (Vanilla Music Player had one too, but it was pretty clunky soo). There is also a feature that lets you automatically download all the Music Tag metadata for your music library which is pretty cool, development has also picked up recently so yeah check Vinyl out! Questions, Comments and etc. ════════════════════════════ If you have any questions, comments or anything else about this blog post, then please [contact] me :3 [contact] <../../index.html#contact>