8 ms·

I didn't realize the app was still being worked on. It's been years since the UI update and it's always been amazingly buggy (across 3 different phone). I'm alw

• hunter2_ 4y ago
  Agreed. I wonder if it falls into traps that simply didn't exist in the past, and release notes about breaking changes regarding those increasing blurry-but-not-killed modes were ignored.
• abdullahkhalids 4y ago
  Every few months, the app starts to crash constantly. Meaning, I open it, it crashes, then for some reason starts up again on its own, crashes again, and the cycle continues. I usually have to restart my phone, uninstall the app, and reinstall again from scratch.
• soiler 4y ago
  Weird, I've never had an issue except with trying to open updates from the notifications dropdown.
  • geokon 4y ago
    I think if you live close to their servers maybe most of the issues would not be noticeable. If the app downloads and installs while you have the app page open then it seems to go smoothly. From Asia, I always get DSL speeds and need to leave the app/phone open for an extended amount of time to download even the smallest app
    • Out_of_Characte 4y ago
      Im european and the app still worked perfectly fine when my data bundle ran out and I had to finish downloading data/apps on 4kbps.
• Hasnep 4y ago
  I recommend NeoStore [1], which is an alternative frontend for F-droid. I can't say it never crashes, but I prefer it to the F-droid app. [1] https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/com.machiav3lli.fdroid/ https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/com.machiav3lli.fdroid/
  • lalopalota 4y ago
    Haven't used NeoStore, but Aurora Droid works well for me. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.adroid/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.adroid/
    • cf100clunk 4y ago
      I switched from Aurora Droid to NeoStore and prefer the latter's speed. Of course now that F-droid has made this change Aurora Droid may improve if/when it adapts.
  • orra 4y ago
    From what I was reading recently, NeoStore is also the F-Droid client which supports automatic upgrades on Android 12, without root.
    • Hasnep 4y ago
      Yes, but it has the limitation that it can only automatically update apps that it installed. So if you've already installed an app through the F-droid app, you can either uninstall and reinstall an app using NeoStore or manually do the first update through NeoStore and then all subsequent updates will be automatic. This is the reason I use NeoStore to install apps like NewPipe on my family members' phones. Before, when Newpipe broke they wouldn't know how to update it, now it just stays updated all the time.
      • Andrex 4y ago
        This is being fixed in Android 14[0], fwiw. 0. https://www.xda-developers.com/android-14-new-apis-app-stores/ https://www.xda-developers.com/android-14-new-apis-app-store...
• cypress66 4y ago
  Yes, fdroid is by an order of magnitude the buggiest app I have.
• deleted 4y ago
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• Weirdfuture 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • fauigerzigerk 4y ago
    Forgive me if I’m underestimating your humanity, but your writing style reminds me of a certain kind of generative entity and I wonder if HN has a policy on that. Personally I think if a comment is helpful then I don’t care who or what wrote it, but your comment refers to issues you claim to have experienced with FDroid, so your comment would only be helpful if that experience is real rather than just a statistically plausible sequence of words.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• dugite-code 4y ago
  My understanding is that a lot of the bugs you'll encounter are because of androids aggressive power management features killing off background tasks with F-droid being particularly susceptible due to it being designed to work without the google play services.
• hilbert42 4y ago
  "...It's been years since the UI update and it's always been amazingly buggy" Being buggy is only one aspect, the other was the annoying change of UI that presents apps in rows of large, gawky icons instead of the previous efficient rows of title text each headed by a small icon (as say in Windows 'List' mode). Unfortunately, this leaves me stuck on ancient version F-Droid 0.102.3. When looking for an app this new large-icons mode is much less efficient, especially so if one's in a hurry and doesn't know what the icon represents (as one would expect with a new program). I'd have thought the large-icon disease would have remained quarantined within the Microsoft and Apple worlds but unfortunately the contagion's now spread to Linux and even infected the F-Droid app on Android. It ought to be resisted on the grounds that there are so many new icons about that their once great benefit has been deprecated (text again conveying a deeper understanding). I've no objection to those who find large icons an acceptable work framework but developers shouldn't change UIs just on a whim. If they so desire a change let them provide it as an option—i.e. a UI revamp should allow users to select the old one as an option (we've all seen this UI nonsense before with MS Windows, the F-Droid app is about the last place I'd have expected to get infected).
