Open-source apps are consistently better than the average closed source app on the playstore (opinion)
Open-source apps are consistently better than the average closed source app on the playstore (opinion)
Has anyone noticed that apps on F-Droid or that you just get from GitHub are just better than the ultra-popular apps on the play store? Most of them are open source and have no ads or trackers. But this isn't true on the Play Store at all.
I see myself always getting apps from F-Droid now because there is always an alternative to the ad-infested bloated privacy infesting BS that I find on the play store. It's unfortunate that it's gotten this bad, where the only reason I even use the play store is to install updates or games.
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Hi, can you share some examples of alternatives you grabbed so that I can get started
Here are some apps I've switched to
AntennaPod - For podcasts, pretty much the best app out there
Simple calender - For calender use
Feeder - RSS feed reader. Useful replacement for news apps
Simple Gallery Pro - As the name suggests, it's a clean, simple offline photo and video viewer with some neat features
Lawnchair - My launcher of choice. A good balance of speed and customisability.
Just notes - Keep replacement
K9 mail - Gmail app replacement. FairEmail is a strong contender too.
Keepass2Android - Password manager
Neostore - F-droid alternative
Geometric Weather - My preferred weather app of choice (Edit - For a more updated fork of this, check comment below)
Wefwef - Kinda mimics apollo for lemmy. It's pretty neat imo.
Honourary mention - Infinity for reddit (RIP)
Lichess - rather than chess.com
Rustdesk - remote desktop software
Syncthing - rather than Dropbox
KDE Connect - phone/computer integration (notifications, media control, mouse and keyboard, file sharing, presentation remote, clipboard sharing, etc)
Aves gallery,
Organic maps
PlayBook - audiobook player
Bitwarden - password manager,
Droid-ify - F-droid client
Element - matrix client (potentiall alternative to discord)
GrapheneOS is also great.
I loved Infinity. Shame they aren't moving it to Lemmy, and instead they're making it a subscription.
Agreed. Although I'm pleased to see them survive through this, I really hoped they'd make a Lemmy client. As a platform, this just makes more sense.
Seems so bizzare though and contradictory. Like not wanting to use the official reddit app that is free and not restricted, but too addicted to reddit to quit that they are willing to pay a subscription to be able to continue to reddit on the app they want. That's like a super hardcore reddit addict more than regular users who scoffed at the idea of a boycott.
Haha, funny and sad at the same time. Apart from addiction though, the sentiment to support the developer who had worked so hard to bring to app to them might be at play too. I know many users who are willing to either donate to the Infinity dev directly and patch the apk for themselves, or pay the subscription cost only if it has a profit margin for the dev. Nobody wants to pay reddit.
the official reddit app that is free and not restricted
Hahahahahaha
Oh you're serious
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
To me someone paying monthly to continue posting on reddit through a third party app because they are too addicted to quit is more ridiculous than using the official app. At that point they are participating and adding content that increases engagement on reddit. There's no stance of being anti reddit at that point. They are officially a reddit addict. So yeah, I do look down on them more than official reddit app users.
Breezy Weather is an active fork of Geometric Weather (the latter is abandoned).
Oh, thank you so much! I've been searching for something like this for a while!
May I suggest you check out KeepassDX? I found it's UI/UX to be much better a few years ago. Haven't looked back since.
Thanks, I'll be sure to check it out!
I'll give you a few from F-Droid (and maybe IzzyOnDroid too):
- Auxio is a pretty good lightweight music player
- NewPipe is an anonymous YouTube client without ads or tracking
- Obtanium is an app that allows you to auto-update apps from many sources like GitHub, GitLab, and F-Droid
- Bromite (use this repo instead of the out of date F-Droid version) is a hardened version of Chromium with features like ad blocking and less spyware Those are just a couple apps, there are a ton more on F-Droid. I reccomend using the Droid-ify client because it has more default repos and better UI.
Unless open camera has improved dramatically, the GrapheneOS camera app is far better.
Depends on the use case. OC has more control over manual settings like exposure and focus peak detection. I use it occasionally for product photography style shots for 3d printed parts and for messing with astrophotography. Otherwise, for general use, I use the Graphene camera