  • roytam87 4y ago
    if you prefer old f-droid interface, you can try foxy droid https://f-droid.org/en/packages/nya.kitsunyan.foxydroid/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/nya.kitsunyan.foxydroid/
    • hilbert42 4y ago
      OK, will do. Currently trying Neo Store which has also been suggested.
    • hilbert42 4y ago
      Update. I like it, it's very similar to the old F-D v0.102.3 mentioned. Reckon I'm not alone, seems Foxy Droid's author shares similar views. Thanks. :-)
      • hilbert42 4y ago
• NayamAmarshe 4y ago
  I use Aurora Droid, it's pretty nice (from the developer of Aurora Store): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.adroid/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.adroid/
• nuodag 4y ago
  I had the impression it very much depends on the OS, on stock Android it definitely feels broken, with clicking ten times to update an app that just gets stuck, on Lineageos with MicroG and privileged F-Droid extensions its super smooth with autoupdates and everything.
• glenstein 4y ago
  >I almost exclusively use FDroid, it's an amazing project. But I've never seen an app with so many issues I've used Fdroid for years, downloaded and updated apps hundreds of times across multiple devices and never encountered a single thing you described. Death, taxes, and people confidently generalizing from one-off cases of highly unusual experiences. >I didn't realize the app was still being worked on. By my count there have been three new updates to F-Droid just this year that were not alpha updates, and if you use F-droid these updates show up. If you use F-Droid, I don't know how you could possibly look at your app updates and not realize that is indeed being developed unless you're in the 99th percentile of highly unusual use cases. And if you're an unusual use case you shouldn't be generalizing from it.
  • efreak 4y ago
    I don't encounter all the same bugs gp does, but I do encounter several on a regular basis. These issues show up regularly on both my tablet and my phone, and they showed up regularly on my previous phone and two tablets over a range of ~5 versions of Android (8-12) 1. Every so often I turn on my tablet or phone and see a notification that fdroid has crashed, asking me to submit the information (I used to, I don't anymore). I wasn't using fdroid recently, I don't leave it open in the background; the only background task it has is fetching update lists and downloading new versions to install later. If it crashes, it loses the downloaded updates. 2. Occasionally fdroid crashes on start, providing the same notification as above. Force-stopping the app and removing the activity from recents is the only way to get past this--if I force stop and restart from recents, it crashes again. If I remove from recents and don't force stop, it crashes again. I'm guessing whatever parameters it launched with are causing the crash to happen again. 3. The background service frequently stops while updating package lists (not while downloading packages). The notification remains. This is regardless of whether the update is manual or automatic; there is no foreground update. At 11:00pm I regularly have a non-dismissable sticky notification, last updated at 5:00am, that fdroid is updating repos. Tapping it does nothing, I have to open the fdroid app, which may or may not crash on opening. If it crashes, the only way to reset the notification is to force-stop it. This is also the only way to open fdroid after such a crash (see #2). While I have no confidence that the crashing issue is fixed, it sounds like the new index is intended to prevent repo updates from taking this long. Personally, I'd prefer to just download an SQLite file directly from a server and just dump that in the app to query. 4. After downloads are complete, the download list frequently doesn't update. I can initiate the install from either the page for that specific app or from the download notification, but the main downloads list just shows that it's still downloading. 5. Not really a bug so much as missing feature: there's no way to do partial update checks. No way to check for updates to a single app without downloading the entire repo. I know there's an update available for X Y Z apps and want to update them on the bus, but because #3, 30 minutes is likely not long enough to do so. There's also no way to check a single repository for updates, and trying to bypass this by toggling that repo off and back on causes fdroid to update all repos in the order they were added. If I want to install an app from a new repo, I have to wait for all my other repos to finish updating first. 6. I have ~10 repos in fdroid. I regularly get a notification that the format is incorrect or the server couldn't be contacted or some such. It doesn't tell me what repo that is. My only option is to go through and toggle all my repos off, enable them one at a time, and I've mostly given up. I can't get the latest update for apps from the website because fdroid doesn't make that available, I can't install updates automatically because I'm not rooted (and thus can't just trust that it'll eventually succeed in installing). I used to run my own fdroid repo for these apps; I don't anymore, because it's not worth the effort to try and get fdroid to install them. It's not because I'm using some obscure hardware or ROM; I've had these issues with: Nexus 7 lineage, Nvidia shield lineage, Moto G6, Moto G6 lineage, Samsung A32 stock, Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 stock. Fdroid is usually the first thing I install after getting a new device or after rooting a device; I've had fdroid crash on the third time starting it on a brand new device, before I've done more than enable adb to install fdroid. *This is _not_ a one-off case, this is an ongoing issue that I've had for years at this point* Instead, for the few apps I actually care about keeping up to date, I use Obtainium, which checks GitHub releases (among others) instead of fdroid (it can check fdroid's website, but that's not kept up to date). As a bonus, this also allows me to keep track of apps that aren't included in fdroid (mostly Tachiyomi forks). Obtainium can't check for updates for individual apps without fetching and parsing the entire catalog, because fdroid only provides a full catalog (see #5)
• stinos 4y ago
  I hear you on the bugs, but my main problem with it is that the search just never seems to return what I need. I don't know if it's me but I usually end up searching the internet for 'best foss android <thing>' or so. Let's see: search for ssh (with the intent of finding an ssh client, that's not too far fetched?), these are the top matches: HACS Hackspace Access Control System, KOReader Ebook reader, AVNC VNC client, FTPClient an (s)ftp client, Linux command library, MultiVNC, SshDaemon. So that last one is the only one which effectively has SSH in the name, and then I guess that FTPClient would be something I might want to see as well, and then the VNC clients perhaps. So maybe 'ssh client' then? Yeah no, KOReader still first, then AVNC, FTPClient, SSHDaemon, .... Ok, I get it, search is hard, and I assume they intentionally didnt want to sort by number of downloads (?), but what it does now is close to useless.
  • linker3000 4y ago
    Have to agree that the search function is pretty dire; it only seems to work (mostly) if you already know the name of the application for which you are searching, which defeats its purpose.
    • berkes 4y ago
      Even worse if you search for terms like "git", "github", or "issues", terms that almost every app uses somewhere in their description or metadata. I would expect this to be trivial to fix. At least my experience with Algolia, Elastic, Meilisearch and even PG fulltext search make me believe it would be doable.
  • philipphutterer 4y ago
    This! And I thought I'm just too stupid to use this search, ha! Search is hard, for sure, but come on. But you actually reminded me to just use Google Dorks for that with inurl:https://f-droid.org/packages/ https://f-droid.org/packages/.
  • urgent_skittle 4y ago
    Sounds very familiar. I switched to Foxy Droid, an alternative F-Droid client, years ago partly because its search functionality is miles ahead of the official F-Droid app. The popular and newer Droid-ify and Neo Store are forks of it I think, so should offer the same improvements. Top results for 'ssh' in Foxy Droid: ConnectBot (SSH client), SshDaemon (ssh server), RSSAid (RSSHub... nothing to do with SSH), Easy SSHFS (Sshfs with ssh client), Trigger (open doors via SSH), FiSSH (SSH authentication via fingerprint), TeamBot (SSH client), SimpleSSHD (SSH server), etc.
• ttctciyf 4y ago
  Curious: how you can almost exclusively use f-droid and not constantly run into the self-updates and associated info that would regularly tell you it's been worked on? (Edit to add:) maybe the problem is that you're not keeping it updated? As per many replies I don't recognise the buggy mess you describe.
• xchip 4y ago
  Did you file any bugs?
• joemazerino 4y ago
  I have never shared your experience with F-Droid. Buggy at times, sure, but overall a good deployment mechanism.
• iudqnolq 4y ago
  For years clicking the install link in the notification errored, but they fixed it a few months ago. There is progress.
• Abishek_Muthian 4y ago
  Do you have F-Droid privilege escalation patch? Preferably built-in as part of the ROM e.g. LineageOS+microG version[1]. App install + bg updates have been an non-issue to me[1]. [1] https://lineage.microg.org/ https://lineage.microg.org/